North Vancouver, as well as surrounding North Shore ridings, typically elect right-leaning candidates in federal elections. For nearly 25 consecutive years between 1979 and 2004, the North Vancouver riding was dominated entirely by conservative MPs across four different (small "c") conservative parties. The stream was however interrupted in the 2004 general election, when outgoing North Vancouver (city) mayor Don Bell was able to swing the riding over to the Liberals, just narrowly defeating long-time incumbent Conservative MP Ted White. Bell was re-elected in the 2006 election (by less than 4% of the vote), though in neither of his two terms did the sitting parliament even make it to the halfway point of its five-year mandate before an election was held. In the 2008 election, North Vancouver businessman and Conservative candidate Andrew Saxton returned the riding to the Conservatives, winning a plurality of the vote (by less than 5% of the vote) and defeating the incumbent Don Bell. Saxton served as parliamentary secretary to multiple cabinet ministers in the Conservative majority government, including Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance (Jim Flaherty). In the 2015 general election, amidst a climate of growing dissatisfaction with the sitting government and prime minister and the emergence of populous strategic voting, Liberal candidate Jonathan Wilkinson defeated Saxton with a majority of the vote in the riding, and serves as parliamentary secretary to the minister of environment and climate change in the Liberal majority government in Canada's 43rd parliament.
This riding was created from parts of North Vancouver—Burnaby and Capilano, both of which elected a Progressive Conservative in the previous election. Chuck Cook was the incumbent from North Vancouver—Burnaby.