SURREY, B.C. – When voters in Surrey-Serpentine River head to the polls on October 24, one name on the ballot will be new to provincial politics but familiar to thousands of patients across the Lower Mainland: Sikander Singh Kang, the BC NDP candidate and a physiotherapist who has established and now manages five physiotherapy clinics in the region.
Kang’s campaign leans hard on his healthcare credentials – and with reason. He holds both a Master’s degree and a bachelor’s degree in Physiotherapy, and years of running clinics have put him face to face with the pressures straining B.C.’s healthcare system: long wait times, staff shortages, and patients who cannot find a family doctor close to home.
“As a physiotherapist, I see how healthcare and support close to home affect people’s lives,” Kang has said, pointing to his experience treating patients and hearing what matters to them. It is the line at the centre of his pitch: healthcare services should be available in the neighbourhoods where people actually live, not a long drive across the city or a wait measured in months.
A campaign graphic from his team puts the promise plainly: “More clinics. More access.” The BC NDP has committed to 20 additional team-based primary care clinics across the province, and Kang is running on bringing that model to Surrey – alongside the party’s plan to recruit more healthcare workers from abroad, freeze ICBC rates, and suspend the provincial fuel tax by 10 cents a litre.
Kang is no newcomer to NDP campaigns in Surrey. An Elections BC filing from the 2024 provincial election identifies him as the financial agent for Jagrup Brar’s successful BC NDP campaign in Surrey-Fleetwood – the behind-the-scenes role responsible for a campaign’s money, its filings, and its compliance with election law. The BC NDP says he has also been active in grassroots party organizing, work that made him a known figure in Surrey’s NDP circles well before his own name ever went on a lawn sign.
That ground-level experience matters in Surrey-Serpentine River, because the riding is one of the truest battlegrounds in British Columbia. In the 2024 election, Conservative Linda Hepner took the seat with 9,782 votes – just 435 ahead of the NDP’s Baltej Singh Dhillon at 9,347. A margin that thin means every door knocked and every vote turned out can decide the outcome, and Kang’s team has been running a visibly active ground campaign, from volunteer canvasses with canvass literature to advance voting reminders pushed across his social media accounts.
This time the Conservative banner is carried by Jessy Sahota, a former police officer, setting up a contest between two community-rooted candidates with very different professional paths: law enforcement on one side, healthcare on the other.
Kang’s campaign is part of a coordinated Surrey NDP push. Late last month, fellow Surrey candidates Garry Begg and Amna Shah opened a joint campaign office in the city, and the party has kept a heavy Surrey presence through the final weeks – a sign of how seriously both sides take the ten Surrey ridings.
Deeply rooted in Surrey, Kang is married and raising two young children – a son and a daughter. His campaign biography describes a family man whose work in clinics and community organizing grew out of the same neighbourhoods he is now asking to represent.
Advance voting in Surrey-Serpentine River runs October 16 to 21, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., at Frost Road Elementary School (8606 162 Street), A.J. McLellan Elementary School (16545 61 Avenue), T.E. Scott Elementary School (7079 148 Street), and the District Electoral Office at 320-15315 66 Avenue. General voting day is Saturday, October 24.
Photo: Sikander Kang campaign (sikanderkang.bcndp.ca)
Sources: sikanderkang.bcndp.ca; BC NDP; Elections BC
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