Mike Farnworth and Keenan Adams meet again in Port Coquitlam. Who will fix its commute?

On 17 October 2025, families gathered at 1278 Confederation Drive in Port Coquitlam, at what was left of Hazel Trembath Elementary. The school had burned on 14 October 2023. Two years on, in CBC’s words, the site was still “an empty gravel field.” Its children had spent those two years riding a bus to class in Coquitlam. Enrolment had fallen from more than 215 to 163.¹

Brad West, the mayor of Port Coquitlam and a former Hazel Trembath pupil, had written five letters to the province. “The project remains mired in needless process and bureaucracy,” he wrote that month. That same day, as the families gathered, the province announced the money: nearly $39 million, for a school scheduled to open in December 2027.¹²

Keenan Adams knows that field. Running for the legislature in 2024, he wrote that he had stood with the community at its rallies, and he lost to Mike Farnworth by 3,876 votes.³⁴ This year he is running again, and when Freshet News asked him what matters most in Port Coquitlam, he did not talk about the country. “High cost-of-living and traffic are major challenges in Port Coquitlam.”⁵

Keenan Adams

Conservative Party of BC candidate, Port Coquitlam

Work

Locomotive engineer; trains new railway workers

Union

Local President, Teamsters Canada Rail Conference Local 320

Most important issue

“High cost-of-living and traffic are major challenges in Port Coquitlam.”

Portrait: Conservative Party of BC

Mike Farnworth

BC NDP MLA for Port Coquitlam, 1991–2001 and 2005 to now

Office

Minister of Transportation and Transit; Government House Leader

Before

Solicitor General and Minister of Public Safety, 2017–2024; Deputy Premier

Most important issue

“a strong economy for B.C. and for Canada”

Portrait: BC NDP

Where Keenan Adams and Mike Farnworth stand, in their own words and records.

Before the argument, the comparison. The same two men are on the ballot again, and Freshet News asked them the same questions.⁶

01 Keenan Adams drives trains out of Port Coquitlam, leads his union local, and named the riding’s problems when he was asked.

Adams has lived in Port Coquitlam since 2010. That year he graduated from the railway conductor program at BCIT, and he worked his way up from conductor to locomotive engineer. He now helps train new railway workers, and he is Local President of Teamsters Canada Rail Conference Local 320. His campaign sums up his politics in one line: “working people deserve a strong voice, both on the job and in government.” He volunteers with the PoCo Lions Club, the city’s Adopt-A-Spot program and river cleanups.⁸¹⁰

Freshet News, the local non-profit newsroom, put the same four questions to every candidate in the riding and published the answers on 16 October. Read the two main answers side by side.⁵⁶

Adams went on to name the work: “I will advocate for key infrastructure like the Fremont Connector, ensure Hazel Trembath Elementary is completed on schedule and work to improve services and hours at our local urgent care facility.”⁵

In our view, that is the difference in this race in two paragraphs. One candidate answered as a cabinet minister talking about the country. The other answered as a neighbour talking about the drive to work, the school and the clinic hours. Port Coquitlam’s MLA should be able to name Port Coquitlam’s problems when he is asked.

Adams first ran in 2024 as the BC United candidate and moved to the Conservatives when BC United suspended its campaign that August. “We cannot afford another four years of reckless spending with no results,” he wrote then. He has never held public office, and his 2026 campaign has left little public trace beyond his party page and his answers to Freshet News; we found no public posts of his own this campaign.¹¹¹²

02 Hazel Trembath burned in October 2023, and its replacement is scheduled to open in December 2027.

A year after the fire, during the 2024 campaign, the Tri-City News asked Farnworth what he would do to have the school rebuilt before the 2025–26 school year. He wrote that “David Eby and the BC NDP are absolutely committed to rebuilding Hazel Trembath in the same location as quickly as possible.”¹³

Adams, asked the same question, did not promise a date. He wrote: “I have been the only provincial candidate to actively advocate for its reconstruction and stand with the community at rallies.”³ This year he has promised to make sure the school “is completed on schedule.”⁵

The 2025–26 school year came and went with a gravel field. The budget confirmed the rebuild in March 2025, but parents said they heard nothing more until the October rally. When the money came, Farnworth said: “we know the rebuild can’t come quickly enough for families.”²

In fairness, the chair of the school board thanked Farnworth, along with the city and the district, for their “tireless work and advocacy” when the money was announced, and construction began on 24 August 2026.²⁷ The new school is scheduled to open more than four years after the fire.

03 Port Coquitlam is the transportation minister’s own riding, and it still has no SkyTrain and an old bridge the province would not pay to replace.

