Conservative candidate for Kelowna/Tracy Gray campaign

By Glenn Hicks

more issues than tariffs

Conservative Tracy Gray criticizes Liberals on crime and lack of investment

Apr 7, 2025 | 1:30 PM

The Conservative candidate for Kelowna in this month’s federal election says voters have a clear choice between the Liberals who presided over the last decade, or a Conservative Party that has solid ideas and policies on reducing taxes, tackling crime, and getting Canadians ahead.

Gray, the incumbent MP for the riding, said in choosing Mark Carney as new leader, the governing Liberals have simply replaced Justin Trudeau with another insider and someone who advised the former prime minister for years.

“They have the same advisers, the same candidates, the same ministers; so it’s all the same team,” Gray said. “We should be more self-sustaining as a country. We’ve had an anti-development government for years,” she said, pointing to specific policies the Liberals have followed that have been against resource development.

“We have lost half a trillion dollars in investments in Canada to the United States and hundreds of thousands of good paying jobs, and had tax increases,” she said. “So, this has led us, coming into this situation [Trump tariff war] , economically in a much weakened position. We should be one of the most prosperous countries in the world.”

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While not dismissing the very real risks and uncertainty from the tariff war initiated by US President Donald Trump, Gray said she’s hearing plenty of other concerns from residents as she knocks on doors or through surveys and mailers.

“That has to do with affordability, crime and mental health and addictions. I’ll ask people what’s most important to them and they’ll say they’re worried about how tariffs are going to affect their daily life but then they’ll talk about the cost of crime because they just had someone try to light their fence on fire.”

Gray recounted a story from a local business owner who didn’t know how the tariffs would impact his costs as he imports items from the United States but on the other side had to invest $30,000 in new security equipment because of so much crime.

“They [Liberal government] changed two pieces of legislation that dramatically affected crime: the first was changing the bail system [requiring courts to consider an accused person’s history of convictions for violence and community safety when making bail decisions], and the second one removed minimum sentences for very serious crimes,” Gray said. “So we see this play out on our streets.”

Gray also pointed to the Trudeau government’s support for the hard drug decriminalization efforts in B.C., which were later reversed by Premier David Eby, and also what she called the backing for ‘government-supplied hard drugs.’

Come the end of this month Gray was asked if she thought another victory for her in the Kelowna riding would make her part of government, or once against, a member of the opposition. Gray said she’s focused on serving locals.

“I’m focused on representing the residents of Kelowna, reaching out and getting their feedback; focusing on serving them again in Ottawa, whatever that capacity might be.”