By what measure is Surrey Canada’s “largest” municipality? Area? Population?
Maybe it’s a typo?
his statistics are out for sure…but surrey… definitely produces more demand on emergency services per capita then anywhere in the country. Anyone who has worked there will tell you what a war zone it is.
is the station capable of handling a hazmat incident…a meth lab goes up …a chemical spill?
The city probably wouldn’t care about anything big until it actually happens, and end up being stuck with not enough capable people to do anything about it. Then, there will be bitching, and something MIGHT be done about it… but usually nothing gets done until something bad happens first.
Well that’s the tactics of all Government organizations and unless you want to pay 10 times the taxes you do today to live here it’s what we have to live with. It would be great to have an answer for every threat, a plan for every problem. It just doesn’t work that way though. We only have a limited amount of money to spend from year to year.
It’s no different than what we all do at home. Do we all have the best protection money can buy at home, or do we do the best we can with the budget we have and hope for the best?
Mike
Yeah I can’t find any actual stats that say Surrey is Canada’s largest municipality. In size as far as geography goes it’s BC’s largest, not sure about those cities around Toronto though you would think that any one of them might be as large and as populated.
Found this about the Fire Department in Surrey
surrey.ca/Inside%20City%20Ha … efault.htm
Found this about it being the fastest growing area
Second largest in population in BC and largest in actual sq miles, I found
gvrd.bc.ca/growth/keyfacts/m … lities.htm
www2.jurock.com/areainfo/surrey.asp
So perhaps that is what the Mayor meant in his comments.
Probably meant the largest (in area, not population) municipality in BC, not Canada.
There are many that are larger – by area and population-- in Canada. (Canada being that mystical * ultramontane* land that a lot of people in this province don’t know exists!)
I agree that all political organizations function in this manner, but, gambling with the lives of the residents of Prince Rupert is not an acceptable option to me. Perhaps we as taxpayers should be given a voice in this matter. That is, are we willing to pay the taxes to increase the number of our full-time fire fighters? Or maybe city hall could re-distribute the funds in a different way.
We do have a voice in this matter. It comes at election time. To expect that we would get a seperate vote on an issue like this would only spend the very money we are short on to pay for that vote, instead of the services we desperately need.
Referedum’s are not cheap.
Mike
Lets cut the money from the engineering department. We the public hardly makes use of the stuff that they take care of. That way we can keep all the fire fighters. We use them way more.
Streets and sewars and lights and bridges and all that junk are a complete waste of time.
Yes, true enough! 
I’ll be watching what city hall does in the next little while regarding this issue. This will be an election issue for me.