South Surrey: Former Conservative cabinet minister heading back to Ottawa
Credit to Author: Douglas Todd| Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2019 04:57:04 +0000
Former Conservative cabinet minister Kerry-Lynne Findlay appears set to return to Ottawa after her second attempt to defeat Liberal rival Gordie Hogg in the riding of South Surrey-White Rock.
An ethnically mixed crowd of about 120 supporters at the Townhall Public House cheered when Findlay showed up Monday night. She had garnered 42 per cent of the vote compared to 38 per cent for Hogg. She will join a strengthened Conservative Opposition.
“I’m going to make sure a West Coast perspective is well heard (in Ottawa),” Findlay said, adding she had already talked with Hogg and thanked him for his years of service. “No doubt, I will ask him for advice from time to time. That’s the sign of a great community.”
This year, the riding of South Surrey-White Rock played host to the second electoral contest in less than two years between Findlay and Hogg, a former White Rock mayor who served for 20 years as a B.C. Liberal MLA and most recently as the federal riding’s Liberal MP.
South Surrey-White Rock was the only riding in the large city of Surrey that was won by the Conservatives in the 2015 general election — when former Surrey mayor Dianne Watts snagged it by a slim majority.
Gordon Hogg, Liberal Candidate For South Surrey–White Rock.
But when Watts resigned her seat to run for leadership of the B.C. Liberal Party (coming in second to Andrew Wilkinson), Hogg took South Surrey-White Rock in a 2017 by-election for the federal Liberals, obtaining 48 per cent of the vote and defeating Findlay by a narrow margin.
The riding of South Surrey-White Rock, created a few years before the 2015 election, stretches south from 56th Avenue to the U.S. border and contains about 80,000 eligible voters.
In contrast to the adjacent federal riding of Surrey Newton, which has a population that is predominantly South Asian in origin, 68 per cent of the residents of South Surrey-White Rock have European roots, 13 per cent are ethnic Chinese, and nine per cent are South Asian.
A veteran lawyer, Findlay was minister of national revenue for two years in the government of Stephen Harper. From 2011 to 2015, she was also the Conservative MP for the former riding of Delta-Richmond East, which was re-drawn. She is a past-president of the B.C. branch of the Canadian Bar Association.
Conservative leader Andrew Scheer visited South Surrey-White Rock during the campaign.