Dan Albas is the Conservative Party candidate for Okanagan Lake West-South Kelowna/Conservative Party

By Glenn Hicks

vote 2025

Policies are good for Canada and Okanagan: Conservative candidate Dan Albas

Apr 14, 2025 | 12:45 PM

The Conservative candidate for the Okanagan Lake West – South Kelowna riding, incumbent Dan Albas, says he’s always been a constituency-focused MP.

Albas says the party leaders are important, but for him, it’s about ensuring proposed policies work for Canada and the Okanagan.

He said, for example, the Conservative push for fast-tracking energy projects, like the huge planned liquified natural gas expansion on the B.C. coast, can generate the economic growth needed to help bolster the social security net and to hire medical professionals in Kelowna.

(Click on the video below for more from Dan Albas)

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“We can’t wait 15, 20 years for permits to come through,” he said.” That’s where a new Conservative government would invest in road infrastructure, in our port infrastructure to get those new trade relationships, but that takes money.”

He said the tens of billions of dollars invested in a new LNG facility would give options for additional energy export markets and “…will put British Columbia in a fantastic state.

“Let’s not forget that the lost Liberal decade, where every single person in our riding is less wealthy on a GDP basis than we were in 2017 … that means lower standards of living,” he said, noting Canada should have prosperity and proper social safety nets for seniors.

Albas said Conservatives have pledged to speed up the credential process so incoming doctors and nurses can practice quicker after arriving, but while that’s good for Kelowna General Hospital, he asks where would these important professionals live when they get here?

“[We’re ] completely eliminating the GST on housing because, how is an essential worker like a nurse, a medical technologist, a firefighter, or a police officer to set roots in our communities if they can’t afford a home? They’re going to go some place else like Alberta, where they can.”

Albas acknowledged there are significant issues from the tariff war with the United States but these bread and butter concerns like affordability, lack of growth in Canada, and drug-related crime have been on voters’ minds for years. He said he and his team had knocked on over 20,000 doors as of the end of last week and crime continues to be a major concern for residents.

“It’s always been, for me, about what’s good for my riding. That’s why I take the great things that Pierre Poilievre is announcing every day and put it into the context of why someone in the Okanagan should support a new Conservative government for a change,” he said, pointing to how the party would help stop crime by ensuring jail not bail for offenders, and offering what he called real treatment and hope for people who are addicted on our streets “rather than free drugs.”