LETTER: Working-class Surrey families deserve recreation access<\/p>\n
Published 9:00 am Sunday, April 19, 2026<\/p>\n
Editor,<\/p>\n
A key problem in Surrey is access to the city\u2019s recreation program.<\/p>\n
The city offers a robust list of activities as part of its recreation programs; however, some of the most popular activities fill up within minutes of the spots opening up. This essentially means that countless families have to go without giving themselves and their kids access to activities such as swimming, skating etc.<\/p>\n
Recreational activities are critical for our physical and mental health, and the city needs to ensure that the number of spots available match the demand for these programs. It is obvious that is not the case currently since demand far outweighs the spots available.<\/p>\n
If a lack of facilities is a hurdle, then the city should build more facilities. If staffing is an issue, then the city should hire more staff. Funding for these things is not an issue, since the City does have the funds for it. The problem is that the funds are directed towards appeasing the city\u2019s rich, and not addressing the needs of the city\u2019s working class.<\/p>\n
This needs to be a key election issue later this year, and as a city council candidate, this is something that I will be fighting for.<\/p>\n
Salman Zafar, Surrey <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LETTER: Working-class Surrey families deserve recreation access Published 9:00 am Sunday, April 19, 2026 Editor, A key problem…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-615042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615042","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=615042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}