kelownaelections.ca

Davis Kyle

Candidate for Councillor

Background

Davis Kyle, 28, is a procurement and contracting specialist who works for the B.C. government. He moved to Kelowna from Calgary with his family in 2003, graduated from Kelowna Secondary School, and earned a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Victoria. He owns a home in the Capri area.

Kyle's community roles include co-founder of Strong Towns Kelowna, a housing and planning advocacy group; past president of the Kelowna Cycling Coalition (where he ran City of Kelowna bike valets in 2023 and 2025, claiming a 58.06 percent drop in bike thefts compared to the same period in 2022); and former vice-chair of the RDCO Planning Advisory Committee. He was a runner-up for the Hunter Prize for Housing, a national housing-policy essay prize, and has written opinion columns in the Daily Courier, KelownaNow, and Castanet.

This is Kyle's second run for Kelowna city council. In 2022, he placed 9th in a race for eight seats, receiving 10,122 votes — approximately 1,000 fewer than Maxine DeHart, who won the final seat with 11,218 votes.

His 2022 campaign finance filing (Elections BC FRPC) reported income of $4,970.00, expenditures of $4,652.97, and a surplus of $317.03. (Elections BC FRPC, 2022)

2026 Campaign

Kyle announced his second council candidacy on June 1, 2026, with the theme "For a safer and more affordable Kelowna."

His platform covers nine areas: Financial Responsibility; Public Safety; Transportation; Parks, Sports, and Public Spaces; Accessibility; Housing and Planning; Jobs and the Economy; Public Voice and Transparency; and Environment and Urban Forest.

On public safety, Kyle's positions include ending overnight-shelter dispersal in favour of a single designated outdoor sheltering site; supporting both voluntary and involuntary treatment centres; opposing illicit drug consumption on streets and in parks; and advocating for 24/7 foot patrols by RCMP, bylaw officers, and business association staff in downtown Kelowna, Rutland, and Capri.

On transparency, Kyle has proposed electronic vote tabulating with public, searchable councillor voting records; lobbying the provincial government for ranked ballots; statistically significant resident surveys; an "Open By Default" transparency standard; reducing closed-door working groups; and emulating BC's political-contribution tax credit at the local level.

Kyle has stated: "We have not seen enough concrete action and local policy change from some of our current city councillors... 56 per cent of residents in the City's own Citizen Survey believe that their quality of life has worsened in the last three years. That's unacceptable."

He has remained active in local politics since his 2022 run, frequently commenting on social media on city-council-related issues.

He was listed among the 37 confirmed councillor candidates.

Campaign site: https://www.kyleforkelowna.ca/

Social media:

In an undated ForChange Kelowna candidate questionnaire, Kyle added further planks consistent with his platform: rapid-transit (bus rapid transit) corridor planning between downtown Kelowna and the University and Airport; pro-hotel Official Community Plan amendments; addressing what he called severe shortages of per-capita soccer-field and hockey-rink availability; and aligning the OCP with the City's Urban Forest Strategy.

In an undated Strong Towns Kelowna candidate questionnaire, Kyle added further positions on urban design and public finance. He called for legalizing the same walkable "high-street" mixed-use commercial zoning that exists on Bernard Avenue elsewhere in the city ("side-yard setbacks, parking-minimum reform, lot-coverage allowances"), and for professionalizing Meet Me On Bernard with bollards and more street trees. He backed "demand-based" parking minimums like those in High River and Spokane, and single transferable vote (STV) local electoral reform. He said he supports lifecycle-cost budgeting and self-funded infrastructure models, arguing the current council has not run a value-for-money audit or economic-impact analysis of sporting-event subsidies or some planned megaprojects.

At the first Castanet election forum (Revelry Kelowna, September 16, 2026), Kyle said he disagreed with the council's cutbacks to Rutland recreation facilities and questioned whether the City Park dog park offered value for its reported cost.

Questionnaire responses

Answers to the standardized Kelowna Elections questionnaire, sent in identical form to every councillor candidate. Published verbatim; received 2026-09-22.

1. Housing affordability

Housing affordability and a stronger local economy is at the core of my campaign. This includes improved market affordability and support for below-market options. Platform details include:

2. Public safety

Investments in prevention, mental health supports, and social supports are mainly provincial. I have strongly supported increased community spaces, programming for youth, and the continued operation of the tiny homes as well as medical services that reduce the risk of harm or death. In terms of items specific to the crime and safety file, my platform outlines the following.

