Frankly Speaking

The City of Surrey has more clout than it realizes in the year leading up to the provincial election. Thus far, it has been reluctant to use it. Mayor Linda Hepner, somewhat belatedly, realized that there was a problem with school capital funding. She only seemed to realize the depth of the problem after the Surrey Board of Education voted on April 21 to ask the city to suspend development applications in three fast-growing areas. She offered the board some support, saying a month later that the city and school district had to come up with “their own plan.” Hepner said the city will no longer sit idly in the face of school construction delays, saying “The formula is broken. We’re going to develop (a formula) ourselves and present it to the minister.” Surprise, surprise. The province was receptive to the issue, and indeed almost fell over backwards to accommodate the school district. The BC Liberals won five of the eight Surrey seats in the 2013 election, and at least two of ...

Premier Christy Clark announced on July 25 that a 15 per cent property purchase tax will be applied to all residential property purchases by foreigners, including trusts and corporations. About six months ago, I received a call from a polling firm which was clearly working for the BC Liberals. The caller asked a number of very specific questions, and one was what issues I was most concerned about. The first thing I mentioned was the high cost of housing, and how soaring real estate prices have a devastating effect on people who are not in the marketplace. That includes people who want to buy, people moving into the area from elsewhere and renters. At that time, the provincial government had done absolutely nothing on that particular file, and in fact was all but asking investors to bring their money to B.C. and keep the real estate boom going. Not long after that call, The Globe and Mail published several crucial stories about what was actually happening in the real estate mar...

The Canadian hand-wringing over Donald Trump is palpable. There is hardly a media or political figure who won't go out of their way to denounce the Republican candidate for president of the United States. The most recent one to jump aboard was James Moore, former Conservative cabinet minister, who painted quite a dark and foreboding picture on CBC Radio's The Early Edition Friday morning. They may all be correct. However, it isn't up to Canadians to elect or defeat Trump. That is the job given to American voters, who hopefully will turn out at the polls in droves in November. I watched almost all of Trump's acceptance speech at the Republican convention on Thursday. I wanted to hear it for myself - not through a variety of media filters. I also wanted to compare it with earlier speeches I'd seen him make after primary wins. Those, I thought at the time, were stream of consciousness speeches - with him saying whatever came into his head. I wondered if this would...

At-grade LRT (pictured) or SkyTrain? There is plenty of debate about which type of transit service would be best for the line planned to run between Whalley and Langley City. Langley City councillors are enthusiastic about SkyTrain coming to Langley ­- and why wouldn’t they be? Transit service to and within Langley is probably the most inadequate service in the entire region. Even Abbotsford and Mission, which are part of a separate transit service with minimal links to TransLink, have better service than many areas of Langley do. There is no bus service to Gloucester Industrial Park, no bus service along 16 Avenue, and east of Murrayville, there is only the 503 to Aldergrove, which gets a lot of use, despite many challenges for riders. One of those is the very long time it takes to get from Aldergrove to SkyTrain in Surrey. Langley City council recently heard from Daryl Dela Cruz, who has been spearheading a drive to have a SkyTrain line built between King George Station ...

Ambulance response times in Surrey are again under scrutiny, after release of a letter from Surrey fire chief Len Garis to Linda Lupini, executive vice-president of the Provincial Health Services Authority. The issue of ambulance response times in Surrey has once again been pushed to the forefront, largely thanks to the persistence of a reporter. It came up in connection with the tragic death of Dario Bartoli, 15, after an apparent swarming on Dec. 14, 2014, at 154 Street and 18 Avenue in South Surrey. Janet Brown, a longtime CKNW reporter who lives in Surrey, heard shortly after the death that Surrey fire chief Len Garis had written a letter to the ambulance service about its response time. She asked the City of Surrey for a copy of the letter. It sent back a copy with almost everything blanked out. She appealed the city’s decision to not release the contents of the letter to the provincial freedom of information office, which after a series of delays finally released m...

Sunday's fire at Burns Bog in Delta, which prompted a response from water bombers, helicopters and many types of firefighting equipment on the ground,  is a good reminder of just how quickly a major natural disaster can strike. The Lower Mainland of B.C. is not immune from wildfires or other disasters. Sunday’s destructive Burns Bog fire, which went from a small grass burn to a 55 hectare uncontrolled forest and brush conflagration in a matter of hours, is a strong reminder of the potency of fire. Smoke was visible over most of the Lower Mainland Sunday afternoon. Fire crews from various parts of the province, including wildfire specialists, were called in. Water bombers and helicopters were used. One Vancouver radio station went off the air after its transmitter site was burned. Most of the Tilbury industrial park, adjacent to Burns Bog, was evacuated as a precaution and, as of Monday morning, several businesses were still under evacuation orders. Highway 17 between H...