kelownaelections.ca

Trevor McAleese

Candidate for Councillor

Background

Trevor McAleese is a lifelong Kelowna-area resident who has lived on one side of Okanagan Lake or the other since 1990.

He graduated from UBC Okanagan and Okanagan College with a co-conferred degree in business administration and worked for the BC Ministry of Finance from 2007 to 2009.

Since 2018, McAleese has worked as a video game developer for his own company, Drixxel Soft, and is a co-founder of Gigatross Games.

He has worked in agriculture, hospitality, and education in the Okanagan, including as an instructor at Okanagan College running arts and technology camps and involvement with the college's Animation program.

McAleese is a member of Kelowna Tree Protectors and the Okanagan Transit Alliance, and serves as a director-at-large of the Friends of Knox Mountain Society.

In the 2025 federal election, McAleese ran as the NDP candidate in the Kelowna riding, receiving approximately 1,941 votes (3.3 per cent of counted ballots) according to Kelowna Capital News; a Toronto Star live tally placed him at 2,150 votes (3.89 per cent). The discrepancy has not been resolved against Elections Canada validated results.

McAleese was the first candidate to officially announce a Kelowna councillor bid for the 2026 municipal election.

2026 Campaign

McAleese's campaign is centered on affordability, transparency, and what he describes as a need to prioritize residents over developers. His campaign site states: "I'm here to work for you on Kelowna City Council because I believe council's job is to prioritize people, not property developers."

He has been sharply critical of the current council majority, writing that "for too long has the council majority acted as an easygoing rubber stamp, following along behind the mayor in support of staff's recommendations" and that "deference to the mayor paired with overreliance on city employees has led to out-of-touch councillors who've stopped doing their homework."

His platform includes: ward-system elections; overnight on-call redshirts for the downtown and Rutland areas; affordable and accessible homes through inclusionary zoning; close-to-home childcare; coordinated traffic-light synchronization; short-term-rental restrictions; making transit public by ending the Transdev contract; daytime basic-needs access; and a council pay freeze.

Additional platform items include alternative approval process (AAP) reform, land-value-tax lobbying, a public searchable councillor-vote database, community repair hubs, a tree-protection bylaw, a residential composter pilot, and seasonal community food processing.

McAleese has been active on social media, posting regular short video clips on Facebook and Instagram since launching his campaign, relying on his video-game and editing background.

On departing incumbents, McAleese said: "Absolutely, a renewal of leadership is all but guaranteed." He praised outgoing Coun. Loyal Wooldridge, saying "Loyal really did prove that it's possible to be a young, progressive person on Kelowna City Council…and I hope he'll consider coming back to Kelowna city politics in future."

In an undated ForChange Kelowna candidate questionnaire, McAleese added detail. On community safety, he proposed resourcing up non-police responder teams — naming DKA On-Call and CRCL — to take lower-urgency, non-criminal calls away from the RCMP so police can focus on criminal emergencies. On housing, he argued the City's Revitalization Tax Exemption has not effectively spurred non-market housing and proposed debating Inclusionary Zoning with incentives such as accelerated approvals or tax deferments to set affordability minimums in larger for-profit builds.

In an undated Strong Towns Kelowna candidate questionnaire, McAleese added further positions. On downtown, he called for making Meet Me On Bernard a permanent walking street connecting the waterfront to Bernard's businesses, extended or overnight DKA On-Call hours, and flagged uncapped commercial rent increases as a threat to small businesses. On transit, he proposed a direct RapidBus route to the airport and noted handyDART users were hit hardest by fare increases. On housing, he suggested density bonusing be used to promote on-site childcare spaces. On governance, he proposed restoring a citizen-led Advisory Planning Commission to inform the 2050 Official Community Plan, in addition to the ward-system elections he already supports. On a hypothetical $1-million grant, he proposed additional public washrooms — equating the sum to roughly four more self-cleaning units — or transit shelters.

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

Financial agent: Kathy Chin.

Questionnaire responses

Answers to the standardized Kelowna Elections questionnaire, sent in identical form to every councillor candidate. Published verbatim; received 2026-10-02.

