Surrey-Serpentine River

Surrey-Serpentine River is a new provincial riding created in the 2024 redistribution from portions of Surrey-Cloverdale, Surrey-Panorama, and Surrey-Fleetwood. It sits between Newton and Cloverdale in south-central Surrey, bisected by the Serpentine River that gives the riding its name. The waterway separates the small West Cloverdale pocket in the southeast corner from the Fleetwood and East Newton neighbourhoods that make up the bulk of the constituency. Agricultural land flanks the river corridor, while residential subdivisions, townhouse complexes, and strip-mall commercial development fill the areas to the north and east.

Candidates

Linda Hepner (Conservative Party) — Hepner spent more than a decade in Surrey municipal politics, serving three terms as a city councillor from 2005 to 2014 before being elected mayor in 2014. She served one term as mayor and chose not to seek re-election in 2018. The Conservative Party of BC announced her nomination in June 2024.

Baltej Singh Dhillon (BC NDP) — Dhillon is a retired RCMP inspector who served nearly 30 years with the national police force before retiring in 2019. In 1990, the federal government changed the RCMP dress code to permit Sikh officers to wear turbans, and Dhillon graduated from training in 1991 as the first Mountie to serve in a turban — a landmark moment for religious accommodation within Canada's national police force. He was decorated throughout his career for his advocacy of diversity within the RCMP.

Jim McMurtry (Independent) — McMurtry is a longtime teacher and former principal who also directed community theatre productions and organized the Cloverdale Terry Fox Run.

Local Issues

The creation of Surrey-Serpentine River as a new riding reflected the rapid population growth that had reshaped Surrey over the preceding decade. The city was on track to surpass Vancouver as British Columbia's largest municipality within a few years, and the neighbourhoods within this constituency — particularly the Fleetwood and East Newton portions — had absorbed significant residential densification. New townhouse and apartment developments filled former agricultural or industrial parcels along 152nd Street and the Highway 10 corridor, but residents argued that infrastructure had not kept pace. Schools were overcrowded, with portable classrooms a persistent feature, and local road networks strained under the weight of commuter traffic.

The policing transition from the RCMP to the Surrey Police Service provided a distinctive backdrop to the campaign. The provincial government had committed $250 million to support the changeover, and the Surrey Police Service had been hiring officers throughout 2023 and 2024, with a target of more than 500 sworn members by the end of 2024. The transition was the largest of its kind in Canadian history, and residents in this riding — which drew territory from areas that had been among the first deployment zones — watched closely to see whether the new municipal force would deliver the visible, community-oriented policing that had been promised. Public safety, including concerns about property crime and the opioid crisis, was a recurring theme at campaign forums.

Health care access remained a frustration for families in the riding. Despite the NDP government's introduction of a new longitudinal payment model for family physicians in late 2022 — which had attracted hundreds of new family doctors across the province over the subsequent two years — many Surrey residents remained without a regular family physician and relied on walk-in clinics or emergency departments for routine care. The Surrey-Langley SkyTrain extension, a project whose cost had ballooned to nearly $6 billion, would bring rapid transit along the Fraser Highway corridor, but the stations were concentrated to the south and east of this riding, and residents questioned when transit investment would reach the Fleetwood and Newton neighbourhoods that made up the bulk of the constituency.