Oak Bay—Gordon Head

Oak Bay—Gordon Head occupies the southeastern corner of Greater Victoria, where the oak-lined streets and heritage homes of the Municipality of Oak Bay meet the more diverse, university-adjacent neighbourhoods of Gordon Head. The University of Victoria campus sits within the riding, lending it a strong academic and research orientation, while Willows Beach, the Oak Bay Marina, and the Victoria Golf Club define the municipality's waterfront character. The riding's demographics include a significant population of seniors alongside the students and faculty of the university, creating an electorate that skews older and more highly educated than the provincial average. The seat has been a bellwether of sorts, electing MLAs from four different parties over the past half-century.

Candidates

Diana Gibson (BC NDP) — Gibson is a community social planner, policy advisor, and entrepreneur who has lived in the riding for more than ten years. She co-founded the Firelight Group, which grew into the largest Indigenous-owned consulting firm in Canada, partnering with First Nations and local communities on land protection, water stewardship, and sustainable economic development. As head of the Community Social Planning Council of Greater Victoria, her team launched the region's Rent Bank and helped more than two thousand households avoid eviction during the pandemic.

Stephen Andrew (Conservative Party of BC) — Andrew served as a Victoria city councillor from 2020 to 2022 and ran for mayor of Victoria in 2022. Before entering municipal politics, he worked as a television journalist and legislative reporter at CTV News Vancouver Island and as a radio talk show host, winning several awards during his broadcasting career. He received an endorsement from former BC Green leader Andrew Weaver.

Lisa Gunderson (BC Green Party) — Gunderson served as deputy leader of the BC Green Party. She holds a PhD in clinical child psychology from the University of Southern California, with a focus on racialized youth, and has worked as a psychologist for twenty-five years. She serves on the Greater Victoria Police Diversity Advisory Committee and co-founded the Girls and Femmes with Afro-Textured Hair group. She was a board member of the Victoria Immigrant and Refugee Centre Society.

Local Issues

The physician shortage in Greater Victoria had continued to worsen, making it the issue most consistently raised by voters in Oak Bay—Gordon Head. The riding's aging population made the absence of available family doctors particularly acute, and residents who lost their physician to retirement or relocation found it nearly impossible to secure a new one. The NDP government had invested in team-based primary care models and urgent primary care centres, but the gap between the reformed system's promise and the reality experienced by patients remained wide. Access to mental health supports, youth services, and quality seniors' care were also pressing needs in a riding where the demographic profile skewed older than the provincial average.

Housing affordability and the municipality's response to provincial housing targets generated significant debate. Oak Bay had struggled to meet the housing construction targets set by the province, achieving only a fraction of its assigned units by 2024. The NDP government's legislation requiring municipalities to permit greater density was resisted by some Oak Bay residents who valued the municipality's low-rise, heritage-rich character, while advocates argued that exclusionary zoning had contributed to the affordability crisis by restricting supply in one of Greater Victoria's most desirable neighbourhoods. The University of Victoria's plans to develop properties on the edges of its campus — including the identification of fifty acres for potential housing — offered a pathway to new supply but also raised questions about traffic, community character, and the adequacy of infrastructure to support densification.

Climate action carried particular resonance in a riding that had been represented by a climate scientist from 2013 to 2020. The NDP government's CleanBC plan, which set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions through building standards, vehicle electrification, and industry regulation, was scrutinized by an electorate that expected measurable progress. Weaver's endorsement of the Conservative candidate rather than the Green candidate added an unusual dynamic to a race where environmental credibility had historically been the Greens' strongest asset in the riding. The endorsement reflected the extent to which the political landscape had been scrambled by the Conservative Party's rise and the collapse of BC United.

The contest for Oak Bay—Gordon Head embodied the broader three-way competition that defined the 2024 election across southern Vancouver Island. The NDP sought to consolidate its hold on a seat won by Murray Rankin in 2020, the Greens fought to reclaim what had once been their flagship constituency, and the Conservatives — bolstered by Weaver's endorsement — tested whether the party's province-wide surge could extend into one of Victoria's most progressive-minded ridings.