BC ELECTION – First official candidate for NDP nomination in Centre riding
Kamal Grewal.
The new Kamloops Centre riding has its first official candidate for the NDP nomination.
Kamal Grewal, an insurance account manager and a former TRU international student services manager, announced today (June 6, 2024) she will seek to represent the party in the October provincial election.
She said in a news release she’s running as “a new voice” who can bring people together.
“This election race is about people versus the status quo,” she said. “We can’t afford the old ways, cuts to vital services, divisive politics, and protecting powerful interests that take advantage of regular British Columbians by our political opponents.”
Grewall said she would be a “forward-looking voice” at the table.
“In a time when our families struggle with the cost of living, a housing crisis, healthcare and childcare, toxic drugs and a changing climate, we need leaders that should fight for us — not against us.
“Yet, the voices in this race in Kamloops look backwards, not forward — to failed ideas. It’s time to ask, who are they really serving?”
She said Kamloops should be a place that “works for us all, not just those at the top.”
Grewal graduated from TRU with a degree in economics and finance and also studied overseas. She worked as a financial services advisor at a local bank, then international student advisor at TRU World for several years before becoming manager of international student services at the university.
In 2023 she returned to the private sector as an account manager for the B.C. region of Guard Me International Insurance.
While Grewal is the first official candidate for the NDP nomination in Kamloops Centre, City Coun. Bill Sarai has also said he intends to seek the nomination.
Peter Milobar of BC United and Dennis Giesbrecht of the Conservative Party of BC will contest the riding for their parties. Randy Sunderman is running for the Greens.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
To Bill: ” Hurst and other decriminalization advocates said the law didn’t succeed because of problems with implementation: a failure to fund new treatment services for 18 months after the law passed, a failure to train police on their new role in addressing addiction, and a failure to direct drug users to treatment.”
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To spoil the ballot may be the only rational choice.
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I hope that Kamal raises a few issues during her internal party campaign if Councillor Sarai decides to run for the nomination.
Now is the time for Mr. Sarai to offer some explanation for his active participation in what has become known as “the gang of 8”.
If Kamal is to become angry and frustrated with other elected officials, is she liable to yell and slam her fist on the desk of another person elected to office?
As Bill Thot has already mentioned, will Kamal hold certain groups hostage, denying them funding if they have criticized her or her Party?
Political life certainly has some interesting dynamics.
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Surely a better candidate than Bill “anti-democracy” Sarai, who wanted council to investigate NGOs to ensure that their funding came with the implied pressure and expectation that they censure any statements that were critical of council (the funders).
I mean, the NDP says the word right there in their name. It’s odd to have a candidate so opposed to those notions.
“Yet, the voices in this race in Kamloops look backwards, not forward — to failed ideas”.
She’s surely referring to David Eby’s vision on unrestricted decrim, that failed in every single North American state and province it was implemented in, prior to BC trying the very same thing?
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I am unable to see where Ms. Grewal is “surely referring to David Eby’s vision on unrestricted decrim, that failed in every single North American state and province it was implemented in, prior to BC trying the very same thing?”
Oregon is the only state that has managed to enact a law decriminalizing the personal possession of all controlled substances.
In Canada “the province of B.C. was granted a three-year exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to decriminalize people who use drugs. The policy provides preferences for approaches to addressing substance use, including a focus on health and social services versus police enforcement.
This is in place, what is changed is where one can use the drugs. Oregon failed because health and social services funding dried up and the program failed.
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You have it the other way around. Decrim failed in Oregon not because the funding dried up, but because the support for decrim dried up, and hence they voted to stop funding their psychotic experiment. Funding is always there if the will is there. The will is gone.
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