Ward Stamer has been elected in Kamloops North-Thompson.

The Barrière Mayor has won his bid to head to Victoria and will represent the BC Conservative Party.

He was running against Maddi Genn of the BC NDP and Tristan Cavers of the BC Green party.

Stamer says he and his party have a lot of work to do. “I mean, like we said on the on the campaign trail, I mean, we’ve got a serious issue with healthcare, or, you know, accessibility to healthcare. We’ve got a serious issue when it comes to housing. We got a serious issue to affordability. We’ve got, you know, we’ve got the opioid crisis. That’s not going to change, whether we’re, you know, official opposition or government, our focus is still going to be to try to get that, you know, change that, and for a positive, positive way and hopefully we’re successful in being government, but if we’re not, I’ll tell you we’re going to push twice as hard to make sure that the other guys are accountable.” 

“I guess the proof will be in the pudding. I mean, I don’t know yet what, you know, what the scenario would be. I don’t know how that, how that works. I mean, back in 2017 I mean, the liberals won the popular vote and but they didn’t have, you know, enough seats to put it together, and they had a non confidence vote, and the Greens back the NDP, whether that could happen or not. I don’t know. One of the guys says, Hey, do you want me to save all the signs just in case? I said, Well, we may have to, and I really don’t want to have to go into another election in the next six months or a year. But again, we’ll do everything we have to for talents in the area. And you know, if we have to turn.”

A by-election for the Mayor of Barrière will now be required. “I will be resigning. Barry will have to have a by election. It’s not very expensive, because we do it all internally, with with with our staff. So it’s just mainly the printing of the ballots and a bit of advertising. I’m quite confident, I won’t say who, but I’m quite confident that we’ll have, you know, at least one candidate that would like to put their their name in the ring, and then we’d have to find another counselor to finish off the two year term.”