Federal politician casts unflattering light on Kelowna’s homeless camp

Sunshine, lakes, golf and wine.

Ask any Western Canadian what the Okanagan is best known for, and most answers will be those four topics.

However, federal politician Pierre Poilievre sent out a tweet on Tuesday morning that compared part of the region’s largest city, and its homeless problem, to a third-world country.

“These images are not from a faraway third-world country,” said Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. “This is Kelowna.

“After eight years of Trudeau and the NDP.”

The tweet included a 57-second video, taken along the Okanagan Rail Trail in Kelowna’s north end, featuring scores of homeless people living in tents.

Poilievre didn’t record the video; rather, it came from a TikTok account that has just 11 videos, all of homeless people presumably in Kelowna.

Of the account’s first 10 videos, they had views ranging from 972 to 5,700. The last video, though, had 167,000 views on Tuesday afternoon.

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Global News has reached out to the City of Kelowna, the Kelowna Chamber of Commerce and local politicians for comment.