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 II.
The Strange Case of How a Municipality in B.C.
Became a Development and Real Estate Lobby Member
Without Informing Mayor and Council
And How Local Government in B.C.
Joining the Development and Real Estate Lobby
Without a Vote from Elected Officials
Turned Out to Not be an Unusual Practice After All…
Part II.
Four days after the September 12, 2023 View Royal Committee of the Whole, in which a report and presentation on View Royal’s membership was provided, and deliberations took place; an advertisement appeared online. View Royal was looking for a new CAO, as its CAO was now announced to be retiring.[i]
The case of View Royal’s membership with the UDI lobby having been achieved, without a vote by elected officials and without having informed the Mayor and Council of the event, led me to conduct more research into this eye-opening phenomenon.
I contacted other municipalities in the Capital Regional District of Greater Victoria and found through extensive email exchanges and access-to-information, aka ‘freedom of information’ requests, that almost all of them and the regional government the CRD itself, as well, joined the UDI as a paying member without votes from elected officials.
As in the case of View Royal, were the elected officials even informed? The story repeated again and again. Staff had made a small purchase, and yes, the asking price was not high to join the UDI. This amount would fit an allowable purchase, based so they would claim, on the low price; which made me think of an old saying: free cheese is in a trap… How many municipalities across B.C. (ostensibly democratic branches of government), had become paying lobby members without a democratic process to join as members?
What had been so enticing to so many staff and planning departments that they would take such a step? How is the process repeating again and again, sometimes in rapid succession with one municipality joining after another, through staff-only decisions? Are the staffers finding the UDI, or is the UDI contacting the staffers? In the View Royal staff report on their joining the UDI, which was presented well over half a year after the fact (upon the issue coming to light to the elected officials), it said that the UDI had not been recorded lobbying the district.
Politicians will come and go, but many staff will remain for decades and lasting “networking” relationships can be formed in the process. “Networking” opportunities is one of the main draws the UDI uses to promote itself to potential government members. How many liaison committees would be set up between municipal staff and lobbyists and how many went unrecorded, across the province?
I am again reminded of what one of the View Royal Councillors said at the Committee of the Whole: “Easy decision. I promote our staff members to continue to learn and benefit from this long-standing institute who has deep roots in this province, with every major city and town across the province.”
[…]
“If you just look up on the screen there. By your rationale, every single town and city up there is being influenced by the UDI, and should remove themselves immediately.”
Why was the Provincial Government itself, turning a blind eye to this situation, just like they were to the lack of mandatory municipal lobbyist registries? Perhaps the Province was intentionally allowing this situation to thrive? In 2011 and 2017, the Urban Development Institute donated money to the BC NDP political party, including immediately after they were able to form the government in a coalition with the BC Green Party in that latter year.
Breaking the Confidence and Supply Agreement with the BC Green Caucus, the BC NDP threw a snap election and gained an overwhelming majority for themselves in the British Columbia General Elections of 2020. With the coalition out of the way, the NDP were once again in full power, after many years, and had the ability to do what they wanted, probably like never before.
The NDP government made many sweeping changes to local government during this term and came under considerable criticism over its handling of the Royal BC Museum. In June 2022, the Premier of BC John Horgan, announced that he was stepping down from his position over health concerns. Earlier, he had taken full responsibility for the museum issue and backed down on what was projected to have been a billion dollars spent replacing and expanding the facility.
The BC NDP then held a leadership race that led to the appointment of David Eby as head of the party, after the only contender running for the position, Anjali Appadurai, was disqualified by senior figures in the party; something that created considerable controversy at the time. Eby had been the Attorney General/Minister of Housing in the government. In November of 2022 Eby was sworn in as the new Premier.
A year later, as 2023 was winding to a close, and with an election looming on the horizon in 2024, the party could be seen to be, through initiating policy changes through the province; to be taking what many have considered to have been sweeping power grabs from local governments, when it came to local zoning and public participation through Bills 44-7.
UDI board directors over the years, had cumulatively had their names on millions of dollars that were donated to the BC Liberal Party, and a considerable amount, albeit less, to the BC NDP. That these were the two parties forming the government over the previous two decades seems non-coincidental. Most of the money by far had flowed to BC Liberal campaign coffers and the funds in comparison to the BC NDP might have seemed relatively parsimonious, yet still substantial; something that may very well for some, have been a way of hedging bets in a political realm that was bound to shift from one party to another.
The UDI is an organization that is open about that one of its primary functions is to influence politicians and government and that they do. We the public can allow this situation to fester, or we can do something about it and separate once and for all lobby and state. The alternative, which is the status quo, is not democracy.
View Royal Council ‘Unanimously’
Votes to Immediately Terminate its UDI Membership
At the Sept 12, 2023 View Royal Committee of the Whole, a motion had been put forward to withdraw the Township from the UDI. The motion ended up in a series of deliberations that night, ending in a tie and thus fail. Just over 2 months later, the Nov 14 Committee of the Whole, turned out remarkably different. In fact, it took less than 5 minutes this second time around for the council to unanimously determine to immediately terminate the township’s UDI membership.
