About
Leah Ballantyne is the BC NDP candidate for Abbotsford South on Elections BC’s accepted nominations list for the October 24, 2026 provincial election. Public legal profiles identify her as a lawyer from Mathias Colomb Cree Nation in Pukatawagan, Manitoba, a Treaty 6 community, and as the first member of her Nation to become a lawyer. A 2023 UBC Allard School of Law speaker biography says she graduated from UBC law in 2005, was called to the bar in 2008, and completed a master’s in international law and governance at the University of Hawaii in 2017, where she was valedictorian. That profile says she has been licensed in Manitoba and British Columbia and has worked on Treaty and inherent rights, child and family services reform, and reclamation of former residential school sites, and has contributed to the Lower Fraser Fishery Alliance’s RELAW project on Indigenous law and fish habitat.