The mayor of British Columbia’s second biggest city says she’s “very disappointed” in the latest provincial budget.
“There was nothing there for Surrey,” Brenda Locke told Global News.
Surrey is home to a population of more than 680,000 and is on track to surpass Vancouver as B.C.’s biggest city within a decade.
That’s come with major growing pains, including a proliferation of portables at schools amid surging enrolment, overburdened hospital emergency rooms and bus routes that have seen ridership balloon to double pre-pandemic levels.
Work is now underway on a second Surrey hospital, but amid the $4.5 billion earmarked for capital spending in the K-12 education system, the budget included no line items for new Surrey schools.
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“Health care, education, public transit have been such a challenge for us and it is getting worse,” Locke said.
“We are going to hit a million people and there was no additional money for schools.”
Finance Minister Brenda Bailey fired back on Wednesday, telling Global’s Focus BC the money is in place but that the projects have yet to be announced.
“Mayor Locke knows well that there are investments being made in capital and it doesn’t show up on the budget until the business plan is through,” she said.
“There are huge investments happening in Surrey … A lot of the capital that you see in this budget is directed for Surrey.”
BC Conservative Leader John Rustad, meanwhile, said the province continues to treat Surrey as a “second-class city.”
The Conservatives made historic gains in the city in the last election, winning more than half of the its seats, unseating former Education Minister Rachna Singh and coming just a handful of votes shy of reducing the NDP to a minority government.
“We need to see a much more focused effort,” Rustad said.
“They need a children’s hospital, they need additional health care facilities … we need to deal with the fact that we don’t have the education spaces, kids are now on shift permanently in Surrey when they’re going to school.”
The growing trade war with the U.S. is also top of mind in Surrey, a border city with an economy tied in many ways to its southern neighbours.
Locke said the trade dispute threatens to hurt Surrey’s trucking, manufacturing and agricultural sectors, adding she was disappointed to see a lack of specifics in the budget to offset damage in those industries.
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