Robin Goldsbury Answers 3 KCFN Questions - Cranbrook Municipal Election, October 2026

Municipal elections matter. 

From land use and infrastructure to affordability, emergency preparedness, community services and local food systems (to name just a few)... politics and public policy have real consequences in our everyday lives.

With Kimberley and Cranbrook soon to be hitting the municipal ballot boxes — Advance Voting is open Wednesday, October 7 & Wednesday, October 14, with General Voting Day on Saturday, October 17 — the Kimberley Cranbrook Food Network recently narrowed our many possible interconnected food-system questions down to three (3) that we sent to all candidates for Mayor and City Council in both communities.

We're sharing their responses on our website/socials as they come back to us to help residents (which includes ourselves) hear directly from the people seeking to represent us all on important community matters such as the three questions we asked below.

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Robin Goldsbury is running for Cranbrook City Councillor. You can learn more about their candidacy through their website and Facebook page — but first, please see below for Robin's responses to our three KCFN questions, which we have shared as submitted.

Q1. What specific actions would you support at the municipal level to strengthen local food production and access to local food in our communities?

Food has been part of my working life for decades. I cut my teeth in corporate restaurant marketing when I was young and eventually owned a 200-seat restaurant on Kootenay Lake. So when I attended the Future of Food Social Hackathon at College of the Rockies recently, this was a conversation I could really sink my teeth into.

I spent considerable time talking with Sophie Larsen from Community Connections about year-round growing, local markets, mobile food sales and delivery, and other ways to get locally produced food to local customers. I also offered my marketing experience because producing food is only half the challenge. You have to sell it.

From the restaurant side, I know local purchasing also has to work for the buyer. Restaurants and institutions need consistency, sufficient volume, predictable delivery and competitive pricing.

Sunny Cranbrook already has some great pieces in place. I want the City to:

• help connect these pieces with economic development and other silos in City Hall

• help develop partnerships with potential funding agencies

• support appropriate growing spaces and year-round production

• remove unnecessary barriers

• help develop markets and distribution, and

• bring producers and local buyers together.

To me, this is food security AND economic development. Grow it here, sell it here, eat it here, and keep more of those dollars here.

Q2. Food insecurity is affecting households in our communities, while local organizations providing food access and food-security programs are often working with limited resources. What role do you think the City should play in supporting this work, and what specific actions or partnerships would you pursue?

One thing that struck me at the Future of Food event was how much good work is already happening here.

We have people who know food production, people rescuing food that would otherwise be wasted, people feeding families, people developing year-round growing, and people working on storage, processing and distribution. I don’t think City Hall needs to reinvent any of that. It needs to ask those people, “What is getting in your way, and where can we help?”

I’ve spent a lot of my life working with small businesses and volunteer organizations where money, people and time are stretched. Sometimes what you need isn’t another program — it’s a partner who can open a door, provide space, help with a permit, support a grant application, make an introduction or bring the right people around the same table.

We’ve already seen that work with the Urban Farm on City land, and I think the new Food Innovation Centre has enormous potential to connect food recovery, storage and processing with local producers and food entrepreneurs.

My approach would be pretty simple: listen to the people already doing the work, find the gaps, connect the dots, and help them get the resources they need.

Q3. Wildfires, drought, extreme weather and disruptions to transportation can affect both local food production and our communities' access to food. How should the City incorporate food security into its emergency preparedness and climate-resilience planning?

This is one of the areas where my recent conversations around food security really made me think.

We tell people to have 72 hours of food and water on hand - good advice. But what happens at the community level if wildfire closes our highways, a major power outage knocks out refrigeration, or transportation is disrupted for several days?

I’d like to see food become a very practical part of our emergency planning. Let’s know, before we need it, where our commercial kitchens, refrigerated and dry storage, generators and transportation capacity are. Which organizations can prepare and distribute food? Which residents will need help first? Which local producers and businesses could be part of the response?

And let’s have those people at the table when we make the plan - KCFN, Community Connections, the Food Bank, Food Recovery, producers, grocery stores, restaurants, institutions and emergency services.

The more I’ve learned about this, the more I see local food production differently. It isn’t only about buying local or helping people experiencing food insecurity. If the trucks can’t get through, it’s infrastructure. It’s emergency preparedness. It’s community resilience.

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Many thanks to Robin Goldsbury for taking the time to respond to our questions — and cheers to all of the candidates who have put their names forward to serve our communities in these important roles (and thank YOU for stopping by to read & add some more context to your voting decisions/discussions).

You can learn more about Robin's campaign through their website and Facebook page, and you can read responses from other candidates through our KCFN Municipal Election 2026 page (which we will continue to update as more responses come back).

For official municipal voting information and full candidate information, remember where you live and then visit the City of Kimberley 2026 Election page and Kimberley candidate profiles (if you live in Kimberley), or the City of Cranbrook 2026 Election page and Cranbrook candidate profiles (if you live in Cranbrook). And for wherever you live, ElectionsBC is always a good spot online to visit for trustworthy election information.

And then remember, for the upcoming Municipal Election, whether you live in Kimberley or Cranbrook or somewhere else… these are the dates for voting in the upcoming Municipal Election:

• Advance Voting: Wednesday, October 7 & Wednesday, October 14

• General Voting Day: Saturday, October 17

Please Note: KCFN sent the same three questions to all candidates for Mayor and City Council in Kimberley and Cranbrook that we were able to find contact information for on Sunday, October 4th (27 candidates in total between both communities). Candidate responses are published as submitted, with only minor formatting changes if necessary for readability. KCFN does not endorse individual candidates, we just endorse informed & engaged voters (and we hope people find these Q&As as engaging as we do).