Poll commissioned by Surrey finds residents unsure of police transition

Only about a third of Surrey residents want to continue with the city’s police transition, according to a new poll by the city.

The Police Transition Survey was commissioned by the City of Surrey and conducted by the polling firm Leger between Nov. 3 and Dec. 13.

It shows only 29 per cent of Surrey residents who responded to the survey want to continue with the police transition, while 46 per cent want to retain the current RCMP. The rest of the respondents stated they were “unsure.”

Meanwhile, the transition from the Surrey RCMP to the Surrey Police Service is well underway, with the current phase featuring officers from both forces currently working together in the city.

In July, B.C. Public Safety Minister and Solicitor General Mike Farnworth announced the city will have to go through with the transition, despite strong opposition from Mayor Brenda Locke.

Currently, the survey shows resolving the policing issue as the fourth most urgent priority that Surrey residents want the city to address, following housing, crime and cost of living.

The recent survey also found that when provided additional information, even more respondents expressed support for the current Surrey RCMP sticking around. With the added context, 64 per cent of respondents said they would prefer to continue with the RCMP and only 22 per cent said they would prefer to continue the transition.

Additionally, 73 per cent of respondents agreed that the provincial government should pay the full difference in funding since it was the province that decided to enforce the transition.

“This comprehensive survey makes it clear that the majority of citizens in Surrey do not want to bear the burden of the police transition and prefer to continue with the RCMP,” said Locke.

“That is why we have been doing everything we can to ensure residents are made aware of the significant cost and implications of this unnecessary transition that is being imposed on Surrey taxpayers by the NDP government.”

She says a large chunk of the city’s budget for 2024 will be allocated to the police transition, which she is reluctant to do.

“I can tell you the SPS transition will be a real hardship on our budget,” she said.

Farnworth had, in July, used his powers under the Police Act to force Surrey to move ahead with the SPS, offering the city $150 million in funding to help make it happen.

But Locke says this amount doesnt come close to covering the cost of the SPS.

“We are talking a minimum of $460 million,” she said.

Locke claims this survey shows that the vast majority of Surrey residents disapprove of how B.C. has handled the policing transition.

Leger says 505 Surrey residents over 18 years of age contributed to the poll. It states the sampling accuracy was around 4.4 per cent, and the data has been weighted to ensure it reflects the age, gender, ethnicity, mother tongue and geographic population distributions in Surrey according to Statistics Canada’s 2021 Census.

With files from Angela Bower.