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We start the year with many of the same clouds overhead as in 2025: looming CUSMA renegotiations, tariff uncertainties and recent added costs of international trade, international instability. Leavening those trade clouds is ongoing optimism around increasing interprovincial trade, long one of the Kelowna Chamber’s policy mandates. Although piecemeal legislation is in place to incentivize an increase, much work remains on the to-do list. We continue to engage with our MPs, our MLAs, and numerous CEOs within our membership to increase the pace at which change occurs on this front.
Elections impact stability and complicate longer-term planning. Toward the end of this new year, the entire province goes to the polls municipally/regionally. However, with minority governments holding razor-thin vote counts both provincially and federally, multiple 2026 elections are possible. Calls for a Conservative Party leader nationally who is knowledgeable about business are intensifying – politics alone may not carry the day in an election.
At the end of 2025, Kelowna Chamber members met to identify policy gaps and determine policy directions for the coming year. Sectoral discussions raised issues to be further debated in January and turned into new policy papers come February. A leading issue is advocating for federal investment in long-term clean energy supply for the Okanagan and similar regions: eliminating electricity and natural gas capacity constraints on approved development projects by 2028 and adding sufficient new low-carbon energy supply to meet projected demand growth through 2035.
Combining energy and tourism shortcomings, the group also came up with advocating for federal support for microgrids and distributed energy in wildfire-exposed regions: setting up at least five such B.C. hubs in wildfire-exposed, single-corridor communities (including at least one in the Okanagan), with funding based on peak seasonal population and energy demand.
Local advocacy issues always get lots of airtime at our annual policy forums: housing needs, and this year, interest in the new Small Housing BC initiative: unlocking housing affordability through education, incentives, and modernized delivery models. Positive outcomes include reduction of cost barriers through using the municipal tax base for deeply affordable housing; emphasizing a floor area ratio density bonusing program; reducing DCCs and expanding DCC waivers beyond nonprofit rentals to include gentle density; tax reform; and support on diverse fronts through education.
Crime and homelessness continue on retailers’ horizons as the key issue in business sustainability. Bail reform and policing remain the key hot buttons but aren’t providing any silver bullets that local small businesses define as adequate to meet current challenges.
We also debated labour, immigration, taxation, tourism, transportation, healthcare and banking fees and came up with policy recommendations and expected outcomes for all.
For the full document capturing the Chamber policy discussions and recommendations, contact Caroline Miller, Policy & Government Relations Advisor.
As 2026 is the Chamber’s 120th anniversary, one of our celebratory messages will be a look back at our policy history, and what the chamber has influenced over the years, how we did that, and who led the charge. We plan to talk about the growth of Kelowna, building a bridge, supporting the 97 Connector, getting rid of the tollbooth, the arrival of UBC and its impact and some glimpses of history in the making locally. We’ll publish what we uncover as the year unfolds. And we are inviting speakers who can enlarge on bigger messages: about fiscal policy, about how we choose our leaders, and how we negotiate our future successes.
If you have an idea for a new policy, tell us:
The Kelowna Chamber of Commerce is celebrating its 120th anniversary throughout 2026. The Chamber is a nonprofit business organization representing the interests of its one thousand members with an elected board of directors and is located in downtown Kelowna. www.kelownachamber.org