The Strathcona Regional District is a regional district in British Columbia, Canada. It was created on February 15, 2008, encompassing the northern and western portions of the former Regional District of Comox-Strathcona. The partition left the new Strathcona Regional District with 91.6 percent of the former Comox-Strathcona's land area, but only 42.1 percent of its population. Its current territory has a land area of 18,329.948 km2 (7,077.232 sq mi) and a 2016 census population of 44,671 inhabitants. There are 21 named Indian reserves within its territory, with a combined 2016 census population of 1,579 and combined land area of 16.444 km2 (6.345 sq mi).
The District's head offices are in Campbell River, British Columbia. During a transitional period, much of its administration was carried out by the Comox Valley Regional District, based in Courtenay, British Columbia but it is now self-administered. It is governed by a board of directors comprising representatives from each of the 5 municipalities and 4 electoral areas within its boundaries. It is anticipated that the board will expand to include representatives from some of the First Nations governments within its boundaries following treaty settlements.
Most of the Discovery Islands are within the Strathcona Regional District, while a few of the southernmost ones are in the Powell River Regional District.
As a census division in the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, the Strathcona Regional District had a population of 48,150 living in 21,227 of its 23,017 total private dwellings, a change of 7.8% from its 2016 population of 44,671. With a land area of 18,243.66 km2 (7,043.92 sq mi), it had a population density of 2.6/km2 (6.8/sq mi) in 2021.[2]
