Petition:  We the signed, call upon the District of Saanich to immediately implement a mandatory lobbyist registry for the district, so that the most basic level of transparency around lobbying at the local government level can be achieved in the municipality.


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Note: This petition is for residents of Saanich BC, only.  As this is a local petition only, please do not donate any money to this petition, but please share widely among residents of Saanich.

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Background:  Saanich's current Mayor Dean Murdock ran his 2022 election campaign with a platform introduced toward the end of it, of implementing a lobbyist registry for the District of Saanich.

After being called upon by the public to live up to his campaign promise, instead, Councillor Chambers put forth a notice of motion in March of 2023 for the implementation of a lobbyist registry in Saanich.

Unfortunately, the majority of Saanich council voted against Chambers' motion to create a lobbyist registry, with Coun. Colin Plant justifying his vote based on that the public had not shown particular interest in the matter.

This was particularly ironic, as only two weeks previous to the vote on the lobbyist registry, Saanich Council had unanimously voted on a motion created by Plant to have Saanich discontinue its paid membership of the UDI development lobby, after numerous members of the public had recently voiced serious discomfort about what they perceived as conflict of interest concerns, which was something cited that night during deliberations as a concern worth withdrawing over.

In late March, Chambers' motion for the District of Saanich to implement a lobbyist registry was voted down by the Majority of Council.

Councillors Chambers, Bondaroff, Brownoff and Mayor Mudock voted in favour of the motion.  

Councillors Mena Westhaver, Susan Brice, Karen Harper, Zac De Vries, and Colin Plant voted against implementing a lobbyist registry.

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Yet, many would consider that a lobbyist registry for Saanich is more important than ever.

Saanich continues to have backroom meetings that the general public are forbidden from attending, between Saanich district staff and the Urban Development Institute (UDI)'s municipal liaison committee.  The UDI is a Provincially registered lobbying organization, but it does not register lobbying activity on the local government level in the Greater Victoria area including Saanich.

If local governments cannot identify whether or not, or with whom they are dealing with are lobbyists; through a local government registry, then they are unable to be properly informed about whether by dealing with them they are engaging in conflict of interest.  The UDI despite being a registered lobbying organization on the Provincial level, is perhaps the most common stakeholder on Saanich's policies and simultaneously plays a role helping all levels of government generate and implement policies which often just so happen to accord with the lobby's agenda.

The District of Saanich still offers Councillors up to $500 a year of taxpayer funds to be educated at the lobbying organization, if they so choose, and staff have also been allowed to use public funds to attend events from the lobbying organization.

A recent Freedom of Information request revealed that in 2022, Saanich district staff had discussed with the UDI lobby's liaison committee, the decoupling of Saanich's Local Area Plans (LAPS) from its Official Community Plan (OCP), despite Council not having offered any direction on it at the time as revealed by the minutes of the meeting (created by the UDI, not by Saanich).

Saanich and a lobbying organization for development and real estate discussed decoupling the Local Area Plans from the Official Community Plan in the spring of 2022 – CRD Watch Homepage

The decoupling, as discussed, took place 2 years later on May 7, 2024, in which a new OCP was approved by the majority of Council over a year and a half prior to it being due by the Province.  Simultaneously, the Local Area Plans were removed from the OCP Bylaw, thus rendering them legally non-binding and thus effectively disabling them.  What the lobby and staff had discussed 2 years earlier, behind closed doors had come to fruition.

The same day the Local Area Plans were decoupled from the OCP, Saanich's Mayor who had previously promoted the decoupling, was a featured speaker at a UDI lobby event at the Union Club titled: “Pathways to Progress: Uniting Land Use and Transit Strategies for Sustainable Growth”

Several months later, on Sept. 23, the majority of Saanich council voted to eliminate open forum, thus ending the last opportunity the public had to address council publicly on the record on a broad (rather than limited) range of topics at city hall.

Couns. Chambers, Bondaroff, and Westhaver voted to preserve open forum. Couns. Brownoff, Plant, Harper, De Vries, and Brice voted to eliminate open forum.

