To ensure Kamloops has a voice in the federal election conversation, The Wren surveyed readers to identify their top questions and concerns for candidates in the lead-up to the April 28 election.
The Wren took the most-asked questions on the survey and reached out to all of the candidates. Homelessness and housing disparity were often included as a top issue by survey respondents.
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The Wren requested responses from all candidates for the Kamloops-Thompson-Nicola and Kamloops-Shuswap-Central Rockies ridings. As of April 22, candidates Jenna Lindley for the Green Party of Canada, Frank Caputo and Mel Arnold for the Conservative Party of Canada did not respond. We will update the story if responses are provided. To request that additional information be included, send us an email.
These responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
How will your party address our homeless demographic & secure shelter / homes for them?
Candidates for Kamloops-Thompson-Nicola riding
Iain Currie, LPC: The plan is to ramp up to half a million new houses in Canada each year. There’s been some success with the building accelerator program.
I know we’ve had some successes locally… I’ve got a meeting scheduled with the leaders of the Propolis Housing Collective. I think there’s a real opportunity to leverage the Build Canada Homes program through the Liberal government with our local affordable housing contractors and sustainable housing contractors.
Accessing federal funds to support initiatives like Propololis would be one of my priorities; having these programs in government but also employing my voice in government to access those programs and bring the funding to Kamloops Thompson-Nicola — more specifically making sure that the local initiatives are already underway. The people already working in this space are doing such phenomenal work, without government assistance for the most part, will have access to government funding and make what they are already doing easier and allow them to expand and move forward as they already are.
I think that’s the missing piece. Supporting and having meetings and attending ribbon cuttings is great but not sufficient. What I’m proposing in being the MP for this region is actually work to get the federal dollars into this community to support these things.
Miguel Godau, NDP: The tragic number of those in our community who are unhoused or not adequately housed must be addressed. The NDP plan for this problem is both ambitious and achievable: three million homes for Canada in five years!
New Democrats believe homes should be for people—not profit. Our plan doubles the Liberals’ with a reasonable plan to tackle the scope of the problem, replacing the Liberals’ temporary program with a permanent $16 billion national housing strategy, building homes and protecting good-paying jobs. We’ll also offer long-term, low-interest mortgages through Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, reducing monthly costs and cut tens of thousands of dollars over the life of a mortgage —money people could use for groceries, childcare or saving for their future.
We’ll build rent-controlled homes on public land to help people find homes they can afford. We’ll bring in national rent control: ban fixed-term leases, renovictions and price-fixing and landlord collusion.
Chris Enns, People’s Party of Canada (PPC): The People’s Party realizes that housing scarcity is an issue of supply and demand. We cannot build housing units at a rate that can even match immigration, so we must pause immigration until our own people have homes.
Once that is in place, and we have cut foreign and other unnecessary spending, we will have the budget to help Canadians secure shelter. Only at that point could we adopt a meaningful plan to address housing scarcity, which could include mobile homes for people getting back on their feet.
Candidates for Kamloops-Shuswap-Central Rockies riding
Ken Robertson, LPC: We will invest in deeply affordable housing, supportive housing and shelters in recognition of the link between housing and mental health outcomes. We will do this through $6 billion invested in the new Build Canada Homes which will build and acquire housing. This investment builds on the Rapid Housing Initiative which supported 15,000 homes for our most vulnerable, including projects like Dunn House in Toronto, Canada’s first-ever social medicine supportive housing initiative. We will continue to work with partners to deliver projects that recognize the link between housing and health outcomes.
Phaedra Idzan, NDP: Housing is a human right. But right now, too many people in Kamloops and across our region are sleeping rough, stuck in shelters or barely making rent.
New Democrats will build deeply affordable, rent-controlled homes—including supportive housing—and ensure non-profits and co-ops can access funding to keep housing affordable long-term. We’ll also stop corporate landlords from buying up affordable homes and driving up rent.
We will work to ensure that housing strategies include wraparound mental health and addiction supports, so folks get what they need to get back on their feet.
Owen Madden, GPC: We will create an annual, consistent Homelessness Prevention and Eradication Fund to cut chronic homelessness across the nation in half. We will increase municipal funding for emergency shelters and transitional housing, ensuring cities have long-term, stable federal support for frontline homelessness services.
John Michael Henry, PPC: The People’s Party of Canada believes in addressing the root causes of homelessness — not just throwing money at the symptoms. Much of today’s homelessness is tied to mental illness, addiction and failed government policies that drive up the cost of living and housing.
We will end harmful programs that enable addiction and mental decline, and instead invest in treatment, recovery and reintegration into society, cut red tape and eliminate foreign ownership loopholes that drive up real estate prices and limit housing access for Canadians, support the rapid construction of affordable, low-regulation housing by partnering with provinces and municipalities — not bloated federal bureaucracies, and prioritize housing access for Canadians — not illegal migrants, international students or foreign investors.
We believe every Canadian deserves a safe place to live and a fair shot at rebuilding their life.
That starts with restoring order, fixing housing policy and putting Canadians first — always.
How will your party address the disparities in living standards and housing in our communities?
Candidates for Kamloops-Thompson-Nicola riding
Iain Currie, LPC: Part of that I’ve already answered in terms of the housing plan, but essentially, what needs to happen is homes need to be built [along with] affordable housing.
