Two North Thompson mayors are not happy with plans from the BC Boundaries Commission to not put their communities in the same provincial riding as the City of Kamloops.
Clearwater mayor Merlin Blackwell tells NL News he is not a fan of the proposed Cariboo-North Thompson riding.
“We are geographically and economically tied to the Kamloops region,” he said.
“One of the little idiosyncrasies of this plan is to separate the Upper Clearwater Valley into the Prince George riding. Those people only have one road south into Clearwater, so they would actually come to Clearwater to vote for a Prince George-based MLA. That makes absolutely no sense at all for a couple of hundred people.”
“For the people just outside the boundaries of Clearwater, being represented out of Prince George is basically being represented from the moon.”
Wells Gray Provincial Park will also be divided from the District of Clearwater into the Prince George-Valemount riding under the current plan.
“In some ways that could be an advantage because we can have two MLAs to talk to, one for the Clearwater-based businesses and [one for] the others, but I can’t remember the last time I was in Prince George,” Blackwell added.
“It is not exactly the place that I got to for anything other than a conference. I can think of maybe eight or nine years ago, at best.”
Under the current plan, both Clearwater and Barriere, currently in Kamloops-North Thompson, would be joined with the communities of Williams Lake, Lac la Hache, 100 Mile House, and Anahim Lake, giving the riding a total population of 41,267 people.
In all, the Boundaries Commission is proposing changes to the boundaries of 71 existing ridings to make room for six new ridings. – one each in Burnaby, Surrey, Langley, and Vancouver, one in the Langford area, and one near Kelowna – taking the total in the province to 93.
Barriere mayor Ward Stamer tells NL News he feels the plan as presented appears to be a case of trying to increase seats in the Lower Mainland and then grouping rural communities in the Interior together to meet population requirements.
“They’re going to go and change all these basic geographical and historical boundaries just for that to work,” he said. “I mean, we’re talking from Vinsulla all the way almost to Bella Coola. How are you going to have fair representation on a geographical location that big?”
“In the past, we used to have a better way of saying, ‘well look, the area is too large [and] we only have 40,000 people but we still have significant inputs into our B.C. Economy.’ We have forestry, we have agriculture, we have mining in this area,” Stamer added.
“But for them to turn around and double the size [of the riding] to try to justify what they’re doing in the Lower Mainland, it doesn’t make any sense at all.”
Both Blackwell and Stamer plan to be at the Kamloops public hearing at the Delta Hotel downtown on Oct. 18 to voice their concerns about these potential changes.
You can find the entire preliminary report here.
