Okanagan - Shuswap

This central B.C. riding includes the district municipalities of Salmon Arm and Sicamous and the cities of Vernon and Salmon Arm. There are also several First Nations reserves here.

Eleven per cent of residents are immigrants and seven per cent are aboriginal. Eighty-nine per cent speak English as a mother tongue, and just over one per cent speak French.

Retail trade, manufacturing, construction and the service sector are major employers. Also important are agriculture and forest products. The 2006 census shows an average family income of $66,939 and an unemployment rate of 6.9 per cent.

The boundaries of North Okanagan-Shuswap have remained largely unchanged since 1986, though in 2004 the riding gained about 3,500 residents formerly of Kamloops-Thompson and Highland Valleys.

Population: 116,236 (2006 census; an increase of 5.9% since 2001)

Political History

Conservative Colin Mayes won a convincing victory in 2006, beating New Democrat Alice Brown by almost 10,000 votes.

Mayes is the successor to Conservative Darrel Stinson, who first took the seat in 1993 and held it until the Liberal government fell in 2005, after which he resigned because of illness.

In 2004, Stinson maintained his hold on this riding, with a margin of 11,486 votes over New Democrat Brown.

The Tories held the seat from 1979 to 1988, when it went to the NDP's Lyle MacWilliam.

• 1988 - NDP
• 1993, 1997 - REF
• 2000 - CA
• 2004, 2006 - CON