The Mayor of Kamloops has some concerns with the proposed federal electoral boundary redistribution that splits the city into two ridings.

“The difficulty that I have with this redistribution is that it takes the subdivisions of Campbell Creek, Barnhartvale, Dallas, Juniper Ridge and Valleyview and adds them to North Okanagan-Shuswap, which I believe is simply an exercise to create the sufficient number of bodies that are required for an electoral riding,” Ken Christian said at City Council this week.

“Issues related to EI, issues related to passports, issues related to immigration, and certainly issues related to the CRA will have to be adjudicated by your friendly neighbourhood Member of Parliament office in either Salmon Arm or in Vernon for those of you living in the southeast sector and I find that inconsistent with what Kamloops is all about.”

Essentially the three-member Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission for British Columbia is proposing to move all Kamloops residents east of the Yellowhead Bridge to the North Okanagan-Shuswap riding, which will also include Salmon Arm, Sicamous, Revelstoke, Armstrong, and Enderby – a total of nearly 110,000 residents.

The rest of Kamloops will be part of the new Kamloops-Thompson-Lytton riding, which will also include the communities of Lillooet, Lytton, Cache Creek, Ashcroft, Clinton, Savona, Logan Lake, Barriere, and Clearwater. This riding would be home to about 115,000 residents.

“[It] is not to say that Mel Arnold, the current Member of Parliament for that area doesn’t do a very good job, and certainly Frank Caputo does here, or Dan Albas does in terms of his representation of Logan Lake,” Christian added. “But this notion of simply trying to get to the numbers without taking into account things like trading area, hospital districts, school district, areas of employment and where people live and the communities that are involved, I think, goes a little too far in my expectation.”

He told people in Kamloops who share similar or other concerns with the proposed changes to make their voices heard.

“My recommendation would be that there either be one riding for Kamloops or that if they are going to divide Kamloops they divide Kamloops either North South as they have done with the provincial ridings or East West but they don’t hive off a portion of the City in order to balance the books,” he added.

“If your opinions are similar to those that I have observed, then make that representation to the government as they are redesigning the federal ridings in this area.”

Public hearings are slated for 27 communities between June 6 and Sept. 27, with a virtual hearing set for Sept. 28. The Kamloops hearing is set for June 16 at the Coast Hotel and Conference Centre in Aberdeen.

You’ll find the full report on the proposed changes here.

An interactive map of the existing ridings and the proposed changes can be found here.