Gordon Skulnec says too many of us are being pushed off the land. If you want to beat Brittny Anderson, he’s the vote.

In December 2019, three constables from the Kimberley RCMP detachment stood shoulder to shoulder in their Red Serge. Between them, Cst. Dylan Cross, Cst. Scott Payne and Cst. Gordon Skulnec had taken more than 100 impaired drivers off the roads in and around Kimberley the year before, and each was welcomed onto Alexa’s Team, the B.C. honour for police officers who get drunk and drugged drivers off the highway.¹ It was not Skulnec’s first time. In 2014 he had removed 24 impaired drivers on his own.²

Seven years later he is asking the people of Kootenay Central to send him to Victoria. Gordon Skulnec is the Conservative Party of BC candidate in the riding, running against Brittny Anderson, the BC NDP incumbent.³ He spent a career keeping the roads safe for the people who use them. He is now running on a different promise about the same country: that the people who live here should be able to keep using it.

Gordon Skulnec

Conservative Party of BC candidate, Kootenay Central

Raised

Trail, in the West Kootenays

Health care

Medical radiographer, Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital

Policing

17 years in the RCMP, Cranbrook and Kimberley; retired May 2023

Honour

Alexa’s Team, for taking impaired drivers off the road

Business

A business in Salmo for about a decade; 20 years in rental housing

On the land

“Too many British Columbians are being pushed off the landscape.”

Portrait: Conservative Party of BC

01 Gordon Skulnec grew up in Trail, wore the Red Serge for 17 years, and decided to stay and fight for B.C.

Skulnec was born and raised in Trail. After Selkirk College in Castlegar he trained as a medical radiographer at BCIT, and came home to work at Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital.⁴ He joined the RCMP in 2006, served as a general duty officer in Cranbrook and then Kimberley, and retired from the Kimberley detachment in May 2023.⁵ For about 20 years he has also worked in rental housing and property management, and for about a decade he has run a business in Salmo.⁶

His campaign describes a life of showing up. He was a youth group leader in Trail, coached minor baseball for four years, and still volunteers with youth baseball, driving players to their games and tournaments. He and his wife have been married for 19 years, and he helps lead a men’s group at his church.⁶ He says his interest in politics began at the 2023 federal Conservative convention in Quebec City, where he took part in the policy debates. Then came the cost of living, and a question he says some families are now asking:⁴

One fact a voter should know is that Skulnec does not live in the riding. His Facebook profile lists Cranbrook, and he told My Creston Now that he lives outside Kootenay Central.⁷⁴ He points to his roots in Trail and to his businesses in Salmo and Creston, and he has said what he would do about it:

He is not the only candidate in that position. The same paper reports that Brittny Anderson also lives just outside the riding, with deep roots in the Nelson area, and that she has questioned how a candidate from as far away as Cranbrook could represent it.⁸

In our view, Skulnec’s is a fair answer, and a candid one. A Trail kid who spent his working life across the Kootenays, and who has run a business in Salmo for a decade, is not a stranger to this riding.

02 He told the BC Wildlife Federation that too many British Columbians are being pushed off the landscape.

This fall the BC Wildlife Federation, which speaks for about 37,000 hunters and anglers through 100 fish and game clubs, asked every candidate three questions. Would they legislate public access to Crown land for hunting, fishing, camping and recreation? Would they guarantee funding for fish, wildlife and habitat? And would they oppose the federal firearms buyback? Among its examples of British Columbians being removed from the landscape, the federation named “Forest Service Roads such as Rady Creek.”⁹

Skulnec’s response to the BCWF candidate survey, provided to Backcountry Coalition, is reproduced below in full. The highlights are ours.¹⁰

Gordon Skulnec’s answersTo the BC Wildlife Federation’s 2026 candidate survey

BC Wildlife Federation:

1. Public access to Crown land

Private property rights and repealing DRIPA is my top priority in BC. I support legislating sustainable public access to Crown land for hunting, fishing, camping and recreation. Access decisions should be based on science and local input, not short-term politics. Too many British Columbians are being pushed off the landscape. That costs families their food and recreation, and it costs conservation the licence dollars that fund it.

2. Dedicated fish, wildlife and habitat funding

I agree that roughly 1% of the provincial budget is not enough to manage our renewable resources. I support dedicated, legislated funding for fish, wildlife and habitat, clear population objectives, and an independent management commission insulated from political pressure. Expanding controlled burns and investing in watershed security also make sense, given what wildfire and flooding have cost our communities. I’ll push for these in Victoria and work to secure the strongest funding commitment possible.

3. The federal firearms buyback

I oppose the federal confiscation and buyback program. It targets licensed, background-checked owners rather than the criminals using illegal and smuggled firearms. Provincial and municipal police resources should stay focused on real public safety priorities, not be diverted to administer this program. I’d like BC to stand with Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba on this.

Thank you again for your advocacy. I’d welcome the chance to meet with your members and keep this conversation going.

Re-set word for word from the document as provided to Backcountry Coalition, 17 October 2026.

