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Stuart Parker: Surrey, the one-party state

One of the most striking things about running for office in Surrey is the gradual realization that while Surrey seems, both to residents and outsiders, to be a poor city, it is actually rich. While underspending on everything from policing to community centres to sidewalks, the city is not teetering on the edge of a budget deficit. Instead, it posted a $300-million budget surplus last year. Out of roughly a billion tax dollars in revenue, the city chose only to spend 70 cents of every dollar collected and stuffed the rest of the money in a sack.

And it is not that Surrey is meeting its residents’ needs while saving money. Instead, the city struggles to handle the most basic challenges, performing worse than cities with a far less impressive tax base when it comes to things like snow removal in the winter. Looking at the sea of school portables, multi-month waits to have building permit applications even opened, and temporary modular housing that is bursting at the seams, Surrey does not just come off as a poor city. There is a more precise term of the magnitude of its problems.

Surrey is underdeveloped. I mean this in the way the United Nations means it. For all of its wealth, Surrey struggles with development challenges: its government programs are consistently over capacity; its citizens are disconnected from one another; the police are not clearly in control of all of the parts of the city; underserviced students are often taught in temporary structures or asbestos-ridden buildings awaiting needed upgrades; basic services are often too far from citizens who need them; and basic infrastructure, i.e. sidewalks, do not reach much of the population.

How do we square the idea of a place being both rich and underdeveloped? Scholars of international development have considered this problem. While many underdeveloped countries are poor but have an elite rich group of citizens, countries that are, overall, rich yet remain underdeveloped are rarer. In 1997, economist Timur Kuran examined that problem in the Middle East, looking at states in the region that had a literate populace and abundant natural resources but still lagged behind in measures of development.

While he had been expecting to find a pattern based on secularization or religious extremism, he found something else: what produces underdevelopment in wealthy places are one-party state structures and public squares that are hostile to debate. In this way, while eschewing religious extremism and propounding secularist ideologies, Iraq and Syria suffered even more dire underdevelopment than Iran, a theocratic state but one whose public square and party system, while curtailed and repressive, were significantly less so. And little has happened since 1997 to refute Kuran’s findings.

I want to suggest that many of Surrey’s problems emerge from the fact that, for reasons largely unconnected to any political oppression, the city has become, functionally, a one-party state with a negligible public square and that this is driving underdevelopment.

Former council candidate Stuart Parker says Surrey is underdeveloped because there isn’t sufficient public discourse about policy alternatives.
Former council candidate Stuart Parker says Surrey is underdeveloped because there isn’t sufficient public discourse about policy alternatives.
It is Surrey’s culture and habits that have gradually changed it into a one-party state. In 1996, Doug McCallum and his Surrey Electors Team (SET) swept into office, winning seven of the nine council seats and all but one school trustee seat. To this lopsided council, McCallum brought an autocratic style that effectively moved all real discussion of public policy to within the caucus of SET, to the extent that his leadership permitted this. For the next three elections, SET functioned as a hegemonic political force within Surrey, never coming anywhere close to defeat. However, as his coalition frayed, due to growing rifts between centre-right moderates and extremist theocrats whose antics, especially on school board, had begun to damage Surrey’s reputation as a place to do business.

However, disagreements among the elements of SET remained inside the party. A major debate was taking place about how to govern Surrey and how the city would be perceived but this did not become a debate in the public square. Instead, Surrey’s public square shrank with a seemingly unanimous party holding all or nearly all of the seats on the city’s council and school board. While opposition members often spoke effectively against the most egregious elements of SET’s agenda, there was a disparity between the real opposition, which was, to the public, largely silent, and the formal opposition.

When McCallum was finally challenged from within the SET by councillor Dianne Watts in 2005, the platform on which she sought the mayoralty, the people who supported her bid, and the arguments made in favour of her new approach appeared out of nowhere, completely unrelated to the discourse of the NDP-affiliated SCC/SCE opposition of the previous nine years.

Following Watts’s victory, rather than a balanced party system emerging, the tendencies toward a one-party state culture that had begun under McCallum instead intensified. All sitting SET councillors and trustees and most SCC/SCE councillors and trustees gradually crossed, after the election, to Watts’s new party, Surrey First. Surrey First, unlike SET, put itself forward as nonideological and multipartisan. Like the one-party states of Africa after decolonization, the party saw its job as achieving a consensus amongst disparate constituencies within Surrey through its own caucusing process and internal democracy. Disagreements among groups within the city were to be debated not in council chambers but instead in closed-door meetings among local notables, community leaders, and the Surrey First caucus.

As mayor of Surrey, Dianne Watts worked with a council entirely made up of members of her Surrey First party.
As mayor of Surrey, Dianne Watts worked with a council entirely made up of members of her Surrey First party.
Under Surrey First, the city became the one-party state that McCallum had aspired to create. And, consequently, debate about the city’s policy direction became completely cut off from the public square. Council votes took place not as a means of resolving disputes but as a unanimous rubber stamp of disputes already resolved. From 1996 to 2018, municipal political discourse gradually vanished from Surrey and the ideal of the one-party state became the norm, to the point where the two opposition parties that contested the 2014 election sought to mimic Surrey First by nominating multipartisan, ethnically diverse slates with almost no policies. By 2014, even elections were not the time to have substantive policy conversations about the city’s direction.

