Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows: Lisa Beare or Doug Morneau on Golden Ears and the cost of staying

Two days before a summer weekend, at seven in the morning, the Province opens a booking page. If you live in Maple Ridge or Pitt Meadows and want to drive into Golden Ears Park to swim at Alouette Lake on a Saturday, that page is where you start. From 15 May to 7 September this year, BC Parks required a vehicle day-use pass to enter the park from Friday to Monday until 3:30 in the afternoon.¹

The park sits at the edge of the riding, and the woman who has represented it since 2017 says she loves it. When the Golden Ears Parkway reopened after the floods of October 2024, Lisa Beare, the BC NDP MLA for Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows, put her name to the government’s release:²

She is asking to be sent back for a fourth term. Her Conservative opponent is Doug Morneau, a Maple Ridge businessman who started his working life as a steel fabricator and spent years in the mines of this province.³⁴ In our view, the choice between them begins at that gate.

Where they stand, in their own words and records

Doug MorneauConservative

Lisa BeareBC NDP · incumbent

The cost of staying

“I want them to be able to afford a life here, and right now that’s getting harder for a lot of families.”⁴

Her campaign: “That means investing in the services that families in Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows rely on, like building new schools and increasing access to healthcare.”⁵

Schools

“Education is about more than seats in a school.” He says families he knows have taken children out of school, and found them more than a grade behind.⁴

A school trustee from 2014 and now Education Minister. A replacement Pitt Meadows Secondary, with 1,100 seats and an estimated $143.9 million, is scheduled to start construction in summer 2026 and to open in spring 2029.⁵⁶

Golden Ears Park

We found no public statement from him on the park or the day-use passes.

“Golden Ears Park is cherished by the residents of Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows,” she said when the flood-damaged parkway reopened in 2025.²

Background

Steel fabricator, prospector’s certification and years in mines around B.C.; four decades in business; board of BC Assessment.⁴

MLA since 2017 and a cabinet minister since 2017, in tourism, citizens’ services, post-secondary education and now education and child care.⁷

01 Golden Ears has rationed weekend entry since 2020, and Lisa Beare has not raised it in this Parliament.

The Province introduced day-use passes in 2020, and this spring it brought them back “as in previous years.” Its reason is the crowds: visits to BC Parks on the south coast have risen 52% since 2010, the bulletin says, and the trails, roads and parking near the trailheads fill up.¹ For the day visitor, the government’s answer to more people wanting in has been to ration the gate.

Lisa Beare has sat at the cabinet table for most of that time. She was Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture when the passes began, and she has been Minister of Education and Child Care since November 2024.⁷ We searched every sitting transcript of this Parliament, 188 of them from February 2025 to May 2026, for Golden Ears, Pitt Lake, Alouette and the day-use passes in the 310 times she rose to speak. The only match was a welcome to a class of students from Alouette Elementary.⁸

In our view, that silence is the record. The park that she says is “cherished by the residents of Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows” now takes a reservation on summer weekends, and its MLA did not ask about it once in the House.²⁸

02 Lisa Beare left the comments open on her campaign posts, then answered no one who wrote in them.

We read the campaign accounts of the BC NDP MLAs running again, from 22 September to 17 October, on X, Facebook and Instagram. Beare deserves credit for one thing: she left replies open on every one of her 25 campaign posts we read.⁹

What she did not do was answer. She replied to no one on X. Under 21 of her Facebook and Instagram posts we read 187 comments from the public, and we found no reply from her among them.⁹ In our view, an open comment box that nobody from the campaign ever answers is a noticeboard, not a conversation.

03 As Education Minister she said SOGI was “not defunded.” Her ministry later confirmed its funding was zero.

On 20 July the BC Conservatives posted that the NDP had “defunded” SOGI 123, the sexual orientation and gender identity resources used in B.C. schools. Beare answered on X within hours:¹⁰

Rob Shaw, the Castanet columnist, then asked her ministry three times about the money. Only on the third request did it confirm that funding to the ARC Foundation for SOGI 123 had been reduced to zero in the February 2026-27 budget. The government says the resources remain available for districts to use, and Shaw faulted both parties that day.¹¹

In our view, whatever a voter thinks of SOGI, the point is plainer than the program. The minister responsible told parents that the opposition’s claim was false and that they could not trust it, about a budget line her own ministry had already set to zero.¹⁰¹¹

04 Doug Morneau started as a steel fabricator, worked the mines of B.C. and wants his grandchildren able to stay.

Doug Morneau

Conservative Party of BC candidate, Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows

Started out

Steel fabricator; prospector’s certification at Malaspina; years in mines around B.C.

Business

Four decades building and running companies, and advising clients including the Independent Wood Processors Association of BC

Public service

Board of BC Assessment, the agency that sets the property values local taxes rest on

Here

Eight years in Maple Ridge with his wife, Heather; three grown children and five grandchildren

Portrait: Conservative Party of BC

Morneau began his working life as a steel fabricator. He later earned a prospector’s certification at Malaspina and, in the words of the Maple Ridge News, spent a lot of years working in mines around B.C. He went on to four decades in business, and he served on the board of BC Assessment.⁴ He and his wife, Heather, have lived in Maple Ridge for eight years. They have three grown children and five grandchildren, and he says they are why he is running:⁴

He says the cost of living is the first thing he hears about at the door, and he puts it in his own family’s terms:

On schools, which are Beare’s own portfolio, his line is that “Education is about more than seats in a school.” And on the snap election that Premier David Eby called, he said what many voters have been saying: “People are upset with the snap election.” “I don’t believe it was called in the best interest of the people of our province.”⁴

In our view, Morneau has done hands-on work in this province’s resource industries, and he talks about the riding in terms of whether his family can afford to stay in it. His record in public life is short, and he has not yet said what he would do about the gate at Golden Ears. Voters should ask him. Beare has had nearly a decade in the House to answer the same question, and in this Parliament she never raised it.

05 Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows is a toss-up, and Doug Morneau is the only challenger within reach.

338Canada, which turns the published polls into a projection for every riding, rates Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows a toss-up. Its update of 16 October puts the BC NDP at 48% and the Conservatives at 45%, each with a margin of eight points either way.¹²

Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows, projected vote

338Canada, update of 16 October 2026. Bars show the projection; the thin lines show its margin either way.¹²

Lisa Beare, BC NDP

48%

Doug Morneau, Conservative

45%

CentreBC

3%

OneBC

3%

0%30%60%

The CentreBC and OneBC candidates are projected at 3% each. Only Morneau is within the projection’s margin of the lead, and 338Canada gives the Conservatives about a one-in-three chance of taking the seat.¹²

The last result shows how close it already was. In 2024, Beare held the riding by 2,579 votes over the Conservative candidate, Mike Morden, 54.9% to 45.1%. If about 1,290 of her voters had chosen the Conservative instead, the seat would have changed hands.¹³

In our view, if you want to replace Lisa Beare, Doug Morneau is the vote.

06 The gate at Golden Ears opens to whoever booked at seven. On 24 October, the riding decides who speaks for it.

Advance voting runs until 21 October, and Final Voting Day is 24 October. Elections BC’s Where to Vote app lists every advance voting place and every voting place in the riding.¹⁴

Next May the booking page will open again at seven in the morning, two days ahead, for the park that Lisa Beare calls cherished.¹² She has had nearly a decade in the riding’s seat and a place at the cabinet table, and she did not raise it once in this Parliament. In our view, Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows deserve an MLA who will.

The park belongs to the people who live beside it. So does the choice of who speaks for them.