Each election, the North Shore News asks the candidates in every riding to fill out a questionnaire on local issues. Today, we bring you the responses from West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country Candidates. Click here to see our West Vancouver election grid.
At 48 characters long, West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country riding has the distinction of the longest riding name in the country. That’s not all that’s big about the electoral district – it also covers a large geographical area containing widely diverse communities – including isolated Nelson Island, the resort town of Whistler and areas of West Vancouver containing some of the country’s wealthiest postal codes.
Since the last federal election, the boundaries of the riding have been withdrawn to exclude Powell River.
That’s lowered the number of eligible voters in the riding to 86,370. The total population of the riding is about 131,000.
Because it contains many different communities, the socio-economic makeup of voters is quite diverse. In general terms, however, voters here are older (the median age in the riding is 46.7) and relatively affluent. Far more people own their own home than rent here and the average household income is $103,167. About 63,000 of the area’s residents are in the workforce while about 44,000 are not – of those, most are retirees.
Since the riding was created, voters have usually elected Conservatives here. John Reynolds held the seat from 1997 to 2007 as a Reform, Alliance and Conservative MP. In 2006 when Reynolds chose not to run again, Blair Wilson squeaked out an upset victory for the Liberals. John Weston recaptured the seat for the Conservatives in 2008 and has held it since then.
In the last election, Weston won with more than 45 per cent of the vote, while the Liberals lagged behind at 24 per cent, the NDP captured 21 per cent and the Greens 7.5 per cent.
Today, with national party fortunes shifting in the polls, the riding has been fingered as among several potential B.C. swing ridings.
Voter turnout was slightly higher than the national average in the last election – 64 per cent of eligible voters showed up to cast their ballots, compared to 61 per cent nationally.