Political discourse is something that takes practice and constant engagement. It requires viable opposition parties that do not shut down between elections but carry on the discourse. It also requires a fourth estate with which the public is engaged. But local English-language media outside of the Semiahmoo Peninsula have among the worst readership and listenership rates of the Lower Mainland. While the Peace Arch News remains an important source of news for the older, whiter, residents of Surrey south of the Nikomekl River, the Surrey Leader is ignored as a source of news. Like the Leader, Pulse FM does its best to cultivate a Surrey audience but fails for a similar reason to the Leader: residents of Newton, Whalley, Guildford, and Fleetwood do not see themselves as part of a small parochial community that can be adequately served by a biweekly newspaper. They see themselves primarily as part of the Metro Vancouver region and residents of the second-largest city therein.

They expect to obtain their news from daily or hourly media as befits a city of more than half a million people. But popular media covering Metro Vancouver typically fall short in reporting on Surrey’s public square because, when the city reached this status as a demographic juggernaut, the political discourse of Surrey had already become nigh undetectable between election seasons. For this reason, outside of election time (and for many media, like the CBC, during elections as well), there is negligible reporting on the issues and ideas with which the city is wrestling.

In this way, Surrey has become, for different reasons, like the one-party states of the Middle East: a place where it is impossible for the state to have a conversation with itself out loud, a place where the public is excluded from the major debates between elections because the debate takes place within a one-party state and an atrophied, shrunken, ignored news media. Although the causes are different, the results are the same: underdevelopment.

Underdevelopment in rich places, Kuran explains, is caused by an inability to debate big plans and ideas, and a lack of capacity to correct for errors in major policy initiatives. The vibrant public square is not just necessary to preserve democracy; it is necessary to debug major policy initiatives and obtain the public buy-in necessary to implement them. One-party states come up with worse, less efficient ideas, which are then imposed upon an unenthusiastic public with little knowledge of either the merits or the defects of the policy.

This further impoverishes opposition discourse in such a state because critics of the government are essentially outside the discourse, yelling ideas into a void, ideas largely unnoticed by the public and similarly insufficiently debated to ascertain basic credibility or even rationality. This is how money gets wasted on crazy projects and this is how sane projects get cancelled.

So it is that Surrey today has a civic government that is proceeding with a major change in policing policy that received no serious public debate. The policy of leaving the RCMP and terminating the city’s contract with it was unveiled by my party, Proudly Surrey, in June. It was part of a pricey but necessary set of law enforcement policy fixes that included major changes to recruitment and training of officers and changes in their relationship with other governmental agencies. The idea of leaving the RCMP contract was taken up in August by Doug McCallum and his victorious Safe Surrey Coalition, except that the policy now entails a 10 percent cut in the number of officers, rather than a 30 percent increase. Gone is nearly every other reform we proposed that would make a local force necessary or worthwhile.

But the one city councillor elected as part of Surrey First—the former one-party state—Linda Annis, is so habituated to Surrey political culture that she has chosen to vote for every major policy initiative she ran against, supported by the new government. The idea that political debate should take place in council chambers, that Surrey should have a permanent public square where ideas are tested and contested, is gone; Annis appears to be preparing to follow in the footsteps of the dozen councillors and trustees elected with McCallum who crossed to Surrey First after Watts’s 2005 win. Now, it appears that the Surrey First trustees, some of whom were elected as part of McCallum’s SET decades ago, are now preparing to leave Surrey First and return to the team on which they started. Surrey’s one-party-state culture now appears so strong that pesky election results can’t get in its way.

The new council wants to scrap a $1.6-billion, fully funded light-rail project in favour of a $3-billion SkyTrain line.
The new council wants to scrap a $1.6-billion, fully funded light-rail project in favour of a $3-billion SkyTrain line.
That is why Surrey could choose an LRT without sufficient public buy-in for the project and then have that project defeated by a candidate claiming that he could fund a $3-billion asset using $1.6 billion of other people’s money that they had set aside for a different project.

Normally, one would look beyond elected officials, to the larger public square to generate some sort of debate. However, instead the public was treated to a cartoonish response to the RCMP contract from Critical Criminology, a group based at the city’s main university, Kwantlen, and headed by a member of the faculty. The instructor, Jeff Shantz, made a series of wacky claims, not just misrepresenting but actually lying about my party’s policy, and conveying an impression that the police force should be immediately be disbanded and replaced with volunteers. According to Shantz, the fact that Surrey is undergoing what scholar Stuart Hall calls a “moral panic” distorting our perceptions of crime, means that crime is such a non-issue that all policing can be safely abolished.

That’s a conclusion one could draw from these two sentences in Shantz’s closing section: “The move to a municipal force must be actively opposed as the public-funding drain and extension of police violence it will represent. And the RCMP must be defunded as well.”

