Esquimalt-Colwood

Esquimalt-Colwood is a newly created riding for the 2024 election, carved from the former Esquimalt-Metchosin constituency and neighbouring seats to form a compact district encompassing the Township of Esquimalt, the City of Colwood, the Town of View Royal, and the neighbourhood of Victoria West. The riding wraps around Esquimalt Harbour, with CFB Esquimalt — home to the Royal Canadian Navy's Pacific Fleet, where roughly four thousand military personnel and two thousand civilians work at the naval dockyard — at its centre. Colwood and View Royal have absorbed much of the West Shore's residential growth pressure, with new subdivisions and condominium projects expanding into former semi-rural land, while Esquimalt retains a more working-class character shaped by its historic connection to the military base and the shipbuilding industry.

With no incumbent seeking re-election in the new riding, the NDP nominated Esquimalt councillor and mental health worker Darlene Rotchford, who faced Conservative John Wilson and Green candidate Camille Currie in a contest where the NDP's traditional strength in the area was tested by a Green campaign that drew significant support in a community with strong environmental leanings.

Candidates

Darlene Rotchford (BC NDP) — Rotchford moved from Nova Scotia to Victoria in 2006 to work in healthcare and accumulated more than eighteen years of experience as a mental health and addictions worker with Island Health. She was elected to Esquimalt Township council in 2022 and served on the executive committee of the Victoria Labour Council, rising to president from 2020 to 2023. An active member of the BC General Employees' Union, she served on the BCGEU Provincial Executive Women's Committee and Environment Committee. She is a military spouse and mother of two daughters.

Camille Currie (BC Green Party) — Currie was born in Metchosin and held degrees in political science and economics, along with certifications in project management. She had worked as a federal investigator for Integrity Services and founded BC Health Care Matters, a patient advocacy group, after losing her family doctor in 2022. She received an award from the Doctors of BC for her healthcare advocacy and had previously contested the Langford–Juan de Fuca by-election in June 2023 as the Green candidate. She ran a personal training business with her husband in the West Shore.

John Wilson (Conservative Party of BC) — Wilson ran on the Conservative platform emphasizing fiscal accountability, public safety, and healthcare reform in a riding with a significant military and defence-sector workforce.

Local Issues

Primary healthcare access was the most urgent local concern across the riding during the 2020–2024 period. When Colwood's only walk-in clinic closed in April 2022, residents in the city were left without a local source of primary medical care. The NDP government responded with the opening of the Westshore Community Health Centre in Colwood in June 2022, expanding access to family medicine, nurse practitioners, and allied health services for residents of Colwood, Langford, Highlands, and Metchosin. A dedicated Westshore Mental Health and Substance Use Hub also opened in Colwood, offering counselling and treatment services five days a week. Despite these investments, the doctor shortage remained acute — at one point, a hoax poster advertising a fictitious clinic appeared in Esquimalt, underscoring the desperation of residents seeking a family physician.

Military housing and the affordability crisis in Greater Victoria were deeply connected issues in a riding that revolved around CFB Esquimalt. The base's military housing units were permanently fully occupied, with hundreds of personnel on the waitlist. Greater Victoria's distinction as one of Canada's most expensive housing markets meant that military families posted to the base often faced severe difficulty finding rental accommodation within a reasonable commuting distance. The Department of National Defence acquired an apartment complex in the area and announced a residential facility for junior non-commissioned officers. The federal government also explored the possibility of converting surplus DND land to civilian housing, a proposal that generated both interest and concern within the military community.

Transportation congestion along the West Shore corridor shaped daily life for tens of thousands of commuters travelling between Colwood, View Royal, and downtown Victoria. The bottleneck on the Trans-Canada Highway and the intersection of the Old Island Highway at the Six Mile area remained a daily source of frustration, and transit service between the West Shore and Victoria's urban core was perceived as insufficient for the volume of commuters. The provincial government had invested in bus rapid transit planning for the West Shore, and the completion of the McKenzie Interchange aimed to relieve some congestion, but candidates faced persistent questions about when meaningful transit improvements would arrive for communities that continued to grow far faster than transportation infrastructure could keep pace.