{"id":603455,"date":"2026-04-14T13:27:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T13:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/603455\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T13:27:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T13:27:14","slug":"city-of-surrey-taking-metro-vancouver-to-court-over-invest-vancouver-bc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/603455\/","title":{"rendered":"City of Surrey taking Metro Vancouver to court over \u2018Invest Vancouver\u2019 – BC"},"content":{"rendered":"

The City of Surrey is taking Metro Vancouver to court over the creation of an agency called Invest Vancouver.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The goal of the agency, which was launched in 2021, was to attract investment to the region, but Surrey now says that the Regional Board of Metro Vancouver<\/a> exceeded its mandate in setting up the taxpayer-funded organization.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a petition filed in court to say that we are moving forward and we will let the courts decide,\u201d Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke said on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we certainly believe that there were missteps by Metro Vancouver in terms of Invest Vancouver and so that\u2019s why we have to pursue it through the courts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Legal documents filed in B.C. Supreme Court show that Surrey has applied for a judicial review, which claims that Metro Vancouver launched Invest Vancouver\u00a0\u201cwithout passing a necessary establishing bylaw under the Local Government Act. Without that bylaw, the purported establishment of Invest Vancouver is ultra vires and of no effect.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In other words, it is invalid.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSurrey has a real brand and so Invest Surrey is important to us and Invest Vancouver just does not fit,\u201d Locke said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe residents of Surrey do not want to pay for economic development in other communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Metro Vancouver told Global News a bylaw wasn\u2019t needed and that Invest Vancouver was developed through a transparent governance process.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Click<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t2:03
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPricey travel raises questions about Invest Vancouver staff\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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Global News has reported extensively on Invest Vancouver, notably the group\u2019s travel. In 2024, staff took 17 trips, with costs including hotel rooms at up to $1,000 a night.<\/p>\n

Two weeks ago, Invest Vancouver president Jacquie Griffiths posted about a trip to Tokyo on her LinkedIn page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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A New Westminster city councillor and mayoral candidate told Global News he thinks it\u2019s time for Metro Vancouver to shut the agency down, \u201calong with a number of other initiatives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Surrey\u2019s legal filing notes, \u201cThe 2025 budget for Invest Vancouver was $4.75 million\u201d.<\/p>\n

And, \u201cSince 2019, Surrey has contributed a total of over $2.6 million to Invest Vancouver.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would have preferred to do it in a more equitable and reasonable way, but apparently Metro Vancouver didn\u2019t want to do this,\u201d Locke said.<\/p>\n

The provincial government told Global News that it was unaware of the legal action.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The City of Surrey is taking Metro Vancouver to court over the creation of an agency called Invest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[49,48,65672,228190,714,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-603455","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-vancouver","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-metro-vancouver","11":"tag-metro-vancouver-news","12":"tag-politics","13":"tag-vancouver"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}