We’re talking about making a huge investment in building the industry and funding the pre-fabricated home industry. I’ll hearken back to those homes built in the 1940s after World War Two still standing, modest in terms of their footprint. But we don’t need to be building monster housing, we need to be building livable, safe [housing]. We need to be building more and that’s the plan.
It’s not to give tax breaks to the rich or tax breaks to developers, but rather to fund the building of this sort of houses which are going to be plentiful enough and simple enough that they can be built quickly and in numbers.
Miguel Godau, NDP: Successive Liberal and Conservative governments have had every chance to stand up to powerful interests — and they keep backing down. During the last crisis, they let the CEOs jack up prices while families struggled. Pierre Poilievre thinks government should do even less to help Canadians.
He has a record of making callous cuts to the very things that help Canadians. Handing out even more to big companies and their CEOs will not help people. At a time of real economic risk, the NDP is making deliberate, transparent choices: protect people, invest in resilience and make multimillionaires and the ultra-rich pay their share. We’ll cap grocery prices on essentials, fix EI so losing your job doesn’t mean losing everything, build affordable homes including rent control and freeze and reduce development charges.
New Democrats would take a different approach than Carney and Poilievre who both promise tax cuts that would benefit millionaires. We’ll put more money into the hands of those who need it most, and ask the ultra-wealthy and most profitable corporations to contribute their fair share.
We will raise the basic personal amount to $19,500 and allow workers to earn more before starting to pay taxes. This would put $505 back in the pockets of those earning between $19,500 and $177,882.
We will double the disability benefit by an additional $2400 a year. And, we’ll take steps to raise the Guaranteed Income Supplement to lift seniors out of poverty.
We’ll maintain the capital gains inclusion rate changes where “only 0.13 per cent of Canadians with an average annual income of $1.4 million are affected by the change”, and we’ll save $19 billion over five years to help those that need it most. Under our plan the richest Canadians – multimillionaires, billionaires, the most profitable corporations — will finally pay their fair share:
No nurse, teacher or tradesperson should pay a higher tax rate than a billionaire flipping stocks. Our platform is made for people and built for the country we believe in — a more equal, more fair and caring country.
Chris Enns, PPC: People do not usually choose to live in squalor. However, over taxation, central bank imposed inflation, rising cost of goods and labour, excessive permitting requirements and a shortage of housing all prevent the improvement of homes and the affordability of new ones.
Less taxation and reduced inflation will return financial means to Canadians. I have touched on immigration, and how reducing demand will allow supply to catch up. This will help to lower housing costs, but also the cost of goods, and over a longer period, labour too. Our immigration system is not bringing in an abundance of tradespeople, it is adding more demand for trades’ labour. Further, we must work with municipalities and provinces to reduce permitting red-tape, which is more of a tax-grab than an actual necessity.
Candidates for Kamloops-Shuswap-Central Rockies riding
Ken Robertson, LPC: The Liberal government introduced a poverty reduction strategy two-and-half years ago.
We would also protect and strengthen child care in Canada. Child care responsibilities largely fall to women. A strong, affordable child care system lets women return to the workforce as soon as they are ready so that they can build their careers and have more financial security, for themselves and their families.
We would protect social programs, including $10 a day child care, dental care, pharmacare and school food programs.
We want Canadians to get the benefits they deserve by delivering automatic tax filing starting with low income households and seniors. This will ensure more Canadians can access the benefits they are entitled to such as the Canada Child Benefit and GST/HST credit, which help lift Canadians out of poverty.
Additionally, we’re going to get back into the business of building houses. We will use every tool at our disposal, leveraging technology and innovation, to build homes at a scale and at a speed not seen since the Second World War.
Phaedra Idzan, NDP: The housing crisis is widening the gap between those with stable housing and those without. We need a government that will take on corporate landlords and speculators, not one that protects them.
New Democrats will build hundreds of thousands of affordable, non-market homes, including in
smaller cities like Kamloops and rural communities that are often left out. We’ll ban renovictions, stop rent gouging and reinvest in public housing.
Housing is the foundation for dignity and well-being. We won’t let it be a playground for investors while everyday people are pushed to the margins.
Owen Madden, GPC: We would remove the need for the one-third of Canadians who earn less than $40,000 to pay income tax. We would set a uniform federal definition of affordable housing, requiring that all federally-funded housing meet the affordability standard of costing no more than 30 per cent of household income.
John Michael Henry, PPC: The People’s Party of Canada believes that the best way to lift people up is through freedom, opportunity and putting Canadians first — not through endless handouts or socialist experiments.
We will restore affordability by ending inflationary policies, carbon taxes and reckless spending that drive up the cost of food, fuel and housing, make housing accessible again by eliminating foreign ownership loopholes, mass investor speculation and the government-created red tape that blocks new builds, support local industries and resource development to create real jobs, especially in rural and underserved areas — because dignity comes from self-reliance, not dependency — and end globalist programs that drain our tax base, and instead invest in Canadians, ensuring families, seniors and working people can thrive in their own communities.
We don’t believe in lowering the bar — we believe in raising every Canadian up through common-sense policies that reward hard work, protect our economy and make home ownership possible again.
Go straight to the source — here are links to the party platforms:
How do I vote?
Voting day is Monday, April 28. Visit The Wren’s voting guide for more information on where to go and what to bring.
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