Opponents call for Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke to resign over misrepresentation of policing motion

Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke is facing calls for her resignation from members of city council over her claims about a recent vote by Metro Vancouver mayors.

Members of the Safe Surrey Coalition – who are a minority on the current council – say Locke made false claims about who exactly supports keeping the RCMP as the city’s police force.

During a Metro Vancouver mayors' meeting last week, Locke released a statement claiming a unanimous vote among the region’s mayors in support of Surrey retaining the RCMP as its local police force.

“At today's Metro Vancouver meeting of the Mayors' Committee, a motion was made by Delta Mayor George Harvie to support Surrey's decision to retain the RCMP as the police of jurisdiction," Locke said in a news release on April 5.

"This motion was not only supported, but it was passed unanimously."

However, Delta Mayor George Harvie says his motion was to call on the province to make a fast decision on Surrey’s policing future.

“The sole intention of the motion is to encourage the province to make a timely decision," Harvie told CTV News in a statement Thursday.

"It's acknowledged that a delay in the Surrey police decision impacts resourcing for all the police departments in the region."

Port Moody’s mayor, Meghan Lahti, also believes the vote was about speeding up the decision-making process.

“I can clarify that there was no discussion regarding supporting either RCMP or municipal police. We were asked to support the request of the province to make a speedy decision regarding policing in Surrey. I voted in favour of providing that support,” Lahti told CTV News in a statement.

The allegation that Locke misrepresented the vote is something that city councilor Doug Elford believes should be cause for her to resign.

"The motion was to support a quick decision and not in one direction or other," said Elford. "Certainly, there's a trust factor among the citizens and colleagues. She could have easily retracted it and admitted she made a mistake and pulled the website statement, but she refused to, and then she doubled down on it, and that's really concerning."

Policing in Surrey has been a divisive issue for years. Former mayor Doug McCallum was elected in 2018 after promising to replace the RCMP with a municipal police force, the Surrey Police Service. The transition to the SPS was well underway last year, when Locke defeated McCallum after campaigning on the promise to keep RCMP in Surrey and disband the fledgling SPS.

Locke did not respond to requests for an interview from CTV News.

Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth confirms a decision will be made on the future of policing in Surrey by the end of April.