Tako Van Popta has represented the Langley area as a Conservative since 2019. He was first elected for Langley Aldergrove, re-elected in 2021, and re-elected in 2025 in the redistributed riding of Langley—Township—Fraser Heights.
Van Popta earned his undergraduate degree at Trinity Western University and his law degree at UBC, then spent more than 30 years as a lawyer at McQuarrie Hunter LLP in Surrey, rising from articling student to managing partner and helping build it into one of the largest law firms south of the Fraser River. He served as a director of the Surrey Board of Trade and the Downtown Surrey Business Improvement Association.
His community record includes two terms on the Langley Memorial Hospital Board from 1990 to 1998 and more than a decade volunteering with the Elim Housing Society, a seniors' aging-in-place campus with locations in Surrey and Chilliwack. Van Popta has spoken in the House about his Dutch heritage, noting his parents were among the Dutch immigrants who came to Canada after the Second World War. That legal and community background is what he brought to his committee work on justice, public safety and the rules of the House itself.
His committee work tells you where his interests lie. He served on the Public Safety and National Security committee from 2020 to 2022, then on the Justice and Human Rights committee from 2022 to 2025. Since 2025 he has sat on the Procedure and House Affairs committee, which handles the rules of the House itself, and he previously sat on the special committee on the COVID-19 pandemic. Justice, public safety and how Parliament itself works, the machinery behind the headlines. He is also active in parliamentary associations, including the Canada-Israel Interparliamentary Group and the Canada-United States Inter-Parliamentary Group.
Fraser Heights sits right on Surrey's edge, and many of the issues crossing his desk, from public safety to growth pressures, are the same ones Surrey families talk about at the dinner table.
One note to avoid confusion: he is the federal Conservative MP, a different person from Misty Van Popta, the provincial Conservative MLA for Langley Walnut Grove.
This profile is part of Apna News' Candidates series, introducing the people who represent Surrey and its neighbouring communities. Apna News is Surrey's new multilingual news platform. If you spot something to correct or add, reach us at info@apnanews.ca.
Official links: Parliament profile) | Roles and committees/roles)
