SkyTrain controversy: Surrey’s mayor-elect Doug McCallum doesn’t have to take nonsense from anyone

The victors: Doug McCallum and his Safe Surrey Coalition slate on Saturday night.
Photo submitted by Safe Surrey Coalition

HE has just been elected mayor of B.C.’s second largest city – and soon to be the largest one – along with seven councillors from his Safe Surrey Coalition slate, decimating the Surrey First slate and leaving former mayor Dianne Watts and outgoing mayor Linda Hepner in a state of shock.
Surrey’s mayor-elect Doug McCallum made it very clear right from the beginning that he would scrap the unpopular Light Rail Transit (LRT) that Hepner and her group were so crazy about and replace it with a SkyTrain that Surrey-ites wanted. But Hepner and her group brazenly ignored the demands of the residents and pressed ahead with the LRT.
They were apparently behind the timing of the grand announcement of LRT financing by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and B.C. Premier John Horgan to obviously influence the outcome of the election in Surrey.
Then McCallum and SSC council candidate Bableen Rana in mid-September announced that they were “gravely concerned that the City of Surrey and TransLink are about to violate British Columbia’s Local Elections Campaign Financing Act.”
They pointed out: “In an internal memo sent to Surrey City council from their General Manager of Engineering, an “LRT communications plan” is laid out for September and October. It says the goal is to “earn and maintain support for the project with proactive, early, broad, regular and high-visible communications.””
McCallum and Rana demanded that the LRT Communications Plan be released to them immediately, noting, “The SkyTrain versus LRT debate is at the heart of this election.”
The LRT signs and at least one other portion of the City of Surrey’s communication plan were deemed to be non-compliant with BC’s Election Act and had to be removed.
Neither Hepner nor TransLink had done their due diligence.
Since McCallum’s victory last Saturday, vested interests have unleashed propaganda against his SkyTrain plan with distortions, half-truths and even outright lies. Yes, there are some difficulties ahead but that is why Surrey-ites elected a strong person like McCallum.
Well, McCallum does NOT have to tolerate all this nonsense – he MUST go right ahead and cancel LRT and demand SkyTrain extension for Surrey. If other mayors and others do not cooperate with him, he should warn them that he will retaliate against them in every way he can on TransLink and in other areas. Surrey MUST be respected.
Both the BC NDP and the federal NDP as well as the federal Liberals stand to lose support in Surrey if they try to sabotage McCallum’s SkyTrain plan. Make no mistake about that!
In mid-October, two fatal accidents on the same day on Calgary’s light rail transit system showed how dangerous the LRT can be. The Calgary Herald reported that the C-Train service was shut down in both directions for several hours while police investigated. Hundreds of commuters were left scrambled, confused and frustrated as they faced delays and had to find shuttle buses or alternate means of transportation.
The Calgary Herald said: “By 2003, 35 people had already been killed. Today’s total is close to 80. Suicide may account for a third of those, but that in itself is a mark of a system that makes it so easy.”
If people are killed by an LRT in Surrey, who will take responsibility for that? Hepner and her group? TransLink? Horgan? Trudeau? The mayors who oppose the SkyTrain plan?
McCallum and his Safe Surrey Coalition MUST keep Surrey safe as in SAFE Surrey Coalition!

1 COMMENT

  1. Please don’t compare a type of LRT that is vastly different than the LRT technology being used in Surrey. Specifically one that is far away from being anything like the decades old C-train built on a old freight train line in Calgary.

    Thats like comparing the monorail to Skytrain… now that the election is over we shouldn’t be divisive of the issue but rather be focused on being informative and facts based.

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