Kelowna—Mission

Kelowna—Mission covers the southern and southeastern portions of the City of Kelowna, including the historic Mission district, the commercial strips along Lakeshore Road, and residential areas climbing the benchlands above Okanagan Lake. The riding's economy is shaped by tourism and hospitality, health care services centred on Kelowna General Hospital, and a growing technology sector, while the surrounding hillsides support vineyards and orchards that contribute to the Okanagan's wine country identity. The 2024 redistribution trimmed the riding's boundaries from its previous configuration but preserved its mix of established residential areas and lakefront communities.

Candidates

Gavin Dew (Conservative Party) — Dew held a Bachelor of Arts in English literature from the University of British Columbia and an MBA from Oxford, where he specialized in corporate social responsibility. He moved to Kelowna in 2023 and opened Play Area, a childcare facility and indoor playground. He had previously run as a BC Liberal candidate in the 2016 Vancouver—Mount Pleasant by-election and sought the BC Liberal leadership in 2022, finishing on the third ballot behind eventual winner Kevin Falcon.

Harpreet Badohal (BC NDP) — Badohal was a registered occupational and environmental health professional with a Master of Science from the UBC Vancouver Faculty of Medicine. He held a second MSc in Botany and had worked as a lecturer before immigrating to Canada in 2006. He had been an officer with WorkSafeBC and had made Kelowna his home since 2016.

Ashley Ramsay (Independent) — Ramsay was an entrepreneur who co-founded Yeti Farm Creative, an animation studio that had created hundreds of local jobs. She had been the BC United candidate for Kelowna—Mission before the party suspended its campaign in August 2024 and chose to continue as an Independent. She described herself as fiscally conservative and socially compassionate.

Billy Young (BC Green Party) also contested the riding.

Local Issues

The wildfire threat took on renewed urgency following the 2023 McDougall Creek fire, which burned through the hillsides above West Kelowna and reached parts of the City of Kelowna. While the heaviest destruction occurred in communities to the west and north, the smoke and evacuation disruptions affected the entire Kelowna region, including the Mission district. The experience reinforced concerns about the vulnerability of hillside residential development in the urban-wildland interface and prompted calls for stricter building standards in fire-prone zones, more aggressive fuel management on Crown land adjacent to neighbourhoods, and better coordination of evacuation logistics.

Homelessness and the toxic drug crisis continued to shape the political conversation. The downtown Kelowna encampments and the opioid death toll—which had accelerated through the NDP's term as fentanyl contamination of the illicit drug supply worsened—remained polarizing issues. The NDP government's investments in supportive and transitional housing had increased the stock of available units, but advocates argued the pace of construction could not keep up with the scale of need. The January 2023 drug decriminalization pilot, which decriminalized the possession of small amounts of certain drugs in British Columbia, drew criticism from communities across the Okanagan who argued it was contributing to open drug use and public disorder. The NDP reversed course in 2024, requesting a federal exemption amendment to recriminalize public drug use in certain spaces.

Health care access and housing affordability remained intertwined concerns. Kelowna General Hospital continued to serve as the primary referral centre for the southern Interior, but patients requiring specialized procedures still had to travel to Vancouver. The chronic shortage of family physicians left thousands of residents without a regular doctor. Meanwhile, the Okanagan's appeal to interprovincial migrants and remote workers kept housing prices elevated, squeezing renters and first-time buyers in a riding where the gap between high-end lakefront properties and the affordability challenges facing working families had widened during the NDP's term.