College Heights is Quesnel North, the Hart is Mackenzie South
Plus, the plan to 'end encampments' and grants, grants, grant
A fun quirk of being the biggest city by a large degree for many hundreds of kilometers in all directions is Prince George is always getting chopped up into different electoral ridings. The reason for this is simple: We have a system of democracy that’s based on the principal of every vote being equal, so there’s an effort made to make every individual riding having roughly the same number of people in it (the idea being you don’t want some MPs/MLAs representing thousands of people while other only represent dozens). There are adjustments made for geography, particularly as you get further and further north, but compared to say, the United States, Canada is more interested in representing people than land at the ballot box.
I bring this up because Prince George is likely to get sliced up further at a provincial level. The latest B.C. Electoral Boundaries Commission report is out and it recommends the city go from having two to three MLAs as different parts of Prince George gets lumped in with Mackenzie, the Robson Valley and the north Cariboo. The reason for this is, as I said off the top, because Prince George has the biggest population around and so chunks of population are lumped in with much smaller outlying areas in an effort to create roughly equal ridings. With other parts of the province growing at a much faster rate, the report’s authors found they had to find a way to deal with the relatively smaller Cariboo region, in particular. I’m just going to show you the entire section of the report:
The Prince George and the Cariboo area is made up of four electoral districts situated in the centre of the province. Prince George is by far the largest community in the area. Other communities include Quesnel, Williams Lake and 100 Mile House. Outside of these centres, the population is relatively sparse. The population is growing more slowly here than the provincial average. Presently, the two Cariboo ridings fall significantly below the usual deviation range. The population of the two existing Prince George ridings are within the usual deviation range.
Residents of this area consistently emphasized the challenge of ensuring effective representation for people living in rural and remote locations. They highlighted the inadequacy of existing transportation and communications infrastructure. Many told us that we should maintain the existing electoral district boundaries. Some told us that ensuring adequate representation in growing urban areas should not come at the expense of the residents of this area.
Transportation is a particular challenge here. The arterial Highways 16, 97 and 20 connect communities throughout the Cariboo and Chilcotin. They run over a high plateau that is subject to harsh weather conditions. Many remote communities depend on these roads and have no alternative routes. People living outside the area’s main centres have very poor cellular and internet connectivity.
We considered combining the two Cariboo electoral districts into one riding; however, we found it was not possible to do so in a way that ensures effective representation. We also considered adding the Bella Coola Valley to a Cariboo riding but decided against that because it would have further reduced the already small population of the North Coast electoral district.
In light of these challenges, we propose distributing the high concentration of population in Prince George among three ridings. This brings all four of the area’s ridings within the usual deviation range. We keep downtown Prince George in one riding and do not disrupt existing connections between communities in the Robson Valley, Chilcotin Plateau and South Cariboo. We recommend that the name of Cariboo North be changed to Prince George-North Cariboo to better distinguish it from the Cariboo-Chilcotin electoral district
We considered moving communities in the North Thompson (including Barriere, Clearwater and Wells Grey Provincial Park) into the Cariboo-Chilcotin riding to better balance populations in the area. However, we recognized that access to larger centres in Cariboo-Chilcotin requires travel over a mountain pass on secondary highways, and that these communities rely on Kamloops as their service centre. Instead, we propose expanding this riding south to include Cache Creek and Ashcroft, which are now located in the Fraser-Nicola electoral district. These communities share the Highway 97 transportation corridor with communities in Cariboo-Chilcotin like 100 Mile House and Williams Lake. This proposal also reduces the large geographic size of Fraser-Nicola. We believe that these boundary adjustments better reflect our guiding principles.
Cariboo-Chilcotin
This electoral district spans a large part of the southern Cariboo area and the Chilcotin Plateau. It includes communities along Highway 97 such as Williams Lake, Clinton, 100 Mile House, Cache Creek and Ashcroft, as well as communities along Highway 20 such as Anahim Lake. The riding is bounded to the north by Cariboo Regional District Electoral Area K, to the west by the Cariboo Regional District, and to the south and east by the borders of Ashcroft and Thompson-Nicola Regional District Electoral Area J.
Prince George-Mackenzie
This riding includes the northwestern neighbourhoods of Prince George, such as Shady Valley, Cranbrook Hill and Heritage. It extends north of the city to encompass the Lheidli T'enneh First Nation, the District of Mackenzie and the communities around Summit, Bear and MacLeod Lakes. The riding’s east, west, and northern boundaries follow the borders of the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George. In the south, the electoral district boundary is Upper Mud River Road.
