Burnaby-Edmonds: The riding in a nutshell

BACKGROUND:

This south Burnaby riding is bordered by Boundary Road to the west, Imperial and Mayfield streets to the north, Fourth Street to the east, and 10th Avenue and Fraser River to the south.

Since it was first carved out of the larger “Burnaby” riding in 1966, the Edmonds area has gone to the NDP in 10 of 13 elections. NDP incumbent Raj Chouhan has held it since 2005, after it went briefly to Patty Sahota in 2001, when the B.C. Liberals swept to power, capturing all but two seats in the legislature. Chouhan took the riding from Sahota by 738 votes in 2005 and has tightened his hold in every election since – defeating B.C. Liberal hopeful Jeff Kuah in the last election by just over 2,300 votes. The Greens – a distant third since first putting forward a candidate in 1991 – have lost ground in the riding since winning over nearly 14 per cent of voters in 2001.

On May 9, the choices will be: Chouhan, founding president of the Canadian Farmworkers’ Union; B.C. Liberal hopeful Garrison Duke, director of employment at Abbotsford Community Services and owner of his own mentorship and career coaching company; and Green Party candidate Valentine Wu, an IT consultant who has worked with B.C. Hydro, Bank of America and Telus.

DEMOGRAPHICS:

There’s diverse and then there’s super diverse. Burnaby-Edmonds, according to 2011 census data, is among the most culturally diverse places in Canada. In fact, the chance any two randomly chosen people in the riding will be of different ethnic origins is as high as 85 per cent in some neighbourhoods, according to MountainMath, a Vancouver data-analysis company. English was the mother tongue of 21,275 residents in 2011, with another 400 claiming French as their first language. A dizzying array of non-official languages (100 by Chouhan’s count) was spoken by 32,505 riding residents – with 13,755 claiming a Chinese language (5,500 Mandarin, 3,815 Cantonese and 4,400 unspecified), followed by 2,805 Filipino (Tagalog), 2,510 Punjabi, and 1,780 Korean speakers.

HOT ISSUES:

As with its neighbour to the north, housing is sure to be top of mind for Burnaby-Edmonds residents. While the riding’s town centre isn’t densifying as rapidly as Brentwood, Lougheed or Metrotown, some of the lowrise apartments that dominate the heart of the area have already made way for highrises, and that trend is sure to impact residents – 6,140 of whom lived in lowrises and 4,295 of whom lived in apartments more than five storeys in 2011. Only 4,865 of the 55,730 private dwellings in the riding in 2011 were single-detached houses.

Burnaby-Edmonds encompasses a number of low-income areas, with the average before-tax household income in the riding about $6,000 less than the city average, according to the last available census data in 2006. That may have changed significantly in the last decade, but social programs will likely still be an important issue to voters in the riding. With Burnaby-Edmonds competing with Burnaby-Lougheed for the most and biggest families in Burnaby, the parties’ platforms on child care could also play a role at the ballot box here.

WHAT TO EXPECT:

With Chouhan’s margins of victory growing over the last three elections, Burnaby-Edmonds will likely get less attention on election night than the other local ridings. Chouhan has had strong support in the area east of Griffiths, especially below Edmonds Street, and, even in areas where the Liberals have fared well – in the corridor between Imperial Street and Marine Drive west of Griffiths and in the Lakeview-Mayfield area – the results have been close. Whatever changes have come to the riding’s demographics in the last three years, they alone are unlikely to bolster the Liberals’ support area enough to tip the scales. Chouhan may not be a high-profile MLA, but he is an experienced politician and well known for his constituency work. Duke and Wu, meanwhile, are newcomers to the political arena and will have an uphill battle swaying voters to move away from the status quo in Burnaby-Edmonds.