Frankly Speaking

Tom Gill, who has been a member of Surrey council since 2005, is the Surrey First candidate for mayor in the October civic election. Surrey residents who pay even minimal attention to city politics must have been scratching their heads in recent weeks. One-term mayor Linda Hepner was retiring, but nobody was stepping up to the plate to take her place. This in the second-biggest city in B.C., where there are a host of serious issues facing the next council. It also occurred at a time when mayoral candidates in other cities, among them Vancouver and Delta, were coming out of the woodwork. There was a reason for the silence. No one was going to step up until the Surrey First slate, which has held every seat on council for the past seven years, said what it was going to do. The first hint came on Wednesday, when Surrey First Coun. Bruce Hayne announced he was leaving the slate. Clearly, some sort of backroom struggle had taken place, and he had lost out. Then on Friday, thre

A community rally at Surrey city hall on June 13 on the issue of gang violence attracted thousands of people. The rally was sparked by the apparent gang slayings of two teenagers, Jaskarn (Jason) Singh Jhutty, 16, and Jaskaran (Jesse) Singh Bhangal, 17.   Their bodies were found in a rural area south of Cloverdale on June 4. Police have no evidence that the two were involved in gangs, and continue to search for the killer or killers. The deaths of the two young men have devastated their families and friends. The large attendance at the Wake Up! rally indicates that many members of the community have been deeply shaken by this tragedy, and they are looking for answers. There is no simple solution, but one of the issues which was raised was the effectiveness of Surrey RCMP in dealing with the numerous instances of gang violence which have become a regular occurrence in Surrey. Gurpreet Singh Sahota, organizer of the rally, said the Surrey RCMP detachment has too few officers