Editor,
Re: 'It's over': B.C. minister says Surrey policing saga ends as court backs transition
We can only hope it’s over. The mayor has already shown a willingness to waste public money for a court case on behalf of the RCMP. Maybe one day we will get answers for this mayor’s obsessively futile commitment to the RCMP. Long after the writing on the wall dried.
By we, I mean not only Surrey residents, but all residents of British Columbia. This drawn-out fiasco has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars of provincial and city money. And the province is promising even more to wrap the ordeal up. Funds and resources that could have gone toward addressing the multiple crises facing the province (housing and homelessness, school programs, health care, overdoses and toxic drugs, youth engagement) and building a foundation for durable community health and safety going forward have been squandered. They can never be recouped.
Enough is enough (it’s already been too much). We can only hope that this fiasco is over, lessons are finally learned, and we can get down to finding real solutions to community health and safety.
Jeff Shantz
Department of Criminology, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey
