Some Prince George residents could find themselves in a different riding after recommendations from the panel charged with redrawing the provincial electoral boundaries.
Relatively minor changes are suggested for the two Prince George ridings, currently represented in Victoria by Shirley Bond and Mike Morris.
According to the preliminary report released Thursday by the B.C. Electoral Boundaries Commission, feedback indicated that residents of the Hart, Bowl and College Heights didn't want to see the areas split into different electoral districts.
The proposed change would move the dividing line between Prince George-Valemount and Prince George-Mackenzie from Highway 97 to one that follows the Fraser and Nechako Rivers to the John Hart Bridge. This would put all of the Hart into the Prince George-Mackenzie riding.
College Heights would also get lumped together in Prince George-Valemount by moving the boundary from Highway 16 to following major roads to the west, University Way and Tyner Boulevard.
The changes to the Prince George-area ridings are the only ones recommended in the eight ridings that make up the North region. Those eight, along with four comprising the Columbia-Kootenay region and the five making up the Cariboo-Thompson region, were given special accommodation by the government in that they could not have the number of electoral districts reduced.
Typically, the number of constituents in a specific riding can only be above or below the average population per district (53,119) by 25 per cent. But given the geographic size of some of the identified ridings, meeting that benchmark could result in there not being "effective representation."
For example, the population of the Stikine riding is 61 per cent below the provincial average, but takes up more than 196,000 square kilometres geographically. Increasing the boundary size to make the population closer to the average wouldn't be fair, said commission chair Thomas Melnick.
"The reality is they live in a completely different environment," said Melnick. "The people in the Vancouver ridings can probably walk down a few blocks and see their MLAs. Not so easy if you live in some of the parts of Stikine, let me tell you."
The majority of the changes to the riding map are proposed for the southern portion of the province, with two new additional ridings - to bring the total to 87 - recommended to represent Surrey and Richmond residents.
The report, available online at www.bc-ebc.ca, is open for public comment until May 26. The commission will also be holding public hearings around the province beginning in April. A final report will be submitted to the government by Sept. 25.
