Surrey City Centre’s rematch. Amna Shah or Zeeshan Wahla on public safety and the cost of living, two years after 232 votes split them.

“I tried my level best to save his life.” Zeeshan Wahla said those words to Global News on 6 August 2024, four days after the worst afternoon of his first campaign.¹

On 2 August 2024, Zeeshan Wahla was campaigning near Surrey Central Station. He stepped into a currency exchange in Whalley to meet its owner, who asked him to wait while he dealt with a client in the back room. Thirty or forty seconds later the owner came out on fire. A man had doused him in accelerant and set him alight.¹

Wahla ran after him into the street, grabbed a blanket from a homeless man outside, and with a woman who was passing tried to smother the flames. He stayed with the owner until the paramedics came.¹

Wahla was the Conservative Party of BC candidate in Surrey City Centre that year. He lost to Amna Shah of the BC NDP by 232 votes.² Now he is running against her again.

Zeeshan Wahla

Conservative Party of BC candidate, Surrey City Centre

Surrey

Arrived in British Columbia in 2007 and has lived in Surrey since

Work

Professional engineer, registered in four provinces; runs his own engineering consulting firm

Family

Raising four daughters in Surrey with his wife; his mother lives with them

2024

Lost Surrey City Centre to Amna Shah by 232 votes

Portrait: Conservative Party of BC³

Both have now spent years in this riding’s politics, and both have said in their own words what they want for it. Here is where they stand, side by side.

Zeeshan WahlaConservative candidate

Amna ShahBC NDP, incumbent

Record

Professional engineer registered in four provinces; runs his own consulting firm; in Surrey since 2007; Conservative candidate here in 2024.³

MLA since 2024; Parliamentary Secretary for Mental Health and Addictions and for Anti-Racism Initiatives; Deputy Government Whip. In her words, “the first Muslim woman elected to the B.C. Legislature.”⁴⁵

Health care

Named the “Healthcare system” his first priority in 2024.⁶

Named “Hiring more nurses and doctors at Surrey Memorial Hospital” among her top priorities in 2024; her government announced a $33 million package for the hospital in September.⁶⁷

Cost of living

“How are families supposed to keep up when everything else is going up too?”⁸

“People in our community are having a tough time making ends meet.” Her top priority in 2024: “Delivering more middle-class homes.”⁶

Safety

Listed “Drugs/crime” among his priorities in 2024.⁶

Spoke for Bill 13, “an absolutely essential tool to protect places of worship across our province.”⁹

01 Amna Shah has been the government’s Parliamentary Secretary for Mental Health and Addictions, and her government has since dropped its signature drug policy.

Amna Shah was first elected in 2024. In November 2024 Premier David Eby made her Parliamentary Secretary for Mental Health and Addictions, and in July 2025 he added Anti-Racism Initiatives. She is also the government’s deputy whip.⁴

In her first speech to the Legislature, in February 2025, she set out the government’s approach to the drug crisis that runs through the streets of her riding.

The centrepiece of the government’s approach in those years was the decriminalization pilot. Eleven months after her speech, in January 2026, the Province said it would not renew it, and the Health Minister, Josie Osborne, said “the pilot hasn’t delivered the results that we hoped for.”¹⁰ The deaths have not stopped. Surrey recorded 82 drug deaths in the first eight months of this year, more than any B.C. city but Vancouver.¹¹

In our view, a parliamentary secretary for addictions whose city is second in the province for drug deaths owed Whalley more than a list of services from a government that would soon admit its signature experiment had failed. Wahla listed “Drugs/crime” among his four priorities in 2024.⁶

02 Surrey’s extortion count went from 9 in 2024 to 147 this year, and Amna Shah has not raised it in the Legislature.

Surrey Police counted 9 extortions in the city in 2024. In 2025, after a spike that began that June, it counted 133, with 49 shootings tied to them. This year, to 12 October, it has counted 147 reported extortions, 21 shootings and 3 arsons, against 80 victims, 41 of them targeted more than once.¹²

The Legislature keeps an index of everything each member says in the House. Under Amna Shah’s name, for 2025 and 2026, there are entries for Ramadan, Eid, the Whalley Little League and Financial Literacy Day. There is no entry for extortion, for homelessness or for housing.¹³ The closest she came was a statement for National Police Week in May 2025, in which she told the House: “We’re investing $230 million into RCMP hiring across the province.”¹⁴

In our view, a member for the heart of Surrey who spends two years in the House without once raising the crime that has terrorized her city has not been doing the job. Wahla did not need to be briefed on it. He has seen what violence in Whalley looks like at arm’s length, and he said so at the time.

