Our non-partisan commitment

Zio Advertising is a Kelowna marketing agency. We built this tool as a free public resource. We do not endorse any candidate, we take no position on the race, and no candidate has paid for or influenced their placement. The tool matches a reader’s answers to sourced candidate positions, nothing more.

Where positions come from

We score candidate positions only from public, citable sources, in this order of authority:

Recorded council votes. For sitting councillors and the mayor, actual votes in City of Kelowna council minutes, the strongest evidence, because it’s what they did, not what they said. When a councillor’s vote and their campaign statement conflict, the vote wins, and we show both.
The candidate’s own words. Answers to a standardized candidate questionnaire, statements in interviews and all-candidates forums, and reporting from Castanet, KelownaNow and Kelowna Capital News.
Campaign material. Positions published on a candidate’s own website or official social accounts.

Every score carries a citation, a source, a date, and a quote or vote description, which you can click on any result. Where a candidate has no citable position on an issue, we leave it blank. We never infer a position from a candidate’s occupation, endorsements, or slate membership.

We don’t infer positions

A candidate is scored on a question only if they voted on it or directly answered it, including any trade-off the question names. A statement on a related topic that doesn’t directly answer the question is shown unscored, under “From their platform,” on their record and card. We never score a candidate from what they didn’t say, and we never score an individual from a position their slate holds collectively.

How matching works

You answer 24 questions in the quiz on a five-point agree-to-disagree scale, and may flag the issues that matter most to you to count double. For each candidate we measure the distance between your answers and their positions, across only the statements you both have a position on, and convert it to a match percentage. You can see how many of your answered questions a given match is based on right on each candidate’s card.

Candidates with fewer than 1 sourced position are shown separately as “not enough public record” rather than ranked on thin data. Of the 39 candidates, 37 currently meet that bar; the rest can move onto the ranked list by completing our questionnaire (below). A match built on fewer than 6 shared positions is real but thin, we label it a “partial match” rather than show it with full confidence. Positions drawn from a candidate’s earlier (2022) campaign are labelled as such.

Candidates: verify or correct your positions

We’ve emailed every candidate the same questionnaire. If you’re a candidate and want to confirm, add, or correct any position attributed to you, email [email protected]. Confirmed candidates receive a “Verified by candidate” badge, and your own answers replace our researched estimates. We turn corrections around within one to two business days.

Known limitations

Public records are uneven, late entrants and lower-profile candidates have thinner coverage, which the tool shows honestly rather than papering over.
One question, whether policing should prioritize violent crime over traffic enforcement, is on the candidate questionnaire only for now. No candidate has a public record on it yet, so rather than show an empty question in the quiz we’ll add it once candidates answer it directly.
One council candidate (Nikki Csek) co-owns KelownaNow, one of our sources. Her scores are drawn from her own questionnaire answers and campaign material, not from KelownaNow coverage.
These questions can’t capture every issue or the nuance within one. Treat a match as a prompt to research further, not a verdict.

The candidates

The Compass covers 39 candidates running in Kelowna’s October 17, 2026 election, 3 for mayor and 36 for council, with every sourced position and its citation on the full sourced record →

The full question set

Grouped by axis. Agreeing with each statement moves you toward the noted pole; the candidate-questionnaire-only question is marked.

Fiscal (spending vs. taxes)

The city should spend more on housing and shelters for homeless people, including on-site support workers. (agree → more services)
Keeping property taxes low should be a bigger priority than adding new city services. (agree → hold taxes)
Before raising taxes, the city should cut spending on services that aren't essential. (agree → hold taxes)
The city should spend more on transit and protected bike lanes, even if that takes away road space or parking. (agree → more services)
Widening and adding roads for drivers should be Kelowna's number-one transportation priority. (agree → hold taxes/roads pole)
The city should fund big downtown projects like the proposed Performing Arts Centre. (agree → more services)
Climate action should be one of the city's top budget priorities. (agree → more services)

Growth (faster change vs. status quo)

Kelowna should allow 4 to 6 storey apartment buildings in more single-family neighbourhoods. (agree → faster growth)
The city should cut red tape to get more family-sized homes built, like townhouses and three-bedroom-plus units, not just small condos. (agree → faster building of family homes)
Kelowna should stop opening up new land on the hillsides and edges of the city for suburban development. (agree → faster growth)
Kelowna should put tighter limits on short-term rentals like Airbnb to free up homes for long-term renters. (agree → slower growth)
The city should lower the fees it charges builders to encourage more housing. (agree → faster growth)
Farmland on the edge of Kelowna should stay protected from development, even if that means less room for new housing. (agree → slower growth)
Big city spending projects should go to a public referendum before they're approved. (agree → slower growth/populist pole)
The city has approved too much new development without the roads and infrastructure to handle the traffic it creates. (agree → slower, infrastructure first)
Council should stop approving towers far taller than the zoning allows, like signing off on an extra 10 or 20 storeys. (agree → stick to the zoning)

Safety & Justice (enforcement vs. rehabilitation)

The city should clear tents and encampments out of parks and public spaces more aggressively. (agree → tougher enforcement)
Kelowna should push for more complex care and treatment beds for people with severe addiction and mental illness. (agree → rehabilitation and root causes)
Kelowna should support harm reduction services like supervised consumption sites. (agree → rehabilitation and root causes)
Kelowna should pay for more RCMP officers. (agree → tougher enforcement)
Downtown needs a lot more bylaw officers and security on the street. (agree → tougher enforcement)
Kelowna should take a harder line on repeat offenders, including pushing the province and the courts for stricter bail and prosecution to protect residents. (agree → tougher enforcement)
The city should focus more on the root causes of crime, like housing, addiction, and mental health, more than on policing and enforcement. (agree → root causes over enforcement)

Tracked issues (not plotted on the compass)

The city should keep expanding its financial support and programs for the local Indigenous community, even when that adds to city spending. (agree → expand support)
Kelowna should aim its policing and enforcement resources at violent crime and theft rather than lower-level issues like traffic enforcement. (agree → focus on violent crime) · candidate questionnaire only

Methodology & Corrections