OFF THE RAILS
Mayoral candidates flip-flop on LRT vs. SkyTrain, leaving poor Surrey voters to ponder what — and who — to believe
If Bruce Hayne loses his bid to become the next mayor of Surrey, maybe he could land a job with Cirque du Soleil instead.
The way Hayne has twisted himself into a political pretzel with new positions on Surrey’s LRT project, the guy is obviously a natural-born contortionist.
Hayne said this week he would “hit the pause button” on the city’s $1.65-billion, light-rail transit (LRT) project if he becomes mayor.
“There’s an overwhelming number of people in Surrey who have not felt LRT is the technology of choice for them,” he said, adding he now prefers building a SkyTrain line instead.
But this is the same guy who was part of the ruling Surrey First majority at city hall that pushed ahead with the LRT project over community opposition. That included city council’s decision last year to build a three-kilometre road through Hawthorne Park to alleviate traffic congestion during LRT construction.
Hayne, the parks-and-recreation chair at the time, said he was “reluctantly supportive of this process” as council voted to fire-up the chainsaws over howls of protest. Hundreds of trees were cut down to make way for the road, something Hayne’s mayoralty opponents don’t want voters to forget.
“It is the height of hypocrisy by Bruce Hayne when you thrust light rail onto the community with no public consultation, cut down over 200 trees in a park, ignore thousands of protesters and then change your mind just to get elected,” said ex-mayor Doug McCallum, who’s running to get his old job back.
McCallum is also campaigning to scrap the LRT and build SkyTrain. With polls showing voters like the idea, McCallum’s campaign accuses Hayne of copy-catting their platform.
Council candidate Stuart Parker, part of the upstart Proudly Surrey slate, got into a Twitter spat with Hayne over the issue just a couple of weeks ago. When Parker accused Hayne of “misleading voters” on whether it was possible to scrap LRT at such a late stage, Hayne tweeted that only “Phase 2” of the LRT project should be reviewed. “Phase 1 Guildford Newton too far down the road,” Hayne tweeted Sept. 4.
Now that Hayne is saying it’s time to “hit the pause button” instead, Parker blames political ambition. “I think Hayne found taking a fiscally prudent position won him zero votes.”
That leaves Surrey First mayoral candidate Tom Gill as the only front-runner still supporting the LRT project.
But wait! Gill says Hayne and McCallum are both being hypocrites.
“Bruce Hayne supported LRT every step of the way and Doug McCallum endorsed LRT in 2014,” Gill said.
McCallum, who finished second in 2014, campaigned on a promise to leverage LRT funding from the federal government.
“Start to lobby very strongly — every week, every day — the federal government toward getting money toward Surrey’s light rail,” McCallum told Business in Vancouver at the time.
But, now that federal funding is in place, McCallum wants to scrap LRT and build SkyTrain instead.
Around and around they go, leaving poor Surrey voters to ponder what — and who — to believe.