In the first six months after she was elected, the mayor of Surrey, B.C., met with senior RCMP officials more than a dozen times as she and her party voted in favour of, then proceeded with, a plan to reinstate the RCMP as the city’s police force. But Brenda Locke declined meetings with anyone from the Surrey Police Service, the municipal force the city had been transitioning to over the previous four years, except to go over police board agendas just prior to meetings.
A Globe and Mail freedom-of-information request for the mayor’s calendar from Oct. 16 to May 10 shows Ms. Locke had her first meeting with Surrey’s main RCMP detachment on Oct. 27, 2022 – 12 days after she was elected and a week and a half before she was sworn in on Nov. 7.
On Nov. 4, there was an in-person meeting with the head of the RCMP in B.C., Dwayne McDonald, and Surrey’s chief RCMP officer, Brian Edwards, then a regular series of in-person or phone meetings, mostly with Assistant Commissioner Edwards.
A Dec. 2 meeting with both officers also included city manager Vince Lalonde and Councillor Ron Stutt. Last week, Mr. Stutt was found to be in a conflict of interest by the city’s ethics commissioner because in November he voted to reinstate the RCMP while his son was still working as a Mountie in Surrey.
And on Dec. 6, Ms. Locke met with then-RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki during a trip to Ottawa.
Ms. Locke did not respond to questions about her lopsided calendar.
The pattern of meetings has one opposition councillor, Linda Annis of Surrey First, concerned that, when it came to deciding who should police the fast-growing city, city council did not do so objectively.
“If you don’t talk and there’s new information that comes out, how would you know?” Ms. Annis said. “She certainly has her own opinion on all this, but you need to have ongoing dialogue with both sides.”
The Globe has previously reported that the union representing the RCMP, the National Police Federation, has spent more than $1-million in political advertising in B.C. and Alberta as it works to maintain support for the RCMP in jurisdictions that have been contemplating transitions to regional forces.
The union also contributed $104,000 of a Surrey advocacy group’s $118,000 campaign to force a referendum on the policing decision.
And as a third party in B.C.’s civic elections in October, the federation spent more than $80,000 campaigning, with a little more than half of that going to “commercial canvassing in person, by phone or over the internet.”
For its part, Ms. Locke’s Surrey Connect party raised $290,000 in direct contributions from individuals.
Surrey, B.C., municipal police force calls for clarity over future
Although a disclosure with Elections BC doesn’t specify which jurisdiction the federation spent the money in, Surrey is the only municipality where bringing back the RCMP is currently an issue.
There is no indication in the mayor’s calendar that she met with Brian Sauvé, the police federation’s president and a registered lobbyist with the provincial governments of B.C. and Alberta, as well as the federal government.
The Surrey Police Service declined to have its chief comment on the relative lack of dialogue with the mayor. But SPS communications officer Ian MacDonald said the service made multiple attempts to speak with her.
“The Surrey Police Board issued a request to meet with the new Mayor and council shortly after the election and the only individual to respond was Councillor Linda Annis,” he wrote in an e-mail.
“The chief invited the mayor to meet, directly via telephone conversations and through city management staff on several occasions but most did not take place. Police board was where they encountered each other the most (and in the context of a meeting format with a fixed agenda). Also, the chief and SPS volunteered to present to council after OIC Edwards did in the New Year but never received an invite or acceptance of that offer.”
The only times the mayor met with members of the Surrey Police Service, according to her calendar, is when she connected with the board’s executive director, Melissa Granum, to go over agendas ahead of a police board meeting. By law, Ms. Locke is the chair of the board.
Her unwillingness to speak with the police force she was trying to terminate extended even to small-scale social interactions.
Surrey Police Union spokesman Ryan Buhrig said he and another union member were at a community event on Nov. 5 at Gurdwara Dukh Nivaran Sahib, a Sikh place of worship, that the mayor also attended. (The event is noted in her calendar.)
Ms. Locke was with a senior RCMP officer, Inspector Harm Dosange, when the two union members approached her to congratulate her on her win.
Two other RCMP officers came up quickly and “whisked her away” before they could exchange more than a few words.
“The majority of her slate did not wish to meet with us,” Mr. Buhrig said.
Frances Bula