Opinion  

Dyas: Kelowna taking action on public safety

Dealing with city disorder

Photo: Contributed

Kelowna Mayor Tom Dyas

The start of 2026 continues to bring positive milestones, including the opening of the new departures lounge at the airport and the announcement that Kelowna will host the 2028 Special Olympics Canada Winter Games, and there is more to come.

At the same time, we know there is work to do, particularly when it comes to public safety.

Last week, we brought together members of Kelowna’s business community, RCMP, bylaw, provincial government representatives and Interior Health for an important conversation about public safety.

More than 200 business owners took the time to attend, hear about actions being taken and share their experiences. I want to thank everyone who participated, including our panelists and partners, for engaging respectfully.

These are not easy conversations, and these are complex problems.

This was Kelowna’s first forum of this kind and while it was not perfect, I want to thank city staff who did a great job organizing the event. It was an important step in continuing direct dialogue. We are committed to having direct conversations and engaging on this topic going forward.

Tom Dyas is the mayor of Kelowna.

One of our next steps will be scheduling follow-up conversations with businesses to ensure we answer any questions that were not fully addressed at the forum, and also hear their solutions.

Additionally, we are inviting people to share their experiences through our online engagement platform, which will remain open until Feb. 10 at getinvolved.kelowna.ca.

While we continue these discussions, I want to be clear, we are not waiting. We are taking immediate action.

As you have seen, we have increased RCMP and bylaw presence in the areas that need it most, at the times that matter most, particularly in our downtown and urban centres. Kelowna is strengthening how we respond to disorder and repeat issues through faster cleanup, better coordination, and moving people along from storefronts.

We are also supporting stronger collaboration and restructuring between the Downtown Kelowna Association and the Uptown Rutland Business Association on-call team, so businesses are not left dealing with these challenges on their own.

In addition, we are launching a business CCTV registry to help RCMP more quickly identify nearby cameras during investigations, reducing response times and improving follow-up. The city is also introducing a business security enhancement rebate program to help offset one-time security improvements for businesses that are investing to protect their staff and property.

We are taking the actions we can as a municipality. Where we cannot directly make changes, we are advocating strongly for the systemic reforms needed to address the root causes of crime and public disorder.

Kelowna has been clear and direct in our advocacy to provincial and federal governments.

We need at least five additional Crown prosecutors in Kelowna. While our city has experienced rapid growth, the number of Crown prosecutors has not maintained pace. As a result, the Crown and courts are often forced to focus only on the most serious cases, while others stall. When accountability breaks down, repeat offenders cycle back into the community, and businesses and residents feel the impacts.

We also urgently need mandatory compassionate care using the facility capacity we already have.

The correctional facility in Oliver was built in 2016 at a cost of approximately $200 million and has capacity for 378 beds. Today, the facility remains underused, while people in our community are living in crisis, committing repeat offences. All Okanagan mayors and area First Nations have signed a letter asking to advance the Oliver site, and there will be more direct advocacy to follow.

Leaving vulnerable people suffering on the street is not compassionate, it’s neglect. It is not humane and it is not fair to the public, to businesses or to those who need support.

Compassion means getting people into care and keeping them there long enough to stabilize, recover, and turn their lives around.

We also need to work with Interior Health to make changes to the operations of the downtown outreach urban health site. The current location of the site and its proximity to other services is creating havoc and serious public safety concerns for nearby businesses, employees and residents.

The city does not have jurisdiction to make these changes, but we are actively working with Interior Health to advocate for changes that improve safety for everyone.

Kelowna is a community built by people who work hard, take risks, and care deeply about this city.

That is why the current situation cuts so deep and feels so frustrating for so many.

As a city, we recognize we need to put immediate actions in place to support our community.

But it does not end there. We will continue to meet with business owners, explore new local actions we can take, and carry the voice of our community forward to provincial and federal governments.

Kelowna cannot accept a future where disorder becomes our identity.

That is not who we are, and it is not what we stand for. City council will continue working every day to make Kelowna safer for everyone.

Small farming towns should be supported like resort municipalities

Small BC agricultural towns

Photo: Contributed

Summerland Mayor Doug Holmes

Every year the provincial government provides $13 million in dedicated funding to help 14 small resort municipalities pay for infrastructure and amenities crucial to the tourism sector.