Mike Farnworth has run the Ministry of Transportation and Transit since November 2024. In 2024 the Tri-City News asked him how his government would get Port Coquitlam SkyTrain. He wrote: “I am committed to working closely with TransLink and the City of Port Coquitlam to expand SkyTrain access throughout Metro Vancouver, including right here in Port Coquitlam.”¹³ Port Coquitlam still has no SkyTrain station.

The Coquitlam River Bridge carries the Lougheed Highway into the city. It does not meet modern earthquake standards, and a report recommended replacing its eastbound span by 2020 and its westbound span by 2024. The province handed the bridge to the city in the late 1990s, and in 2024 the ministry told the Tri-Cities Dispatch it “is not in a position to provide direct funding for its replacement.” Mayor West called that “irresponsible”: “They need to step up with funding to have that bridge replaced.”¹⁴

Farnworth’s answer that year was that “it is of great importance that this bridge is replaced as quickly and efficiently as possible.”¹³ We could find no provincial money for it since. In fairness, the province did open an urgent and primary care centre in Port Coquitlam in March 2026.⁹

In our view, a riding whose MLA holds the transportation portfolio should have something to show for it on its own commute. Adams puts traffic first, and names the Fremont Connector, the road link Port Coquitlam and Coquitlam have been asking for, as his first piece of infrastructure.⁵

04 Keenan Adams says he will fight for tax relief. Mike Farnworth voted for the budget that raised the lowest income-tax rate.

Asked about the school tax, Farnworth told Freshet News: “B.C. is one of the lowest-tax provinces in Canada. This year, we reduced taxes for 40 per cent of taxpayers by increasing the Tax Reduction Credit.”⁶

The credit is real: Bill 2, the 2026 budget bill, raised the BC tax reduction credit from $436 to $690. The same bill raised the income-tax rate on the first slice of every income, the slice everyone pays on.¹⁵

Global News reported that government staff expect 60 per cent of tax filers to pay more, by $76 on average. On 1 April the House split 46 to 46 on the bill, the Speaker’s casting vote passed it, and Mike Farnworth was one of the 46 who voted for it.¹⁶¹⁷

05 Online, Mike Farnworth answered no one.

Farnworth kept the replies open on the campaign posts we read, and he deserves that much.¹⁸ But open is not the same as listening. In our read of the 41 BC NDP MLAs running again, he answered no one on X, under campaign-period posts that drew 1,983 replies. On Facebook and Instagram we found no reply from him either. Of the 29 campaign items on his accounts, he wrote six himself; the rest were reposts and other accounts’ posts. He graded F.¹⁹

He is the Government House Leader as well as a minister, and his time is not his own. In our view, that is the point. After more than 30 years, the job Port Coquitlam elected him to do has become the smallest of the jobs he holds.

06 Port Coquitlam is within reach, and Keenan Adams is the only challenger close enough to take it.

338Canada, which turns the published polls into a projection for every riding, rates Port Coquitlam “NDP leaning.” Its update of 16 October puts the BC NDP at 48% and the Conservatives at 40%, each with a margin of seven points either way.²⁰

Port Coquitlam, projected vote

338Canada, update of 16 October 2026. Bars show the projection; the thin lines show its margin either way.²⁰

Keenan Adams, Conservative

40%

Mike Farnworth, BC NDP

48%

Stephanie Hendy, BC Green

9%

Lee-Ann Bates, Unaffiliated

3%

0%35%70%

Stephanie Hendy, the BC Green candidate, is projected at 9%, and Lee-Ann Bates, who is running unaffiliated, at 3%. Lewis C. Dahlby is also on the ballot for the Libertarians.²⁰

In 2024 Farnworth won with 13,843 votes to Adams’s 9,967: a margin of 3,876. If 1,939 of Farnworth’s voters had chosen Adams instead, the seat would have changed hands. Only 57.7% of the riding’s 44,601 registered voters cast a ballot.⁴

In our view, the rematch is Keenan Adams’s to win, and Port Coquitlam would be better for it.

07 The gravel field on Confederation Drive is a building site now. On 24 October Port Coquitlam decides who finishes the job.

Advance voting runs from 16 to 21 October, and Final Voting Day is 24 October. Elections BC’s Where to Vote app lists every voting place in the riding.²¹

Two years after the fire, the families of Hazel Trembath stood on a gravel field and asked to be heard. Their MLA, asked this week what matters most in Port Coquitlam, talked about the economy of the country. The man who ran against him last time says he stood with those families at the rallies, and this time his first answer was the cost of living and the traffic. In our view, Port Coquitlam deserves an MLA who starts with Port Coquitlam.¹³

3,876 votes decided it last time. In our view, this time Port Coquitlam should send Keenan Adams to Victoria.