premier david eby said he was told about the issue on thursday morning and he finds it “incredibly frustrating.”
“i understand the desire of the mayor to spend taxpayer money on advertising leaflets, on billboards, on lawyers, to fight this. i disagree with it, but you know, that’s her business,” eby said during an unrelated news conference in vancouver.
“the challenge obviously is these are folks who are willing to go out and do the difficult work of policing in our communities. and they need to get paid. surrey deserves a safe community. police officers need to get paid, for pete’s sake.”
eby said the city of surrey should be paying those officers and the province will find a way to make sure that happens: “we will not allow public safety to be compromised for a political campaign.”
locke had said the city would face a shortfall of $314 million over 10 years if it were forced to switch to the surrey police service. she said the ndp government’s offer of $150 million over five years to help fund the shift wasn’t enough.
“we don’t have a budget for this very, very expensive police service that they are imposing on the residents, the taxpayers of my city,” she had told postmedia in october.
— with files from katie derosa, david carrigg and gordon hoekstra
bookmark our website and support our journalism:
don’t miss the news you need to know — add vancouversun.com and theprovince.com to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here.