Province says people of Surrey want SPS, Locke says she’s looking out for taxpayers.
A B.C. Supreme Court judge has upheld provincial legislation to force a police transition in Surrey, and while Mayor Brenda Locke continues to be combative, there are questions about the strength of her mandate to continue to try to keep the RCMP in her city. This week presented the latest loss in Locke’s desire to deliver on the single most important issue upon which she
campaigned in 2022: stopping a transition from the RCMP to a municipal force.
The city initiated the judicial review to argue that the public safety minister was going against the will of voters who elected Locke on a promise to keep the RCMP.
Locke, who is still not admitting defeat, and hasn’t yet decided on an appeal, continues to maintain she’s in the fight to prevent the cost of policing from increasing in B.C.’s second largest and fastest-growing municipality.
“The tax burden facing Surrey residents is the reason why the majority of the members of this council and I have fought so very hard to put an end to this transition,”
she said Thursday at a news conference, wearing a red blazer similar to the Mounties’ red serge. A key tenet of her argument is this is what she was elected to do, but results from the past elections show a city that did not clamber to the polls to vote in a manner that was emphatic about the issue. In both the 2018 election, when Doug McCallum won on a campaign to bring in a municipal force, and in 2022 when Locke defeated him for the opposite, only around 32 per cent of eligible voters cast a vote in Surrey.
Both elections were defined by a three-candidate race where one was able to come up the middle and snatch victory.
McCallum, who called on Locke to resign on Thursday after the judicial review was released, won 41 per cent of the vote in 2018, while Locke won with only 28 per cent of the vote in 2022, barely topping McCallum’s 27 per cent… Source: cbc.ca/news
Friday, May 15, 2026
