Image Credit: B.C. Electoral Boundaries Commission

By James Peters

Electoral Boundaries Commission

Provincial boundaries report removes Clearwater from Cariboo – but adds Ashcroft and Cache Creek

Apr 3, 2023 | 5:04 PM

VICTORIA — The B.C. Electoral Boundaries Commission tabled its final report Monday (April 3). It includes significant change proposals for Kamloops — and even more dramatic shifts in the rural areas.

Two Kamloops ridings are still included in the final report, with one of them, Kamloops Centre, encompassing the majority of the urban core of the city. Upper Sahali would be split, with households west of Summit Drive in Kamloops Centre.

The Kamloops-North Thompson riding remains, now including Valleyview, Barnhartvale and Dallas. The riding would also include the Tk’emlups reserve, Westsyde and Batchelor Heights, but would not extend below the CN rail tracks on the Kamloops North Shore. Kamloops-North Thompson would now extend east along the Trans Canada corridor to include Chase.

A preliminary report released last October grouped North Thompson communities like Barriere and Clearwater with the Cariboo-Chilcotin.

In opting to keep those communities in the Kamloops-North Thompson riding, the commission said a desire to balance populations was trumped by practical connections between the North Thompson and the Kamloops area.

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However, the commission satisfies population concerns in Cariboo-Chilcotin by expanding it south to encompass Ashcroft and Cache Creek, both currently in Fraser-Nicola. It notes those communities remain on the Highway 97-Highway 1 transportation corridor.

To compensate for the losses of Ashcroft and Cache Creek, the commission redraws Fraser-Nicola to the southwest to smaller communities on the north side of the Fraser such as Harrison Hot Springs and Kent.

The final report also keeps the Shuswap region together in the riding of Salmon Arm-Shuswap, adding the North Okanagan communities of Enderby and Armstrong.

The report is now in the hands of B.C. MLAs, who must decide which, if any, of its recommendations they will adopt.

READ THE FULL REPORT: