COLUMN: Tight races for Surrey, Delta, White Rock seats<\/p>\n
Published 7:00 am Monday, October 12, 2026<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s municipal elections have been overshadowed by the provincial election, which Premier David Eby decided to call to maximize his own political advantage.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, the elections in Surrey, Delta and White Rock have received a fair bit of attention, and there seems to be plenty of voter interest. Advance voting and requests for mail ballots are indicators of that.<\/p>\n
One thing the premier may not have considered is that he and his government\u2019s policies have become important points in the local campaigns. Not only is he condemned almost universally by municipal candidates for calling the election when he did, but policies on housing, health care, public works projects and transportation are recurring punching bags for local candidates. The lack of mention of needed reform to Metro Vancouver is also striking.<\/p>\n
Many provincial observers state that the 10 Surrey seats are the most important in the province \u2013 largely because of the possibility of many of them going to either the NDP or the Conservatives. This may be over-exaggerated, but Surrey residents will play a key role in determining which party will form government.<\/p>\n
On the Surrey municipal campaign trail,<\/a> it appears that there is a strong three-way and possibly even four-way fight for mayor. The three best-known candidates, incumbent Brenda Locke of Surrey Connect, Doug McCallum of Safe Surrey Coalition and Linda Annis of Surrey First, all have momentum. Mike Starchuk of Imagine Surrey is trying to keep up with them, and Troy Van Vliet of Surrey Now has an undercurrent of support which is hard to measure.<\/p>\n All this means that the winning candidate will likely be elected with less than 30 per cent of the vote, as happened in 2022.<\/p>\n Each candidate for mayor and their respective slates (there are no less than seven of them) has made many promises, largely about future capital projects and putting pressure on the province. One intriguing one which has not showed up in most earlier campaigns involves the ward system which, if implemented, would make it much easier for voters to select candidates, as councillors would be elected in specific areas of the city, rather than city-wide.<\/p>\n