Surrey-White Rock

Surrey-White Rock stretches from the suburban streets of south Surrey down to the seaside city of White Rock along Semiahmoo Bay, near the Peace Arch border crossing with Washington State. The riding's population skews older than most of Surrey, with a significant retiree community in White Rock proper and an affluent residential character throughout. Peace Arch Hospital anchors local health care, while the riding's economy draws on cross-border commerce, tourism, retail, and the service sector.

Trevor Halford won the seat for the BC Liberals in a narrow 2020 victory. After the BC Liberals rebranded as BC United in 2023, Halford was set to run under that banner until BC United withdrew from the election in late August 2024. He was subsequently announced as the Conservative candidate on September 3, 2024.

Candidates

Trevor Halford (Conservative Party) — A south Surrey native, Halford was educated at Elgin Park Secondary and Trinity Western University before embarking on a career in government and public affairs. He served as chief of staff for two BC cabinet ministers, worked in Premier Christy Clark's communications office, and later took on the role of director of public affairs at TransCanada Pipelines. First elected to the Legislature in 2020, he held critic portfolios including mental health and addictions, and later transportation, infrastructure, and ICBC.

Darryl Walker (BC NDP) — Walker served as mayor of White Rock from 2018 to 2022 and is the past president of the BC General Employees' Union. As mayor, he led the city through the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and worked with local organizations on addiction and mental health issues. He campaigned on housing affordability and health care access.

Damyn Tassie (Libertarian) also contested the riding.

Local Issues

Peace Arch Hospital continued to be a focal point of the riding's health care concerns. The hospital's multi-phase expansion — which more than doubled the emergency department's treatment capacity from 24 to 50 spaces and added new operating rooms — was completed in early 2022, but residents argued that the facility still strained to meet demand from a rapidly growing south Surrey population. Wait times in the emergency department remained long, and specialist referrals often required travel to larger facilities in Surrey proper or Vancouver. The physician shortage compounded the problem: many residents, particularly seniors in White Rock, struggled to find a family doctor despite the province's recruitment initiatives.

The reopening of the Peace Arch border crossing to non-essential travel in late 2021 — after more than nineteen months of pandemic closure — revived cross-border commerce but also highlighted the riding's economic vulnerability to international disruptions. White Rock's retail and hospitality sectors had been battered by the extended closure, and while the recovery brought shoppers and visitors back to Marine Drive, some businesses had not survived. The broader cost-of-living crisis weighed on residents, with grocery prices, insurance costs, and property taxes all climbing.

The NDP government's housing densification legislation drew pointed debate in a riding with an older, more established residential character. Bill 44's requirement to permit multiplexes in single-family zones was viewed by some residents as an unwelcome imposition on a community where much of the housing stock consisted of detached homes on larger lots. White Rock's municipal council had pushed back on aspects of the provincial mandate, and the tension between the province's affordability-driven housing agenda and local planning autonomy was a recurring campaign theme. Public safety concerns — including visible homelessness and the opioid crisis, which had intensified across the region — also shaped the conversation in a riding where candidates offered sharply different approaches to drug policy and community safety.