Crown prosecutor Frank Caputo will be on the ballot for the Conservative Party of Canada in the Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo riding in the next federal election.

NL News has been told by someone close to the vote that Caputo is the winner in the party’s nomination race for this riding, as no public notice has gone out yet at time of posting. Three days of voting were held for local party members.

There were more than 800 votes cast. Apart from Caputo, other candidates for the nominee were Tourism Kamloops CEO Bev Desantis, developer Michael Grenier and mayor of Barriere Ward Stamer.

It’s widely expected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will drop the writ very soon to trigger a federal election.

Apart from Caputo, other confirmed names on the ballot in the Kamloops area are lawyer Bill Sundhu for the NDP, lawyer George Petel for the Liberal Party and Corally Delwo for the People’s Party of Canada.

Sundhu was acclaimed as the NDP candidate months ago, on April 7, while the Liberal Party acclaimed Petel on Saturday. The PPC named Delwo its candidate in the spring, after she won a nomination race between two people.

In the most recent election in 2019, Cathy McLeod won by earning more than 44 per cent of the vote. She finished ahead of Liberal candidate Terry Lake (27 per cent), NDP candidate Cynthia Egli (13 per cent), Green Party candidate Iain Currie (12 per cent), and three other candidates: Ken Finlayson of the PPC, Kira Cheeseborough of the Animal Protection Party and Peter Kerek of the Communist Party.

McLeod’s election win was her fourth in the KTC riding; the former nurse and mayor of Pemberton announced earlier this year she would be retiring from politics after this term, which has led the CPC to find a new local candidate.

– with files from Victor Kaisar