Two candidates, one backcountry: Warren Mirko and Steve Morissette on keeping Kootenay-Monashee’s roads open

Last July, the Public Land Use Society posted a sixty-five-second reel. In it, the society’s executive director, Warren Mirko, was on Vista Radio talking about a bridge and a road. The Province planned to pull the bridges out of the Incomappleux Forest Service Road, in the Selkirk Mountains, and deactivate it. Mirko explained what that does to a valley:¹

He had been at it for months. In June his society and the Quad Riders Association of British Columbia called on the Province to issue a stop-work order. The coalition fighting the deactivation said the Minister of Forests had given it no substantive answer.² That same summer the BC Snowmobile Federation put road deactivation in front of five members of the Legislature. One of them was Steve Morissette, the Parliamentary Secretary for Rural Development and the member for Kootenay-Monashee.³ We have found no public statement from Morissette on that road, or on any of the roads closed in his own riding.⁴

Now the two men are on the same ballot. Mirko is the Conservative candidate in Kootenay-Monashee, and Morissette is running again for the BC NDP.⁵ One of them has spent more than a year speaking up for the roads into the backcountry. The other has the title, and we found no word from him on them.

Warren Mirko

Conservative Party of BC candidate, Kootenay-Monashee

Home

Warfield, since moving to the West Kootenay with his wife and two children in 2021

Council

Acclaimed a councillor in the Village of Warfield, 2026

On the land

Founder and executive director, Public Land Use Society

Career

More than 15 years in public relations, crisis response and risk management for public regulators, his party says

His words

“Four-wheel drive access is what makes Crown land usable.”

Portrait: Conservative Party of BC

01 Where Warren Mirko and Steve Morissette stand on the riding’s land, jobs and recreation.

Morissette has a record to run on. As Parliamentary Secretary for Rural Development he has announced the Province’s rural development money in the Kootenays, including $937,153 for trailhead facilities at the Black Jack Cross Country Ski Club in Rossland, and he has spoken up for the riding’s mills and smelter.⁴ Mirko has spent more than a year working to keep public land open. Here is what each has said, in their own words.

Both men say the backcountry matters to this riding. The sections below set out which of them has acted on it.

02 Warren Mirko moved his family to the West Kootenay and built a society to keep public land open.

Mirko moved to the West Kootenay with his wife and two children in 2021. He joined committees in Warfield and Trail, and this fall he was acclaimed to Warfield’s village council.⁶ His party says he has spent more than 15 years in public relations, crisis response and risk management for public regulators, and that he holds a political science degree from the University of British Columbia.⁹ He told My Kootenay Now why he stays:⁸

In March 2025 the Public Land Use Society, the non-profit he founded to keep Crown land open to the public, was registered.¹⁰ In March this year it partnered with the Four Wheel Drive Association of British Columbia, whose members maintain 40 recreation sites. Mirko put the case in one line:⁷

He says the same thing as a candidate. The government has been restricting access to backcountry roads, he told My Kootenay Now, which makes it harder to prospect, cut firewood or simply get out on the land:⁸

03 A year before he ran, Warren Mirko named Steve Morissette’s silence on the rail trail in his own riding.

The Columbia & Western Rail Trail runs from Castlegar toward Christina Lake, and 41 kilometres of it lie in Kootenay-Monashee. In July 2020 the Province cancelled its recreation designation.⁴ Mirko wrote about what came next. In September 2025 he set it out in the Northern Beat: a promise in 2020 that the trail would stay open, then a 2025 statement from provincial staff that the government would no longer fund its upkeep.¹¹

Two months later, in the Castlegar News, he named the people he said should be answering for it. More than 15 organizations, from local governments to tourism and trail groups, had launched a campaign to restore stewardship of the trail. He wrote:¹²

That was ten months before he became a candidate. The record also shows that Morissette did raise the cost of the trail’s tunnels and trestles at a finance committee hearing in June 2025, and in August 2026 he toured the trail with a minister.⁴ In our view, that is what a member does when someone else has already made the noise. Mirko made it.

