Surrey candidates debate building a light rail system
Posted May 8, 2013 1:06 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
SURREY (NEWS1130) – Building a light rail system south of the Fraser was one of the hot topics debated at an all-candidates meeting at Eaglequest Golf Course in Surrey moderated by News1130‘s Bruce Claggett. The event hosted by the Surrey Board of Trade had MLA hopefuls from all four major parties taking part. When it comes to transportation candidates agree a light rail project is needed, but disagree on how to fund it.
NDP candidate Harry Bains says some of the carbon tax money can be used but first there needs to be a change in transportation governance. “In the last 12 years what we’ve seen is chaotic, confused leadership from Victoria that gave us a decision making process at TransLink that is dysfunctional, undemocratic, and there’s no transparency, so what we need to do is bring those people who make those land use decisions to the table, mayors, councillors, so that we change the governance.”
Liberal candidate Peter Fassbender who feels strongly in favour of light rail says the province isn’t completely to blame for the current challenges. “Where I disagree with my colleague over here is that mayors have had some responsibility in the ‘dysfunctionality’ that we’ve been dealing with.”
During the debate, Liberal candidate Amrik Virk took a jab at the NDP claiming the party in the past hasn’t been supportive of transportation improvements. “Sometimes transportation and NDP cannot be used in the same sentence…you look at Surrey and look at the new bridge, highway 1, highway 10, 176, the south perimeter ring road, you probably don’t know this but the NDP voted against every one of those new projects in the budget.”
In defense, NDP candidate Jagrup Brar says Virk’s accusation is false. “If there is one thing we can offer to you, is honesty. What we’ve heard from the liberal party in the last 28 days, only two things, negative attacks, and misinformation to the people of British Columbia.”
Other issues discussed included saving the struggling BC Film industry, cracking down on grow-ops and the economy.