This kind of intervention is typical in societies that have no real public square. Ideas are simply launched into a void, never managing to collide with another idea and begin some sort of dialectic in which we collectively think aloud. That’s why despite our disappointing vote totals, Proudly Surrey is going to continue meeting, continue speaking out, and continuing to help rebuild our city’s public square. You can join us fortnightly at Kelly’s Pub in Newton where we cosponsor a political reading group with Los Altos Institute.

Originally published at November 15th, 2018 at 8:47 PM
https://www.straight.com/news/1165126/stuart-parker-surrey-one-party-state

Stuart Parker teaches international studies and history at Simon Fraser University. He ran for Surrey council in 2018 as a member of Proudly Surrey.

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Pulling out of PSEA, TransLink and the RCMP is a Practical Solution to one of Surrey’s Biggest Problems

“For more than a decade, Surrey has suffered from a shortage of RCMP officers, educational assistants, bus drivers and teachers. That shortage is not because we don’t have the money to pay public servants. It’s because of bad agreements our governments need to get out of,” explained Pauline Greaves, Proudly Surrey’s standard-bearer for mayor, a PhD in educational administration and a business instructor at Langara College.

Greaves explained that although Surrey can afford to hire more teachers and educational assistants, not only are teaching staff allocated provincially; the wages and benefits they receive are set at a provincial level. “We recognize that Surrey teachers face unique challenges that are not faced by teachers everywhere. The same is true of our educational assistants but we are trapped in a provincially-imposed agreement that does not let us compete with other school boards to lure the best teachers from elsewhere in BC, Canada, the US and overseas,” stated School Trustee candidate Dean McGee. “That’s why we want out of the Public Sector Employers Council, the provincial authority that usurped local school boards’ bargaining power back in the late 90’s. Two decades of provincial bargaining haven’t just led to understaffing and uncompetitive teacher wages. They have led to litigation and labour chaos.”

Proudly Surrey has obtained a legal opinion that, even if Education Minister Rob Fleming will not allow Surrey to exit PSEA, common law rights may have accrued to local school boards in North America, given that they existed as autochthonous governmental authorities prior either to the Royal Proclamation of 1763, arguably existing as an implicit part of the document creating British North America, a document successfully used in arguments favouring pre-existing aboriginal rights and common law rights of indigenous peoples.

“By the same token,” Greaves added, “new RCMP officer hires that are promised by local politicians often do go through. Our force temporarily gains fifty or a hundred officers but then loses as much as a third or half of their new recruits through RCMP transfer policies that allow officers to receive less stressful assignments in smaller municipalities for essentially the same salary. We recognize that Surrey has major, major challenges that demand more from officers. The only way to actually reach officer parity with Delta is to create a local force with superior wages and benefits and from which, one cannot simply transfer to another city. Our city ran a $300 million budget surplus this year. There is simply no reason we cannot set up a police force that can effectively recruit and retain officers.”

The party has already issued a major statement on its “CisLink” proposal earlier this week but Greaves added, “We did not, at that time, have the space to remind voters that we can have a more multilingual fleet of drivers, permanent desks in our major stations and exchanges for qualified professionals to help with directions and security and local police rather than special transit law enforcement keeping our passengers safe.”

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Proudly Surrey Will Bring Democracy to our Civic Elections

Surrey is run under what is called “commission government,” a kind of government created during the First Gilded Age (1890-1930). According to its inventors, the idea of commission government was to reduce voter turnout, reduce citizen participation in politics, create unanimous city councils and place most power in the hands of unelected officials, accountable to a city manager.

“Why would anyone want those things? You might ask,” Stuart Parker, Proudly Surrey council candidate, who holds a PhD in US, Canadian and Mexican history explained, “back in the first Gilded Age, many social scientists have followed the lead of US historian Tom Sugrue in calling this the second, we saw the rise of populist authoritarian movements and increasing government corruption, just like today. Back then, people mistakenly thought that these things could be stopped by taking government away from the people and placing it in the hands of experts. While this ultimately failed, our municipal governments are relics of this failed strategy, vestiges of an elitist past. Our goal is to bring democracy back to our city.”

Proudly Surrey’s democratization platform involves three sets of measures: “First, we need to fix our voting system,” explained Parker, one of the founders of BC’s electoral reform movement who has served in leadership roles in fair voting groups since 1996. “The current Surrey government won 47% of the vote and yet won every school board seat, every council seat and the mayor’s chair. That’s because the voting system was designed to make sure most people didn’t have a single representative they voted for on council. We’re going to change that by bringing in the Cumulative Vote system, a kind of proportional representation used through the US in cities where the courts have struck down unrepresentative voting systems like ours.” In this system, voters still have eight Xs for council and six four school board but may place more than one next to an individual candidate.

“We also want to bring real power to the mayor’s office so the mayor ceases to be a simple figurehead but we don’t favour the kind of top-down approach that has been tried in Toronto, San Francisco, Chicago and elsewhere. Instead, we favour a parliamentary mayor system where city Councillors vote select a mayor from among their number. The person in the mayor’s chair is whoever commands majority support on council. In this way, our mayor will be the true leader of city council, not a bully trying to lord a title over people. When things get done through cooperation and compromise, that’s how representative government works. That’s how our legislature works; that’s how our parliament works; that’s even how our school board works,” Greaves explained.