03 Amna Shah promised a new acute care tower at Surrey Memorial. It is still in planning.

In 2024 Shah told the Surrey Now-Leader that her top priorities were middle-class homes, more nurses and doctors at Surrey Memorial Hospital, and more schools.⁶ In her first speech she told the House the government would “build a new acute care tower right in my riding of Surrey City Centre, at Surrey Memorial Hospital.”⁵

Fraser Health’s project page still says that “plans move ahead” for the tower, and that planning will align with its “30 priority actions” for the hospital.¹⁵ What arrived instead, four days before the election was called, was a $33 million package: a front-door triage team that is “expected to be operational by January 2027,” a satellite emergency centre whose construction “will begin within six months,” and a new CT scanner.⁷

In our view, a triage nurse at the door is a patch on an emergency room that needs a building. Wahla’s first priority in 2024 was the health care system.⁶

04 Amna Shah demanded answers from the Conservative leader. She answered none of the people who wrote to her.

On 29 September, Shah told her followers on X that the Conservative leader had dodged a question. One hundred and forty-five people replied to her.¹⁶

Amna Shah@amnashahbc · X · 29 Sep 2026

Lorne Doerkson wants people to trust him. But he refused to answer a basic question: what will he cut?

145 replies · answered by Shah: 0

The post as published, re-set. The highlight is ours.¹⁶

We read every campaign post Shah put up between 22 September and 17 October, 57 in all on X, Facebook and Instagram. Her 9 posts on X drew 1,293 replies, and she posted no reply of her own. On Facebook and Instagram we read 222 comments under 43 of her posts and found no reply from her there either. To her credit, she left the reply box open on every post. In our grading of all 41 NDP incumbents on whether they answer the people who write to them, she gets an F.¹⁷

In our view, an MLA who holds the other side to a basic question and then leaves every one of her own constituents’ questions unanswered has told you whom her account is for.

05 Zeeshan Wahla is an engineer and small business owner who says Surrey families cannot keep up.

Wahla came to British Columbia as an immigrant in 2007 and has lived in Surrey ever since. He is a professional engineer, registered in four provinces, and runs his own consulting firm. He and his wife are raising four daughters, and his mother lives with them.³ He says policies that help small and medium-sized businesses grow should come first.⁸ His case on the cost of living starts with a tax bill.

His public record is a short one, and he is not a career politician. What he has shown is that he stays: he ran in 2024, lost by 232 votes, said “I won thousands of people who gave me their vote,” and came back.¹⁸ In our view, that is the right instinct in a riding where the incumbent has been hard to find on the issues that matter most.

06 Surrey City Centre was decided by 232 votes, and 338Canada now rates it a toss-up with Zeeshan Wahla ahead.

On election night in 2024, Shah led Wahla by fewer than 100 votes, close enough for an automatic recount.¹⁸ The final count gave her 6,726 votes to his 6,494. Fewer than half the riding’s registered voters cast a ballot.²

Amna Shah, BC NDPElected

6,726

Zeeshan Wahla, ConservativeSecond, 232 votes behind

6,494

Elections BC, Statement of Votes, 2024 Provincial General Election. Turnout was 44.82%. If 117 of Shah’s voters had chosen Wahla instead, the seat would have changed hands.²

338Canada, which turns the published polls into a projection for every riding, rates Surrey City Centre a toss-up. Its update of 16 October puts the Conservatives at 48% and the BC NDP at 45%, each with a margin of nine points either way.¹⁹

Surrey City Centre, projected vote

338Canada, update of 16 October 2026. Bars show the projection; the thin lines show its margin either way.¹⁹

Zeeshan WahlaConservative

48%

Amna ShahBC NDP

45%

Oliver WildfongOneBC

3%

Raman SharmaCentreBC

3%

0%30%60%

A projection is a forecast, not a result, and the margins overlap. Only Wahla is within reach of Shah. Oliver Wildfong of OneBC and Raman Sharma of CentreBC are each projected at 3%, and there is no BC Green on the ballot this time; the Greens took 877 votes here in 2024.²⁰²

In our view, Zeeshan Wahla is the better choice for Surrey City Centre.

07 Zeeshan Wahla did not wait to be asked in 2024. Whalley should not wait either.

Two years ago, on a campaign walk near Surrey Central Station, Zeeshan Wahla found himself beside a man on fire, and he grabbed the nearest blanket.¹ Since the start of 2025 the city around that corner has counted 280 extortions, and by the Legislature’s own index its MLA has not raised them in the House.¹²¹³

Advance voting runs until 21 October, and Final Voting Day is 24 October.²¹ Last time this seat was settled by 232 votes, with fewer than half the riding voting.

He grabbed the blanket. In our view, Surrey City Centre should give him the seat he came within 232 votes of winning.