It is acknowledged that without this support, these towns would not have the means to provide key infrastructure needed to advance the industry that drives their local economies.

The challenges faced by small resort towns, where high visitor demand places a strain on infrastructure beyond what their local tax bases can support, are similar to the challenges faced by small agricultural towns like Summerland. Our tax base is simply too small to support widely dispersed infrastructure, including many miles of roads, irrigation water systems and flood control infrastructure.

Property taxes, the primary source of revenue for local government, were designed to cover the cost of servicing property. However, in Summerland, for every $1 collected in property tax from lands in the Agricultural Land Reserve, it costs more than $3 to service those properties, and the ratio is increasing as costs increase and infrastructure ages.

Rural municipalities also face significant growth and other pressures on their land that present challenges for supporting the integrity of the ALR and ensuring farmland remains available for food production.

Summerland district council has worked with other farming municipalities and lobbied the province to point out the sustainability of agriculture cannot be separated from the sustainability of the infrastructure needed to service agricultural land.

We had a constructive meeting with Finance Minister Brenda Bailey and Finance Ministry staff at the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention in September 2025, where we discussed ideas to help small farming municipalities alleviate revenue shortfalls to better provide infrastructure to agricultural properties.

As a result of that meeting, council submitted a proposal to the government to create an Agricultural Municipality Initiative, modelled on the successful Resort Municipality Initiative that was established in 2006.

Just as the RMI is designed to support small, tourism-based municipalities to build their tourism infrastructure, the idea of an AMI program would be to help small, agriculture-based municipalities build infrastructure in support of agriculture and food security.

Like the RMI, an AMI program could fund projects that result in key outcomes. For example improving the sustainability of the agri-food sector or making land available for farming, with eligible municipalities receiving annual fixed base funding and a performance-based lift.

The number of RMI participants is limited to a manageable group of municipalities and the same approach could be used for an AMI program, with specific eligibility criteria established. There are about a dozen agriculture-oriented municipalities in B.C. with populations of less than 20,000 but approximately 2,000 hectares or more of land in the ALR.

We are scattered around the province but we meet annually at the UBCM convention and keep in contact at other times. We are all proud of our agricultural roots and see ourselves as partners in the protection of B.C. farmland.

However, it needs to recognized that the ALR is a provincial priority and it exists to ensure food security for all British Columbians, not just those of us living in farming towns.

It is therefore reasonable to expect the provincial government to support the role of municipalities in providing the infrastructure needed to ensure the sustainability of agriculture.

Doug Holmes is mayor of Summerland.

Shaw: Forestry leaders warn Eby reforms moving too slowly to save mills

BC's forestry challenges

Photo: Flickr/Government of British Columbia

B.C. Premier David Eby speaks to reporters on Nov. 17, 2025. The premier appeared at the Natural Resources Forum in Prince George on Tuesday, where he said there are “no quick fixes” for B.C.’s forestry sector despite mounting mill closures and layoffs.

Premier David Eby began his address to the Natural Resources Forum in Prince George Tuesday night describing the “hardest challenge and where I think we have the most work ahead”: the province’s beleaguered forestry sector.

Eby said he’s still trying to bring about stability to an industry rocked by American softwood lumber tariffs, admitting “there are no quick fixes” to the dozens of mill closures, curtailments and layoffs occurring under his government.

“It is challenging,” Eby said.

“It always feels too slow for the urgency of the threat. But predictable land access, permit reform, value-added investments and new trading relationships will deliver a better forestry future.”

The premier skipped an opportunity to speak to forestry leaders directly last week at the annual Truck Loggers Association convention, becoming the first premier in recent memory to do so. Instead, Eby was on a trade mission to India.

Perhaps if he’d gone, he would have once again been reminded from those working in forestry that it is the NDP government’s own policies on old growth, climate, reconciliation and permitting that have created the crisis the industry faces, with American tariffs just adding to the damage.

Forestry companies complain of a persistent inability to access economical trees, wood waste and fibre that is crippling the industry, leading to sawmill closures that compound into pulp mill closures that compound into hundreds of jobs lost in just the last year.

