As the Oct. 24 provincial election approaches, Jack Knox is looking at Vancouver Island’s 14 ridings and some of the issues affecting them. Today: Langford-Juan de Fuca and Esquimalt-Metchosin.
No one calls them the Western Communities anymore. The area isn’t even just “the West Shore.” It’s “the burgeoning West Shore,” as though the adjective were part of the name, like “Canucks legend Trevor Linden” or “Oscar-winner Meryl Streep.” This is usually said with a baleful glance at the lesser-achieving child, Victoria, which 31/2 years after voting to do so still hasn’t figured out how to replace its crumbling swimming pool.
Construction cranes hover over Langford, as usual. Colwood is on a tear, seemingly ripping open a new Christmas present every week: a 600-student addition to the high school, 5,000 new homes in Royal Bay, a 10-episode Netflix series that will shoot over the winter, a $26-million office and warehouse complex, a massive new building to house Royal B.C. Museum collections. Meanwhile, if housing slows in next-door View Royal, it will be because the biggest undeveloped bits have all been filled in.
Families, and the businesses that chase them, are being lured to the West Shore by that housing: The benchmark price for a single-family home was $695,500 last month, which is what passes for affordable in Greater Victoria, at least when compared to the core, where the figure was $879,200. People who think they need a passport to travel past Uptown would be stunned by the ongoing transformation.
It’s not all sunshine and kittens and boom-boom-boom economic activity, though. Scratch the surface, you’ll find evidence of the pandemic. People worry about their jobs. In August, the West Shore RCMP reported a 60 per cent spike in mental health calls relative to the same month last year. Last week, Sooke Mayor Maja Tait made a heartfelt plea to other local politicians to help with a homelessness crisis in her community; the people sheltering in the woods might not be as visible as those in Centennial Square, but they’re still there.
“We’re beginning to experience the bigger city issues in the West Shore as a whole,” says View Royal Mayor David Screech.
Screech has to deal with another COVID casualty, the loss of revenue from the Elements casino, which has been closed by the pandemic. The casino usually produces close to $4.5 million a year for local municipalities, with View Royal and Langford getting 45 per cent each and the remainder being divided among the other West Shore communities and Esquimalt. “I think short term we’ll be OK,” Screech said of the loss of View Royal’s share. The municipality will defer some capital spending, draw on contingencies if necessary. But what if the closure drags on?
Still, while the pandemic might always be a lurking presence, it doesn’t dominate. At the Royal Bay Bakery in Colwood, owner Brad Kiss hears plenty of customers discuss all the development, but none talk about COVID. At the Broken Paddle Coffee House in aggressively rural Metchosin, the hot topics are affordability, how to keep farmers farming, and the preservation of green space.
Affordability is on the minds of Esquimalt residents, too. “They do talk about house prices,” says Nishi Sunda, behind the counter at the Craigflower Foods. His is a neighbourhood of renters who fear they will never be able to afford a house, of service-industry workers who worry about losing hours, if not their jobs, he says. In that sense, the pandemic is on their minds.
Transportation remains a hot topic in the riding as commuters flood in and out of CFB Esquimalt and elsewhere in Greater Victoria each day.
While the new McKenzie Interchange might have broken B.C.’s worst bottleneck outside the Lower Mainland, the long-awaited, just-released south Island transportation strategy proved a dud. Instead of a concrete (as it were) plan for moving half a million people around the region, it was little more than vague muttering about electric vehicle charging stations, bike lockers and, I think, magic carpet rides.
Meanwhile, the thorniest challenge — finding an alternative to the often-closed Malahat without incurring too great a financial or environmental cost — remains unaddressed.
That’s one area where it can be said Premier John Horgan’s constituents have been left wanting — not that it’s likely to hurt him in Langford-Juan de Fuca, the riding he has represented since 2005. Many longtime residents of all stripes knew him well before he was a politician, and still call him by his first name. To some, he’s a Shamrocks lacrosse fan first and premier second. He earned more than half of all votes in the riding in the last election.
That’s what his opponents are up against. The Liberals are running Kelly Darwin, who owns a marketing agency in Langford. The Greens have put up Highlands councillor Gord Baird. Communist Tyson Strandlund, who garnered 65 votes in neighbouring Esquimalt-Metchosin in 2017, is giving it another crack. Not to say Strandlund et al have no hope, but John Horgan losing in the West Shore would be like John Lennon losing in Liverpool.
The New Democrats also like their chances in Esquimalt-Metchosin, where Mitzi Dean is seeking a second term. The former head of the Pacific Centre Family Services Association has been an active and visible MLA, particularly on social issues.
The Liberal candidate is public affairs consultant R.J. Senko, who doesn’t have the same profile as the party’s 2017 nominee, Esquimalt Mayor Barb Desjardins, and in a campaign like this will be hard-pressed to build one. The Greens think they have a shot with Metchosin councillor Andy MacKinnon, who finished third in 2017, just behind Desjardins. Desta McPherson is running as an Independent.
THE CANDIDATES
Esquimalt-Metchosin
• NDP — Mitzi Dean* — mitzidean.bcndp.ca
• Liberals — R.J. Senko — bclib.ca/rjsenko
• Greens — Andy MacKinnon — andymackinnon.ca
• Independent — Desta McPherson
Langford-Juan de Fuca
• NDP — John Horgan* — johnhorgan.bcndp.ca
• Liberals — Kelly Darwin — bcliberals.com/team/kelly-darwin
• Greens — Gord Baird — gordbaird.ca
• Communist — Tyson Strandlund cpcbc.ca
* Incumbent
2017 RESULTS
Esquimalt-Metchosin
- NDP – Mitzi Dean 11,816 (46.25 per cent)
- Liberal – Barb Desjardins 7,055 (27.62 per cent)
- Green – Andy MacKinnon 6,339 (24.81 per cent)
- Libertarian – Josh Steffler 171 (0.67 per cent)
- Independent – Delmar Martay 102 (0.4 per cent)
- Communist – Tyson Strandlund 65 (0.25 per cent)
- Voter turnout: 66 per cent
Langford-Juan de Fuca
- NDP – John Horgan 13,224 (52.75%)
- Liberal – Cathy Noel 6,544 (26.10%)
- Green – Brendan Ralfs 4,795 (19.13%))
- Libertarian − Scott Burton 262 (1.05%))
- Vancouver Island Party – Willie Nelson 242 (0.97%)
- Voter turnout: 62 per cent
