Fact Check: Whose Work Was It?

Progress for Langley is campaigning on two ideas it did not come up with. The Township’s own records show who did.

The Claim

Two Progress for Langley posts tell voters a story about who did the work. On September 14, Councillor Tim Baillie wrote that “we made significant improvements to the main RCMP detachment with $4 million of internal security measures as well as a new gym,” and that Progress’s record on public safety “has been unmatched by previous councils.” Back in February, driving past the detachment, he told followers a new gym was his own doing: “It brings back the day I was visiting and asked Inspector Wade if we could find out if we can fill in the space in the second floor. After confirming we could, we funded this and other needed improvements.” On July 30 he called the parking-lot fencing the “last stage of 3 stages to help our RCMP help us stay safe.”

Then Mayor Eric Woodward and council candidate Sarb Rai released a video promising to “expand before and after school recreational programs,” to “make Active Beyond the Bell active before the bell as well,” with “more locations, more spaces, and real coordination with the district.” The video says it can only happen “with a new team on the Board of Education.”

The Verdict

MISLEADING, both times. The RCMP detachment gym, the security fencing, the cameras, the lights and the 15 new officers all trace back to one council motion, and Councillor Barb Martens wrote it and moved it on January 30, 2023. The record is in the Township’s own minutes and on its own YouTube channel. Baillie seconded it. Woodward only put his name on the funding a year later, by which time Martens was no longer on his slate. And the “before and after school” plan is not new, and it is not Progress’s. Woodward’s own 2022 slate promised it, in writing, four years ago, but delivered NO expansion. His council has continued Active Beyond the Bell but has left it at the same seven schools for four straight years while raising the fee. Langley Strong put the expansion in its trustee platform on September 18. Progress copied it days later and called it a reason to elect “a new team.” We checked. Here is what the documents say.

Key Points

Barb Martens moved the January 30, 2023 motion that added 15 RCMP officers and ordered the report on an “expanded and improved fitness facility” and “perimeter fencing, gates, exterior lighting and cameras.” Tim Baillie seconded it. It is item E.8 in the Township’s own agenda.
The Langley Advance Times reported the next week that “Councillor Barb Martens proposed both motions,” the RCMP one and the 10 bylaw officers. Read it here.
The staff report Martens asked for came back on February 12, 2024. Council funded it unanimously: $5.5 million for the gym and security, $2.7 million for fencing and exterior security, $1.2 million for other renewal. Woodward moved it, Rindt seconded. Township minutes.
Martens says the gym idea itself came from the police: retired Inspector Steve Wade and former Langley OIC Superintendent Adrian Marsden, who showed council how poor the conditions were. Baillie’s own February post names Inspector Wade, but implies he took the meeting alone.
Active Beyond the Bell is a Township of Langley Parks and Recreation program. Before the pandemic it ran at 12 schools. Under Woodward’s council it has run at the same seven schools in 2022/23, 2024/25 and 2026/27. No before-school option exists. The fee went from $15.60 to $17.10 a day.
Woodward’s 2022 slate, Contract With Langley, promised in September 2022 to “expand before and after school programming” and “expand these programs to include before school opportunities for students.” Sarb Rai ran on that slate, and in the same survey series she wrote of Active Beyond the Bell: “This a program which I would like to see more of moving forward.” Yet no expansion occurred. Better Langley candidate survey, September 26, 2022 and Q7, TOL programs.
Langley Strong’s trustee platform, released September 18, commits to “build on programs such as Active Beyond the Bell and work with partners to expand” and to “expand School Age Care on school grounds.” Read it here. The Progress video came out days later.

1. The RCMP Detachment: Barb Martens Wrote the Motion

On January 30, 2023, three months into this council’s term, Councillor Barb Martens brought forward item E.8, “15 Additional RCMP Officers 2023 to 2027.” The Township’s meeting record lists the mover as Councillor Martens and the seconder as Councillor Baillie. Part B of her motion directed staff to report back “with options and recommendations for Council to consider for capital improvements to the Langley RCMP Detachment including: a. an expanded and improved fitness facility; b. security upgrades including but not necessarily limited to perimeter fencing, gates, exterior lighting and cameras.” The gym, the fencing, the gates, the lights and the cameras: every piece Baillie now claims is in Martens’ motion, in that order. You can watch her speak to it on the Township’s own YouTube channel.

Martens spent her career as a Vancouver police officer. She told council the detachment’s condition was a health and safety problem, not a perk. When the funding came back a year later, she put it this way to the Langley Advance Times: “A gym in a police facility is not a perk of the job. It’s actually proven heart disease is the number one killer of police officers.”

The same night, item E.6 added 10 bylaw officers. Woodward moved that one and Martens seconded it; she spoke to it as well. The Langley Advance Times reported on February 8, 2023 that “Councillor Barb Martens proposed both motions,” with Woodward co-sponsoring the bylaw one. Baillie’s contribution that night, per the same article, was to call the existing gym “depressing as hell.” He was right about that. The old gym was a small, dark room in the basement with next to no equipment and space for one or two officers at a time. The second-floor fitness centre he now drives past did not exist; it had to be built. He just did not write the motion to build it.

