Surrey First councillor and candidate for mayor Linda Annis, and Bilal Cheema, Surrey First council candidate and former Surrey Police Service board member, say the deal the provincial government has struck with Brenda Locke over SPS board appointments means Surrey no longer has a functioning police board, and future appointments could be deeply political, rather than community-minded.

“There are now just three sitting members on the eight-person SPS board, and future meetings have been cancelled while the province tries to figure out what to do next,” noted Annis. “This means that in the middle of this extortion crisis we have no functioning police board, and no board to deal with finalizing the 2026 SPS budget, which is critical for public safety in our city. It sends a lot of wrong and concerning signals to our community, to the SPS and to our police officers.”

Annis said she also has serious concerns about Premier David Eby’s decision to give Brenda Locke a virtual veto on board appointments.

“Brenda Locke’s lack of commitment to the entire police transition is evident each and every day to our community,” said Annis. “She was opposed to it, stalled it, tried to starve it financially, took it to court, and now she would like to control the board. Thanks to her, the police transition has cost more and is now into year eight, when it should have been concluded years ago. Instead, we continue to have two police forces, with operational and communications issues that have impacted the extortion crimes and related shootings.”

Cheema, who stepped off the SPS board in December 2025, said the board should be made up of citizens committed to the success of the SPS and the whole idea of a local police department, not one whose head office is three time zones away on the other side of the country.

“Surrey is dealing with organized extortion shootings, increased gang violence and serious public safety threats, and right now we don’t even have a working police board,” said Cheema. “Allowing future appointments to be negotiated behind closed doors with the mayor’s office politicizes policing at the exact moment when independence, experience, and stability are needed most. This puts governance at risk when public safety should be the only priority.”

In the fight against the extortionists, Annis has called for 24/7 real time access to more than 600 city cameras and the addition of 600 police-specific cameras, allowing police to lay charges as they do in most other provinces, deporting non-Canadians charged with extortion and shooting crimes, stricter screening of those applying for extended visas, securing a permanent SPS helicopter, adding 300 new officers over four years, and building a police training centre in Surrey to speed up recruitment.

“It is incredibly disappointing that during this dangerous time in our city that we are forced to deal with an ongoing transition and now a serious board appointment issue, instead of putting all of our attention into solving the crisis by stepping up and giving police and other agencies the people, technology and funding they need to do the job,” explained Annis. “Right now, people in Surrey are shaking their heads because their priority is solving the crisis, not playing politics with public safety.”