Surrey city councilors are divided in their support for Mayor Doug McCallum after a screaming mob demanding his resignation interrupted their meeting on Monday.
Citing security concerns, McCallum adjourned the meeting just seven minutes after two advisers asked him to resign and the public backed their request.
While some councilors are urging McCallum to resign until his disciplinary hearing in the fall, others remain in support of the mayor.
McCallum will stand trial on October 31 for alleged public mischief because of a police report he made last September. He accused a member of an advocacy group that opposes the transition of city police to run over his leg with her car in a Save-On-Foods parking lot.
News reports of a recently printed but not a publicly available search warrant a video surveillance claim contradicts some of the mayor’s claims.
The video of Monday’s meeting shows that two minutes after the council meeting, Mr. Brenda Locke asked McCallum to take time off until the court date in light of the documents.
– @JackHundial
Locke will run for mayor against McCallum in the 2022 municipal elections, just over two weeks before the trial against McCallum.
“I’m not going to do that at this point,” McCallum said.
Minutes later, Count. Jack Hundial made a similar request, followed by applause from the audience, to which McCallum again replied that he would not.
Then the people in the audience heard shouting.
After McCallum called for a 48-hour break, councilors were escorted to their cars by the RCMP.
The public session will resume on Wednesday at 7 p.m.
‘tense moment’
“There is complete chaos,” Count. That’s what Linda Anis told CBC.
Anis said the meeting ended because of concerns about the safety of everyone in the room.
“It was a very tense moment in the halls of the Council, we left very quickly.”
Anis said the McCallum scandal recently caught the spotlight on city councils, distracting from other important issues.
She reiterated Locke and Hundial’s calls for the mayor to step down.
“Our only focus in the city right now is the mayor’s bad behavior … he has to step down so we can continue with the business,” Anis said.
“They basically provoked this to happen.”
count. Lori Guerra accused the two councilors of provoking the scandalous scene of Monday’s council meeting.
“They’re basically pushing this to happen. How would people know they’d show up?” Guerra told the CBC.
According to Guerra, many of the people in the audience are from the Keep the RCMP advocacy group in Surrey.
“It’s politically motivated, it comes from some councilors who are fighting against the mayor and they are doing it. They are pushing these people to show up, to be destructive … I find it disgraceful,” Guerra said.
Guerra said his lawyers advised McCallum not to speak on his charges.
“People are innocent until proven guilty.
The situation has prompted calls for a municipal integrity commissioner to have the power to investigate and remove elected officials for wrongdoing. Other provinces, including Ontario and Quebec, already have such a position.
British Columbia Secretary of State Nathan Cullen told The Early Edition that he was ready to work with municipal leaders on the issue at the annual convention of the Union of Municipalities in British Columbia this autumn.
McCallum declined to comment to the CBC on the meeting and calls for his resignation. He must present his address for the state of the city for 2022 on Wednesday morning.
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