“When we have city Councillors who represent the vast majority of Surrey residents, we can begin fixing our broken public consultation system. Public input, feedback and consultation only work when there are consequences for not listening. When city staff, no matter how well-intentioned, conduct public consultation, there are no consequences for them manipulating or overruling voters because their jobs are secure no matter what happens. They are hired or fired by a permanent city manager, not by elected politicians. And when politicians conduct public consultation under our current system, there are few consequences for them. They rise or fall by their slate; that won’t be the case with Cumulative Vote. A party’s voters will reward the Councillors who listen and be better able to punish those who don’t,” explained Adam MacGillivray, a strata council president who came up through local strata democracy to join the Proudly Surrey slate, “I know that if I make too many mistakes or don’t appear to be working for my fellow residents, I’m out on my ear next year.”

Proudly Surrey will not eliminate the City Manager position but will begin transferring staff from the indirect management through the Manager to direct manager through councilors’ offices. In this revised system, each Councillor would have additional managerial and administrative staffers who would directly administer a portion of the city’s civil service. “As we roll out this new system,” Greaves explained, “we will begin by transferring staff who are directly responsible for public consultation and planning to the direct management of Councillors. Of course, we realize this entails risks. Corruption remains a real danger.”

“And that is why we also need not just an iron-clad city conflict of interest policy but a full-time Conflict of Interest Commissioner, one who supervises both the parts of the government indirectly administered through the manger and directly administered through mayor and council,” Greaves concluded, explaining that “the 65-75% of Surrey residents who do not vote are not stupid, lazy, apathetic or any of the other names they are called. They are responding rationally to a rigged system. When we give them a better system, many will start showing up.”

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Proudly Surrey Highlights its Transit Policy

A feature policy of Proudly Surrey is the creation of a South Fraser transportation authority, a “CisLink”, if you will, to the Vancouver-centred TransLink (the Latin root “trans” means “across” whereas “cis” means “adjacent to”). The party has announced a series of “CisLink” policy goals and ideas since the beginning of the campaign. This synopsis puts all of these ambitious proposals in one place.

Legal Basis: In 1994, when TransLink was created, it was by a multilateral consensual agreement among the affected municipalities, the Greater Vancouver Regional District (now Metro Vancouver Regional District) and the BC government. This was symbolized in a signing ceremony between GVRD Chair, George Puil and the BC premier Mike Harcourt. While the authority was reorganized non-consensually by the BC Liberal government of Gordon Campbell, “Proudly Surrey has received a legal opinion that the absence of consent made the reorganization illicit and that this, alone, constitutes actionable grounds to leave TransLink,” explained Pauline Greaves, Proudly Surrey’s mayoral candidate.

Practical Basis: In recent years, the Greater Montreal area has split its transportation authority in two, creating a second authority for the less populous, more rapidly growing, more suburban Island of Laval, the Montreal equivalent of the South Fraser Region. This has turned out to be good public policy in Quebec and there is no reason that it would not produce equally good outcomes in BC. In eastern and central North America, it is common for multiple governments and their agencies to co-administer a system with a single fare structure and shared infrastructure assets. The Greater Boston area, for instance, features a system that does not just serve multiple counties and municipalities but three states, with both buses and rail lines crossing state lines administered not through a single authority but through cost-sharing agreements.

Democratic Control: TransLink is an agency  whose decisions are removed from democratic control. Surrey’s mayor is but one vote on a “Mayor’s Council,” which functions mostly as an advisory body to a board of directors, who are often hired from outside of BC and remunerated far in excess of the salary any elected BC politician receives and whose business plan is no longer effective for all its members.

“TransLink has become a technocracy, a government by experts, it is not a democracy. While expertise has its place in transportation planning, routing bus routes, truck routes and the like must be based on local knowledge and local concerns. TransLink has plenty of experts to execute its individual decisions, but we need an authority in which regular people, ordinary transit users have more direct control,” stated Greaves.

“CisLink” would be governed by Councillors selected from among their peers on city council(s) and would be required to hold regular meetings. In addition, the governing council of “CisLink” would include an additional member drawn randomly each year from monthly bus pass purchasers.

Fair Fares: “The Compass Fare system is so expensive and inefficient that it currently absorbs the entirety of fares paid in the system. The cost of purchasing and running the Compass system has been so high that all fares pay for is the purchase and maintenance of the fare gate system. The predictions that it would reduce fare evasion and thereby cause an increase in revenue was premised on the erroneous notion that something other than poverty causes most fare evasion. An expensive and ineffective system was installed and yet, people in extreme poverty did not become any richer as a consequence and so no revenue increase took place. Instead, those in extreme poverty became poorer, paying a single fare on the bus that could not be converted into a rapid transit fare,” Greaves concluded.

