Columbia River-Revelstoke is sled country. Should Scott McInnis or Andrea Dunlop speak for its backcountry?

On the evening of Thursday, 15 October, two teachers took questions from voters at McKim Middle School in Kimberley. Scott McInnis worked as a teacher and principal for 15 years before he won Columbia River-Revelstoke for the Conservatives in 2024, and he has lived in Kimberley since 2010.¹ Andrea Dunlop, the BC NDP candidate, has taught French at David Thompson Secondary School in Invermere for more than three decades.² The Kimberley & District Chamber of Commerce ran the forum. Rana Nelson, the BC Green candidate, did not attend.³

When the evening turned to tourism and recreation, they gave different answers. According to the Kimberley Bulletin’s report, Dunlop said she would like to see more forest environmentally protected, and more outdoor recreation through new trail networks, alongside sustainably managed forestry. McInnis said he would support more community forests in the region.³

That is a fair account of a short exchange, and it leaves out the question this riding cannot avoid. Columbia River-Revelstoke runs from Kimberley and the Columbia Valley north through Golden to Revelstoke, west to Trout Lake and Galena Bay, and east along Highway 1 to Field.⁴ It is sled country. The Revelstoke Snowmobile Club, founded in 1968, calls itself one of the oldest and largest registered snowmobile clubs in British Columbia, and riding there means working around the seasonal closures that protect mountain caribou.⁵ Above Trout Lake, CBC News reported in September that the Incomappleux road had been deactivated, and the Ministry of Forests told CBC that its decision to deactivate the Rady Creek road was final.⁶ Underneath the forum’s question sits a larger one: who will speak for the roads into the backcountry?

Where Scott McInnis and Andrea Dunlop stand, in their own words.

Both are asking for the job a second time. In 2024 McInnis won the seat by 670 votes, with Dunlop second.⁷ Here is each of them on four of the riding’s questions. Where we have only a reporter’s summary of what a candidate said, we say so.

Sources: Hansard; the Kimberley Bulletin’s report of the 15 October forum; MyEastKootenayNow; the Revelstoke Review. Portraits: Conservative Party of BC; BC NDP.

Scott McInnis has taken the riding’s closed roads to the floor of the Legislature three times.

His first attempt was an oral question in May 2025, after the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship sent a land-use survey to a handful of residents in the Columbia Valley and the Kootenays.¹²

The minister answered: “The very last thing we’re going to do is turn the back country off from folks who love to use it.”¹² In the budget debate of February 2026 he came back to it, in the same speech in which he said a home in Revelstoke is hard to find under a million dollars: “You see closure after closure. No explanation. Roads deactivated. Access cut off. It has got to stop.”⁸

On 28 May 2026, the last day the House sat, he rose with a petition: “I rise to present a petition on behalf of 1,500 individuals who are vehemently opposed to the deactivation of the Incomappleux Forest Service Road.”¹³ Six weeks later he spent a day on that road. The Public Land Use Society’s account of the 8 July field day, which drew more than 70 people to Trout Lake and the Incomappleux, put two sentences side by side:¹⁴

The highlights are ours.

None of this reopened a road. The ministry still calls its Rady Creek decision final.⁶ Petitions and field days are the tools an opposition member has, and McInnis has used them where his voters live. Our earlier piece, Scott McInnis took the Incomappleux to the Legislature, sets out that record road by road.

Andrea Dunlop’s case rests on her roots in the valley, on housing, and on the forestry office her community lost in 2001.

“This riding is my home. I grew up in Windermere and was lucky enough to return here after getting my education,” she told MyEastKootenayNow this week.⁹ She has served ten years on the Windermere Community Association board, and she and her husband run an electrical company.¹¹ She officially retired in June 2024 and is still teaching at DTSS because the school is short of teachers.²

Her strongest local argument is about a government leaving the land. She told the same interview:

She has also made stability her theme. “We need more stability,” she told the Columbia Valley Pioneer, pointing to what she called “the chaos in the (B.C.) Conservatives”.² McInnis was part of that summer: he left the Conservative caucus on 2 September, saying he could no longer support the “direction, judgement and decisions” of the then-leader, Kerry-Lynne Findlay, and he rejoined on 21 September, after she resigned.¹⁰

On the backcountry her record is thin, and we say so plainly rather than fill it. Her campaign site lists nine priorities, and roads and recreation access are not among them; the closest is “Protecting our air, land, and water”.¹⁵ We found no public statement from her on forest service roads, the Incomappleux or Rady Creek. She has never held public office, so she has had no floor to raise it from.

The BC Snowmobile Federation asked every party four questions on backcountry access before 24 October. It summarised the Conservatives’ official answer as support for “responsible backcountry access and opposing unnecessary resource road deactivations and bridge removals”. Under the BC NDP it wrote: “No official party response had been received at the time of publication.”¹⁶ Neither McInnis nor Dunlop is among the candidates it lists as answering individually, and the federation adds that “The absence of a response should not be interpreted as a candidate’s position.”

338Canada projects the Conservatives ahead in Columbia River-Revelstoke, with the two margins overlapping.

Columbia River-Revelstoke, projected vote

338Canada, update of 16 October 2026. The lines show each margin of error.

Scott McInnis · CPBC

49%

Andrea Dunlop · NDP

41%

Rana Nelson · Green

9%

0%35%70%

338Canada rates the seat “CPBC leaning” and gives the Conservatives an 88% chance of holding it if the election were held today.¹⁷ A projection is a forecast built from polls, not a result, and the two ranges overlap. In 2024 the gap was 670 votes out of 18,296 valid ballots.⁷

In our view, Scott McInnis has the stronger record on the question this riding cannot avoid.

Dunlop is a serious candidate. She knows the valley, her housing argument is the one most voters will recognise, and her account of 2001 makes a point worth keeping: when the people who watch over the forests leave, rural communities pay for it.

In our view, that same point is the case for McInnis. When roads were deactivated and closures came without explanation, he put them in Hansard, tabled the petition, and went to stand on the road when the ministers who were invited stayed away. His party answered the snowmobilers’ questions, and hers did not. He has not won those fights, and the next term will test whether he can. For a riding whose way of life starts at the end of a forest service road, we think Columbia River-Revelstoke is better served by Scott McInnis.

At McKim Middle School the question was tourism and recreation, and each teacher had a few minutes to answer it. The longer answer is in the record, and it is there to read before 24 October.