SURREY, B.C. - Parik Tahlan’s day job is keeping other people safe. The BC NDP candidate in Surrey South is a security professional who helps high-profile people and organizations keep themselves safe, and he is now asking voters to trust him with a seat in the B.C. Legislature.
Tahlan holds a Master’s degree in law, with a specialty in corporate and commercial law, and an MBA in marketing, according to his campaign. Healthcare is personal for him: his campaign biography says he lost his mother to cancer when he was young, and he is a longtime supporter of the Canadian Cancer Society. His campaign has highlighted his work in security and his advocacy around healthcare.
His campaign runs under the slogan “Protecting the things that matter in Surrey South,” tying his professional background to the NDP’s pitch under leader David Eby. The platform he is carrying includes 20 additional team-based primary care clinics across B.C., a freeze on ICBC insurance rates, a suspension of 10 cents a litre of the provincial fuel tax, and a price guard on grocery essentials that would cap corporate retailers’ profit margins on milk, eggs, cheese, butter and poultry.
Tahlan is seeking his first term in the legislature, and Surrey South gives a challenger room to run. The riding has no incumbent on the 2026 ballot: Conservative Brent Chapman won it in 2024 with 13,056 votes (58.8 per cent) over the NDP’s Haroon Ghaffar at 9,136 (41.2 per cent), but Chapman crossed the floor to OneBC in September 2026 and is not running again. The NDP’s task is to close a gap of nearly 4,000 votes in a riding the party lost decisively two years ago, in a city both major parties treat as the battleground of this election.
Tahlan’s path still runs through a five-way field. He faces White Rock mayor Megan Knight for the Conservatives, BC Green candidate Bill McConnell, an unaffiliated candidate, and CentreBC leader Elenore Sturko, who represented this area in the legislature before Chapman and now leads her own party. With the seat open and two former office-holders in the race, Tahlan’s bet is that a security professional’s message about protecting families, healthcare and household budgets can cut through.
Advance voting in Surrey South runs October 16 to 21, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., at Ta’talu Elementary School (all six days), Gracepoint Community Church (October 16 and October 19 to 21), and Pacific Heights Elementary School and Semiahmoo Trail Elementary School (October 17 and 18). The district electoral office is at N116-15850 26 Avenue. General voting day is Saturday, October 24.
Photo: Parik Tahlan campaign (pariktahlan.bcndp.ca)
Sources: pariktahlan.bcndp.ca; BC NDP; Elections BC; StudioX News; Wikipedia (2024 results, Elections BC)
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