“CisLink would remove the new fare boxes, and switch to the cutting-edge optical technology used in the integrated subway-LRT-bus system in which paper transfers are scanned by the eyes of transit vehicle operators and fare collectors,” stated Stuart Parker, Proudly Surrey’s point person on the “CisLink” project.

Serving Transit-Dependent Users: TransLink has the objective of increasing its ridership statistics, i.e. use of the transit system by new individuals who have not used the system before and focuses its service increases not on areas where there is the highest demand but where ridership will be most responsive to investment. “For this reason, areas where there are concentrations of transit-dependent users, i.e. people who will ride the bus/train no matter how bad or inconvenient service is have received little and, in some cases, negative transit investment. This is unacceptable,” stated Parker, a transit-dependent resident of North Surrey.

“The first priority of any transit system must be to ensure that those who have no other way of getting around are not housebound for extended periods, cut off from crucial services like childcare, medical care or senior’s services. “CisLink” will invest first in providing necessary service for those whose age, youth, disability or poverty cuts off from other transportation options,” Parker added.

Responsive Truck Routing: Currently, truck routes are planned, designated and maintained by TransLink based on regional priorities. “In a rapidly changing city like Surrey, where new industrial land goes into production with some frequency and areas of industrial use become residential, it is necessary to have a more flexible truck route designation system both for logistics firms and the changing needs of neighbourhoods,” stated Parshotam Goel, Proudly Surrey’s point person on development.

“CisLink” would decentralize truck route control to local city councils to handle along with other types of arterial route designation.

“Many people think that ordinary voters and their elected representatives are not smart enough to care about public transportation and, when given the opportunity, will form ill-informed plans about public transportation. Some opinion leaders and politicians in Vancouver point to the belief of some Surrey residents, that tearing up a $500 million contract with Justin Trudeau will get them a $4 billion SkyTrain. But the reason that the transit debate in Surrey has become toxic the past decade is because the power of local voters and their representatives has been usurped by an unaccountable group of technocrats who have perpetrated massive boondoggles like the Compass system and have tried to hide their failures from the public. Know-nothing populism doesn’t come from nowhere; it is fostered by systems in which people are looked down upon and made to feel powerless. Surrey residents will engage with their transit system democratically, rationally and cooperatively, given the chance” Greaves believes.

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Proudly Surrey Highlights its Cannabis Policy

With the onset of legalized Marijuana coming into effect on Wednesday, Proudly Surrey Mayoral candidate Pauline Greaves is highlighting the Party’s long established cannabis policy.

“Our intention with this policy is to make this legal product available in the safest and most responsible way to the tens of thousands of Surrey residents who partake in cannabis use” stated Proudly Surrey Candidate for mayor Pauline Greaves. ” We want to ensure that all users have access to legal cannabis, and that parents, employers, and health practitioners have the best, most up to date information on its effects and current regulations of cannabis use.”

Greaves outlined the long established policy which was first rolled out in May of this year.

  • A Proudly Surrey City Council will establish a special municipal license of marijuana sales, the first eight of which will be issued to city-owned stores situated in each major neighbourhood, staffed by qualified, responsible employees
  • A Proudly Surrey City Council will maintain low licensing costs for municipal stores and any additional private stores the city may license
  • Low licensing costs will be maintained so that a per-transaction or per-gram tax can be levied on each purchase as per the provisions of the license
  • This municipal tax and all profits derived from City run stores will be transferred directly to the Surrey School Board to spend at its discretion. There will be no revenue splitting with the City

Proudly Surrey Council Candidate Stuart Parker elaborated “Proudly Surrey has no interest in participating in a moral panic around cannabis legalization. Anyone who thinks our current prohibition regime has been even remotely effective in restricting the availability of cannabis products to Surrey residents is living in a fantasy world.” Stated Parker “Surrey will benefit from this by redirecting the money in this area of the economy from organized crime to our Schools.”

Greaves continued “A resident related a story to me a couple of months ago. A family Doctor was at a Vancouver dispensary and was asking about the health effects of cannabis. The person behind the counter had no clue, and told the Doctor that she should use Google to find this information.” said Greaves “This would never happen in any dispensary that is located in Surrey.” asserted Greaves. “All dispensary employees will be trained in the latest facts on the product and its use. To do anything else will be irresponsible.”

When asked about allowing producers to use ALR land to cultivate cannabis, Greaves answered “Marijuana is a hardy plant that does not require high grade of soil for cultivation. While we have no current plans to prevent the use of Surrey ALR lands to grow marijuana, it is our hope that industrial, rather than agricultural zoned land will be used.” Stated Greaves

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Open Letter to the Producers of CBC’s Surrey Mayoral debate on Oct. 9

Dear CBC;

Let me introduce myself.

My name is Dr. Pauline Greaves I have a BA, BED, MA in Criminology, and a PhD in Education Administration. I have worked in Social Services and Education I have held positions such as Executive Director of the Downtown Eastside Women’s Center, Director at UBC Women’s Center, Director of Policy with the Elizabeth Fry Society, and Counsellor with the Ottawa Youth Services Bureau. I have taught in the K-12 system and am currently teaching in Higher Education in the department of Business and Management.

