After turning predominantly BC NDP orange since the 2017 provincial election, ridings within the city of Surrey turned into the blue hue of the Conservative Party of BC in the 2024 provincial election this past Saturday night.
Elections BC has yet to finalize the results, which depends on conducting the final count of approximately 49,000 ballots (absentee and mail-in ballots) across the province and the legally required recounts in two ridings where results are less under a 100-vote difference, including the riding of Surrey City Centre.
The final count, including the recounts, will be performed this weekend, October 26 to 28, 2024, at which point the official MLA winner of each riding will be declared. At that juncture, British Columbians will have a better idea of whether the BC NDP or BC Conservatives will form government, which is likely to be a minority for either scenario.
But the completed initial count, finished this past Sunday afternoon, shows the BC Conservatives are projected to secure seven of the 10 ridings within Surrey, including Surrey North, Surrey South, Surrey-Cloverdale, Surrey-Guildford, Surrey-Panorama, Surrey-Serpentine River, and Surrey-White Rock.
Currently, the BC NDP are projected to win Surrey-Fleetwood and Surrey-Newton. If the Surrey City Centre recount reaffirms their lead, the BC NDP will take a total of three ridings within Surrey.
This represents a reversal of the BC NDP’s fortunes in BC’s second most populated city, with their poor performance within Surrey accounting for half of the party’s losses. The BC NDP won 57 seats in 2020, but they are currently projected to win 46 seats in 2024, representing a net loss of 11 province-wide, including up to five within Surrey, depending on how Surrey City Centre swings. A party needs to win at least 47 of the 93 provincial ridings to form a majority government.
In the 2020 provincial election, the BC NDP won seven of the nine ridings within Surrey, except for the BC Liberals (BC United) wins in Surrey South and Surrey-White Rock. This was an improvement for the BC NDP over the 2017 provincial election, when they won six of the nine ridings.
Prior to 2017, the BC Liberals held Surrey, winning five of the eight ridings within the city in the 2013 provincial election.
The number of ridings within Surrey increased by one to a total of 10 between the 2020 and 2024 provincial elections, as a result of the recent redrawing of electoral district boundaries based on population growth. The difference is from the creation of the new Surrey City Centre riding — borne from areas previously under the Surrey-Whalley and Surrey-Green Timbers ridings, which no longer exist.
A wide range of broader factors and province-wide issues can explain the BC Conservatives’ sudden rise and the BC NDP’s disappointing results. However, Surrey city councillor Linda Annis, from the Surrey First party, suggests that various local factors also contributed to the BC NDP’s performance in Surrey, asserting that the governments led by David Eby and John Horgan did not do enough to address the city’s pressing needs.
Annis suggests the BC NDP-led provincial government’s emphasis on adding more residential density within Surrey to help address Metro Vancouver’s housing affordability and supply crisis — in a jurisdiction that is already experiencing rapid population growth — without also providing the corresponding significant new transportation infrastructure and expanded healthcare and education facilities did not resonate well with Surrey voters.
“For the past seven years, the provincial government ignored Surrey, and thought we wouldn’t notice. But our voters did notice, and last minute election promises were not enough to wipe away seven years of neglect,” said Annis today.
“In four short years, Surrey will be BC’s biggest city, and it’s definitely time that we flex our political muscle to ensure our city gets more transit, more health care, more schools, and more infrastructure. We have 8,000 students in portables, and students going to school in shifts. Our one hospital is struggling, the new Cloverdale hospital is really too small and doesn’t even have a maternity ward. Even with the SkyTrain project to Langley, we are still short when it comes to transit and other important infrastructure. We’re not asking for more than our share, but our growth demands that the provincial government step up.”
John Rustad’s BC Conservatives platform vowed to replace Surrey’s 400 school portable structures at a faster pace than the BC NDP’s ongoing strategy, build a new second BC Children’s Hospital in Surrey’s Fleetwood area (reducing the reliance on BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver) next to SkyTrain’s future Bakerview Station in addition to the current construction project of building’s second general hospital in Surrey in Cloverdale, prioritize and expedite the much-delayed George Massey Tunnel replacement project, and extend SkyTrain Expo Line along King George Boulevard from Surrey City Centre to Newton, whereas the BC NDP promised Bus Rapid Transit along King George Boulevard between Surrey City Centre and White Rock with the long-term possibility for an upgrade to LRT or SkyTrain.
The BC NDP have countered that they have accelerated new school construction in Surrey during their governance, spearheaded the opening of BC’s second medical school of training new doctors at Simon Fraser University’s Surrey campus, and committed to building a new acute care tower at the overcrowded Surrey Memorial Hospital.
It should also be noted that the 16-km-long, eight-station SkyTrain Expo Line extension along Fraser Highway between King George Station and Langley City Centre will begin major construction in late 2024, following the awarding of the contracts earlier this year.
Annis further suggests the election results puts both the BC NDP and BC Conservatives “on notice,” adding that “if you don’t deliver for Surrey don’t expect our support at election time.”
A notable victory within Surrey is former Surrey mayor Linda Hepner’s projected win in the riding of Surrey-Serpentine River, where she came 516 votes ahead of the BC NDP’s Baltej Singh Dhillon.
Hepner, who was under the Surrey First party during her time in municipal politics, ran a campaign that focused on Surrey being severely underserved by the provincial government, especially under the BC NDP.
“We know how to produce housing, but the provincial government needs to do its job and provide the infrastructure that makes growth possible. That’s the part of the equation David Eby and his candidates keep ignoring. When it comes to housing, we’ve been doing our job for decades and we’ll continue to do our job in Surrey, but the NDP government has yet to demonstrate that it is ready to step up and do its job,” said Hepner.
“Instead, they sit in Victoria and dictate to British Columbia’s cities. It’s laughable that the NDP want to lecture cities about growth and density.”
Even without the provincial government’s housing legislation, continued rapid population growth in Surrey is expected to lead to the creation of more ridings within the municipal jurisdiction during future electoral district boundary redrawing exercises by Elections BC. This increase in representation would effectively enable Surrey residents to grow their ability to influence election outcomes, outpacing the rate of growth in additional ridings in other communities, including Vancouver.
The provincial government’s population growth forecast also shows Surrey will become BC’s most populated city when it reaches 785,619 residents in 2029 — squeaking past Vancouver’s expected 780,075 residents. The gap led by Surrey will grow with each passing year afterward.
Surrey is also expected to become the first BC municipality to reach one million residents — by 2042. In the same year, Vancouver will trail behind at just over 936,000 residents.
This past summer, on the basis of the city’s population growth, Surrey mayor Brenda Locke announced the City of Surrey’s push to request the provincial government to create new legislation that creates the new Surrey Charter. Similar to the Vancouver Charter governing the City of Vancouver, the new Surrey Charter would provide the City of Surrey with new and special powers that are not available under the BC Local Government Act, which currently governs all municipal governments except for the City of Surrey.
Similarly, the City of Surrey is increasingly gaining a larger voice within TransLink’s Mayors’ Council and Metro Vancouver Regional District’s Board of Directors. Each body’s decision-making process is based on weighted votes allocated to each jurisdiction based on their population, with the number of votes adjusted periodically based on population growth.