Surrey city councillors Jack Hundial and Brenda Locke have been sending out a strong message by hanging out the city’s dirty laundry for the neighbours to see.
But what that message is depends on your perspective.
Last month the pair took their fight against the Surrey policing transition province-wide, sending a letter to more than 1,000 elected officials at the civic level in B.C. to warn them the project could negatively impact their own bottom lines if allowed to proceed.
In December, they penned a letter to Lana Popham, provincial minister of agriculture, expressing deep concern that Mayor Doug McCallum and his Safe Surrey Coalition majority on council dissolved the city’s Agriculture and Food Policy Advisory Committee and replaced it with a council-driven Environmental Sustainability Advisory Committee, with only three public experts on board.
In response, Popham herself sent his worship and council a letter last month expressing her concern with the dissolution of the “long-standing and well-respected” agriculture committee, her “disappointment” that Surrey’s leaders did not seek dialogue nor public input prior to the change, and that having only three experts on board “will not likely provide adequate representation for Surrey’s diverse agricultural community.”
So, are Hundial and Locke righteous whistle-blowers or self-serving, grand-standing tattle-tales? Ultimately you, the reader, will decide, as will Surrey’s voters in the Oct. 15, 2022 civic election. But as they say, where there is smoke, there’s fire. And these two councillors have definitely brought Surrey’s smouldering issues to a wider audience.
– Now-Leader
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