Prince George-North Cariboo
Prince George-North Cariboo consists of the southern portion of Prince George, including most of the College Heights neighbourhood, and communities along Highway 97 such as Quesnel, Stoner, Hixon and Marguerite. It is bordered by the Cariboo Regional District in the west. It includes the communities of Wells, Likely and Horsefly in the east. Its northern boundary follows the Yellowhead Highway (Highway 16) and the Fraser River. The southern boundary extends to the municipal boundary of the City of Williams Lake and the boundary of Cariboo Regional District Electoral Area F.
Prince George-Valemount
This electoral district extends from the urban centre of Prince George to the Alberta border in the east. It includes downtown Prince George and the neighbourhoods of Charella Garden, South Fort George, as well as the northern part of College Heights. It also includes communities in the Robson Valley and the uppermost part of the North Thompson River Valley such as Valemount, McBride, Tête Jaune Cache and Blue River. The riding’s western boundary follows Wells Grey Provincial Park and the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George Electoral Area A. To the north, it is bounded by the Peace River Regional District.
You can see a map of this proposed change here but the big difference is College Heights getting siphoned off into Cariboo North. The part about this that always interests me is whether it would be hypothetically possible for Prince George to vote one way and either overwhelm or be overwhelmed by a completely different voting pattern in other areas because of this division. I’ve looked at past election outcomes and in the years I’ve done so this has only happened once — in the federal election of 2016 when the city of Prince George cast more votes for Liberals than anyone else, but the two MPs for the region wound up being Conservative because of the results elsewhere. It was a narrow margin in Prince George and other years it’s gone firmly Conservative but, still — it could happen! We’ll see what happens if/when this goes through and we have our next election.
Btw, having three provincial MLAs represent the city is by no means a new concept — it was this way from 1991 until 2009 when we had the Prince George - Omineca, Prince George - North and Prince George - Mount Robson ridings here. The big difference is that while Prince George - Omineca went out west, this new riding is headed south. Significant because John Rustad used to be a Prince George-based Liberal MLA but is now out in Nechako Lakes and leader of the B.C. Conservative Party, and I’d be curious how being more of an urban MLA might impact his chances of getting elected.
B.C.’s plan to ‘end encampments’ comes straight from Seattle
David Eby announced his $4 billion housing plan yesterday, with most of the headlines focused on efforts to stop speculation and flipping and allow for more high-density housing. But Arthur Williams in the Citizen took note of the section focused on ending encampments:
The plan outlined three new measures to “close encampments and better support people currently sheltering in encampments to access housing.”
The plan calls for the creation of regional Homeless Encampment Action Response Teams (HEART). Each HEART team would be a multidisciplinary teams to respond rapidly to encampments to prevent them from becoming entrenched, based on models used in Victoria and Seattle.
“To be effective, HEART teams need to be complemented by housing, shelter options and immediate coordinated supports,” the plan says. “(Homeless Encampment Action Response for Temporary Housing) HEARTH will increase decampment support funding and seek to enhance fire prevention, safety, and other supports and to acquire rapid deployment housing and shelter spaces.”
The report actually refers to “a Seattle project featured in the New York Times” which I think is this one, a guest opinion piece written by Maia Szalavitz, a reporter focused on public policy and addiction treatment, titled “Something Better Than a Tent for the Homeless,” and focused on a program called JustCare:
JustCare staff members, rather than police officers, would respond to urgent calls about encampments. After building trust with local homeless people, the workers would move them into housing without strict abstinence requirements and then help clean up the site. The police would be contacted only as a last resort.
An early success involved an encampment on a major thoroughfare, Third Avenue, where around two dozen tents were erected directly outside the popular local restaurant Wild Ginger, which had closed under pandemic restrictions. A co-owner, Rick Yoder, wanted to reopen the restaurant in the summer of 2021, but he told me, “I couldn’t get the windows repaired because the guy said, ‘I’m not going near those tents.’”
The glazier’s fear was not unwarranted. According to Jon Scholes, the president and chief executive of the Downtown Seattle Association, which represents local businesses, there was active drug dealing inside the encampment. A retail theft group was also operating in it. Liquor and other items had been stolen from the shuttered restaurant.
Outreach workers from JustCare managed to house those living in the encampment and clean up the site without police reinforcement. (I interviewed Mr. Yoder at the reopened restaurant, which was buzzing on a Tuesday night, but is not yet back to its prepandemic numbers.)
Those challenges certainly sound familiar to anyone who is a member of Facebook groups where folks talk about downtown or Moccasin Flats. So, too, does the fact that there are outreach groups ready to help. Obviously, it’s not a full-on solution — Seattle still has camps, and there are people complaining about the costs — but it’s an interesting approach. I’ll be curious how quickly the province moves on this and how this announcement might impact discussions around Prince George’s homeless camp strategy slated for next week.
Lheidli T’enneh receives funding for language revitalization
Good news shared below:
$200,000 for language and culture revitalization as part of a federal court settlement, and another $100,000 for language revitalization — and lots of plans to implement programs to use the funds.
Quick news:
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