(Image credit: Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission).

By Mel Rothenburger

ARMCHAIR MAYOR

ROTHENBURGER: Proposed new riding boundaries for Kamloops make no sense

May 4, 2022 | 4:10 AM

DRAWING LINES ON A MAP is easy, especially for electoral boundary commissions.

A new federal electoral map is being drawn up and one of the initial proposals is to split the city of Kamloops and attach the two pieces to separate ridings.

The main populated area of the city, including Aberdeen and the North and South Shores, would be part of a riding called Kamloops-Thompson-Lytton, while an area stretching from Valleyview along the South Thompson River would be in a riding called North Okanagan-Shuswap.

The Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission is tasked with splitting B.C. into 43 ridings with 116,300 people each, more or less. A review is done every 10 years — between 2011 and 2021, the province grew from 4.4 million to five million people, creating some challenges in keeping distribution relatively equal.

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Kamloops has been bounced around for many years, from Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys to Kamloops-Thompson and now Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo. The current riding isn’t perfect, but it roughly aligns with the Thompson-Nicola Regional District and includes all of Kamloops.

Valleyview and Barnhartvale have very little connection with Revelstoke, Vernon or the District of Coldstream, but would become an outer fringe of the new riding that includes those towns.

The problem with the way boundary commissions draw new lines is their mandate to evenly distribute population, to the detriment of natural geographic boundaries and trading areas.

The result is a hodgepodge of ridings ranging from urban neighbourhoods at the Coast to vast regions in the north.

Municipal boundaries certainly don’t work that way. Tiny communities of a few hundred have the same structure and authority as those with hundreds of thousands, and it works.

By the way, B.C. provincial boundaries are up for review as well, and that could prove interesting for the two Kamloops ridings, which, of course, are divided by the river. It’s time to scrap the narrow population requirement and base riding boundaries on common sense.

I’m Mel Rothenburger, the Armchair Mayor.