Not one member of the public had spoken, nor written in favour of eliminating open forum. On the contrary, numerous members of the public had previously spoken and written in favour of preserving it. At the previous council meeting (Sept. 9), many members of the public were made to wait until 10 p.m. before they were able to speak in favour of preserving open forum.

Soon after, during the same "special council meeting", all but one councillor chose to continue allowing the unrecorded, unminuted, backroom meetings (that the public cannot attend) between Saanich and the UDI, a registered organization on the BC Lobbyists Registry that offers representation and political influence to its paying member companies that profit from development and real estate.

Coun. Chambers had put forth the following motion: "That committee and other meetings that could include staff and/or members of Council with the Urban Development Institute are minuted, recorded and open to the public."

Couns. Brownoff, Westhaver, Plant, Harper, Brice, De Vries, Bondaroff, and Mayor Murdock all failed to provide Chambers with a seconder for the motion, thus immediately ending it in its tracks.

Two weeks prior to the motion, the majority of Port Moody council voted to release details on an unlisted UDI liaison committee. The District of Saanich has not listed on its website the UDI liaison committee that it meets with.

Now Councillor Chambers has brought forth another notice of motion for a Lobbyist Registry, which will be deliberated on close to 2 years after the majority of Council voted against the last one.

In a democracy the people are supposed to be in charge by definition of the word.  While public input on decision-making has been drastically curtailed, including most public hearings eliminated by the Province, at the behest of the UDI's lobbying efforts, hidden lobbying continues to place in the background at the local government level.  What transparency and accountability is there in regard to elected officials' decision-making in this atmosphere?

A newsletter from the UDI (Saanich receives such newsletters) showed that the lobbying organization was looking for local government officials to aid them in their advocacy work by contacting the UDI: "If you are working in a municipality listed here and would like to be involved in our advocacy work".

The BC Lobbyists Registry entry for the UDI, has revealed the UDI filing lobbying registrations under the description of "advocacy".

Conclusion:

With public input opportunities over decision-making, drastically curtailed over the last few years and the Local Area Plans rendered legally non-binding; and with backroom meetings between the district and lobbyists continuing unabated and unlisted, the District of Saanich appears to be in more need of a lobbyist registry than ever before. 




See also:

Petition · That the Province of BC define the word lobby as a noun in the Lobbyists Transparency Act - Canada · Change.org

References:

Saanich scraps concept of registry for people lobbying council, staff - Saanich News 

Saanich nixes idea of lobbyist registry - Victoria Times Colonist

LETTER: Council shows lack of consistency - Saanich News

https://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/comment-saanich-needs-a-lobbyist-registry-6817354

LETTER: Local governments should distance themselves from lobbyists - Saanich News

The Strange Case of How a Municipality in BC Became a Development and Real Estate Lobby Member Without Informing Mayor and Council and How a Local Government in BC Joining the Development and Real Estate Lobby as a Paying Member Without a Vote from Elected Officials Turned Out to Not be an Unusual Practice After All… Part I. 

The Mystery of Sooke’s Transitory UDI Communications Continues – Reveals Failure of the BC Freedom of Information System to Provide Transparency Around Lobbying – CRD Watch Homepage

UDI (registered lobbying organization) Newsletter from March 2023 Advertised “connecting with the University of Victoria Real Estate Club for your next public hearing” – CRD Watch Homepage

LETTER: Saanich council limits public input - Saanich News

https://www.lobbyistsregistrar.bc.ca/app/secure/orl/lrs/do/clntSmmry?clientOrgCorpNumber=3004&sMdKy=1735249621015

Saanich bails on membership in developers’ organization - Victoria Times Colonist

Saanich and a lobbying organization for development and real estate discussed decoupling the Local Area Plans from the Official Community Plan in the spring of 2022 – CRD Watch Homepage

Port Moody to release details on unlisted development committee – Tri-Cities Dispatch

Microsoft Word - 2023-03-13-nom-lobbyist-registry.docx