South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale

Bounded by the United States border to the south and Semiahmoo Bay to the west, this riding took in the small seaside City of White Rock, the fast-growing South Surrey neighbourhoods above it, and the older town centre and farmland of Cloverdale to the northeast. Its Surrey portion ran north from the border to the Serpentine River and east along 72nd Avenue and the Fraser Highway; the Semiahmoo First Nation reserve lay inside it. Some 112,000 people lived in 153 square kilometres.

Candidates

Russ Hiebert (Conservative) — Born in Steinbach, Manitoba in 1969, Hiebert took an arts degree at Biola University and then both an MBA and a law degree at the University of British Columbia. He worked as a political assistant in Ottawa and at the Canadian embassy in Washington and practised law before entering the Commons. He narrowly won the Conservative nomination in 2004 over Val Meredith, the sitting member for the predecessor riding, and took the new seat that year. He was parliamentary secretary to the defence minister from February 2006 and, from October 2007, to the minister responsible for intergovernmental affairs and Western Economic Diversification.

Judy Higginbotham (Liberal) — Higginbotham had sat on Surrey city council since 1983, a quarter-century of municipal service that gave her the broadest name recognition of anyone in the field. A former teacher and broadcaster, she had already run against Hiebert once, in 2004.

Peter Prontzos (NDP) — A White Rock resident, Prontzos taught political science at Langara College and wrote frequently on foreign and social policy.

David Blair (Green Party) — A manager living in Surrey, Blair campaigned on growth management and farmland preservation in a rapidly developing corner of the Lower Mainland.

Brian Marlatt stood for the Progressive Canadian Party, as he had in 2006.

About the Riding

Three communities with little in common shared the constituency. White Rock was a municipality of about 19,000 stacked on a hillside above a long pier and a sand beach, its economy small retail, restaurants and health services, its median age well above the regional figure. South Surrey, immediately inland, was a large-lot suburb filling in with new subdivisions, golf courses and shopping centres aimed at professionals and retirees. Cloverdale kept its own identity around a heritage main street, the fairgrounds that hosted the rodeo each May, and the Agricultural Land Reserve fields on every side of it.

The border was the riding's defining federal fact. The Douglas crossing at the Peace Arch was the busiest passenger crossing in British Columbia and the third busiest on the Canada–United States line, with truck traffic running through Pacific Highway at 176th Street. Cross-border shopping, commuting and tourism were woven into the local economy, and new American documentation rules for land travellers, due the following June, worried merchants along Highway 99, as did staffing and wait times at the booths. The Semiahmoo reserve sat directly against the border on the bay.

Growth supplied the other running argument. Surrey was adding residents faster than almost any city in Canada, and expansion of the Campbell Heights industrial lands, the future of farmland in the Serpentine and Nicomekl valleys, and highway capacity north to Vancouver were all contested locally. Comparatively affluent, comparatively old and heavily owner-occupied, the riding had been ground for the political right since its creation for the 2004 election. Property values, taxation, pensions and crime in the wider Surrey area were the themes Conservative canvassers returned to, while the opposition pressed on health care waits and the market collapse that dominated the final fortnight.