Read about Dianne Watts net worth, age, husband, children, height, family, parents, salary, and party as well as other information you need to know.
Introduction
Dianne Watts is a former politician in British Columbia, Canada. She won her first federal election campaign in October 2015 to become a federal Member of Parliament for South Surrey—White Rock. In 2017 she resigned as MP to pursue a failed leadership bid for the BC Liberal provincial party. Previously, Watts served as the mayor of Surrey, the second-largest city in the province from 2005 to 2014. She was elected in 2005 to this office as the city’s first female mayor.
Early life
| Name | Dianne Watts |
| Net Worth | $2 million |
| Occupation | Politician |
| Age | 64 years |
| Height | 1.68m |
Dianne Lynn Watts was born on October 30, 1959 (age 64 years) in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She is a second-generation Canadian with Ukrainian-Yugoslavian roots. She studied at Mount Pleasant Elementary School and Templeton Secondary School in Vancouver’s east side before moving to Kelowna.
Watts is listed in the 1974 Templeton Secondary School Annual on page 48 among 1958-born students as “Dianne Milan”. Dianne Watts worked as a credit manager and a materials consultant for an architecture firm during her 20s and early 30s after her return to Canada. Watts later won a seat on the city council in 1996 with Doug McCallum’s Surrey Electors Team. In 2009, she had three cats and three dogs. She has expressed an interest in Buddhism.
Political career
Dianne Watts served on the Surrey City Council since her election in 1996 before becoming a mayor. She ran as an independent candidate, defeating incumbent Doug McCallum at the polls on November 19, 2005, who had been her political ally as recently as 2003. When she announced her intent to challenge McCallum, she claimed that a “culture of control and conflict has developed at city hall under Doug McCallum” and promised “better co-operation between the city and senior governments to bring more social services into Surrey to deal with homelessness, drug use and crime”.
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Watts’ election affected regional politics as well since she replaced McCallum on the board of the Greater Vancouver Regional District. Watts created a political slate called “Surrey First” for the 2008 municipal elections. The slate was made up of current councilors and aspiring individuals from the community. Surrey First is not an official party and its members are reportedly free to vote their consciences on land development and other contentious issues before City Hall.
On November 15, 2008, Dianne Watts defeated her lone challenger for the mayor’s chair by almost 43,000 votes and all six members of her Surrey First slate—Judy Villeneuve, Tom Gill, Barbara Steele, Linda Hepner, Mary Martin and newcomer Barinder Rasode—won seats on Surrey City Council. She served a term as chair of the Mayor’s Council on Regional Transportation (the board which oversees TransLink). She had also been touted as a possible future Premier of British Columbia. Watts was ultimately selected as “the fourth-best mayor in the world, according to the 2010 World Mayor Prize.”
She was a driving force behind the controversial 2011 Surrey Regional Economic Summit, in which former US presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton were featured, speakers. Amnesty International, the Canadian Centre for International Justice, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Lawyers Against the War all called on Canadian authorities to arrest and prosecute Bush for the use of torture by U.S. forces. Amnesty International stated it had provided the RCMP with more than 4,000 pages of documents alleging that the former US president was engaged in war crimes, and called for his arrest. The human rights group stated that it had submitted a memorandum to Canadian officials outlining why Bush was legally responsible for human rights violations that took place between 2002 and 2009. The summit was also expected to draw protests.
Watts won re-election to a third term as mayor of Surrey on November 19, 2011, with 80% of the vote. Her slate of Surrey First candidates won all seats on the city council, defeating Robert (Bob) Bose, her sole opponent on Surrey City Council. The Royal C anadian Mounted Police in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia will also have their new 76,000 square metre LEED gold-certified headquarters in Surrey Green Timbers Park, near Surrey Central City, by early 2013.
At the April 2014 opening ceremony for the new City Hall in Surrey City Centre (formerly Whalley), Dianne Watts announced that she would not seek re-election as mayor in the November 2014 municipal election. On September 18, 2014, Watts announced that she was running for the Conservative Party of Canada nomination to replace Russ Hiebert who was retiring as federal MP for South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale. As of March 2015, Watts won the party’s nomination by acclamation for the revised constituency of South Surrey—White Rock.
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Dianne Watts won her first federal election campaign on October 19, 2015, and was the only Conservative candidate elected in Surrey’s four ridings in the 2015 federal election. Watts received 44% of ballots, or 24,934 of 56,631, ahead of Liberal candidate Judy Higginbotham who received 41.5% according to unofficial Elections Canada results. She announced on September 24, 2017, her resignation from the House of Commons in order to seek the leadership of the British Columbia Liberal Party. The resignation took effect on September 30. Whilst failing to secure a plurality of votes in any of the rounds, Dianne Watts led the leadership race vote until the fifth ballot when she lost to Andrew Wilkinson.
Husband
Dianne Watts is currently married to her second husband Brian Watts, they had their wedding in 1993. Her husband is a Surrey native and they have two daughters, Elora and Elisha. However, she was a stay-at-home mother with two daughters prior to being a campaign manager for the new provincial MLA and family friend Bonnie McKinnon in 1991. After graduating from Kelowna Secondary School, she married her first husband at the age of 18. After a divorce, she traveled and worked in Australia and other countries in the 1980s before returning to British Columbia sometime in the late 1980s. As of mid-2022, Dianne Watts and her husband Brian Watts are still married.
Dianne Watts net worth
How much is Dianne Watts worth? Dianne Watts net worth is estimated at around $2 million. Her main source of income is from her primary work as a politician. Dianne Watts’s salary per month and other career earnings are over $350,000 dollars annually. Her remarkable achievements have earned her some luxurious lifestyles and some fancy car trips. She is one of the richest and most influential politicians in Canada. Dianne Watts stands at an appealing height of 1.68m and has a good body weight which suits her personality.