I have advised governments and was the Deputy Director of the Commonwealth Education Programme where I advised and set policies for fifty-four Ministers of Education. Most importantly, I was appointed to the Diversity Committee, one of the committees of Surrey’s local government.

I am also a candidate for the position of Mayor in the City of Surrey with Proudly Surrey.

This week, CBC Radio hosted a Mayors debate in Surrey. I was invited to attend this debate by CBC, and I gladly accepted. I was subsequently uninvited.

While we in Proudly Surrey reject the idea that one’s entitlement to participate in a debate should be based on one’s curriculum vitae, I draw your attention to these facts because they demonstrate that, by excluding me from the Surrey mayoral election debate, the CBC were following neither the letter nor the spirit of their putative criteria for inclusion. Inclusion in a debate should be based on factors such as a substantive and comprehensive policy platform, popular support in the community and fielding a slate of candidates of sufficient size to form government. My team, Proudly Surrey, and I clearly meet these criteria.

It is clear that I could have contributed substantially to your debate, providing information, perspective and principle in which the debate was clearly lacking with its demographically and politically narrow selection of candidates. This demographic narrowness is every bit as concerning as the ideological and political narrowness of the debate; in this day and age, does Canada’s national broadcaster really wish to be known for excluding the only female candidate, especially one who could substantively challenge many of the falsehoods and nonsense purveyed by the debate’s male participants?

I also believe that your decision to uninvite me based on your published criteria has severely damaged the perspective of the citizens of Surrey, and here is why.

As a public entity “Canadian federal Crown corporation that serves as the national public broadcaster for both radio and television” you have a responsibility to the community in general to provide a nonpartisan, independent perspective and not influence who people vote for By only including three men (candidates) you have in fact told Surrey voters that these candidates were the only important individuals that is worth their consideration.

As a woman of colour one of my positions running in this election was to work to bring Surrey together where the diversity of the population would contribute to the richness of the community and the city rather than keeping them divided. My platform if you had cared to ask, is to get the community working together, where the focus is on inclusion not exclusion.

The other priority of my platform is to reach out to the various minority groups who traditionally do not vote and to encourage them to actively participate in this very important democratic process. It is important that their interests are represented and reflected in who are elected to provide leadership at city hall.

As a possessor of a CRTC broadcast license, as well as Crown Corporation I feel that you are in breach of your obligation and duty to the residents when it comes fairness of representation and inclusion in an important process.

The criteria used to decide on who would be invited are without merit and only serve to support the status quo. The following are my responses to your selection criteria.

• Incumbents or mayoral candidates representing incumbent parties (those holding seats at city hall).

Based on the first part of this criteria no one or all candidates should have been selected because there are no incumbent running for Mayor. Based on the second part, only Tom Gill should have been interviewed as both Doug and Bruce are running under new parties.

• Candidates who have held past elected office on city council, or at the provincial or federal level.

I find this criterion to be very elitist (exclusive and discriminatory) as it implies that you would only invite previously elected candidates regardless of their record, which would imply that no new candidates would ever have a chance to speak on the interests of their community. This is why members of minority groups do not feel that their voices and/or interests are being represented at City Hall. We live in a very diverse city but if this is not reflected in any of the decisions at City Hall or on an electoral debate panel then what message is this sending to these communities as to their importance and inclusion in matters in Surrey.

• Candidates with demonstrated civic engagement experience as evidenced by work with a civic electoral organization, or inclusion on a city committee.

I would like to point out that I am a member of the City of Surrey Diversity Advisory Committee and have been for 3 years. Again, by this criterion my voice on inclusion should have been an important one.

I spend a lot of time talking to people about the importance of inclusion and why it is not just about recognizing diversity but about accepting and embracing inclusion be it socio-economic, access and the promotion of equal opportunities for all, not just for a few.

• Those with demonstrated voter support based on polling results (where available).

Only one publicly released scientific poll has been conducted on the Surrey Mayoral election; it was conducted in June by Mario Canseco’s Research Corp. It found Proudly Surrey tied for second place at 27% of the popular vote. So, as with the above criterion, your network chose to violate its own stated criteria in order to exclude me.

• Candidates with defined platforms on a substantive array of civic issues/whose electoral organizations are running a comprehensive slate of candidates.

On this criterion, Proudly Surrey was and is far ahead of the other slates. I would direct you to review the policies and issues that have been addressed by the Proudly Surrey Slate and before any other organizations were able to find members. We have an extensive number of civic issues that many of the current candidates have embraced as their own.

A visit to the Proudly Surrey website would have clearly shown that Proudly Surrey do have a comprehensive slate of candidates. We are the only slate running candidates for Mayor, Councillors and School Trustees; and based on this criterion the other three slates would have been excluded.

• Broadcast considerations around airtime and debate format.

