Frankly Speaking

Delta Mayor Lois Jackson will be retiring from politics in 2018, after 46 years of involvement with Delta council. First elected as an alderman in 1972 (the first woman ever to hold that office in Delta), she has been mayor of Delta since 1999. In late 2017, she ushered Delta into a new era as it officially became a city. The new year will bring a lot of changes to the South Fraser area of Surrey, Delta, White Rock and Langley. Some of the biggest potential changes could be at the local council level. Voters will elect new councils on Oct. 20, 2018. The results of the 2014 election, the first in which councillors and mayors were elected to four-year terms, ended up mostly as expected. Many indications are that 2018 could be considerably different. Four-year terms did not bring out the best in some local politicians. For sure, there will be at least two new mayors. Delta Mayor Lois Jackson is not seeking another term. She has been mayor since 1999. Her involvement with Delt...

Surrey Memorial Hospital has the busiest emergency room in B.C. The fact that there is just one hospital in the 12th-largest city in the country is a damning indication of the shortage of services in Surrey. Surrey had 517,887 residents in mid-2016, according to census numbers released last week. The continued growth makes it the 12th-largest city in the country, not far behind Vancouver, which sits in eighth place with 631,486 residents. Interestingly enough, Vancouver is not just smaller than the two largest Canadian cities, Toronto and Montreal. It also smaller than Calgary, Ottawa, Edmonton and Winnipeg, as well as the largest Toronto suburban city of Mississauga, which has 90,000 more residents than Vancouver. The Metro Vancouver area is the third-largest urban region in the country, and it wouldn’t be that way without large suburban cities such as Surrey, Burnaby, Richmond and Coquitlam. Burnaby is the third-largest city in the region, but at 232,755 residents, it is l...