About Daniel
Who am I?
I am a father of two wonderful young children, ages 3 and 5, a husband, and a small-business owner.
For work, I have enjoyed something of an unconventional path, having been self-employed since I was 18 and working my way through university as a freelance automotive journalist while studying English literature and forensic psychology. Eventually, I struck out on my own and started a publishing company, which has produced Canada’s only consumer firearms magazine for 15 years now. It’s been tremendously rewarding to contribute to a relatively small but diverse print media landscape here in Canada, and the ability to couple my education in forensic psychology with the extensive coverage of public safety policy we’ve produced has afforded some equally wonderful opportunities; from dozens of interviews with media personalities I’ve looked up to for years, to being invited to testify to our country’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Safety.
My passion remains cars and motorcycles, though, as has been the case since my own childhood, and I enjoy sharing my enthusiasm with my (mostly) enthusiastic kids - watching Formula 1 and MotoGP as they’ll allow me to and trying their patience at the local car shows through the summer. The winter months will typically find me in the garage, trying to rehabilitate old English cars or vintage motorcycles for the next summer’s enjoyment - “trying” being the operative word.
Why I'm Running
At the risk of sounding cliché, I’m running for my kids.
When my wife and I moved to Kelowna a decade ago, it felt like heaven on Earth. Pushed out of the Lower Mainland where we grew up by rising home prices, we found Kelowna's relative affordability combined with the city’s accessibility made it feel like heaven on Earth. Being able to walk down the Rail Trail to the beach, or drive to Home Depot in 10 minutes instead of spending an hour in the car, was life changing. Parks were clean and idyllic places to enjoy sunsets and watch wildlife, and the commercial district felt vibrant, supporting everything from quaint coffee shops in converted industrial spaces to motorcycle dealerships right in downtown.
But that isn’t the case anymore.
Over the last few years, cars in my driveway have been broken into numerous times. I’ve been stopped on the Rail Trail and had someone demand my wallet - while pushing a stroller, no less. Either side of the trail is littered with detritus, trash, and encampments where people pull apart and paint stolen bikes. Abandoned bags full of knives, sharps, and other paraphernalia are left on playgrounds overnight. And whenever law enforcement and bylaw sweeps any of the numerous encampments around town, they inevitably unearth a trove of machetes, knives, guns and other weapons.
Open drug use is prolific throughout the city. Homeless individuals walk down our streets yelling and accosting passersby and families using our parks. Businesses are leaving our downtown core in favour of less well-travelled areas just to avoid constantly having to repair windows and doors that are broken overnight, employees across the city are forced to confront aggressive individuals in alleyways in the course of simply doing their jobs, and the problem is so entrenched that the city’s best answer ino one area was to simply fence off an alleyway and close it entirely.
And after a $20,000 air compressor was stolen off my truck’s trailer hitch overnight by a thief using a stolen car, I was forced to confront the hostile thief to recover both the compressor and the car just 500 metres from our city’s police headquarters because no police officer was able to attend the scene when I called to report having found them.
I hate driving past another person laying prostrate on the sidewalk and wondering if they’re even alive, and I dread the day my kids ask what someone smoking something from a glass pipe in a park is doing. These are not issues the residents of Kelowna should have to confront, and they are definitely not issues that I want my kids to inherit. The status quo is simply unacceptable, and from both subjective experience and objective statistical records, Kelowna’s public safety situation is only getting worse.
But while these concerns around public safety, which must be any community’s chief priority, have taken the position of primacy in driving my participation in this election, they are not my only motivating factors. Unemployment, specifically youth unemployment and the diversity (or lack thereof) of employment options in town, is another, as is traffic congestion, which is growing at a pace outstripping population growth. And housing affordability, an issue I've had to confront in my own life, is a significant and growing worry.
In short, I want to be part of building a Kelowna that is safe for my kids to grow up in, that has good, diverse career options available for them when they are old enough to work, and that offers them an affordable place to live, all so that they don’t ever feel like they need to go elsewhere to achieve their goals of living a fulfilled life.
I’m running because I love it here. And I want my kids to, too.