Frankly Speaking

Santa Claus has a bag full of goodies for the newsmakers among us. This is an update of a sneak preview of gifts Santa has for some of the newsmakers who affect our lives. The original was written in the midst of the windstorm of Dec. 20, just before the power went out at my home and in thousands of other places on or near the B.C. south coast. Of course, that was the day the White Rock pier broke apart in the storm, and the day the electoral reform referendum results came down. As a result of all that, Santa let me know that an update of the gifts he was giving was required. Over a bowl of Christmas cheer, I acquiesced. Santa had to change his list quite dramatically this year – even as late as Thursday, Dec. 20. So many of the politicians he had gifts for were summarily dumped by voters in October, and that didn’t give the elves in his workshop much time to retool. However, he’s managed to do his best with the time he had available. He knew earlier that Linda Hepner ...

Frank Bucholtz photo This instruction to voters was posted all over Sierra Leone (in West Africa), as voters there prepared to vote in a presidential runoff election in March. As noted near the bottom of the poster, the Government of Canada (i.e. Canadian taxpayers)  helped to support the voter education process. The runoff election went very smoothly. If democracy can be that resilient and powerful in Sierra Leone, it most certainly can be the same in B.C. The shouting is almost over. The signs, somewhat reduced in number, will be coming down. Surrey and White Rock voters will elect new councils and a new Surrey Board of Education on Saturday. The same process will take place in Delta, Langley City, Langley Township and municipalities across B.C. It has been a unique civic election campaign. Here in the South Fraser region, there is the very unusual prospect of electing four new mayors. Longtime Delta Mayor Lois Jackson, Surrey Mayor Linda Hepner, White Rock...

The funds are in place to build the Newton-Guildford LRT line, but a number of candidates for Surrey council are questioning whether the line should be built at all. Even some of those supporting it, such as Coun. Bruce Hayne, are now wavering in whether a second LRT line along Fraser Highway should be built. Many members of the public want SkyTrain to be built in Surrey, instead of LRT. .   Nominations for Surrey council and Surrey Board of Education close Friday. Already, candidates for Surrey council are offering diverging perspectives to voters who are considering the merits of LRT vs. SkyTrain. Outgoing Mayor Linda Hepner hosted the prime minister and premier last week, as they once again announced that the Guildford-Newton LRT project was going ahead. Construction will begin in 2020, and the line will be in operation by 2024 – six years later than Hepner promised in 2014, when she was running for mayor. The costs are also rising significantly, due mainly to land ...

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...