3. Homelessness & the supervised consumption site

Closing the site without seeing side provincial support for on-demand treatment, fully funded mental health supports, and reforms to prevent drug use on the street or in parks is reckless. We don’t want to make outdoor usage worse. We don’t want to increase overdoses or deaths. I don’t see a plan yet to justify closing OPS at this time, because every proposed alternative seems worse, given the lack of provincial support and investment.

4. Taxes & budget

I am absolutely in favour of capital spending to improve transit frequency, speed, and reliability, repair sidewalks while adding new ones, adding to the ATC network, building amenities like washrooms and park improvements, along with planning for long-term capital investment to solve shortages of hockey rinks or replacing aging cultural amenities. We should invest in roundabouts, bus pullouts, and upgrade our road design standards for Dutch-style protected intersections and better crosswalk standards in suburban areas and town centres. On budgeting writ large, my platform https://www.kyleforkelowna.ca/financial-responsibility.html talks about how I want to approach it differently than the current council.

5. Growth & infrastructure funding

That is why I am strongly in favour of a new funding model for municipalities https://www.kyleforkelowna.ca/housing-and-planning.html. It’s mentioned all over my platform. DCCs are a direct tax on new homebuyers and renters. We need to fund infrastructure without driving up the cost of buying a home. The new transit yard would be my single highest priority for a large ($100m+) capital budget expenditure.

6. Transit & getting around

My top priority is balanced infrastructure investment into better road design standards following the Dutch approach or perhaps the Oslo design guidelines. That includes new roundabouts, bus pullouts, signal priority for transit, ATC investment, new sidewalks, and walkable mixed-use zoning patterns. As a co-founder of Strong Towns Kelowna, I understand the Downs-Thompson paradox and how traffic works, and what we need to do to improve both traffic safety and road efficiency through complete streets. https://www.kyleforkelowna.ca/transportation.html

7. Downtown & the local economy

The single biggest thing that is killing downtown, besides safety, is the cost of commercial rent and triple-net leases. That is why I strongly support zoning reforms to increase the supply of walkable commercial land, along with LVT tax reform that will better allow small businesses to compete against big chains. Other reforms I support include:

  • Competitive permitting for businesses and events. Kelowna should be the easiest and most cost-effective municipality in BC to operate a business or run an event.
  • Small business roundtable for permitting reform and regulatory efficiency review for both events and businesses. The current approach of “leading with no” instead of “getting to yes,” while strangling community events in increased costs, is directly forcing taxpayers to spend more on unnecessary bureaucracy.
  • Establish an office for Economics, Internal Audit, and Data Visualization, allowing the City to work on zoning, regulation, budget, and tax reforms while focusing on their tax efficiency and private-sector job creation, along with communication of those efforts, in order to improve fiscal transparency and efficiency.
  • Improving safety and cleanliness in all urban centres by redirecting parking meter revenue towards security and downtown on-call teams through “parking benefit districts.” https://parkingreform.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/PRN-Parking-Benefit-District-Playbook.pdf
  • Directing staff to prepare an industrial land strategy with 5% vacancy rate goals achieved by 2030.
  • Designating a permanent year-round indoor market site for independent vendors, similar to Toronto’s St. Lawrence Market. https://www.stlawrencemarket.com/
  • Creating hospital-oriented OCP amendments for the Pandosy–Richter transit corridors including options for short-term healthcare accommodation for nurses and patients.
  • Directing staff to report on a walkable commercial and mixed-use zoning reform strategy, in order to create and allow new “high street” commercial clusters similar to Bernard and Pandosy streets.
  • Moving a motion at the council table to legalize and incentivize more childcare spaces through childcare major prezoning in core area neighbourhoods.
  • Directing staff to work with the provincial government on reintroducing split-rate property tax reform, with the end goal of revenue-neutral single-rate land value tax shifts.

Endorsements

ForChange Kelowna recommends Davis Kyle as one of eight candidates for Kelowna city council in the 2026 election. ForChange Kelowna is a Kelowna volunteer group that reviewed candidates' questionnaire responses, held structured interviews and attended forums; it lists its eight recommendations alphabetically rather than by ranking. The group describes itself as independent and not affiliated with any political party, slate or business organization, and is registered with Elections BC as a third-party advertising sponsor (principal official Francis Braam).

Registered campaign links

From the official candidate registration record; presence here is not an endorsement.

Financial agent: Self

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