04 Steve Morissette’s title is rural development. On the roads his riding lost, we found no word from him.

The Premier appointed Morissette Parliamentary Secretary for Rural Development on 18 November 2024. We have set out his record in detail in our earlier piece on him.⁴ Since 2020, thirty-three forest service roads in Kootenay-Monashee have been closed or had sections retired. Two of them, both on the Sugar Lake road north of Cherryville, are still closed. Across all 72 of his speaking turns in the House, we found no mention of any of those roads, and none used any general term for road access.⁴

The question was put to him directly. On 6 July 2026 the BC Snowmobile Federation recorded a lobbying communication with him and four other members. The registry gives its subject in the federation’s words:³

A registry entry cannot show what he said back, and no meeting was arranged. This month the federation asked every party four questions on recreation access and road deactivation. It reports that the BC NDP sent no official answer. The Conservatives answered in writing, backing “responsible backcountry access and opposing unnecessary resource road deactivations and bridge removals.”³¹³

05 In the campaign, Steve Morissette limited who could comment on 35 of his 41 Facebook posts.

We read every campaign post on the candidates’ accounts that we could reach. On 35 of the 41 Morissette posted on Facebook, the platform showed a notice that replies were restricted. On some, the notice was Facebook’s own sentence:¹⁴

Before the campaign it was different: of the 39 older posts we read, one was restricted. The restrictions came with the campaign.¹⁴ Across the comments the platform did show us, we found two replies from his own account.¹⁵ On Mirko’s account we found no restriction on any of the 14 posts we read.¹⁴ In our view, a Parliamentary Secretary for Rural Development who has said nothing on the roads in public, and who then closes the comments in the campaign, is not listening to the people who use them.

06 Warren Mirko says Victoria’s decisions fall hardest on rural B.C., and the public deserves a say.

His campaign starts from the same place as his society. He told the Trail Times that for families and businesses that depend on access to land and resources, it matters enormously who governs and how decisions are made:⁶

He has criticised the provincial deficit, which My Kootenay Now put at $13.8 billion, and he fears that servicing that debt will mean fewer services in the Kootenays. He called the snap election “self-serving.” And he has said that if he wins the seat, he will not try to sit on Warfield council and in the Legislature at the same time.⁸⁶

On the roads, he has already said what is at stake, and it is not only recreation. In June he and the quad riders asked the Province to answer the coalition’s questions before it removed access for good:²

07 Kootenay-Monashee leans NDP, but the gap is inside the margin and Warren Mirko is within reach.

338Canada, which turns the published polls into a projection for every riding, puts the BC NDP at 45% in Kootenay-Monashee and the Conservatives at 40%, each with a margin of eight points either way. It rates the seat “NDP leaning.”¹⁶

Kootenay-Monashee, projected vote

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

Steve Morissette, BC NDP

45%

Warren Mirko, Conservative

40%

Connie Larochelle, BC Green

11%

SHStephen Hill, OneBC

3%

0%30%60%

Connie Larochelle, the BC Green candidate, is projected at 11%, and Stephen Hill, the OneBC candidate, at 3%. Only Mirko is within the projection’s margin of the lead.¹⁶

In 2024 Morissette won with 52% of the vote: 10,202 votes to 7,616 for the Conservative, Glen Byle, a margin of 2,586. If 1,294 of his voters had chosen the Conservative instead, the seat would have changed hands.¹⁷ 338Canada now projects him seven points below his 2024 share.¹⁶¹⁷

The region is moving the same way. The Angus Reid Institute’s early-October survey had the Conservatives at 57% in the Interior to the BC NDP’s 36%, and Ipsos had them at 53% to 32% across the Southern Interior and North.¹⁸¹⁹

In our view, Warren Mirko is the candidate this riding’s backcountry needs, and the projection puts him within reach.

08 Warren Mirko said on the radio what a closed road costs. We found no record of Steve Morissette saying it.

Elections BC’s advance voting runs from 16 to 21 October, and Final Voting Day is 24 October.²⁰ In July, a man with no seat went on the radio to say that a road taken out of a valley takes search and rescue and ground firefighting out with it.¹ The member whose title is rural development was lobbied on road deactivation that same month, and we found no public statement from him on it.³⁴

He spoke up for the roads before he had a seat. In our view, Kootenay-Monashee should give him one.