1. Housing affordability

I see value in an approach to leverage market housing to deliver deeply affordable, family-suitable, accessible units to the market such as through Inclusionary Zoning, where incentives are offered which may include accelerated approvals or tax deferments or other compliance motivators, to set minimums in new for-profit builds over a certain density and ensure the most critically needed housing criteria is met. I support greater prioritization of successful non-market housing models such as community land trusts, housing cooperatives, and community non-profits, and the aggressive pursuit of affordable housing partnerships with BC Housing and non-profit homebuilding partners to ensure that projects such as the recently cancelled development at Bertram St actually happen. With construction costs and land values being what they are, multi-family dwellings are increasingly necessary for us to deliver anything resembling an affordable option for new housing, so accepting density and taller building heights is a given, but we must be serious in mitigating the negative impacts on residential neighbourhoods especially as it relates to privacy and character.

2. Public safety

To see meaningful system-level improvements to healthcare, notably relating to local capacity for mental health support and addictions treatment, dedicated advocacy from a unified council to the provincial government is necessary as we cannot act unilaterally here as a municipality. We know that almost a 2/3rds majority of service calls demanding an RCMP response are low risk, low urgency matters related to disorder which spreads police resources increasingly thin, and our emergency services budget is exploding because of the incredible demands on our RCMP and Fire Dept., who are themselves responding to many more overdoses than fires. In the immediate term, it may be much more cost effective for us to resource up the Downtown On-Call, URBA On-Call, and the Crisis Response Community-Led teams to extend their service hours and allow more non-criminal calls to be delegated their way, allowing our strained RCMP resources to better and more safely respond to criminal matters. Within the Kelowna RCMP detachment itself, the Kelowna Gang Enforcement Team is a specialized arm of our detachment deserving of prioritization in the emergency services budget to better disrupt the drug & sex trafficking networks that motivate street crime and prey on vulnerable populations.

3. Homelessness & the supervised consumption site

Ideally, the SCS at Outreach Urban Health Centre is part of a front-line intake system that links vulnerable substance users at risk of overdose with longer-term supports and services, such as drug counseling, detox & treatment programs, transitional & supportive housing, and community reintegration including vocational training opportunities and work/volunteer placements. In practice, the wraparound supports described here are terribly under-resourced, can be difficult to access on-demand when needed, and pose serious challenges to coordinate, featuring many opportunities for persons in need of these supports to fall through the cracks and wind up right back at the beginning. A supervised consumption site is not intended to be the end all be all solution, and the very real security concerns in Downtown surrounding and associated with Outreach Urban Health Centre which Interior Health is aware of and has made recommendations for need to be seriously addressed for residents and businesses alike. Long-term, we need to lobby the province to adequately fund a full spectrum of care as previously outlined to ever have a hope of rehabilitating people in anything resembling adequate numbers, and closure of the site without any adequate substitute in mind will lead to even more open drug use, more uncontained disorder in more neighbourhoods that will negatively impact more residents, an even greater strain on our first responders who are struggling with the scale of the issue as it stands, and more overdose deaths.

4. Taxes & budget

While tempting to commit to property tax increases staying at or below an arbitrary target, we are already facing an infrastructure deficit across this city and the last thing we want as a community is to be compromising our asset renewal efforts that could result in disaster if and when an extreme weather event hits. The number one area that needs containment is emergency services, and I have described in a previous answer a more cost-effective approach to evolving our street level community safety that may better meet the realities of demands on our responders. I support lobbying the province to restore municipal authority over tax reform, to permit us to move to a more progressive form of property tax or a land-value tax to more equitably share the ratepaying burden and shore up the stability of our tax base.