I do understand this as a criterion, however this does not apply to me as I was invited and confirmed to participate and then dis-invited. What you had were three men who primarily talked to themselves and talked about their records. What is clear is that CBC knows how to organize debates with more than three participants. The Broadcast Consortium of which you are part, at the national level, has organized five-person federal leaders’ debates. In these debates, the decision to include the least-popular party (e.g. Elizabeth May’s Greens and Alexa McDonough’s and Audrey McLaughlin’s NDP) was taken partly because this was the sole means by which the Consortium could include what it deemed a necessary female voice.

It is my opinion that the outcome of this debate only serves to convince residents of Surrey to become more disillusioned about voting by falsely creating the impression of a lack of choice. Sometimes optics count because then people can see that there are individuals in their communities that are concerned about them and are prepared to represent their interests.

At the end of the day, it is about inclusion and the participation of the many not just a few.

Dr. Pauline Greaves
BA. BED. MA. PHD
Proudly Surrey Candidate for Mayor

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Pauline Greaves Announces Trucking Policy

Proudly Surrey Mayoral candidate Pauline Greaves is announcing today a series of measures to improve commercial trucking in the city with a view to helping small operators stay competitive, reduce air and noise pollution, improving working conditions for professional drivers and pointing towards a more sustainable industry. With over 60% of BC’s 26,000 trucking firms having a single vehicle and an owner-operator, with hundreds of those living in Surrey, it is important to ensure that logistics remain a family-supporting job during the transition to a zero-emission transport sector.

“As a key trans-shipment point for Western Canada, with Robert’s Bank, the Tsawassen Ferry, three major border crossings and the Port of Vancouver’s Surrey Docks, we will establish a Logistics Office in our city government,” explained Proudly Surrey Candidate for Mayor Pauline Greaves. “This will be a one-stop shop for logistics companies in our city, one where all permits fees and regulatory matters can be handled. It is this kind of storefront approach that can help keep small owner-operators in competition with the larger firms.”

Council Candidate Adam MacGillivray added “We also have a problem of unregulated and informal truck parking in Surrey. Drivers need to know that their equipment is secure while they are at home with their families” MacGillivray explained.

Greaves added, “We need to ensure that local operators and those who do not regularly travel through Surrey have a clear understanding of where they can park so they do not use our residential streets to get to the unregulated spaces in Surrey. Public and private lots passing inspection will appear in a registry and be easily accessible online and through the Logistics Office. “Private lot owners are generally eager,” she explained, “to be part of a network of authorized, well-lit, well-secured spaces. Our vision is not to compete with these owners but to work in partnership.”

“We also need to point the way forward when it comes to future technology in the industry. That’s why we will offer free parking to heavy, commercial zero-emission vehicles in city-owned and city-managed lots and waive licensing and other regulatory fees for zero-emission commercial vehicles in the city. While zero emission vehicles may be years away, we will ensure that they are welcome in Surrey. As with our plan for BNSF, we recognize that government must step up when it comes to the transition to a zero-emission future.”

She also noted that leaving TransLink, as per Proudly Surrey policy, the city would regain jurisdiction over truck routes within Surrey. “I think that is something all Surrey residents would support,” she concluded.

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Proudly Surrey to Eliminate Barriers to Youth Sports

Felix Kongyuy

Felix Kongyuy, a long-time program designer and organizer with at-risk and marginalized youth in Whalley began laying out the practicalities of Proudly Surrey’s signature policy, city-wide barrier-free youth activities. “Every September, when young people return to school, they don’t just encounter the formal curriculum of our school system. They confront a hidden curriculum that tells them who is destined for success and who is not. In my work, I try to undo the effects of that hidden curriculum that separates students by class, income and parental employment,” stated Kongyuy.

“Surrey, as the municipality with the largest number and proportion of children and youth in Metro Vancouver, has the most comprehensive, robust and diverse program of extra-curricular sports taking place in our parks,” Kongyuy explained, “But even though these parks belong to all of us equally, they are not enjoyed equally. Some parents can afford the uniform, equipment and travel costs to enroll their kids in sports. And some cannot. Some families have a stay-at-home parent or a parent with flexible work hours who can take time off to volunteer with team sports and attend games. And some do not. Some families have a second or third vehicle and an available daytime driver. And some do not.”

Stuart Parker

“While we appreciate Tom Gill and Surrey First suddenly adopting our policy of ending community centre facility (but not program) fees after nine years of inaction in office, we want to remind him that there are a bunch of other youth programming ideas, he and his slate need to hurry up and adopt,” stated Stuart Parker, one of Kongyuy’s three council running-mates.

“To keep our kids out of gangs,” he continued, “to ensure true equality of opportunity, to get the best and brightest competing for Surrey and to give all of our children and youth equal access to public facilities, we will begin municipal busing for team sports and begin regulating team sports in our parks to ensure that every team provides free uniforms and equipment, subsidized equally, per-capita by our city budget. We had a budget surplus in the hundreds of millions of dollars last year. The cost of zero-barrier sports teams is a drop in the bucket.”

