Solving Boundary-Similkameen

When analyzing the new legislation governing redistricting in British Columbia this cycle, I noted in passing that the creation of three “protected regions” creates an isolated, unprotected region in the Okanagan. If there are districts that have unbalanced population in the Okanagan, the only way to solve the problem is moving population around inside the Okanagan.

Well, there is a district with unbalanced population: Boundary-Similkameen (37,840) is 30% below the provincial population average (54,369), and 36% below the average population of unprotected ridings (58,810). So about 15,000 people need to be added.

On the face of it, this is no problem, the other ridings in the region have excess population in the 4% to 14% range, so there’s lots of people to transfer to Boundary-Similkameen, in theory. The trouble is, people don’t live in a nice uniform distribution over the whole land area of the region. They are clumped together.

Here’s what the situation looks like now:

The commission cannot take population from the east or west, those are both protected regions, the only direction to go is north. But, to the north is Penticton, with a population of 33,000. The whole of Penticton cannot be added, the only way to balance Boundary-Similkameen is going to be splitting Penticton in half.

Splitting communities in half, particularly small ones that are much smaller in population than the district itself is generally avoided by Canadian boundary commissions, because retaining jurisdictional integrity is one of the concerns they attempt to address (unlike the US of A). One of the “failures” of the last commission was the splitting of Williams Lake between Cariboo North and South.

If the commission were drawing borders without the artificial restriction of the protected regions, it would be possible for Boundary-Similkameen to discard some of it’s communities on the east and west edges (into underpopulated ridings that need the help) and transform into a simple north-south oriented riding running from Penticton down to the US border.

However, that’s not on. It’s not the only conundrum the commission will be wrestling with, either.