Independent voter guide · Kelowna civic election · Saturday, Oct 17, 2026 Guide only · not an official ballot

Kelowna Council Compass

Where do Kelowna's mayor and council candidates stand? Each candidate is shown on five local issues (taxes and spending, growth, homelessness and public safety, policing, and transportation) based on their council votes, platforms and public answers. Every position links to its sources.

An independent guide, not a voting recommendation. Made by a Kelowna resident as an unpaid volunteer project, not connected to any candidate, campaign, slate or party, and not affiliated with the City of Kelowna. How this guide was made

Find your match

Take the Quiz

Answer twenty statements and see how closely each candidate matches you. A star marks you on every chart below, and your answers stay on this page.

Or scroll down to browse every candidate first.

How to read this
  • Each dot is a candidate, placed from their council votes, platform and public answers.
  • The tick in the middle means mixed or moderate. The ends are the two approaches named on each scale.
  • A pale dot or "thin evidence" means there is little to go on, so open the card and check the sources.
Tap any name or dot for that candidate's card and sources.

Where every candidate stands

One topic at a time · Mayor: vote for one · Council: vote for up to eight

Key Mayoral candidate Incumbent councillor Council challenger Pale: thin evidence Dashed ring: the candidate shown in the card below

Use the topic buttons or arrows, or swipe across the chart, to change topics.

What the five topics measure
What this guide does not cover
  • Only five topics are scored. Wildfire preparedness, farmland, council transparency, major deals and other local issues are not, so check candidates on what matters most to you.
  • Placements show stated positions and recorded votes, not ability, experience or how well a candidate works with others.
  • Council votes come from news reports, not the official minutes. The City publishes meeting records at kelowna.ca.
  • A pale marker or a thin-evidence note means little is known. Read it as unknown, not as moderate.
  • You can choose up to eight councillors. The guide scores candidates one at a time and does not show how a group of eight would balance.

Candidates

Mark a name to open that candidate's card and sources

Each group is alphabetical by surname. Council: vote for up to eight.

Compare candidates

Choose two or three candidates · same scales as the chart

Pick two or three names. Each topic has one shared scale, with the same left and right ends as the chart, so the distance between dots is the difference between candidates.

All candidates in one table

Tap a heading to sort · tap a name for the card

Tap a column heading to sort. Each cell shows which end of the topic the evidence points to (the arrow) and how strongly (darker shading means a stronger lean, in either direction); a dashed outline means thin evidence and a dash means no placement. Tap a name to open that candidate's card. Scroll sideways on a phone.

Other issues in the race

Outside the five charted topics · not scored

These issues sit outside the five charted topics. Each one lists only candidates who have said something specific, with links. Candidates not named had no public position found. Figures are as reported in the linked coverage.

Background

Context for the issues above

The City's 2026 Citizen Survey, as summarized, ranks social issues first (61%), then transportation (33%) and crime (27%). City of Kelowna 2026 Citizen Survey

Kelowna reached the highest drought rating (Level 5) this year, which bears on water supply planning. Castanet: drought deepens

Other guides

Other places to compare candidates

    How to vote

    Saturday, Oct 17 · advance voting Oct 7 to 16

    Election day
    Saturday, October 17, 2026, general voting 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
    Advance voting
    Per the City, advance voting runs Oct 7 to 16, with most locations open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Check the City's where and how to vote page for which sites are open on which days.
    Not the provincial election
    A BC provincial election is a separate vote on Saturday, October 24, 2026. This guide covers only the municipal race on October 17.
    What is on the ballot
    One choice for mayor (3 candidates) and up to eight choices for council (37 candidates). You do not have to use all eight. The ballot also includes four school trustees, which this guide does not cover.
    Who can vote
    Age 18 or older on election day, a Canadian citizen, lived in BC for at least six months and in Kelowna for at least 30 days. Non-resident property owners can also vote under extra conditions, such as a minimum period of ownership and a consent form. If you are not on the list, you can register when you vote; bring ID. Mail ballot options and deadlines are on the City's election page.

    Eligibility and dates are from the City's election page; eligibility follows BC local election rules. This guide is not an official source. City of Kelowna election information

    Who made this

    Independence, funding and how sources are checked

    This guide was made by a Kelowna resident as an unpaid volunteer project. It is not paid for by anyone and is not connected to any candidate, campaign, slate or party. It has no ads, no tracking scripts and no cookies.

    Research and drafting were done with the help of an AI assistant and reviewed by a person. Quotes were checked against the linked pages where those pages could be read. Every candidate was held to the same rules, set out below. No candidate was contacted, and no one paid for a placement.

    Four candidates have no placements because no public position could be found for them on any of the five topics. That says nothing about their views; they are shown without a position rather than guessed.

    Missing a source? Anyone, including candidates, can submit a publicly available source: a news article, campaign page, recorded council vote, forum or debate recording, or published questionnaire. Each submission is checked against the same rules as everything else, and positions change only when the source supports it. Disagreement without a public source cannot be used.

    Every submitted source is opened and read directly; the submitter's own description is never used as evidence. A candidate's website or social account counts only if it matches the link on the City's official candidate list. Screenshots, reposts, anonymous posts and unattributed quotes cannot be used. As with every placement, a strong position needs the candidate's own words or recorded votes, and the number of submissions makes no difference. Any change made from a submission is listed under Changes, with its source linked on the candidate's card.