Dean McGee

To implement this policy, the city and school board would need to mutually invest in a larger dedicated bus fleet, to supplement the small school bus fleet the board currently owns. “This is an example of a policy that requires close council-school board cooperation,” explained Dean McGee, co-founder of Proudly Surrey and School Trustee candidate. “We need to make sure the same policies go for school field use as for city park use when it comes to extra-mural teams so that we are working hand-in-hand to enact the same policy. We need lend the city some buses and, in exchange, we get to share the capital costs of expanding our fleet with City Council.”

The expanded school bus fleet would be supplemented with Translink vouchers for children and youth able to reach practices, games and other programmed activities through existing public bus and rapid transit routes, until such time as an agreement can be reached to exit the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority and establish an integrated bus system south of the Fraser.

Parker, co-author of the policy, remarked that this program is closest to his heart of all Proudly Surrey policies. “This is a vision that my uncle Harry Jerome, BC’s Athlete of the Century (1871-1971) always dreamed of. He lifted himself out of poverty, abuse and racial discrimination through amateur sports. The idea that every young person, irrespective of wealth, income, race or class, could participate as an equal on a baseball diamond, soccer field or on a track like him was something he strove for his whole life of public service, as a founding administrator of Canada’s Ministry of Sport and creator of BC’s Premier Sports Award. He would be seventy-eight years old this month. I wish he could be here to see the first election where people could vote on his vision.”

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Greaves Calls for the Suspension of Mail-In Balloting After Massive Fraud Allegation

Pauline Greaves, candidate and standard bearer for the Proudly Surrey Party is calling for an immediate suspension of all mail-in voting in Surrey after an explosive report from the Wake Up Surrey citizens group.

On Friday, Wake Up Surrey made an official complaint the both the BC Chief Electoral Officer and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police alleging a massive conspiracy to affect the votes of up to 15,000 Surrey Citizens.

“If even a fraction of this is true, this is completely unacceptable.” Greaves exclaimed “The people of Surrey must not have this election stolen from them, for that reason I am calling for the immediate suspension of all mail-in balloting for this election. We have over a billion dollars in transportation funding at issue in this election and we must not have that stolen for the benefit of a few.”

Wake Up Surrey alleges that some 600 individuals have been tasked to obtain mail in voting forms for up to 25 people each. The group does not indicate in their complaint to either the Chief Electoral Officer or the RCMP, which candidates are involved in this illegal scheme.

“A coordinated effort to steal this election from voters strikes at the heart of our democracy” said Parshotam Goel, Pauline Greaves’ running mate and Candidate for Surrey Council. “I joined Proudly Surrey because this is a Party that talked about ideas and good government, not about enriching friends” Goel concluded.

“We realize that suspending mail-in ballots may disenfranchise some innocent voters in this election” said Greaves, “But the alternative is to have organized crime controlling City Council. We at Proudly Surrey want this investigation wrapped up as quickly as possible so that legitimate votes can be counted” concluded Greaves.

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Proudly Surrey to Assemble Consortium to Expropriate BNSF

“Enough is enough,” states Pauline Greaves, Proudly Surrey mayoral candidate. “This is the message that we have been hearing from residents in Ocean Park and Crescent Beach, especially, as well as from our neighbours in White Rock. There is simply no negotiating with BNSF (formerly Burlington Northern) to meet the needs to South Fraser residents.”

Adam MacGillivray

“Residents, as well as a succession of governments in Surrey and White Rock, have, for decades been unable to resolve concerns about an ever-growing list of serious problems with the venerable train line connecting Metro Vancouver to America’s rail network through Whatcom and King counties. We are crazy to think things are going to improve is a new crop of politicians is elected this fall, just to make the same requests again,” added Adam MacGillivray, a Proudly Surrey council candidate who, like Greaves, lives in South Surrey.

Proudly Surrey has identified the following outstanding issues that BNSF has failed to address:

  • Reducing noise and environmental (especially thermal coal and other toxins) impacts on South Surrey residents and ecosystems
  • Improving safety for South Surrey residents and tourists crossing, working or recreating near the line
  • Re-routing portions of the line in response to changing residential and transportation patterns in South Surrey
  • Re-routing portions of the line and reconstructing others to mitigate anticipated climate change impacts, especially rising sea levels
  • Double-tracking additional portions of the line to accommodate existing and future scheduled passenger rail
  • Making the line available for Canadian commuter rail use

“For this reason, we need to assemble a consortium of governments including White Rock, Surrey and New Westminster, our transportation authority and the government of British Columbia to expropriate the BC portion of the BNSF track with compensation so that we can make these improvements ourselves,” Greaves explained, also pointing out that this would likely become necessary, regardless, should the planned Portland-Vancouver high-speed rail project go ahead. “We believe,” she added, “that we will be able to recover a significant portion of the costs of expropriation over time by charging BNSF fees to reach the New Westminster, Surrey and Vancouver port facilities and from fees currently levied by BNSF on the Amtrak Cascades route.”

Proudly Surrey currently supports the establishment of heavy commuter rail on both the BNSF line and the Southern BC Rail line in the future but has not included implementation in its platform due to the ongoing problems with BNSF. “If we want commuter rail, like the West Coast Express, we need to begin by working with other governments to take charge of the tracks in our territory.”