In the last two weeks I have been in three very different rooms, and the questions in each one were different. That is the part of a campaign I didn’t expect to enjoy as much as I do.
September 24 — the all-candidates meeting
Seventeen of us running for Council sat in front of a full Maury Young Arts Centre, hosted by the Whistler Chamber, Arts Whistler and Pique. Permitting dominated the night: how long an application takes, how much it costs, and how it feels to deal with municipal hall. Housing, wildfire, municipal spending, childcare and recreation all came up after it.
Housing is the part where I want to be honest about myself. I am not going to claim I have the whole file at my fingertips — the agreements, the bylaws, the decades of history behind the Whistler Housing Authority. Looking back at that evening, I may well have come across as someone who is still learning parts of it. I am.
What I do have is the reason I care. I spent three years on the WHA waitlist, and then I bought in Pemberton — not because I wanted to leave Whistler, but because the arithmetic made the decision for me. Hundreds of people here are doing that same math right now. For me this isn’t a talking point; it is my own last few years.
So housing stays my first priority, and I will keep working on it precisely because it is personal. And after listening — to the other candidates on September 24 and to the builders tonight — I am more convinced than I was that there is a lot here we could be doing better.
Two of those things cost almost nothing: publish how long each application actually takes, and treat that number as a target we are judged against. And when we build, build to own as well as to rent. The 104 units at Sitka & Cedar on Mount Fee Road, with tenants in since July, show we can deliver when we decide to.
One thing I won’t pretend: Council cannot make the private market in Whistler inexpensive. Forty-four per cent of the homes here have no permanent resident. Any honest housing plan starts by admitting who we are competing with for land.
On wildfire my position is simple, and it comes from the municipality’s own plan: Highway 99 has no parallel alternative, and clearing this valley could take up to 15 hours. The last evacuation exercise was in April 2024, in Spring Creek. We should be practising more often, at a bigger scale, and publishing what we learn.
October 1 — AWARE, WCSS and the Whistler Multicultural Society
A different room and a different frame: conservation, climate and community wellbeing. The hosts made a point I agree with — close to 3,000 adults who live and work here cannot vote in this election because of citizenship or age. They keep this resort running and they deserve to be heard between elections, not just counted after them.
That evening I talked about the things that decide whether a working life here is possible at all. Transit is one: the last bus from Whistler to Pemberton leaves at 9:13 p.m., and before it there is a three-hour gap. Route 99 isn’t even ours — it is funded by the regional district, Pemberton, the Líl̓wat Nation and BC Transit — which is exactly why Whistler has to be at that table asking for more, together with our neighbours and the province. Aging is another: we have no dedicated space for seniors, who move between four borrowed rooms, two of them slated for redevelopment.
October 5 — the builders
The Sea to Sky Canadian Home Builders’ Association put the candidates in a boardroom with the people who actually pull the permits. Same subject as September 24, seen from the other side of the counter: fees, timelines, and requests that aren’t on any checklist. I’d rather hear that directly than read about it later.
Three rooms, one conclusion: people here are not short of ideas. They are short of being asked.