Bal Grewal

Kelowna council forum #1 at Revelry

Castanet and Revelry, with ForChange Kelowna · Sept. 16, 2026 · Full video of this forum on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

1. Opening statement

   I'm running because I am sick and tired of the homeless, the crime and the open drug use.

2. Opening statement

   What I propose to stand for is tackling our crime and homeless issue. I'm a strong proponent of compassionate and voluntary care. [...] We can utilize the Okanagan central prison that we have in Osoyoos that's under capacity. We can bring it and make it compassionate.

3. Opening statement

   We need to look at our city and how they're spending money. We need fiscal conservatism. [...] Where can we save money and reallocate funds?

4. What does leadership mean for you on council?

   That means making decisive decisions when they're required. Making tough decisions, even if they're not popular, because you are speaking and representing the people.

5. A council decision you disagreed with, and what you would have done differently

   I'm not a fan that we essentially have a welfare office in Rutland. The city has a say in that and I think that's contributed to a lot of the crime and disorder in Rutland and I think we need to get that moved out of there into more of an industrial zone

6. A council decision you disagreed with, and what you would have done differently

   But again, we have a lot of vanity projects that are happening and we need to re-evaluate those because we have a lot of infrastructure issues. We can do street widenings. There's corridors we got to look at for traffic issues.

7. An area of city spending that deserves greater scrutiny

   I think the biggest area is our consultation fees that the city has. [...] Consultation fees, we can at least look at those because those are on every single project and I think if we bring that down that'll bring just overall spending down as a whole.

8. What would you do differently about crime and safety that hasn't been done before?

   On this topic, if we look at what the city can do, by-law, we can expand by-law powers. We can get by-law to provide stricter enforcement for our schools, our playgrounds, our parks, our business corridors. [...] We need decisive people to come on council and we need to push for compassionate voluntary care.

9. What would you do differently about crime and safety that hasn't been done before?

   The other thing that we can try to do is use public-private partnerships. [...] So we can look at having private-public partnerships there, where they hold on to the IDs, they use those places as their actual fixed address so people can actually utilize government resources.

10. Question from Mohini Singh about the mandatory care facility and the Rutland office

    Was I in advocating this prior to that announcement? Yes, I was. I work legal aid. I understand how the justice system works. I've worked with prosecutors. We have a revolving door right now and mental health is used as an extenuating circumstance in a lot of situations