Delfing looks to make ground for People’s Party in North Okanagan-Shuswap

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Bluesky
• Share on X
• Copy Link

He also ran for the People’s Party in the 2019 federal election and received 2,027 votes, or 2.73 per cent of the votes, for fifth place.

Event Cancelled

Pentastic Hot Jazz & Music Festival cancelled after nearly 30 years

14h ago

Flood Hazards

Requests for proposals open for Water Reclamation bridge project

15h ago

Fire spreads to house

Vernon home "significantly damaged" by grass fire

Apr 02, 2026

Delfing told Vernon Matters that he has been interested in politics since he was a kid, eventually leading him to getting involved in the political system.

Delfing served as president of the Conservative Party of British Columbia, but decided to get involved in federal politics after the last 18 months of the COVID pandemic brought his attention to the PPC’s stance on debt, affordability and liberty.

Kyle Delfing poses with supporters at a campaign kick-off event. (Submitted photo/Kyle Delfing)

Delfing told Vernon Matters that the big issue the PPC looks to address in the North Okanagan-Shuswap riding is making life more affordable and supporting small businesses.

He claimed that one of the big issues people in the region are dealing with is the vaccine passport, and how this will negatively affect businesses, saying people who haven’t already gotten their doses won’t be convinced to take one and will instead go to other sources than local businesses like online stores. Later, during an all-candidate forum, Delfing said proof of vaccinations do fall under the jurisdiction of provinces, but a PPC government would work with people to dismantle those policies.

Delfing said affordability is another big issue that the PPC looks to handle by eliminating the deficit. He pointed to the price of housing in the area, claiming that it’s not inflation that led to the spike in costs but the government printing too much money and devaluing the Canadian dollar.

He said the carbon tax is also having negative impacts on Canadians, as food and products have the tax applied to it, which the average Canadian then has to pay, and that the PPC plans to eliminate carbon taxes across the board.

Delfing told Vernon Matters that climate change is another issue that continues to be at the forefront of the minds of North Okanagan – Shuswap constituents, but he said the way to manage the climate is not taxing people.

“Let’s get real, climate change isn’t going anywhere. It’s been changing for thousands of years, long before humans were here,” said Delfing. “Let’s start mitigating the effects of disasters better, we need to start disasters as they happen, and we need to start preparing for the future better. We need to know when the disasters are coming, and our disasters are quite cyclical in this country: we know where the forest fires happen and where they’re not going to happen, we know where flooding happens and not going to happen. So if we start attacking that with engineering and with actual technology instead of taxing the populous into destitute and oblivion, I think that we would be more successful in living here as a species on this planet as part of Mother Nature and we would be more successful as a society so people wouldn’t have to take two jobs to pay for rent, to pay for food, to pay for shoes on their kids feet.” (Kyle Delfing, PPC candidate)

Kyle Delfing files his papers to run in the 2021 federal election. (Facebook/Kyle Delfing)

He went on to say some of those management techniques could include building more dams and dykes to prevent flooding, building ditches to redirect flood water, and building fire breaks to stop the spread of forest fires when they start.

Moving the conversation to the COVID-19 pandemic, Delfing said the current government’s plans have not been working and cases of variants have been on the rise, and rather than push people to get vaccinated, the PPC would not push for herd immunity, claiming that the virus would mutate to a point where it is resistant to the vaccinations.

He also said the infection rate in the North Okanagan-Shuswap isn’t high, anecdotally referring to conversation with health care workers who say there are bigger issues to deal with, and that if people can still get sick when vaccinated, then there doesn’t appear to be a point of pushing them on people.

On the issue of COVID’s impact on the health care system itself, Delfing points to both the federal and provincial governments not doing enough to support health care in the past. He said the PPC would change the system by eliminating health care transfer payments, and allow province’s to fund their own health care systems.

“In lieu of the GST, we would allow the province’s to collect those tax points off of their constituents, off of their population, and use that to fund their health care,” said Delfing.

“It pretty much equates to the $40 billion in almost equally for jurisdiction that the federal health care transfer payment are through Ottawa. Well what is the advantage? There are 87 members of the legislative assembly in British Columbia, it is the province’s job to administer health care, and it is also their job to finance it but, unfortunately, they have advocated that to the feds in the way of that health care transfer.”

The candidate also claimed he had been told the health care transfer payments are not scrutinized or audited, saying “you can take the money from Ottawa into Victoria and Victoria can build a parkade, they can build a clock, they can go and build a building that has nothing to do with health care, then turn around and ask Ottawa for more money claiming the first payment wasn’t enough.”

Delfing also said the PPC would explore publicly-funded private health care in an effort to breed competition.

On the topic of housing, Delfing told Vernon Matters mismanagement of the industrial, banking, commercial and real estate sectors has led to the housing crisis. He said the plans from the other parties that would see more housing built would need tax money to do that, and Delfing said the PPC would instead not spend money building more supply, but instead put the focus on building “a strong, robust economy,” and that the PPC would achieve this by bringing inflation down so that builders can create more housing at less cost to their bottom lines.

He also said getting rid of the deficit over the next few years is a PPC policy, which he claims would bring down the price of housing.

He said to achieve this the PPC would bring the inflation rate down to zero, have flat taxes of 15 per cent up to $100,000, take out the capital gains tax, and rework the way Canada borrows and spends its money.

The discussion moved on to Indigenous Rights and Reconciliation, and Delfing said the PPC would start treating Indigenous people as true Canadians by eliminating the Indian Act.

“We’re the only party that wants to come together with all representatives, governments of all levels, every tribe that wants to get a seat at the table, every single representation of Indigenous community of Canada. We want them all at the table and we want to negotiate a way out of the Indian Act,” Delfing commented.

“We want to give them land, we want to have their communities prosper. It’s hard to get people to invest in communities when there’s no private properties or wealth rights or anything else. We want them to be part of Canada and we feel that this is one piece that the Truth and Reconciliation has ceased to identify.”

Aside from eliminating the Indian Act, Delfing did not comment on the Truth and Reconciliation Calls-to-Action, or what the PPC would do to follow through on those recommendations.

Delfing ended the conversation with Vernon Matters by saying the Conservatives look to him like ‘Liberal Lite’ and wouldn’t achieve the change the PPC plans to work towards.

The 2021 federal election will be held September 20.

Other profiles:

Mel Arnold Conservative Party

Shelley Desautels Liberal Party

Andrea Gunner Green Party

Ron Johnston NDP