Brenda Locke’s Victory Means No Surrey Police And Backtrack On Fast-Tracked 50 Development Projects!

Councilor Brenda Locke played her Keep The RCMP In Surrey and anti-corruption aimed at mayor Doug McCallum and his Safe Surrey Coalition just right for her narrow 973 vote victory Saturday night, winning a slim majority on council with her Connect securing her grand mayoral victory along with four councilors including Harry Bains, who surprisingly polled more votes than Locke. Meanwhile McCallum, aka “Doug Paaji”, was done in by the combination of MP Sukh Dhaliwal and MLA Jinny Sims, who while losing badly, were able to take significant portion of the South Asian vote, thus denying McCallum his second straight term, although two members of his party were able to eke out 7th and 8th place wins on election night. 

By R. Paul Dhillon – Editor DESIBUZZCanada 

SURREY – Councilor Brenda Locke played her Keep The RCMP In Surrey and anti-corruption aimed at mayor Doug McCallum and his Safe Surrey Coalition just right for her narrow 973 vote victory Saturday night, winning a slim majority on council with her Connect securing her grand mayoral victory along with four councilors including Harry Bains, who surprisingly polled more votes than Locke.

Meanwhile McCallum, aka “Doug Paaji”, was done in by the combination of MP Sukh Dhaliwal and MLA Jinny Sims, who while losing badly, were able to take significant portion of the South Asian vote, thus denying McCallum his second straight term, although two members of his party were able to eke out 7th and 8th place wins on election night. 

Locke and her four member team combined with similar thinking two Surrey first councilors Mike Bose and Linda Annis, who again topped the polls and should have been the party’s mayoral candidate, should be able to pursue the agenda she outlined in the campaign, mainly that Surrey police will be gone and RCMP will stay as well as undoing the heavy favoritism in development of the previous regime including canceling the 50 development projects that McCallum rammed through on the last council meeting before the election that favored insiders.

Keep the RCMP In Surrey (KTRIS) are buoyed by Locke’s win and were the first group to thank her in a press release sent out Sunday.

“Keep the RCMP In Surrey Campaign (KTRIS) is delighted with the results of the Surrey municipal election yesterday, where incumbent mayor Doug McCallum and his Safe Surrey Coalition were put to flight. The Surrey Connect Team, led by Brenda Locke, was voted in with a majority” said Ivan Scott – Team Leader and Founder of the KTRIS.

“With this result, the goal that KTRIS has worked for over the past four years will be finally realized, with the disbandment of the SPS with immediate effect. I believe that KTRIS played an extremely important role, by not allowing McCallum to get back in together with Gordon Hogg’s vote-splitting tactics”.

Locke has already begun the work to stop the transition to Surrey police, telling City staff to stop the funding to SPS and she said city staff has told her they are prepared to pull back from the SPS.

 “I have now asked them to let the Surrey Police Service know that they are to spend no more. No more money and to cease all expenditures moving forward,” said Locke.

On Sunday, the Surrey Police Service issued a statement saying stopping the transition would not be feasible.

It says millions of dollars have already been invested and 350 staff are on the payroll, 150 of whom are officers deployed to work alongside the Mounties.

“The cost is just extraordinary, the cost moving forward to do it is way, way greater than to stop it now,” said Locke.

But Locke says she’s confident stopping the transition is the right move for taxpayers.

“All of the expenditures on the capital side are fully recoverable,” Locke told CTV Morning Live.

She says the majority of expenditures right now are on human resources.

“We will always be needing human resources to do policing. It’s a service after all. So we will just be replacing the SPS members with either RCMP officers and in many cases bringing some of the current SPS officers into the RCMP tent,” said Locke.

KTRIS said it has worked tirelessly over these four years and expended many tens of thousands of hours by very dedicated, unpaid volunteers in all weather conditions. During this time KTRIS has

·        Organized a 50,000 name petition which was handed to the provincial government

·        Helped obtain a 43,000 name petition in favour of a referendum that was presented to ElectionsBC

·        Been banned, by McCallum, from attending council meetings by attempted legal means

·        Been banned, by McCallum, from attending Canada Day celebration events

·        Been fined for appearing at parks with KTRIS regalia

“Surrey people are tired of the lies and non-transparency that have come out of Surrey City Hall.  The voters have booted out the McCallum regime for this, seeking a change back to ethics, morality, and non-corruption that Brenda Locke has promised to uphold” Scott went on.

“We look forward to having the RCMP continue as our Surrey Municipal police force.”