Kelowna

Kelowna Chamber of Commerce hosts second of three all-candidate debates

2 of 4 candidates at forum

Cindy White - Oct 9, 2024 / 11:00 am | Story: 510828

UPDATE 11 a.m.

The absence of the Conservative and BC Green Party candidates, and the fact they didn’t send even a statement to organizers, elicited a disgruntled “wow” from the audience at Wednesday’s Kelowna Chamber of Commerce all-candidates forum.

The second of three debates featured just two of the contenders in the Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream riding: independent Kevin Kraft and the BC NDP’s Anna Warwick Sears. Missing were Tara Armstrong, the Conservative nominee and the Green Party’s Andrew Rose.

Kraft and Warwick Sears agreed on a number of issues, including finding other traffic and transportation alternatives, rather than building a second bridge linking Kelowna and West Kelowna.

“There’s no doubt we need to work on our transportation corridors but I wouldn’t say throwing a bridge at it is a logical approach,” said Kraft. “It took the better part of 30 years to build the last bridge and I don’t see it being accomplished in eight.”

Kraft was referring to the Conservative Party's proposed plan to build a second crossing over the lake by 2032.

He pointed to desperate needs elsewhere, including Westside Road, slope stability on Highway 97 and paving of the forest service road from Naramata to Highway 33 as an alternate route should the highway be closed again, like it was last summer.

Warwick Sears said there are many things that are much less expensive and faster than another bridge over Okanagan Lake.

“I’m a big fan of bus rapid transit,” she said. “One of the proposals that I’ve heard is widen the existing bridge. That seems very sensible to me, perhaps with a bus-only lane that you could have transit buses going much more frequently from the Westside down to downtown Kelowna.

“There are options that we can do within our existing transportation footprint to improve the intersections, to improve the flow of traffic and really to grow the businesses on the Westside. So that more people can work over there, and to provide better housing options in Kelowna, so that people don’t have to commute,” she added.

One thing they did not agree on was the best approach to the homelessness and toxic drug crisis. Kraft said spreading services into communities like Rutland is having an adverse impact on residents and services should be centralized. Warwick Sears argued against that.

“I think it’s actually good to have distributed services because, particularly our riding is so far-flung, we can’t have the homeless people with no cars trying to access mental health services just in one centralized location,” she said.

“I do think, though, it’s really important to choose where those locations are and make sure that they are not interfering with local community and prosperous areas of business and neighbourhoods.”

Both candidates spoke passionately on the issue of water management, and tapped into their years of experience dealing with the issue in the Central Okanagan.

“We’re behind that 8-ball when it comes to work that could be done on our reservoirs,” said Kraft. “We have two high elevation reservoir systems that could be increased in both retention and storage and application.”

Warwick Sears has been the executive director of the Okanagan Basin Water Board for the past 18 years. She says electing her would allow her to advocate for the area from within government.

She says things need to be done now to prepare for future disasters.

“We need to spend more money, locally, on fuel mitigation in the forest. We need to spend more money on replacing the Okanagan Dam in Penticton because it’s undersized for climate change. There are a lot of things that we need to do now before the next round of disasters, so that things cost much less money," Warwick Sears said.

“If we do not spend money up front, we are going to be in a situation where we will have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in the future.”

The next all-candidates forum will Thursday morning, again at the Coast Capri Hotel, featuring the candidates in the Kelowna Centre riding. It begins at 8:10 a.m. Attendees need to pre-register here.

ORIGINAL 8:05 a.m.

The Kelowna Chamber of Commerce is hosting the second of three all-candidate forums on Wednesday morning at the Coast Capri Hotel.

Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream contenders will make their cases to business leaders after they heard from three of the candidates in the Kelowna-Mission riding on Tuesday.

Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream candidates