Split city: Some B.C. voters don't feel represented as urban centres carved into sprawling, rural ridings | CBC News

CBC - 17/04
The cities of Prince George and Kamloops are both cut in half, with their residents lumped in with voters living hundreds of kilometres away.

When Paul Sanborn started researching the upcoming federal election, he was dismayed to learn he had been moved into a new electoral riding to which he feels very little connection — and which he worries will fail to represent his views.

The Prince George, B.C. resident had previously been on the northern edge of Cariboo-Prince George, which extends roughly 300 kilometres south to just past the community of 100 Mile House.

But as part of a redistribution process, he had now been moved into the southwest corner of the Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies riding, which extends roughly 250 kilometers southeast to the Alberta border and more than 600 kilometers north up to the Yukon and Northwest Territories, passing through the communities of Dawson Creek, Fort St. John and Fort Nelson. 

"Maybe I was just being a bit grumpy but, you know, it just seems odd that we [the city of Prince George] keep getting sliced and diced in a different way every few years," he said, adding that he'd like to see the city turned into its own standalone riding.

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Sanborn says while he feels there's a natural connection between Prince George and the other communities in his old riding, particularly with the importance of the forest industry in the region, there's very little tieing him to voters in the province's northeast, where many people work in o...
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