B.C. Votes 2017: At least a quarter of candidates don't live in their ridings

At least a quarter of all the candidates running in the B.C. election don't live in their ridings, a CBC News analysis has revealed.  

According to Elections BC nomination forms, 50 per cent of candidates who provided their addresses live in their ridings and 25 per cent do not. The other 25 per cent wouldn't provide an address.

There is no requirement under B.C.'s Election Act to be a resident of a riding or own property there in order to be a candidate, but at least 75 people from that riding must sign the nomination papers.

Use the chart below to see which candidates from the four major parties live in their ridings.

Most candidates who do not live in their ridings live close by, but there are some notable exceptions involving the Green Party.

Greg Powell, the Green candidate in Richmond South Centre, lives in the Kootenays. Two other Green candidates running in Surrey live in Victoria. Another Green running in Victoria lives in Vancouver.

There are three ridings where none of the major party candidates are residents. They are:

• Burnaby-Edmonds
• Kamloops-North Thompson
• Richmond-Queensborough​

There are also 15 ridings where all the major party candidates are residents. They are:

• Coquitlam-Maillardville
• Courtenay-Comox
• Cowichan Valley
• Kamloops-South Thompson
• Kootenay East
• North Coast
• Peace River North
• Penticton
• Prince George-Mackenzie
• Saanich North and the Islands
• Shuswap
• Skeena
• Vancouver-Point Grey
• Vernon-Monashee
• West Vancouver-Sea to Sky

Richard Johnston, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia, said one of the most important things in terms of connection is whether residents of a constituency can recognize themselves in the candidate.

"In a place like Greater Vancouver, what that means really ... is the class or the ethnicity of the person. If you're talking Surrey, for example, it may not matter that it's Fleetwood ... instead of the next riding over.

"I think when you get into physically larger ridings, then it's going to matter more. People kind of know who people are."

The Green Party has both the most candidates who live in their ridings (55 per cent) and the most who do not (33 per cent). 

This is because the party has the fewest candidates, just nine, who chose to black out their addresses.

The Liberals and the NDP both have 41 candidates out of 87 who live in the ridings where they are running, or 47 per cent. 

The Liberals have 18 candidates who do not live in their ridings and the NDP have 17. Twenty-eight Liberal candidates chose not to share their residential addresses, as did 29 from the NDP.

Our analysis

CBC News requested residential addresses for each candidate for the four major parties from the nomination papers, which were provided by Elections BC.

Some candidates blacked out their addresses from the public version of nomination papers to protect their privacy, as is permitted under B.C.'s Elections Act.

Candidates who chose to black out their address were emailed and invited to share their address with the CBC for the purposes of this analysis. 

CBC then cross-referenced a map of the ridings with a map of the candidates' residential addresses.