Coquitlam-Burke Mountain chooses between Jodie Wickens and Ryan Peterson as Burke Mountain waits for its high school.

In January, the Coquitlam school district emailed parents with a request. It wanted a name for its next high school, one “that reflects our values, celebrates our community and inspires future generations.” The school will stand at 3390/3400 David Avenue on Burke Mountain, beside a future middle school, and the two together will hold 1,000 students in grades 6 to 12. Freshet News reported the opening date: September 2027.¹

That date is four years later than the one Burke Mountain’s families were first given. In March 2021 the school board wrote to the Education Minister that “a promised school opening date of September 2023 is now unattainable, and a September 2024 date is becoming increasingly challenging.”²

Burke Mountain has been growing fast, as Wickens herself noted at a groundbreaking this spring.³ It sits in Coquitlam-Burke Mountain, the largest riding in the Tri-Cities.⁴ Its MLA is Jodie Wickens of the BC NDP, who is also B.C.’s Minister of Children and Family Development. Her Conservative challenger is Ryan Peterson, who spent his career building a technology company next door in Port Coquitlam.⁵⁶

Ryan Peterson

Conservative Party of BC candidate, Coquitlam-Burke Mountain

Home

The Tri-Cities since 2014; three sons in local public schools

Business

Co-founded Finger Food Studios in Port Coquitlam, about 200 jobs

Exporter

B.C. Exporter of the Year, 2017

Leadership

Chair of the Business Council of British Columbia in 2026, until he stepped away to run

Outdoors

“Fishing trips up the coast and ski days in the mountains”

Portrait: Conservative Party of BC

01 Where Jodie Wickens and Ryan Peterson stand.

Wickens answered Freshet News’s candidate questionnaire this month; Peterson’s campaign sets out his case on the Conservative Party’s candidate page. We found no questionnaire answers or debate remarks from him, so his column draws on his campaign and his business record.⁷⁵⁸

Ryan PetersonConservative · Tri-Cities tech founder

Jodie WickensBC NDP · incumbent, minister

Cost of living and jobs

His campaign calls him “a job creator who has spent his career building businesses in British Columbia” and says: “He now backs early-stage technology companies, several of them in B.C., and the jobs they create.”⁵

“Families are feeling the squeeze as the cost of groceries and everyday essentials continues to rise. The BC NDP would take on corporate grocery giants by capping profits on essential staples like milk, eggs and chicken.”⁷

Schools and growth on Burke Mountain

His campaign does not set out a schools plan. It says he and his wife are raising three sons in Tri-Cities public schools.⁵

“I’ve advocated for new Burke Mountain schools and funding for a much-needed recreation centre because growing communities need infrastructure that keeps pace.”⁷

What they point to

Co-founded Finger Food Studios in Port Coquitlam; about 200 people kept on when Unity bought it in 2020; B.C. Exporter of the Year 2017; chair of the Business Council of British Columbia this year until he stepped away to run.⁸⁵

A winter shelter at the former Riverview site: “I’m proud to have successfully advocated for funding and opening of a winter shelter at…” As minister, $475 million in new funding over three years for children and youth with disabilities.⁷⁹

Both say Burke Mountain needs the schools and services its growth demands. The difference is in the record, and that is where the rest of this piece goes.

02 Ryan Peterson built a Port Coquitlam technology company to about 200 jobs, and he is running on that record.

Peterson co-founded Finger Food Studios in Port Coquitlam and, his campaign says, grew it into a technology company that worked for clients from LEGO and Microsoft to PACCAR. It was named B.C. Exporter of the Year in 2017.⁵ In 2020 Unity Technologies bought it and kept all of its roughly 200 people. “By joining the Unity family, we will have more access to Unity’s extensive engineering team to help shape the future of their platform by sharing the trends and needs that we’re seeing across our customer base,” Peterson said at the time, as its CEO.⁸

His campaign says he went on to lead a global division of more than 1,000 people at Unity, including its advanced technology and AI teams, that he now backs early-stage technology companies, several of them in B.C., and that this year B.C.’s business leaders elected him chair of the Business Council of British Columbia, a role he stepped away from to run. It says he was Tri-Cities Business Leader of the Year in 2019, received the King Charles III Coronation Medal in 2025, and serves on the board of the Rick Hansen Foundation.⁵ The Tri-Cities Dispatch summed up his campaign in a line: he “is running on his track record as a job creator.”⁴

He and his wife, Monica, have lived in the Tri-Cities since 2014 and are raising three sons in local public schools. Monica runs Apex Fencing in Port Moody.⁵ In our view, a riding whose families are waiting on a school and a recreation centre needs an MLA who has actually built something and hired the people who live here. That is the record Peterson is asking voters to judge.

