Doug McCallum sets his sights on building a new hospital in Surrey
Earlier this morning, Surrey mayoral candidate Doug McCallum claimed that he was making an announcement that would “change the direction of the Surrey municipal election.”
He announced that if he is elected as Surrey’s mayor, he would build a new full-service hospital for Surrey on City-owned land at 6965 King George Boulevard in Newton.
Surrey purchased this land in Oct. 2020.
McCallum’s party, the Safe Surrey Coalition, said in a press release that they will fast-track the application and issue all City permits within 60 days, then go to both the provincial and federal governments for construction funding.
“The disparity Surrey lives with is not a matter of opinion; it is arithmetic. Vancouver and Surrey have roughly the same population, about 730,000 people each. Vancouver has six hospitals. Surrey has one,” reads the press release.
“Same population, six hospitals there, one hospital here. How is that fair to Surrey?” said McCallum in the release. “Vancouver has a general hospital, a children’s hospital, a women’s hospital, a trauma centre, specialty care for everything.”
The release noted that Fraser Health, the health authority that Surrey falls under, does not have a pediatric intensive care unit, and that between 900 and 1,000 critically ill children are transferred from Surrey to the BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver every year.
It also added that Surrey’s current hospital, Surrey Memorial, treats 50,000 children a year, even though its pediatric emergency department is designed to treat 20,000 a year. It also delivers 6,000 babies a year, with a capacity for 5,000.
“Surrey has been treated as a second-class city for as long as I can remember, and we are done accepting it,” McCallum said, adding that it is on the trajectory to become B.C.’s most populated city.
McCallum said that the Surrey General Hospital would be a full-service acute care facility, with an emergency department, acute care and inpatient beds, operating rooms, intensive care, maternity and newborn care, diagnostics and imaging, and dedicated pediatric care.
The City of Surrey has already stepped into healthcare
Earlier this year, the City of Surrey confirmed locations and lease agreements with two new community medical clinics, which are expected to open this fall.
While the City will not be involved in medical decision-making, this is a step outside municipal government’s responsibility, as healthcare typically falls under the provincial government’s jurisdiction.
“These first two clinics are a concrete step toward making sure more Surrey residents can see a family doctor when they need one,” said Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke at the time of the announcement in March 2026.
The provincial government is also currently in the process of building Surrey’s second hospital — the new Cloverdale hospital — at a cost of $2.9 billion. When it opens in 2030, it will have 168 beds, including medical/surgical beds, high acuity beds and medical oncology beds, and an emergency department with 55 treatment spaces. There will be surgical units, outpatient clinics, and a BC Cancer Centre facility.
There are also longer-term plans to build another acute care tower at Surrey Memorial Hospital.
Alongside Doug McCallum (who was previously Surrey’s mayor before he was defeated by Locke in 2022), Brenda Locke, Linda Annis, and Mike Starchuk are some of the major contenders for mayor.
Voting day is on Oct. 17.
With files from Kenneth Chan