The answers as provided, re-set in full. The original document is shown below.¹⁰

The document as provided to Backcountry Coalition, cropped to the page.¹⁰

Read it plainly. On the first question, he backs what hunters, anglers and campers have been asking for: a law that keeps Crown land open to them, with access decisions made on science and local input. On the second, he agrees that about 1% of the provincial budget is not enough, and he backs dedicated, legislated funding for fish, wildlife and habitat. He did not put a dollar figure on it. The federation asked for $200 million a year; he wrote that he would “work to secure the strongest funding commitment possible.”¹⁰⁹

He also opened with the priority he has put first all campaign: “Private property rights and repealing DRIPA is my top priority in BC.” DRIPA is the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. He told My Creston Now the same thing: that he supports repealing it, and that protecting private property rights would be a central focus if he is elected.¹⁰⁴

In our view, the line that matters most for this riding is the plainest one. “Too many British Columbians are being pushed off the landscape.” On the fourteen forest roads closed, posted or retired in her riding since 2020, we found no public statement from Brittny Anderson at all.¹⁰¹¹

03 He says Kootenay Central needs forestry jobs, housing that gets built and an MLA who picks up the phone.

The rest of his platform is written on his campaign site, under four headings: safer communities, housing that gets built, health care that shows up and jobs close to home. On jobs he starts with the industry that built the Kootenays. His site cites the BC Council of Forest Industries for the figure that more than 15,000 forestry jobs have been lost across B.C. since 2022.⁶

On public safety he speaks from 17 years on the front line. His site says he will work for “stronger support for law enforcement, greater accountability for prolific offenders, and better access to mental-health, addictions treatment and recovery services so police aren’t left to carry those pressures alone.”⁶ On addiction he has put it in a sentence:

And he has made a promise about the job itself, which is a promise about answering the people who call:

04 Brittny Anderson has courted the old-growth vote while forest roads in her own riding were closed.

Brittny Anderson has represented this riding since 2020 and sits in Premier David Eby’s cabinet as Minister of State for Local Governments and Rural Communities. We have set out her record in detail in our fact-check of her old-growth reel, and in our account of the forest roads closed in her riding.¹²¹¹ Here is that record, measure by measure, beside what Skulnec says he would do.

In our view, the difference is one of direction. Anderson’s pitch to this riding is aimed at the environmental movement: more permanent protection, a new biodiversity law, a seat at the cabinet table for the forests. Meanwhile the roads that hunters, anglers, sledders and families use to reach the land have been closing around her, and she has not said a word about them in the House.¹²¹¹

Kootenay Central does not live on slogans. It lives on the bush: on forestry and the mills, on the lakes and the trails, on hunting and fishing and tourism. The BC Wildlife Federation puts outdoor recreation alone at $11.1 billion of B.C.’s economy in 2024.⁹ In our view, this region has had six years of an MLA whose agenda leans toward the most dramatic demands of the environmental movement, and it is time to bring it back into balance. Skulnec’s answers point that way: keep people on the land, fund the wildlife properly, decide on science and local input, and stand up for the forest economy.

05 Kootenay Central is a toss-up, and Gordon Skulnec is the only challenger within reach.

338Canada, which turns the published polls into a projection for every riding, rates Kootenay Central a toss-up. Its update of 16 October puts the BC NDP at 38% and the Conservatives at 36%, each with a margin of seven points either way.¹³

Nicole Charlwood, the BC Green candidate, is projected at 23%, and Hunter Corrigal, the OneBC candidate, at 4%. Of the three challengers, only Skulnec is within the projection’s margin of the lead.¹³

The last result shows how small the gap is. In 2024, Anderson held the riding by 1,749 votes over the Conservative candidate, Kelly Vandenberghe. If about 875 of her voters had chosen the Conservative instead, the seat would have changed hands.¹⁴

And the region is leaning his way. The Angus Reid Institute’s early-October survey had the Conservatives at 57% in the Interior to the BC NDP’s 36%.¹⁵ Ipsos had them at 53% to 32% across the Southern Interior and North, and Research Co. had them ahead 44% to 40% in Southern B.C.¹⁶¹⁷

In our view, if you want to beat Brittny Anderson, Gordon Skulnec is the vote.

06 Gordon Skulnec joins the candidates who have stood up for backcountry access.

Over this campaign we have profiled the candidates whose records show they will fight for access to public land. Each of them has done it differently, in the House, on the road or in the field. Skulnec now joins them, with his answers to the BC Wildlife Federation in writing.¹⁸

Each face links to our profile of that candidate. Every candidate on the ballot is rated in every candidate, rated on public access, and what a government would have to do is set out in the strategy and the ballot. Portraits: Conservative Party of BC.¹⁸

07 He kept Kootenay roads safe for 17 years. Now he wants to keep the people of this riding on the land.

The College of the Rockies has scheduled a provincial all-candidates forum in Creston for Tuesday 20 October, and the BC Wildlife Federation has scheduled a virtual town hall for 19 October.¹⁹⁹ Go and hear the candidates, and ask them about the roads, the lakes and the trails. Elections BC’s advance voting runs from 16 to 21 October, and Final Voting Day is 24 October.²⁰

In 2019 he stood in his Red Serge for taking impaired drivers off the roads around Kimberley, so that the people on those roads got home.¹ Seven years on, he says the people of this province are being pushed off the land they live on, and he has put in writing that he would make access to it the law.¹⁰

He spent his career keeping the roads safe. In our view, if you want to beat Brittny Anderson, Gordon Skulnec is the vote.