Surrey’s mayor: City needs a healthcare administrator
Posted May 1, 2025 6:47 pm.
Brenda Locke, Surrey’s mayor, is proposing that the city hire a healthcare administrator.
Locke says this is necessary to address what she is calling inequities in the city’s healthcare system. Compared to the healthcare situation in neighboring Vancouver, the mayor says there are major discrepancies.
“People are very aware of the fact that we are underserved in the city of Surrey,” Locke said.
“And they are angry about it. It does not escape anybody; everybody is touched in some way by healthcare.”
Mayor Locke says the numbers speak for themselves: “Surrey has less than half the hospital beds available in Vancouver, just 16 beds compared to 252 in Vancouver.”
According to the mayor’s office, ER doctors in Surrey can spend 16 minutes with every patient they see on average — compared to about three times that care in Vancouver.
The discrepancies are in spite of the populations of the two cities being very close. According to BC Stats, the population size of Surrey in 2024 was above 682,000, while Vancouver’s population is estimated at 737,216.
Surrey is expected to overtake Vancouver as the most populous city in the province in a matter of years. In 2029, Surrey’s population is projected to exceed Vancouver’s, with estimates showing 785,619 residents in Surrey compared to 780,075 in Vancouver.
