Nanaimo—Gabriola Island

Nanaimo—Gabriola Island is a new riding created by the 2024 redistribution, combining the urban core of Nanaimo with Gabriola Island, a small Gulf Island community accessible by a short BC Ferries crossing from the Nanaimo harbour. The riding takes in Nanaimo's downtown waterfront, the commercial corridor along the Island Highway, and established residential neighbourhoods stretching south toward the Nanaimo River, while Gabriola's roughly four thousand residents contribute a rural, arts-oriented character to the constituency. Nanaimo has emerged as central Vancouver Island's largest city, a regional hub for health care, education through Vancouver Island University, and ferry connections to the mainland.

Candidates

Sheila Malcolmson (BC NDP) — Malcolmson was the incumbent MLA, having won a January 2019 by-election in the former Nanaimo riding after the previous MLA stepped down to become mayor. She studied environmental and resource studies at Trent University before serving four terms on the Islands Trust Council, including six years as chair. From 2015 to 2019 she sat in the House of Commons as the federal NDP member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith, then made the switch to provincial politics. Under the NDP government she was appointed Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and later became Minister of Social Development and Poverty Reduction.

Dale Parker (Conservative Party of BC) — Parker grew up in the Cowichan Valley and spent his summers at family properties on Mudge Island, Gabriola Island, and Nanaimo. He has worked in information technology for more than thirty-two years as a consultant, manager, and senior technical advisor in both the public and private sectors. He holds degrees in computer science and business administration from the University of Victoria and completed an MBA at Royal Roads University.

Shirley Lambrecht (BC Green Party) — Lambrecht has close to three decades of experience in the technology sector, including work with Shaw Cablesystems and SaskTel. As a network specialist, she contributed to provincial, national, and international operations teams focused on disaster recovery.

Local Issues

The campaign for expanded cardiac care at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital became the riding's most prominent health care issue during the NDP's second term. Patients in Nanaimo and across central and northern Vancouver Island requiring cardiac catheterization or comprehensive cancer treatment had to travel to Victoria or Vancouver, and advocates argued that a regional centre serving nearly 300,000 people should not lack those capabilities. During the campaign period, Premier Eby committed to building a new patient tower and a cardiac catheterization lab at the hospital, a pledge that was welcomed but met with caution by residents who had heard similar promises before without seeing construction begin.

Homelessness and public safety in downtown Nanaimo had intensified since the Discontent City tent encampment of 2018. Visible homelessness along the waterfront and in city parks remained a source of community tension, and the pandemic had worsened conditions by straining shelter capacity and disrupting outreach programs. The NDP government's investments in supportive housing had added units to the city's stock, but demand continued to outstrip supply, and residents near shelter sites reported ongoing concerns about safety and property crime.

Gabriola Island, which joined the riding under the 2024 redistribution, brought its own set of concerns. The island's housing challenges were acute: a high proportion of the rental housing stock was substandard or unstable, and the absence of a municipal water system — residents relied on approximately three hundred private wells — limited the island's capacity to absorb further population growth. The Gabriola Housing Society had been working to develop affordable housing on the island, but the pace of construction was constrained by infrastructure limitations and the complexity of building on an island served only by ferry.

The drug toxicity crisis continued to devastate the mid-Island region. British Columbia's decriminalization pilot, which took effect on January 31, 2023, drew particular scrutiny in a city where public drug use in the downtown core and near the hospital had become a daily reality. The provincial government's May 2024 decision to recriminalize possession in public spaces was a direct response to the backlash that communities like Nanaimo had expressed, but advocates for harm reduction argued that the reversal would push drug use into less visible — and more dangerous — settings without addressing the underlying supply crisis.