The Saanich Town Hall meeting at the Hellenic Community Centre was really well attended Tuesday night. The more overdevelopments that are now occurring within Saanich are generating a lot of push back and anger towards Saanich Council. You can both hear and feel it.

REALLY GREAT comments and concerns were voiced by a variety of concerned residents, young and old. I was pretty impressed and very glad I went. Everyone who spoke at the meeting had very good and very valid points to bring forward to Council. The concerns were varied but ALL really hit home. 

The general conclusion from the attendees was that Saanich council seems to be completely aligned with the developers. This has been confirmed by their close association with the UDI (Urban Development Institute) and the various development lobby groups that are ever present in all of these Saanich developments.

I am being educated in all of this; I really had no idea. 

I guess this is legal, I’m not entirely sure, but this is most certainly NOT ETHICAL. We elected these people to act unbiased for the best interests of the residents of Saanich. This seems to be NOT the case. 

The other major theme and highlighted by many, was the complete lack of transparency by Saanich on what they are doing. By design or not, the communications out to us residents have been a disaster.  The level of trust we now have in our council seems to have eroded very quickly. 

I will also mention a process called an "AAP" on my next update in more detail. AAP stands for “Alternate Approval Process”. Saanich is silently attempting to borrow 150 million dollars for a Saanich Operations Centre. Most everyone I know, me included, haven’t a clue about this! Do you? We are purposely being removed from this process! That is simply NOT right.

If you DO NOT make your voice known before the deadline of June 25, 2025, this will HAPPEN by default. 10 % or more electors are needed to oppose the borrowing of this $150,000,000.00 (that is 8735 responses in opposition). Contact Saanich immediately! I will get some direction as soon as I can, but I believe you need to actually go to Saanich and get a hardcopy form. Apparently they only allow 5 per person. How is that for democracy! Wow, right?

What will be the tax increase on this alone? This is removing all the other development costs where we are on the hook for all the infrastructure upgrades. 

But back to the meeting, where these developments were all a hot topic, including:

The ‘QMP” (Quadra, McKenzie Project);

The Mann Avenue bike lanes;

The proposed sale of the Saanich owned property south of the Fireside Grill;

The future development plans on the Saanich owned Panama Flats; 

The two developments along Normandy;

A Cadboro Bay development;

The development along Wesley Road creating eight units for a projected sale price of 1.7 million dollars a unit, all within a RESIDENTIAL neighborhood.

All of these developments have either been approved and built (Mann Ave) or are attempting to be approved with little or no community consultation. 

A women brought her densification and “housing affordability” experience over from Dublin, Ireland, where they tried this to disastrous results. There are so MANY other examples where this has simply NOT worked. There are countless examples from around North America and the world, yet Saanich doesn’t seem to want to listen.

One woman asked the Council to really think about what Saanich is in their minds and compare that to what is actually happening. They simply do not align to our neighborhoods. 

She also wanted them to begin to substitute the word “change” to “improve” (sorry I think I have it mostly right here), in order to get a better understanding of what they are unleashing on our community, just so the developers can maximize their profits. Change isn’t required, but improvements are! If the change isn’t improving OUR community, then what is the point? The only answer is to serve the NDP’s top-down agenda which obviously includes developer profits. It certainly does nothing to improve our community or quality of life, and certainly is NO solution to affordable housing! That has been proven.

The general consensus was that Saanich is allowing the developers to completely run amuck and do what they want. The council no longer works for us their constituents, but for the developers, and that is really too bad. 

Only Councilor Nathalie Chambers is NOT associated with any development association or lobby group. She actually publicly stated this at the meeting on Tuesday. She was the ONLY one to state this. Thank you, Nathalie!

I think when the Aragon development is finally submitted to Saanich, this is going to be the gasoline on the fire, I really do.

Thanks again to everyone, we are not giving up!

Best,

Dan Horth