Why riding boundaries changed in 2024

Riding boundaries changed because an independent commission redrew them and the Legislative Assembly adopted the result. The BC Electoral Boundaries Commission submitted its final report on April 3 2023, and legislation putting the new map into law passed on May 11 2023. Elections BC calls each riding an electoral district.

The headline change was the number of seats. British Columbia went from 87 electoral districts to 93, which is why six areas gained representation and why boundaries around them had to shift to make room.

Who draws the riding boundaries?

A commission of three people draws them, and no sitting politician is on it. Elections BC explains that an independent and non-partisan commission is established after every two general elections. Section 2 of the Electoral Boundaries Commission Act sets the membership.

The three seats are filled this way:

• a judge or retired judge of the Supreme Court or the Court of Appeal, nominated by the Lieutenant Governor in Council
• a person who is neither an MLA nor a government employee, nominated by the Speaker after consultation with the Premier and the Leader of the Official Opposition
• the Chief Electoral Officer appointed under the Election Act

Section 3 gives the commission one function. It makes proposals to the Legislative Assembly about the area and boundaries and names of the province’s electoral districts. Section 3(2) allows it to propose an increase in the number of electoral districts up to a maximum of 93.

What rules does the commission have to follow?

Section 9 of the Act sets the governing principles. Representation by population is the primary rule, weighed against geography and communities of interest and the means of travel and communication across the province.

Population is bounded by a percentage. The commission may deviate from the electoral quotient by no more than 25 percent either way, where the quotient is the provincial population divided by the number of proposed districts. Section 9(2)(c) allows the commission to exceed that band where it considers it necessary for effective representation, and section 9(3) lists what it may take into account, including a manageable geographic size.

Public input is built into the schedule. Section 11 requires hearings after the report is made public, and section 12 gives the commission six months to submit amendments. Sitting MLAs may make submissions only after the commission has heard from everyone else.

Why did BC go from 87 seats to 93?

Population growth drove the increase. The commission wrote that six additional ridings were a necessary response to the province’s growth since the 2015 Commission and to projected growth in densely populated urban areas.

The 2021 Census made the problem measurable. Using those figures against the 87 existing districts, six districts sat above the 25 percent maximum. Four of them were 30 percent over the quotient and one was more than 40 percent over.

Adding seats helped at both ends of the range. With 93 districts the electoral quotient is 53,773 people and the usual deviation range runs from 40,330 to 67,216. The commission noted that this lowered the bottom of the range from 43,111, which reduced the number of boundary adjustments needed in sparsely populated areas.

Where did the six new ridings go?

The commission placed the six new electoral districts in these communities:

• Langford
• Kelowna
• Langley
• Burnaby
• Surrey
• Vancouver

Three technical mapping changes came with the redraw. Coastal boundaries were pulled in to follow regional district lines five kilometres out to sea. Existing boundaries were aligned to nearby administrative boundaries. Boundaries running into inland waterways were set to angles of zero or 90 or 180 or 270 degrees. The commission also renamed districts where a name no longer fit the area or duplicated a federal riding name.

When did the new boundaries take effect?

The new map took effect at the dissolution of the 42nd Parliament. Section 6 of the Electoral Districts Act says the Act comes into force on that day, and BC Laws records the repeal of the 2015 Electoral Districts Act as effective September 21 2024. The 2024 general election was the first vote held on the 93 district map.

The published boundary data carries its own date. Elections BC’s electoral district layer, distributed through the BC Data Catalogue, stamps all 93 districts with a gazette date of December 7 2023.

If you want to know which district you live in now, Elections BC runs an address lookup that returns the current electoral district for any BC address.