    How placements were made

    Sources, scoring and the five topics

    Each candidate was assessed from public sources: council votes, campaign sites, news coverage, forum answers, and published questionnaires and Q&As (ForChange Kelowna, VoteMate and Capital News). Each candidate's position on a topic, from -1 to +1, is a judgment based on what those sources show taken together, not the output of a formula. The strength of the evidence behind it is shown separately as strong, some or thin. A position of 0.6 or more toward either end rests on the candidate's own words or recorded votes. The two ends of each topic are defined below.

    How the topics were chosen. A topic needed four things: council has real power over it (the budget, zoning, bylaws, transportation spending); candidates visibly disagree on it in 2026 coverage, forums and questionnaires; it has two defensible ends; and enough public evidence exists to place most candidates. Issues that fail one test, such as wildfire preparedness (nearly everyone supports it) or the performing arts centre (few candidates have spoken), are on the Other issues tab. Police and homelessness overlap, but are kept separate because one is about how many officers there are and who responds, and the other is about treatment and housing. The list reflects judgment, and other reasonable lists exist.

    Worked example
    Ron Cannan on taxes and spending: he voted against the 2025 budget, the 2026 budget and the 10-year capital plan, and his platform says "Taxes down". Consistent votes and a clear platform line put him at +0.7, toward lower taxes, fewer services, and the recorded votes make the evidence strong. Tom Dyas voted for the 2026 budget (a 4.4% increase) and says "now is not the time to start over or stop investing in our community". That puts him at -0.3, leaning toward more services, higher taxes, also with strong evidence. A candidate with only one forum answer on the topic would get a position from that answer, shown with thin evidence as a pale marker.
    Evidence strength
    Strong evidence means recorded votes on the issue, or detailed, specific commitments that agree across several sources. Some evidence means several clear public statements, or a platform page plus a forum answer. Thin evidence means one forum answer or website page, or membership of a slate.

    Limits you should know about

    What the guide can and cannot tell you

    Evidence and sources

    • Every placement is the guide's reading of public coverage, campaign sites and questionnaires, and sources are linked on each card so you can disagree. A card's short blurb uses the candidate's own words where available; the longer notes on how a placement was reached are in the collapsed section and are the guide's wording, not the candidate's.
    • Phrases such as "compassion with accountability" or "housing first" are scored by what a candidate would actually do, not by the phrase. Backing involuntary care (often called mandatory care) or more enforcement moves a candidate toward the enforcement end of homelessness and public safety; backing supportive housing or harm reduction moves them toward the housing end; with no concrete action they stay near the middle or unplaced.
    • Many of the fuller answers come from the ForChange Kelowna questionnaire, run by a volunteer group that also recommended eight council candidates. Cards note which candidates it recommended; those recommendations play no part in placements. A candidate who did not answer it can look thinner here for that reason alone.
    • Incumbent votes come from news reports of council meetings, not the official minutes, and some budget items were debated line by line.
    • Quotes were taken from news coverage, campaign pages and published questionnaires. Check the linked page before repeating one.

    Slates and overlaps

    • Slate placements (BRACE) lean on the slate's published priorities more than on each member's own words, and most have thin evidence. BRACE's line-up changed over the summer before settling on the four candidates now on the ballot.
    • Nikki Csek is CEO of the company that owns KelownaNow, one of the outlets used for sources here.

    Law and context

    • Questions about sheltering in public spaces are legally constrained in BC. In Victoria v. Adams (2009), the BC Court of Appeal held that Victoria could not stop people from putting up temporary overnight shelter in parks when there were more people without homes than shelter beds, although cities can still regulate where and when. In June 2026 the BC Supreme Court ruled that Victoria had the authority to pass bylaws restricting overnight sheltering in designated parks, and did not decide the Charter question. This guide has not checked Kelowna's own bylaw, so a candidate's promise on enforcement may be narrower in practice than it sounds.
    • Many promises depend on other governments. Supportive housing is largely funded by BC Housing, supervised consumption sites are licensed by Health Canada, involuntary care needs provincial action, and transit service is shared with BC Transit, so promises on any of these may be narrower in practice than they sound.
    • Municipal races in BC are non-partisan and parties are not on the ballot. A card shows a Party history line only where the guide found that the candidate ran for, held office for, or held a role in a federal or BC provincial party. A candidate who only sought a nomination or ran as an independent gets no line. No line does not prove there is no history: Elections Canada and Elections BC records could not be searched directly.

    What the guide shows

    • The Priorities line on a card lists the headings or issues a candidate names on their own site, VoteMate profile or ForChange questionnaire, in their own words. It shows emphasis, not a position, and an issue missing from the list does not mean the candidate opposes it.
    • A quiz match compares your position with each candidate's on every topic where both have a position. A candidate needs at least two such topics to appear in your matches, or one if you answered only one topic. By default each topic counts equally. If you mark topics as mattering most, those count double. Doubling a topic where a candidate's evidence is thin also doubles that uncertainty, so check the evidence strength shown with each match.
    • The five topics often line up, but they are separate questions. A candidate can sit at different ends on different topics, so the guide does not combine them into one score or label.
    • This is not a voting recommendation, and it does not predict how anyone would vote on future issues.

    Not placed

    No public position found on any topic

    These candidates have no placement because no public position was found on any topic. They still have cards in the candidate picker on the Chart tab. Brady Rogers and Brian Rogers are two different candidates.

      Official City of Kelowna candidate page

      Changes

      Dated record of updates

      Updates are dated so changes are visible. Positions change only when a new public source supports it.

      • Oct 4, 2026. First version: 40 candidates, 36 with at least one placement, research current to Oct 4. Any later change to a placement will be listed here with its date.