Abbotsford City Council · 2026 Election

Re-Elect Mark Warkentin: Experience and Competence for Abbotsford

I'm asking Abbotsford for a second term on City Council. Four years of steady, informed work on housing, flood protection, and public safety earned it, and there's more to finish.

See the Priorities

Mark Warkentin, Abbotsford City Councillor

Three Priorities for a Second Term

A second term means picking up work already underway. Here's where I'm focused.

Street Crime and Disorder

Abbotsford's overall crime rate is low, but a handful of hotspots, including South Fraser Way and the areas around Peardonville, Sumas, and Whatcom Roads, carry a disproportionate share of homelessness, property crime, and street disorder. I will keep pressing the Province to clean up unsafe sites and to fund real drug recovery and treatment options, not more injection sites. I'll continue backing the Abbotsford Police Department's work to stay ahead of disorder before it spreads.

Funding for Flood Mitigation

Abbotsford has flooded twice, first in 2021 and again in 2025. The flood zone isn't just farmland: two pipelines, an international border crossing, major electricity lines, key railways, and the region's most important highway all run through it. The city has already done the planning work. What we need now is provincial and federal dollars to build the infrastructure that prevents a repeat, and I will keep pushing both governments to pay their share rather than leaving Abbotsford to shoulder the cost alone.

Aquatics, Fields, and Ice

The city is moving ahead with new pool facilities, playing fields, and ice rinks that Abbotsford genuinely needs, and I've voted in favour of all three. My condition is simple: the public gets a clear, honest picture of what each project costs and where the money is coming from before shovels go in the ground. Big projects deserve big transparency.

A Record Built on Real Experience

I founded Linley Welwood, a business and real estate law firm, in 2010, and have practiced there ever since. Reading contracts, handling multi-million dollar transactions, negotiating complex deals and financing structures - work that most councillors only encounter secondhand.

Before that, and alongside it, I served as President of the Abbotsford Chamber of Commerce, a role that put me in direct contact with the challenges local business owners face every day, from red tape to labour shortages to rising costs. I also spent six years on the Abbotsford Police Board, gaining firsthand experience with the social issues underlying crime and homelessness, and with how police governance actually works, not from the outside, but from the table where the decisions get made.

That combination of legal training, business insight, and police governance is what I brought to Council in 2022, elected on a promise of Smart Growth for Abbotsford. In the four years since, I've helped move forward major housing development projects the city needs, spoken up on social issues and street disorder rather than staying quiet on hard topics, and helped shape Abbotsforward 2050, the Official Community Plan that will guide the city's growth for the next twenty-five years. I've also pushed hard to finish the Mill Lake Plan after years of study, and get shovels in the ground rather than let it stall in process.

Four Generations of Abbotsford Roots

Since the 1940s · four generations in one city changes how you see its problems.

My grandparents came to Abbotsford to farm in the 1940s, and my family has been here ever since. I met my wife, Brenda, in Abbotsford, and we raised our two children here. Both are graduates of Mouat Secondary: one now works in technology in London, and the other is a high school teacher here in Abbotsford.

Flooding isn't an abstract policy file to me, it's the farmland my grandparents worked. Housing pressure isn't a statistic, it's what my own kids weighed when deciding whether to build a life here.

Re-Elect Mark Warkentin isn't just a campaign line to me. It reflects a family that has chosen Abbotsford for eighty years and counting.