Eby though, had a different view, from his perch at the Natural Resources Forum.

“Certainty matters and reform is overdue,” he said. “That is why the minister has announced we are moving away from a permit-by-permit system and toward an operational approach to forestry.”

The core of this new approach?

“Forest Landscape Plans—developed together with First Nations, industry, and communities,” said the premier, adding they “provide years of certainty.”

It’s not a new concept.

Eby actually launched it almost three years ago. Since then, only one of the 15 forest landscape planning tables has actually reached completion. Eleven are still stuck in the earliest stage, part of a sort of paralyzation between forest companies, unions, community leaders and Indigenous communities on planning.

The premier continued to insist that “these are results that take time, energy and commitment. But they are real—and they are the future of a sustainable industry.”

A future unfurling at a snail’s pace, it would appear, buffeted by a blitz of government reviews launched into every aspect of the forest sector, adding further instability to the mix.

A presenter at the Truck Loggers convention in Vancouver last week put up a slide of government reviews that have contradicted the premier’s assertions of “certainty,” listing more than 60 reviews that have affected forestry since the NDP took office in 2017.

Others spoke of persistent multi-year strategic problems.

“I don’t have any silver bullets or magic solutions,” said Jonathan Armstrong, vice-president of Vancouver-based Western Forest Products.

He said “the markets are not the problem here” but that “people just cannot access the land base” and government policies have piled up unsustainable per cubic meter costs onto timber.

Fibre is so difficult to access that Harmac pulp mill in Nanaimo is now importing a record amount from the United States just to keep its mill running at an economical capacity, said Harmac CEO Paul Sadler.

The B.C. government’s industrial carbon pricing system, developed under the Eby government, also costs Harmac $6 million, which will rise to $12 million by 2030, said Sadler.

Jim Girvan, a forestry consultant and former Truck Loggers Association executive director, told the convention that the premier’s forest landscape planning tables are too slow to meet the moment.

“We can’t wait five to 10 years to get them done or else there won’t be an industry to get to,” said Girvan.

The Eby government is leaving billions of dollars in revenue and tens of thousands of jobs on the table by not reforming its policies to help the sector grow, he added.

That was not the view Forests Minister Ravi Parmar took when speaking at the Truck Loggers convention in the premier’s place last week. He pointed to BC Timber Sales reforms, a reduction in permitting times and more wood waste available.

“I'm damn proud of the changes we're making to BC Timber Sales, because at the end of the day, it's all about performance and getting more fibre out, and that is ultimately what it comes down to,” he said.

Parmar reiterated Eby’s vision.

“I see a future where we have no need for cutting permits in forestry here in British Columbia,” said the minister.

“Instead, I want the industry working alongside First Nations loggers and partners to develop forest operational plans, plans to provide years of certainty on the land base.”

A utopian vision for B.C.’s forestry future. After nine years of an NDP government so far taking the sector in the opposite direction, further and further away from certainty.

Rob Shaw has spent more than 18 years covering B.C. politics, now reporting for CHEK News and writing for BIV. He is the co-author of the national bestselling book A Matter of Confidence, host of the weekly podcast Political Capital.

Preparing to enter the school system by starting Kindergarten

Ready for Kindergarten

Photo: Contributed

Board chair Heather Grieve (front row centre) and the Kamloops-Thompson Board of Education

Each year, the Kamloops-Thompson School District welcomes new Kindergarten students to schools across the district.

Kindergarten is an exciting and meaningful milestone for families and an important step in every child’s educational journey. Parents are a child’s first and most important teacher and the transition from home to school is a major step—one that is filled with excitement and questions.

Children, who will be age five by Dec. 31, 2026, are eligible to start Kindergarten in September 2026. To support the transition, the school district encourages parents and families to learn more this month about their options and the Kindergarten registration process for their catchment schools and “Schools of Choice.”

As a board of education, supporting families through the Kindergarten registration process aligns with the mission, values and commitments of the district's strategic plan.

Ensuring that every child has a welcoming, safe and inclusive start to their K-12 school journey is the foundation of the district’s mission to support learning opportunities and environments that inspire students to thrive.

