Green Party of BC leader Emily Lowan made two stops in downtown Kamloops on Thursday, November 27, meeting with residents and hearing concerns firsthand during her ongoing tour of the Interior.
Lowan began her day at The Art We Are Café on Victoria Street, where she spoke with community members between 9 and 10 a.m. The café filled steadily with residents eager to meet the newly elected leader, including students, young families, and retirees. Lowan said she was struck by the level of enthusiasm from younger voters in particular.
“One of my favourite stories from the day was meeting a high school student who actually ditched class just to come see me,” she said. “It was amazing to see all the young people come out, and to see the intergenerational party that we’re building represented here in Kamloops.”
Healthcare dominated much of the discussion throughout the morning. Residents raised concerns about the recent walkout by the maternity ward staff at Royal Inland Hospital and the continued lack of cardiac services in the region. Lowan said the anger and worry she heard from residents reflects a healthcare system she considers to be “crumbling.”
“People are being left on stretchers overnight for multiple days, and it’s killing people,” she said. “It’s not a viable healthcare plan to force someone having a heart attack to travel to Kelowna or Vancouver. I’m extremely concerned about the state of healthcare here in Kamloops and the burnout pipeline that healthcare workers have been pushed into.”
Lowan reiterated the Greens’ focus on community healthcare centres, which she said would improve access to primary care and reduce the need for long-distance travel. “I’m really inspired by the community healthcare centre model,” she said. “It’s working very well and bringing more of our doctors into the public healthcare system. I think it’s one of the key solutions we’re fighting for.”
She also commented on the difficulties of influencing policy without a seat in the legislature but said she remains confident the party can push meaningful issues forward. “I’m no stranger to making change from the outside,” she said. “The Greens occupy a really important role right now, especially with a razor-thin majority government. We’re pushing the issues that matter most to British Columbians, and we’re not getting caught up in the culture wars.”
Lowan’s second stop came that evening at Pizza Pi at 314 Victoria Street, where roughly 50 people attended an informal pizza-party event between 6 and 9:30 p.m. The restaurant buzzed with conversation as residents discussed local issues, party policy, and the broader political climate. Lowan said she could feel momentum building.
“We saw a near doubling of our party membership during the leadership race, and that number is continuing to grow,” she said. “We now have more active members than the official opposition, the Conservatives, and we’re closely following the NDP. People are really feeling hope in this political climate.”
Affordability and taxation were recurring themes throughout the evening. Lowan highlighted the Greens’ proposed tax reforms, arguing the province’s current system is not serving ordinary British Columbians. “BC currently has the highest rate of wealth inequality in all of Canada,” she said. “Our taxation plan looks at reversing Gordon Campbell’s early-2000s changes on the largest corporations and the top one percent. These are common-sense changes to ensure our tax system benefits working people and not the wealthy.”
She said the revenue from those reforms would support investments in green jobs, union employment, and social housing. “We want to massively scale up good union jobs and social housing so people across this province can actually afford to live,” she said.
As the evening wrapped up, Lowan said she left Kamloops encouraged by the level of engagement and the willingness of residents to voice their concerns. “Communities across BC are fighting for bright solutions,” she said. “And they’re doing it without depending on the foreign multinationals that bankroll this government. There’s a lot of hope out there, and Kamloops reflected that today.”
Lowan’s visit to Kamloops is part of a broader tour throughout the province.
