Richmond—Queensborough

Richmond—Queensborough was a newly created riding in the 2015 redistribution, combining parts of the city of Richmond with the Queensborough neighbourhood of New Westminster, which sits on Lulu Island. As a brand-new riding with no incumbent, the 2017 election was an open contest. The BC Liberals recruited Jas Johal, a high-profile broadcast journalist, as their candidate in a riding they hoped to add to their traditional sweep of Richmond seats. The NDP countered with Aman Singh, a civil rights lawyer. The contest would prove to be one of the closest in the province.

Candidates

Jas Johal (BC Liberal Party) — Johal was born in Jalandhar, Punjab, India, and moved to British Columbia at the age of two, growing up in Williams Lake before settling in Greater Vancouver. He graduated from the British Columbia Institute of Technology with a diploma in communications and began his broadcasting career at Vancouver radio station CKNW in 1991. He joined BCTV (later Global BC) in 1994, becoming a senior reporter, then moved to Global National in 2005 as its BC correspondent. In 2008, he became the network's Asia bureau chief, based in Beijing and New Delhi. He left journalism in 2014 to become Director of Communications for the BC LNG Alliance before being recruited by the BC Liberals.

Aman Singh (BC NDP) — Singh was born in Sultanpur Lodhi, Punjab, India, and moved to Hong Kong as an infant. He studied physics and anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, and received his law degree from the University of Victoria. He operated his own law practice specializing in human rights and civil rights law.

Michael Wolfe (BC Green Party) — Wolfe was a public school science teacher at McNair Secondary School in Richmond who was pursuing a Master of Education at the University of British Columbia. He was a veteran Green Party candidate, having run in multiple federal, provincial, and municipal elections dating back to 2005.

Kay Khilvinder Hale ran for the Conservative Party and Lawrence Chen for the Republican Party, both receiving minimal support.

Local Issues

Housing affordability was the dominant issue across Richmond and the adjacent parts of New Westminster included in the riding. The Queensborough neighbourhood had seen significant development activity, with new condominium and townhouse projects transforming what had been a quieter, industrial-residential area. Residents expressed concern about the pace of change and whether infrastructure, including schools, roads, and parks, was keeping up with population growth. The foreign buyers' tax introduced in 2016 was a divisive topic, with some residents arguing it was insufficient to address speculation and others concerned about its impact on the broader real estate market.

Transit connectivity was another important local issue. While Richmond was served by the Canada Line, the Queensborough portion of the riding had limited rapid transit access, and residents relied heavily on bus service and private vehicles to reach employment centres. The riding's diverse population, with significant South Asian and Chinese-Canadian communities, meant that issues of immigration settlement services, multicultural programming, and access to government services in multiple languages were important campaign themes. The extremely tight margin in the riding underscored the competitive nature of suburban Metro Vancouver seats in the 2017 election.