Kelowna should be divorced from West Kelowna in terms of representation in the provincial legislature, city councillors say.
A redrawn map of riding boundaries should use Okanagan Lake as a local dividing line, with three electoral districts in Kelowna and one centered around West Kelowna. Councilors agreed Monday.
“To me, this is a very logical way forward,” Coun Luke Stack said at Monday’s meeting, as councillors voted unanimously to make that recommendation to the provincial commission studying the possible redrawing of BC provincial electoral map.
Currently, downtown Kelowna is part of a riding called Kelowna West, that includes all of the Westside. The rest of Kelowna is divided into two other districts, called Kelowna Mission and Kelowna-Lake Country.
All three Kelowna ridings have populations between 68,000 and 75,000, substantially above the provincial riding average population of 57,000, deputy city clerk Laura Bentley told council.
Kelowna’s current populations is 144,000, so creating three ridings just within city boundaries would result in an average riding population below the provincial average.
So it’s likely that the three proposed Kelowna ridings would have to include residents of unincorporated areas to the east of the city, in the Central Okanagan Regional District, as well as some areas of the town of Lake Country, Bentley said.
Kelowna is the fastest-growing city in Canada, according to the 2021 census, with a forecast population of 168,000 by 2040.
The provincial commission studying examining riding boundaries will release its report with recommendations for change later this year.
A federal commission is also studying possible changes to federal riding boundaries. One of its proposals is to redraw the Okanagan’s federal map so downtown Kelowna and the Glenmore area is shifted into a new riding called Vernon-Lake Country, with no mention at all of Kelowna.
City staff will bring a report on that matter to councillors at a later date, Bentley said.