5. Growth & infrastructure funding

As touched on in a previous answer around getting ahead of catastrophic infrastructure failures, we should be looking to improve asset renewal efforts with support from FCM's Asset Management Program to prioritize updates to aging supply pipes, irrigation systems, etc., and pursuing property tax reforms that more equitably distribute tax burden across ratepayers for a more stable tax base. I would like to see additional sources of revenue be sourced, such as through lobbying of the province to entitle municipalities to a share of taxes collected on cannabis sales. If there were one single infrastructure/capital project that I consider highest priority, it is a new Performing Arts Centre — this is infrastructure that will provide a tremendous community benefit and be vital to the growth of our arts & cultural sector while providing a world-class venue for attracting touring performances, all of which promises real quality of life gains for residents.

6. Transit & getting around

Improving public transit is my number one priority, as a city of our size and ambition needs a more dependable, frequent, well-routed bus network to provide an affordable and convenient alternate mode of transport for people to get to where they need to be on their schedule. Kelowna is incredibly car-dependent, and our worsening traffic congestion is evidence of this as the majority of trips that residents are making depend on a vehicle to be completed conveniently. We are hamstrung in our ability to grow the size of our bus fleet due to constraints of the current Hardy St transit yard, and advocacy to the province to accelerate construction on the expanded bus yard will be needed unless we're prepared to wait decades and watch traffic get even worse. In the meanwhile, we can again lobby the province to end its contract with for-profit multinational Transdev and return operations of our transit system to the community level, where funds that were previously being paid out in profits to Transdev shareholders can instead be reinvested into the service to hire drivers and pay overtime, leading to a greater frequency and extended hours on evenings and weekends for existing routes. A direct RapidBus line to the airport can likely be achieved through careful redistribution of current transit resources, and this would pack impressive bang for the buck.

7. Downtown & the local economy

When Meet Me On Bernard is going, we see how lively downtown could be with a permanent walking street connecting the waterfront to Bernard's amazing restaurants, bars, cafes, and shops. With appropriate considerations made for handicap accessibility and business logistics such as receiving deliveries, I would love to see the Meet Me On Bernard program made a year-round fixture. I have described previously the increased role that Downtown On-Call can play in maintaining a higher level of safety, and their presence as uniformed support persons can go a long way to ensuring perception of security for residents and businesses.

Follow-up responses

Answers to the Kelowna Elections follow-up questionnaire on three live community issues, sent in identical form to every councillor candidate. Published verbatim; received 2026-10-04.

1. Audible bird-scare devices ("bird cannons")

I would support a bylaw regulating the use of bird-scare devices, with specific limits on hours of use, minimums set on device distance from neighbour properties, and maximums established for firing frequency during permitted hours. I do recognize that these propane cannons serve an important purpose in controlling undesirable behaviour from wild bird populations, but stricter regulations may be necessary to balance and mitigate the worst disruptive impacts of these devices on neighbouring households.

2. Prospera Place / MNP Place operator and transparency

I would vastly prefer that a Canadian company be awarded the operating contracts for Prospera & MNP, and a more complete set of details regarding the selection process of this new operator would certainly be illuminating, but confidentiality around these in-progress procurement agreements is normal procedure. In the interests of building trust in the decision-making of City Hall, once the agreement is fully settled, I would begin with support for the public release of a list of competing operators in the bidding process, the final value of the contract signed with Oak View Group Canada, and a summary of the reasoning behind seeking a new operating partner for these sporting facilities over contract renewal with GSL Group.

3. Highway 97 right-of-way protection

The highway widening proposal is immediately problematic if only for the immense complexity and cost of expropriating land along such a significant length of Harvey/Hwy 97. As evidenced by the extent to which approved development so closely encroaches upon the highway corridor, a widened Hwy 97 was not part of this city's long-term transportation and development plans. While I do appreciate that the proposal includes transit-oriented laneways, thus working to offset the phenomenon of induced demand for additional vehicle traffic that is shown to occur from simply adding lanes without dedicated use in mind, I would sooner see greater political capital expended on obtaining provincial funding commitments to accelerate completion of an expanded transit yard. This would enable Kelowna Regional Transit to dramatically increase service levels and introduce new, improved routes that better serve the transportation needs of everyday people, and thus provide a viable transportation alternative for more Kelowna residents who may otherwise have no choice but to travel by car to complete their trip on their schedule.

Registered campaign links

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

Financial agent: Kathy Chin

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