The Kindergarten learning environment encourages children to explore and express their thoughts and feelings as they are actively engaged in a wide range of hands-on learning activities, supporting intellectual development and human and social development as key district priorities.

Registration for the 2026–2027 school year begins this month and continues into February, with options to support the diverse needs and interests of children and families.

This week (Jan. 19–23) is Schools of Choice Registration Week, when families can apply to one of SD73’s specialized elementary school programs, including French Immersion at Lloyd George Elementary and South Sa-Hali Elementary, Kamloops School of the Arts, Montessori at Aberdeen Elementary and Bert Edwards Science and Technology School.

Families interested in a School of Choice can pick up a registration package directly from the school they’re applying to and return completed forms by noon on Jan. 23. Registering this week ensures your application will be included in the district lottery process, which helps place students fairly and equitably when demand is high.

Families can also register for Kindergarten at their local catchment school during Kindergarten Registration Week, from Feb. 2–6.

The first step when registering your child for Kindergarten is to find your catchment school. Every catchment school in SD73 has a catchment boundary that determines which students in a geographical area are scheduled to attend a specific school. Parents can use the school locator and school boundaries map tools on sd73.bc.ca to find their catchment school.

Once you know your catchment school, you can complete the student enrolment form and gather the required registration documentation for your child (B.C. Services Card, birth certificate, proof of address and any custody agreements if applicable). You can then visit your catchment school during the first week of February to complete your child’s Kindergarten registration.

If you or someone you know has a child turning five this year and want to learn more about Kindergarten, consider join the upcoming SD73 Kindergarten information night virtual session on Jan. 28, 2026 at 6:30 p.m. to learn more about preparing your child for Kindergarten and understanding the registration process.

Information about Schools of Choice, catchment boundaries, enrolment forms and more can be found at sd73.bc.ca.

As a board of education, we are committed to ensuring every child enters Kindergarten feeling welcomed, supported, and ready to thrive. Thank you to all families preparing for this exciting next step. We look forward to meeting our newest learners in September.

Heather Grieve is the chair of the Kamloops-Thompson Board of Education.

Rob Shaw: B.C. laws leave landowners alone with costly discoveries of Indigenous remains

Expensive find for owners

Photo: Mike Wakefield / North Shore News

Recent courts rulings have reshaped property rights in B.C., according to one MLA.

A Kamloops landowner has learned an expensive lesson that most British Columbians don’t even know exists: if you dig on your own property and uncover Indigenous remains, you could be on the hook for six-figure costs, with no help from the government and no clear way out.

Their experience should serve as a warning to anyone who assumes private property still means what it used to in the province.

In the Kamloops case, in just seven months, the discovery has triggered more than $100,000 in legal and archeological costs on an empty parcel of land assessed at $440,000. The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc have demanded more than $80,000 in additional fees, including 24-hour security provided by them at roughly double the normal rate.

At the same time, the property has been declared an untouchable “sacred site” locked behind layers of provincial red tape and bureaucratic delay—all while duelling archeological reports suggest the two skulls in question may not have originated on the property at all, but were dumped there many years ago as imported fill under a previous owner.

It is, for many, a nightmare scenario. Start a small project in your backyard, only to hit an ancient object or bone that predates you by hundreds of years but nonetheless puts you on the hook legally for a mountain of costs, without help from any level of government.

“It shows there’s a lot of vulnerability in private property ownership at the moment, with really a limited access at this point to full disclosure and information about what’s happening,” said Independent Surrey-Cloverdale MLA Elenore Sturko, who has been trying to help the property owner.

“Where is the balance?”

The problem isn’t about treating Indigenous remains with care, it’s about the province’s legal framework that effectively transfers the full financial burden of that care onto a private citizen, with no transparency, no appeals and no compensation.

The property owner found two skulls on June 13 while landscaping a relatively small empty lot to act as a community garden for seniors at a neighbouring seniors home.

The RCMP and coroner were notified, who told the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc nation, which by the end of that same day had registered the land as an archeological site and issued a press release about the “ancestral remains” on the property “now considered a sacred site” in part under the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.

