‘This is no small matter for municipal democracy,’ lawyer Craig Dennis says
Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth’s order to press on with the Surrey Police Service is akin to replacing the “winner with the runner-up” by overriding Surrey council’s desire under Mayor Brenda Locke to keep the RCMP and enforcing the previous council’s desire, under former mayor Doug McCallum, to install the SPS as the city’s police of jurisdiction.
The provincial government, Dennis argued, “has nullified the mandate to keep the RCMP delivered to council by voters.”“In purpose and effect, it controls the electorate’s attempt to convey meaning by significantly interfering with the vote, specifically by nullifying the electoral mandate that city council keep the RCMP in Surrey, and in the process it undermined the confidence Surrey residents can reasonably repose in their future elections.
“The status quo then is the RCMP. Surrey’s not meaning to revert to anything,” Dennis noted. “Surrey voters delivered a mandate in the 2022 municipal election for keeping the RCMP as Surrey’s police of jurisdiction. Access to the voting platform has already occurred. Far from seeking access to a platform, Surrey seeks to implement that mandate free from provincial interference.
This, he said, was the “raison d’être” of Locke’s Surrey Connect slate and was the central issue in the city’s 2022 civic election, in which she defeated McCallum. “This only confirmed what should have been clear to all observers, that the election was centrally about the fate of Surrey policing and Surrey voters had spoken in favour of keeping the RCMP.”
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