‘It’s time that Kamloops is remembered’: MP Frank Caputo disappointed by latest federal budget

“Right now we are at a point where 10 cents out of every tax dollar collected goes just to serving the debt,” said Caputo. “Anybody whose ever known somebody who got into credit card debt, they know that eventually this gets unsustainable and I worry we are getting to that point. It’s not so much where the government is investing, but how they are utilizing that money, there is a lack of efficiency.”

“Yesterday, the Carney government presented Budget 2026 that proposes massive new debt and fails to cut wasteful spending; instead of acting to reduce present and future costs for Canadians, Carney is increasing the amount that Canadians will be paying off for decades to come,” reads a press release from Kamloops-Shuswap-Central Rockies MP Mel Arnold.

Caputo had a lengthy wish list for the riding, but the word ‘Kamloops’ appeared zero times in the more than 500 page document.

“Kamloops-Thompson-Nicola citizens have just as much entitlement as people in greater Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal. And that is where I think I’m most disappointed, is we don’t see that money funnel out to places like Kamloops-Thompson-Nicola, it’s always going elsewhere it’s time that Kamloops is remembered in that funding,” said Caputo.

Taxation on the donation of property to a community land trust remains the law of the land in Canada, despite ongoing advocacy from the Kamloops Chamber of Commerce and the Kamloops Community Land Trust.

“If we look around the rest of the world at the success of land trust’s everywhere else, we realize that this is really just a Canadian problem,” said Colin O’Leary, with the Kamloops Land Trust Foundation. “That is why this policy will actually unlock and supercharge all of our land trusts across the country.”

With the policy absent from Thursday’s budget, the land trust could be waiting until the spring for their next chance to get the policy through.

“Soon enough, or hopefully, the government will be able to see their approach that they’ve been taking of just supply supply supply doesn’t make a meaningful difference for the average Canadian,” added O’Leary. “And we need something new and that is where this policy comes at the problem from a completely different angle.”

Elsewhere in the region, Sun Peaks remains included in the foreign owners ban, that despite other resorts such as whistler and big white being exempt from the program now extended to 2029.

“We agree that’s fully needed in a lot of cases, but not in the tourism industry and not here,” said Sun Peaks Mayor Jason White. “Especially when other resorts where allowed to sell to foreigners and have us not, it’s just not fair.”

by Michael Reeve

‘It’s time that Kamloops is remembered’: MP Frank Caputo disappointed by latest federal budget

Our Community