Empty Chairs While Ballots Are Open: Kamloops Voters Deserved Answers
The forum was about survivor supports, public safety and vulnerable people. Most candidates were absent when voters needed answers.
Kamloops voters got a blunt picture of election accountability this week: a community forum on survivor supports and public safety with most candidate chairs empty.
Castanet reported that only two of eight Kamloops-area provincial candidates attended Tuesday night’s forum hosted by the Kamloops Sexual Assault Counselling Association at the Same Sky Collective. The two who attended were BC Green candidate Annelise Beach and independent Thaelo Proctor. The other six did not appear.
The no-show list cuts across parties, and the facts should be stated carefully. Castanet reported that the two B.C. Conservative candidates, incumbent MLAs Peter Milobar in Kamloops Centre and Ward Stamer in Kamloops-North Thompson, declined the invitation. The outlet also reported that neither OneBC candidate responded to organizers, while BC NDP candidates Mike Wisla and Kory Clark called in sick the day of the event.
Illness can be real. Prior engagements can be real. None of that erases the democratic problem created in the room. The forum questions were not trivia. Castanet said topics included housing, poverty, SOGI 123, a universal minimum wage, wildfire mitigation, support for social-service providers, harm reduction, and protecting vulnerable people during interactions with law enforcement.
Those are exactly the issues that campaign slogans tend to flatten. Survivor supports need staffing, funding and delivery. Community safety needs more than a press line. Vulnerable people need policy that works on the street, in clinics, in housing offices and in emergency response. If candidates want the power to legislate, voters are entitled to hear how they would use it.
The timing makes the empty chairs harder to excuse as a small scheduling story. Elections BC says advance voting for the 2026 provincial election runs from October 16 to October 21, with Final Voting Day on Saturday, October 24. In other words, this forum happened while voters were already marking ballots.
That is the consequence of David Eby’s compressed election calendar. When the clock is shortened, every missed forum matters more. Voters do not get endless chances to compare answers before the ballot closes. Local organizations do not get endless chances to press candidates on the issues their clients and communities live with daily.
The fair ask is simple: every absent candidate should answer the KSACC questions in writing, publicly and immediately. No spin, no substitute slogans, no blaming the room for noticing the chairs. Kamloops voters deserved answers before they voted. They still do.