A Plan for a safer Kelowna

Kelowna is one of the largest cities still outsourcing its policing to the RCMP. With little control over the associated costs as a result, policing is the city's largest taxpayer-funded service, having increased by 66% since 2020 - a rate that is double that of the provincial average. Moreover, RCMP costs are expected to increase a futher 66% over the next five years, and are expected to reach cost parity with municipal police services by 2029, three years before the RCMP contract expires in 2032.

Despite these significant investments, Kelowna's crime rate remains 24% higher than the provincial average, and 56% higher than the national average. And our elevated crime rate doesn’t discriminate by the type of crime - our violent crime rate is 22% higher than the provincial average, while the property crime rate is 24% higher. 

Transitioning to a municipal police force would allow the City of Kelowna to better control policing expenses, provide greater authority to build formal partnerships with mental health and addictions support services, and explore alternative response models to counter the rising rate of calls for service that involve mental health or social issues rather than criminal acts.

Moreover, recruiting and promoting from an exclusively local pool of candidates offers more stability and consistency for both police and the community, with comparator municipal police forces' average vacancy rates being 2-3 times lower than that of the Kelowna RCMP’s, and boasting attrition and turnover rates that are 2-4 times lower - all while providing hundreds of much-needed local careers without the potential requirement for relocation.

For all these reasons, Kelowna should begin transitioning to a municipal police force, with the intent of having a Kelowna Police Department serving as the primary policing provider by 2032. Additionally, increase support for the existing Mobile Crisis Response Team, with the aim of increasing the team’s size and availability, to better address the growing proportion of calls for service involving mental health or addiction issues. 

This will save money in the long run, and provide Kelowna’s residents with both more control how our community is policed and more accountability from those tasked with policing it.

In the mean time, Kelowna should 

Kelowna continues to experience one of the highest rates of homelessness in British Columbia, with last year’s count of at least 806 individuals experiencing homelessness resulting in a homeless rate that is 28% higher than the Capital Regional District’s, 32% higher than Vancouver’s, and a stunning 229% higher than Surrey’s.

And the issue is only getting worse. 2025’s homelessness figures represent an increase of almost 6% since 2024 and 27.5% since 2020, vastly outstripping the rate of increase in Kelowna’s overall population, which grew by 17% from 2020 to 2025. 

Although there was a 25% reduction in the number of unsheltered homeless from 2024 to 2025, the number of individuals unsheltered in public spaces increased by 67% over the same span, while delays have postponed the opening of supportive and off-market subsidized housing and complex care spaces that are, frankly, already inadequate: The just 40 supportive and complex care spaces committed to by BC Housing are not slated to become available until 2029 while a second supportive housing development on Betram has been entirely cancelled. By comparison, Kamloops has partnered with BC Housing on six projects, totalling 607 housing units ranging from supportive housing to affordable housing for low-income seniors - with nearly 200 of those slated to become available this year.

While homelessness is an existing council priority, the reality is that City Council has not shown the leadership this crisis requires, made clear by the use of such vague language as “support and connect local change makers to facilitate collective action among diverse leaders” to describe its efforts, while maintaining the same targets for intergovernmental partnerships since 2023. In other words, the city is relying on increased intergovernmental and agency cooperation to address the growing homelessness problem, without increasing the number of intergovernmental and agency partnerships sought.

Kelowna needs to provide more supportive subsidized, and affordable housing options by dramatically increasing the target number of partnership projects with intergovernmental agencies such as BC Housing, prioritizing projects that can be brought online in the near term to address Kelowna’s current need for affordable and supportive housing, while creating a program in the model of Vancouver’s Homeward Bound effort to help eligible homeless individuals in Kelowna return to their home communities by coordinating travel, confirming family or local support networks, and establishing stable housing plans elsewhere. Finally, modernize existing vagrancy bylaws to reduce the number of individuals living unsheltered in public spaces, in favour of Kelowna’s designated sheltering spaces.

By leveraging partnerships with other levels of government, as well as intergovernmental agencies, Kelowna will be better able to provide shelter and affordable housing, and conjoined with programmatic and bylaw changes, will reduce Kelowna’s unsheltered homeless population - an absolute necessity for our community to thrive.

From 2015 to 2025, Okanagan Lake has seen 33 drowning deaths, making it BC’s deadliest lake by a massive margin - Harrison Lake had the second-highest number of drowning deaths over the same period with 12. Thus far in 2026 alone, 5 of BC’s 40 drowning deaths have occurred in our lake - two of which occurred on our local beaches.

Additionally, Kelowna’s various parks and recreational trail networks are some of our community’s most at-risk areas for fires to start, and have been unfortunate scenes of a variety of criminal activity; from open drug use to assaults.

In order to ensure Kelowna’s parks, beaches, and trails remain safe and enjoyable for all, Kelowna should expand the existing Parks & Recreation department to create a staff of municipal park rangers, incorporating into it a seasonal lifeguarding program, with the obvious aim of increasing safety and security in our parks and on our beaches, but also hosting educational programs for residents, tourists and children eager to learn about Kelowna’s flora, fauna, and history.

This would provide Kelowna with a staff who would be best positioned to ensure park facilities are maintained to the highest standard, keep an eye on park and beach use to coordinate preventative responses to potentially dangerous situations when able and priority bylaw or police responses to incidents when required, and provide the city with the capacity to more easily increase safety and security capacity within our parks on a seasonal basis than is currently possible. Additionally, by leveraging our various city venues to host everything from educational seminars about wildlife to nature walks, our rangers could instill a better appreciation for the natural beauty that abounds here among those who visit and provide residents and especially families with young children the opportunity to learn about the area we live, and the animals and plants we share it with. Finally, the creation of this program would provide both high-quality, high-value seasonal jobs for young Kelowna residents, and the possibility for full-time employment with the Parks department for some of those who aspire to.