03 Burke Mountain was promised a high school for September 2023. It is now scheduled to open in September 2027.

The school was an election promise. In its 2021 letter the board thanked the riding’s NDP MLA at the time, Fin Donnelly, for his commitment to the election promise “that he and the Premier made.”²

1. 2020An election promise from the Premier and the riding’s NDP MLA. The school board later wrote that the opening had been promised for September 2023.²
2. August 2021The province approved the concept plan.¹⁰
3. August 2024Construction started. “Days before it should have opened, construction has finally started on the new Burke Mountain Middle/Secondary School in Coquitlam.” The school was expected for September 2026.¹¹¹²
4. January 2026The school district said the secondary school would open in September 2027.¹

Wickens returned to the legislature in October 2024. Since then the opening date has slipped another year.¹¹¹ Asked this month about infrastructure for growth, she answered:⁷

The province did put $10 million toward the City of Coquitlam’s new recreation centre on Burke Mountain this spring. It is scheduled to open in 2029.³ In our view, a high school four years late is not a record of delivery. It is what the families of Burke Mountain have been living with.

04 Families with autistic children protested at Jodie Wickens’s office. She answered that her door is open.

On the afternoon of 24 April, parents, caregivers and providers stood with signs outside Wickens’s constituency office on Glen Drive in Coquitlam. Her ministry is changing how children with autism are funded.¹³ Sara Lindberg of BC Families for Fair Autism Funding told Freshet News that she and her husband expected the support for their five-year-old daughter to fall from $1,833 a month to potentially $139 a month on 31 March 2027. Amanda Claeys, director of operations for Monarch House, said she had met two NDP MLAs from neighbouring ridings but had been denied a meeting with Wickens.¹³

Wickens answered in an email to Freshet News. Her “door is open and I encourage anyone who wants to connect or has questions to reach out to the ministry.”¹³

In February she had announced the new system: $475 million in new funding over three years and $298 million of existing autism funding redirected into a needs-based disability benefit and an income-tested supplement. The government estimates about 48,000 children will get funding, up from about 30,000. The Canadian Press reported: “Up to 5,000 children may see a reduction in their direct funding benefit, she said.”⁹ It is the government’s second try. A 2021 plan to phase out direct autism funding was paused after parents protested,¹⁴ and Wickens has written that “after listening to parents and service providers it became clear we didn’t get it right, and plans for change were paused.”¹⁵

In our view, a minister who tells families her door is open should not be refusing to meet the people who serve their children.

05 During the campaign, Jodie Wickens restricted comments on 15 of 20 Instagram campaign posts, and we found no reply from her to the comments we read.

We read the campaign posts of every BC NDP candidate we could find, logged in, from 22 September to 17 October, and recorded the platform’s own notice wherever comments were restricted. On Wickens’s Instagram account, 15 of the 20 campaign posts we read were restricted. Thirteen carried Instagram’s notice, “Comments on this post have been limited.” Two had comments turned off.¹⁶

Instagram’s own wording, as it appeared under 13 of her 20 campaign posts. Every post, with its date and link, is in the data panel of our report on the BC NDP slate.¹⁶

Where people could comment, she did not answer. Under 21 of her Facebook and Instagram posts we read 34 comments from the public and found no reply from her, and on X she answered no one. We graded all 41 BC NDP MLAs running again on how they deal with voters online. Our rule is simple: if we could not find it in public, the MLA gets no credit. Her grade is an F.¹⁷

06 Coquitlam-Burke Mountain is projected to lean Conservative, and last time it was decided by 368 votes.

338Canada, which turns the published polls into a projection for every riding, rates Coquitlam-Burke Mountain as leaning Conservative. Its update of 16 October puts the Conservatives at 49% and the BC NDP at 45%, each with a margin of eight points either way.¹⁸

Coquitlam-Burke Mountain, projected vote

338Canada, update of 16 October 2026. Bars show the projection; the thin lines show its margin either way.¹⁸

Ryan Peterson, Conservative

49%

Jodie Wickens, BC NDP

45%

Kaden Mann, CentreBC

3%

Valerie Morrison, BC Green

3%

0%35%70%

Kaden Mann, the CentreBC candidate, and Valerie Morrison, the BC Green candidate, are each projected at 3%. The race is between Peterson and Wickens, and the projection’s margins overlap.¹⁸ In 2024 Wickens held the riding by 368 votes over the Conservative candidate, Stephen Frolek, out of 21,672 cast. If 185 of her voters had chosen the Conservative instead, the seat would have changed hands. In 2017 she lost it by 87 votes.¹⁹

In our view, on a seat this close, Ryan Peterson’s record of building in the Tri-Cities is the reason to choose him.

07 Burke Mountain is still choosing a name for a school it was promised for 2023.

Advance voting runs from 16 to 21 October, and Final Voting Day is 24 October.²⁰ Ask both candidates when the school will open, what happens to the families losing their autism funding, and who answers when you write to them.

The school district asked parents for a name that “inspires future generations.” The students who were promised that school for September 2023 have spent four years waiting for it.¹² Wickens says she has delivered.⁷ Peterson spent his career in the Tri-Cities building a company that grew to about 200 jobs.⁵⁸

Burke Mountain was promised a school for 2023. In our view, Ryan Peterson’s record of building things in the Tri-Cities is the stronger promise for Burke Mountain.