The Kelowna—Lake Country riding returned to its conservative leanings during the last federal election, but there are four fresh faces in the race now vying for the incumbent’s job as Member of Parliament.
Conservative candidate Tracy Gray beat Liberal incumbent Stephen Fuhr by nearly 9,000 votes in the 2019 election, and she’s now fighting to keep her seat in the 2021 federal election.
“I truly want to continue to serve the community,” Gray said.
The Kelowna—Lake Country riding includes all but a small section of Kelowna south Harvey Avenue and stretches up to Lake Country in the north.
As a shadow minister, Gray said she was involved in vaccine procurement and also claims she helped ensure the Okanagan riding got its fair share of vaccines.
“Every time that I’m at a committee pressing a minister or asking questions, or whether I’m in the House of Commons, it’s always a matter of bringing that local voice,” she said.
The former Kelowna city councillor cites housing and affordability as key local issues and said she wants Canada’s economy put back on track.
“We do have a labour crisis here,” Gray said. “We need to get people back to work and incentivize people to get back to work as we wean off of these government programs.”
Gray said it’s important to ensure that Canadian businesses continue to invest in the economy.
“Right now we have red tape and a regulatory environment that makes it really unfriendly for a lot of businesses,” she said, adding that she met with manufacturers and union across the country as part of her role in the shadow cabinet.
“And there’s a real lack of confidence in the Canadian environment,” Gray said.
“Right now, we’ve lost a lot of business to other countries,” she added. “We need to have a regulatory environment that works so that businesses will continue to grow and invest here.”
Tim Krupa is hoping to take the traditionally Conservative seat back for the Liberals.
“The wildfires, the pandemic, and our absence of leadership on climate change and on vaccines, to me, made this the perfect opportunity for us to step up to get stronger representation in Kelowna Lake Country,” Krupa said.
The former Liberal staffer grew up in Kelowna and went on to study at Oxford University.
He spent the last two years working in the financial sector for Canada’s Pension Plan, which oversees $500 billion in assets.
“What the Conservatives are trying to do is distract from their poor track record on taking action on climate change and on encouraging vaccination,” Krupa said.
“And that’s why we need stronger leadership here in Kelowna—Lake Country.”
Given the devastating fire seasons the Okanagan has recently faced, he said tackling climate change is a top local priority.
“It’s arrived on our doorsteps. It’s impacting not only our environment, but our economy. It’s hitting agriculture, tourism, hospitality,” he said.
“For the first time we have a price on pollution, where we ask big polluters to pay their fair share. We have net zero legislation by 2050,” Krupa said.
Krupa said his party will tackle the housing crisis through a rent-to-own program, by building more homes and by temporarily banning foreign buyers.
NDP candidate Cade Desjarlais is a second-year political science student at UBC Okanagan. He said much of his work and life has been dedicated to social justice and mental health advocacy.
“Young people and marginalized voices for a long time haven’t had a seat at the table and haven’t been a part of the conversation,” Desjarlais said.
The 19-year-old noted the world is changing quickly and that between the pandemic, the climate crisis and the housing crunch, a new perspective is needed.
“Experience of 30 years ago isn’t really going to lend itself to tackling these new challenges and these new problems,” Desjarlais said. “And what have the 30, 40, 50, 60 year olds, those representatives in Parliament, what have they really done for our community?”
He said his party will introduce universal pharmacare and build affordable housing.
“We’re going to invest in green tech. We’re going to retrofit all buildings. We’re going to electrify public transport,” Desjarlais said.
“And for one thing, you can’t call yourself a climate leader and then go and buy a pipeline,” he said. “That doesn’t make sense. We’re going to take the big money out of big oil and put that money back into Canadians.”
Green Party candidate Imre Szeman lives in Winlaw and works remotely as professor of environmental communications at the University of Waterloo.
He wants to see a national pharmacare program and also believes housing is an important issue, but said tackling climate change is his absolute top priority.
“There has to be ways to adapt to climate change locally as well as mitigate it,” Szeman said. “So we have to think about what’s going to happen to agriculture in the region. How are we going to make sure that our communities are safe from fire?”
“Canadians have this tendency to flip flop back between two parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives, neither of which I believe have done very much for Canada, especially when it comes to climate change,” he said.
“We didn’t just get here all of a sudden. We got here because of a lot of government inaction.”
People’s Party of Canada candidate Brian Rogers raised his family in Kelowna and worked as an electrician for the last 17 years.
He’s against vaccine passports and doesn’t believe lockdowns have worked.
“The last thing we want to see is our government continue to erode away that every single freedom that we have, whether it be life, liberty, or your property,” Rogers said.
His top priority is changing the way the COVID crisis is being handled.
“Get rid of all the mandates, get rid of all this expectation of making businesses check for people’s ID,” Rogers said. “Allow businesses to get back to business and let them make money.”
The federal election is on Monday.