Soon, the bills started arriving, everything from the cost of a smudging ceremony, to digging equipment, to the requirement of 24-7 “culturally sensitive” security from the nation (at twice the cost of a normal security rate), said Christine Elliott, a lawyer hired by the property owner to handle the details.

No one from the city, province or federal government offered to help pay anything.

“My calculation at the time was, ‘Oh my god, we will have soaked through 100 per cent of the value of the land in one year,’” said Elliott.

The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc were able to get a “site alteration permit” to exhume the remains from the B.C. government’s Archeological Brand within 24 hours of applying in August. But that same office took more than two and a half months to respond to questions from the landowner, said Elliott.

The owner hired their own private archeological firm to assess the land. Gordon Mohs, who has 40 years of archeological experience in the Secwepemc territory, concluded the skulls were part of a sand layer covering two-thirds of the site that had been imported as fill some years prior.

“My professional assessment, based on the preliminary field inspection I conducted, is that the archaeological deposits … were contained within sand fill deposits imported and deposited on the [property],” he wrote in his report. No other archeological remains were found.

The owner allowed the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc to access the site to exhume the remains in October. But they refused to pay any of the nation’s fees. A short time later, an unknown party made a complaint to the Heritage Conservation Branch that the site had been tampered with.

The owner and Mohs now find themselves under investigation by a government Natural Resources officer. They insist they did nothing to the site, other than Mohs’ professional assessment. It has been locked and under watch of a security guard since the discovery.

Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc chief Rosanne Casimir did not respond to a request for comment.

The property owner has abandoned plans for a community garden or anything on the land, and intends to leave it vacant, said Elliott.

Still, the property sits under a cloud of incredible confusion—the nation has declared inherent title as well as cultural site status, and it has also claimed a buffer zone around the property that impacts adjacent lots. The area is now registered as an official archeological site with the province, even though the remains are gone.

The land’s sale value is questionable, at best. Any development would first require inspection permits, archaeological impact assessments and other bureaucratic hurdles from the B.C. government, all paid for out of the private landowner’s pocket.

“You are on your own as a private landowner,” said Elliott. “There’s no ability to claim this from the province.”

For Sturko, it’s another example of how the NDP government’s reconciliation framework, particularly under DRIPA, has quietly reshaped property rights in B.C. without clear rules about who pays when those worlds collide.

It builds upon last year’s Cowichan Nation court ruling that Aboriginal title is superior to private property rights, and the Court of Appeal ruling last year that DRIPA can be used to strike down provincial laws.

Premier David Eby has said he’s preparing amendments to protect private property rights, but it’s not clear if any of that will address the immense costs that face private landowners who stumble across ancient archeological finds.

The B.C. government does maintain a database of heritage sites on private land, called the Remote Access to Archeological Data (RAAD), but it is only accessible to First Nations and registered archeologists. The general public can’t access it, for fear from the province that they might loot those sites for valuable artifacts. Buyers and sellers have to assume enormous liability for risks they can’t discover in advance.

“We need to somehow be able to balance this situation with letting people understand any kind of risk and liability that goes along with purchasing a property that is surrounded by archaeological finds,” said Sturko.

“The government, I think, needs to do a better job of allowing people access to this information, and then also how do we deal with this situation when these types of finds are located.”

Allowing the current situation to stand, where private owners foot enormous bills for historical remains they were unaware of and had nothing to do with, could eventually cause people to destroy or hide any remains they find in order to avoid the burden, said Sturko.

“This government is so super-secret all the time, and constantly doing stuff out of the public view, most people don’t even know it’s a thing,” she said.

In the meantime, the Kamloops land remains in limbo.

Elliott said she has included Eby and Forests Minister Ravi Parmar in some of her letters objecting to the process. Neither has responded.

“We sympathize with the property owner as this is a complex case,” the Ministry of Forests said in a statement.

Not really, though. The message from the NDP government is clear: If you are unlucky enough to uncover history on your own land, you alone will pay the price for it.

Rob Shaw has spent more than 18 years covering B.C. politics, now reporting for CHEK News and writing for BIV. He is the co-author of the national bestselling book A Matter of Confidence, host of the weekly podcast Political Capital, and a regular guest on CBC Radio.