Tom Gill, Surrey First candidate for mayor, faces some big challenges
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, three-term Coun.
Tom Gill was announced as the Surrey First candidate for mayor, after the remaining
Surrey First council members gathered at Hepner’s home to agree he would be
their choice.
One veteran politician told me, a week before this happened, that the Surrey First method of selecting its candidates is equivalent to the way the Roman Catholic church selects a pope - "a puff of smoke" indicates that a decision has been made.
It’s a very odd way for a dominant slate to pick a mayoral
candidate, but Surrey First is nothing if not secretive. Hepner even justified
the way Gill was chosen, stating that no “backroom people” are involved in the
selection of the candidates. If that's really the way Surrey First operates, without backroom people, how is it that the slate raised well over $1 million to fight the last election campaign?
Surrey First is likely to also have a huge war chest to run this year’s campaign.
The slate, which spent almost $1.2 million (mostly from developers) to win all
nine seats on council in 2014, almost certainly accumulated a lot of money
before the province brought in new rules about campaign donations and
financing.
However, it is not an auspicious time to try to convince
Surrey residents that the slate deserves every seat for another four years. For
one thing, Hayne has left – and will run either for mayor or councillor. Two
other Surrey First councillors are retiring – Mary Martin and Judy Villeneuve,
the longest-serving councillor, who was also one of the most effective council
members. Another wrinkle is the interest shown by Liberal MLA Rich Coleman, in
cabinet for every minute of the 16 years of BC Liberal government, in seeking the
mayor’s chair.
Most importantly, the people of Surrey have a lot of
questions about how their city is run. Crime, in particular drive-by shootings,
is top of mind.
On Saturday in Clayton, Paul Bennett, a 47-year-old
registered nurse at Peace Arch Hospital, popular hockey coach, father of two,
and well-liked community member, was shot in his driveway on a quiet street.
This has shaken many people. This come just a few weeks after the execution-style
shooting of two teens, whose bodies were found in a rural area about five kilometres
away from the Clayton shooting site. A rally organized by a group called Wake Up
Surrey, which expressed concern at both the shootings and the lack of effective
action against shooters, attracted thousands of people to city hall on June 12.
Many Surrey residents feel that city council has done little
to seriously address the issue of gangs, violence and shootings. While council approved
funding to hire a large number of new police officers, they were painfully slow
to arrive from training in Regina. The majority of them are new RCMP recruits.
The city is also being strongly criticized for its
pro-development stance. A pet project of Gill’s, development of a rural environmentally-sensitive
area in Hazelmere, was finally laid to rest Friday when Metro Vancouver said it
defied regional planning guidelines. Four Surrey representatives on the MV board, Gill, Hayne, Coun. Mike Starchuk and Coun. Barbara Steele, all voted for it.
The city’s insistence that LRT is the technology necessary for
rapid transit is also unpopular, and the construction of a road through Hawthorne
Park to allow LRT to proceed remains a powerful symbol of council arrogance to
many people. Hepner’s enthusiasm for ejecting tenants from illegal suites in
Clayton because of parking concerns (a stance she later backed away from) also
served as a symbol of council indifference to housing affordability concerns.
Surrey First was formed after Dianne Watts defeated incumbent Doug McCallum to become mayor in 2005. Gill, Hepner, Steele and Martin were, at that time, members of McCallum's Surrey Electors Team slate and initially threw roadblocks in Watts' way. Later realizing that they were fighting a losing battle, they joined forces with her to form Surrey First.
Hepner is a big part of the perception many residents have about Surrey First. They feel she is aloof, arrogant and out of touch. While she has accomplished a number of things, she does not have the ability to connect with people that Watts had - and indeed, she shows little interest in doing so. Her background is working as a bureaucrat with Surrey's economic development department, and she often acts like a bureaucrat. Her initial response to the Clayton evictions issue demonstrated that. Her complete tone deafness on the Hawthorne Park road issue also showed how disengaged she is from ordinary people.
It isn't just her. Most of the Surrey First councillors are perceived by many as being out of touch with
residents, unwilling to listen or engage in dialogue, and too entrenched.
While each has positive personal qualities, their almost total inability to speak out against the majority in public means there is little real democracy at city hall. Council meetings sometimes resemble Surrey First meetings - they gather to make pre-ordained decisions. To some degree, Hayne and Coun. Dave Woods have been slightly better at speaking up on a few issues.
I've personally been disappointed that Villeneuve, the most experienced politician on council and an articulate and thoughtful person, hasn't spoken up more often. Whether this is due to Hepner not brooking dissent, or exhaustion from the heavy workload councillors bear, I do not know. In the past, Villeneuve was a very key member of council who was not afraid to speak up about many issues.
Whether the widespread perception about Surrey First is really an issue with voters or not remains to be seen. The answers will come in October.
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