NEW Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke on Monday tried to end the “uncertainty” of which police force to have in the city by asserting that the RCMP would remain in Surrey.

However, the truth is that that is anything but realistic.

Locke and the new councillors — Linda Annis and Mike Bose (Surrey First); Harry Bains, Gordon Hepner, Rob Stutt and Pardeep Kooner (Surrey Connect); and Doug Elford and Mandeep Nagra (Safe Surrey Coalition) – were sworn in on Monday evening at Surrey City Hall by Judge Valli Chettiar.

Solicitor General Mike Farnworth has made it clear that he wants to see a clear plan from Locke about reversing the ongoing transition to the Surrey Police Service (SPS) before he gives his approval. He has also pointed out the huge expense that will be incurred if the transition is reversed.

And that is where the problem lies. The SPS now has 352 employees, with 298 sworn police officers and 54 civilians. And Locke has demonstrated amazing lack of understanding by assuming that all these employees will somehow just go away!

The fact is that the City will have to fork out more than $100 million in compensation and face any amount of lawsuits.

The Province, as any insider will tell you, has no appetite to keep switching police forces every time a new mayor comes in. And Locke will learn that the hard way.

The ruling NDP and the BC Liberal Party know that any reversing of the ongoing transition will anger the majority of South Asians who wholeheartedly support the SPS. In fact, in the last provincial election the BC Liberals lost a seat in Surrey for opposing the SPS.

Also, the fact remains that Locke got only 28 per cent of the total vote in the municipal election and won by less than 1,000 votes in spite of making the policing issue her main plank and being the only candidate to get the endorsement of ‘Keep the RCMP in Surrey group’. What does that tell you?

Former mayor Doug McCallum won the election in 2018 with 45,564 votes — 41.08% of the total votes — while Locke  won with only 33,311 votes — 28.14% of the total votes. That means that ONLY 33,311 Surrey-ites were passionate enough about the RCMP to vote for Locke!

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out.