Editor:
Surrey will have its own police service.
That was the message from Doug McCallum and his team during the run-up to last year’s council election.
As a candidate, McCallum said if enough people voted for him he would start the process of forming a municipal police service in Surrey. They did, and he did.
The other guys said if they won there would be consultation and a referendum, maybe. They lost.
Let’s get on with it, then.
Not enough of a mandate for such a big change, you say? Like it or not, the idea behind a plurality voting system is that it will deliver a functional government, even amid appalling levels of voter apathy. It’s time to accept the civic election outcome – as rough-hewn as it may seem to some – and let our duly chosen mayor get on with the urgent tasks awaiting him at Surrey City Hall.
That’s where fundamental issues of regional mobility and public safety are being unshackled from neglect, but also where whitecaps of manufactured doubt are now being whipped up by gusts of misinformed indignation. Do we really need another round of the so-called consultation we’ve already declined on voting day?
A right old dither over process, so we can feel good about doing nothing? Maybe our very own mini-Brexit?
The RCMP is a legendary institution in the throes of an existential crisis. One can only hope it will ultimately be restructured into an organization keenly focused on the urgent work of combating terrorism, international financial crime and other top-level threats without the millstones of rural and municipal policing hanging about its neck. When provincial governments west of Ontario create provincial police forces, as they should have decades ago, the RCMP may at last be free to take its rightful place among the premier national security agencies of the world.
Meanwhile, all of Mayor McCallum’s team need to be reminded of the meaning of a mandate and work to fulfil the wish that a plurality of Surrey voters took the trouble to express at the ballot box – for a home team of local street cops who will help us all take pride in a truly safe Surrey.
Paul Thurston, Surrey