Martens credits the gym idea to the police themselves: retired Inspector Steve Wade and former Langley OIC Superintendent Adrian Marsden, who walked council through the second-floor space and how bad conditions had become. Baillie’s own February 7 post agrees on that much. It names Inspector Wade as the person he asked. The police raised the need; Martens turned it into a motion; council funded it.

2. The Funding Vote: Woodward’s Name on Martens’s Work

The report Martens ordered came back on February 12, 2024, as Report 24-28, “RCMP Main Detachment Project Updates.” Council approved $1.5 million for 2024 and pre-approved $4 million for 2025 “for the design and construction of a new fitness centre and building security system upgrades,” plus $2.7 million for 2025 “for security fencing and exterior security system upgrades” and $1.2 million for 2026 for other renewal. The Township minutes show the mover as Mayor Woodward and the seconder as Councillor Rindt. The vote was unanimous. Martens, by then no longer part of Woodward’s slate, voted yes. So did every Langley Strong councillor.

Watch the February 12, 2024 discussion. Baillie speaks, and so does Martens, who lays out in detail why she asked for the report a year earlier. In February 2024 he was still giving her credit in the council chamber. By February 2026, with an election coming, the story had changed to “I was visiting and asked Inspector Wade.”

A word on Baillie’s numbers. He says $4 million for security “as well as a new gym.” The minutes say $5.5 million for the gym and building security together, $2.7 million more for the fencing and exterior security, and $1.2 million for the rest. That is $9.4 million from the RCMP reserve, all of it flowing from one motion by one councillor who now sits with Langley Strong.

3. Active Beyond the Bell: Woodward’s Own Program, Frozen for Four Years

Active Beyond the Bell is not a school district program. It is run by Township of Langley Parks and Recreation, two hours after dismissal at seven elementary schools: Alex Hope, Dorothy Peacock, James Kennedy, Langley Fundamental, Lynn Fripps, R.C. Garnett and Richard Bulpitt. Township staff run it. Township registration takes the money. The mayor and council set its budget every year.

Before the pandemic, the Township ran it at 12 schools. When it went on hold in 2020, parents started a petition in April 2021 asking mayor and council to bring it back; 448 people signed. It came back at seven schools for 2022/23, the year this council took office. It was seven schools in 2024/25. It is seven schools again for 2026/27. There has never been a before-school session. The only thing that grew was the fee: $15.60 a day in 2022, $17.10 today.

Woodward did not need “a new team on the Board of Education” to add a school or a morning session. He needed to put it in his own budget. He had four budgets to do it and did not. Now, less than three weeks before the vote, the mayor who let the program sit is promising “more locations, more spaces.”

4. His Own Slate Promised This in 2022

In 2022, Woodward’s slate was called Contract With Langley. It ran candidates for council and school board, and three of its trustees were elected. When Better Langley surveyed trustee candidates on September 26, 2022, its candidate Joel Neufeld gave the slate’s answer: “Expand before and after school programming and childcare options by advocating for joint programs with Township & City councils to increase recreational based programs such as Active Beyond the Bell and expand these programs to include before school opportunities for students.” Read the survey. Sarb Rai answered that same survey as a Contract With Langley candidate.

So when Rai replied to a critic this week that if the idea “was formally proposed during the last term, I’d genuinely be interested in seeing when it was brought forward,” the answer is in her own slate’s 2022 survey, and in her own words. Asked that September how programs like Active Beyond the Bell should move forward, Rai wrote: “This a program which I would like to see more of moving forward. Programs like this keeps children active and assists with child care.” It was proposed. She ran on it. She said she wanted more of it. Trustee Charlie Fox, who sits on the board with her, put it plainly in the same thread: the idea came from Trustee Holly Dickinson, and once she was gone from the slate, it was dropped. Dickinson now runs with Langley Strong.

The promise sat untouched for four years while Woodward held the program’s budget and Rai held a board seat. Then Langley Strong published its trustee platform on September 18, with a commitment to “build on programs such as Active Beyond the Bell and work with partners to expand” and to “expand School Age Care on school grounds.” Read it here. Days later, the Progress video appeared, presenting the same idea as its own and telling voters only a new board could deliver it.

The Bottom Line

Tim Baillie is taking credit for a motion Barb Martens wrote, moved and defended, on an issue she spent a career living. Eric Woodward and Sarb Rai are taking credit for an idea their own slate promised in 2022, never delivered, and then lifted from Langley Strong’s platform. In both cases the Township’s own minutes, videos and program letters tell the story, and we have linked every one. Progress for Langley has had four years and full control of Township Hall. What it did not have was these ideas. Bad leaders mislead.