Surrey mayor spurns former allies, chooses remaining supporters for police committee

The mayor of Surrey has announced his picks for an advisory committee overseeing the city's transition to a municipal policeforce, spurning a number of councillors who quit his election-era coalition to favourhis remaining supporters on council.

Doug McCallumnamed himself and the last fourSafe Surrey councillors Doug Elford, Laurie Guerra, MandeepNagra and Allison Patton to the new, interim Surrey Police Transition Advisory Committee during the city's routinecouncil meeting Monday night.

The advisory committeereplaces the city's previous safety committee as council works to establish an independent Surrey police force inthe next two years.

Excluded from the new committee, despite having had a place on the old one,are councillors Linda Annis, Brenda Locke, Jack Hundial and Steven Pettigrew.

Ex-Safe Surrey councillors Locke, Hundial and Pettigrew now sit as independents after they quitMcCallum'sSafe Surrey coalition within months of each other this year. Anniswas never part ofthe alliance, having been electedas the lone Surrey First councillor in October.

On Tuesday, Guerra said she and her fellow Safe Surrey councillors are the ones who have stayed trueto the policing promise and platform they were elected upon. Establishing a city police force was a key campaign promise for the Safe Surrey Coalition.

"They [Annis, Locke, Hundial andPettigrew] have flipped and flopped quite a bit ... it's confusing and disappointed to see people waver back and forth," said Guerra. "The rationale behind why [the three left Safe Surrey] doesn't make any sense to me."

Hundial, a former RCMP officer with 25 years' experience in policing, announced his departure fromthe mayor's alliance last Thursday. The councillorsaid he had spent just 30 minutes talking police work with McCallum in the nine months since election night, despite hisexpertise.

Locke said she was quitting the alliance on June 27 because it was dysfunctional under McCallum's stewardship, particularly when it came to working together on the policing file.

Pettigrewleft the mayor's team at the end of May. He also citedinfighting over law enforcement.

The city is working to establish its own, municipal police force to replace the existing RCMP by April 1, 2021. The city released its plans for the transition on June 3.

McCallum responded to the councillors' partyresignations by saying the majority of "solid and strongly united" council agrees with his approach to fulfilling campaign promises, saying the coalition is "even more focus and energized."