Why the sudden change in pace? The tied vote on September 12th took place under a false premise. The false premise, which appeared during deliberations that night was that the UDI was not a lobby. This was immediately afterward shown to be incorrect, when the legal lobbyist registrations on the BC Lobbyists Registry from the UDI were shown, thus a second convening on the subject was in order.
On November 14, 2023 a Committee of the Whole was convened at View Royal City Hall. Included in the agenda was: Membership to the Urban Development Institute - Mayor Tobias
The video of the meeting can be viewed here: 2023 11 14 Committee of the Whole Meeting on Vimeo The UDI deliberation can be viewed starting at 3:52:00
This section of the meeting was Chaired by Councillor Mattson, who had been absent in the previous vote on the issue on September 12.
After being introduced to speak on the subject by Chair Mattson, Mayor Tobias spoke:
“Thank you, Councillor Mattson. I had brought this up before and Kim had investigated before he left and was going to bring it back to a council meeting, but overtaken by events, Kim is gone. So, part of this issue was around the town’s sponsorship and Urban Development Institute. Urban Development Institute were giving a presentation. Their E.D. [Executive Director] even got up and said they weren’t a lobby group, but I forwarded Kim the link that indeed were a lobby group. So, some of these things that are their registered lobby trademarks seem familiar.
Here’s some of them:
“Seeking changes to limit municipal public hearings for rezoning applications consistent with Official Community Plans, or Local Plans.
“Seeking changes to the municipal development finance model to remove community amendment contributions expectations from rental housing.”
“Seeking consideration of minimum and height and density targets in the removal of parking minimums in areas well served by transit determined by robust assessments in a program of monitoring.
So we’re paying a membership for the same group, we’re actually involved in writing to an Auditor General of the concerns, so my concern is that part of UDI’s work is to form committees to inform staff about what our policies should be, in accordance with what the UDI has set out for lobby practices and I think as a council we are aware of the effect of legislation now; it would be us caught in the middle of a sandwich, if we’ve got now policy being implicated by the same external group that’s influencing legislation.
I want to make it clear that I really trust our staff. The reason why I’m trusting our staff, instead of hiring a consultant, that’s part of UDI; is that the staff is working in the best interests of the Council and View Royal. So, my concern is that we have a standing membership with UDI right now, that didn’t come to council, and it was a staff decision, and as staff didn’t make that decision for many years. And I realize that there may be some benefits with membership, but I do not think they outweigh some of the complications, that we’re receiving right now.”
Chair Mattson: “So, do you have a motion?”
Mayor Tobias: “Yeah, my motion is that we terminate effective immediately, our membership with the UDI.”
Chair Mattson: “We have a seconder.”
Mayor: “Seconded by Councillor Brown.”
Chair Mattson: “Councillor Brown, do you have anything further to add to the discussion, or should we just have a vote?”
Cllr. Brown: “By definition, they’re a lobby group, so, and we’re trying to look to means to cuts, and I don’t know what we pay, but probably a significant amount of money to cut from our budget. So yeah, I think we should resend it for sure. It’s a lobby group by any, by any definition it's a lobby group.
Chair Mattson: “Anybody wish to speak contrary?
Allison?”
Cllr. MacKenzie: “Just a question I guess for staff: how much are we paying into them, and have we, already, will we be losing out on money, I guess by terminating it immediately?”
Staffer: “Thank you. It’s around 600 or something a year, and the membership becomes due sometime, I believe in January. So, I don’t know if it’s prorated or not, but it wouldn’t be much.”
Chair Mattson: “So, I think we are basically talking to political statement from council by this motion.
So, all those in favour?” [All hands by Cllrs., except by Cllr. Kowalewich go up.]
Chair Mattson: “Opposed?” [No hands are raised.]
Chair Mattson: “Seems to be unanimous. Thank you. And with that, I will,”
Cllr. Kowalewich (interjects): “I, I think I’m abstaining, uh Ron.”
Chair Mattson: “What? Oh, Abstain”.
Cllr. Kowalewich: “Yeah.”
Chair Mattson: “Can’t we abstain, anyone?”
Cllr. Kowalewich: “Another political statement.”
Mayor Tobias: “Yeah you can abstain, but it’s counted basically the same as voting for it. Um, but it, it is a political statement, within a political statement.” [chuckles]
Chair Mattson: “OK.”
Mayor Tobias: “Uh, so thank you.”
Chair Mattson: “So, the motion passes. And we will no longer be, uh, participating.
And with that I will pass the Chair onto Councillor Rogers.”
With that section of the meeting concluded, council had voted ‘unanimously’ (according to procedure) to immediately terminate the Township’s membership with the UDI.
‘Immediately’, should also be put into air quotes, along with ‘unanimously’. Beyond the powerful political statement, there was still nothing immediate about it. The vote by council still required ratification by the same council according to official procedure.
Regardless of how immediate or otherwise, the Township’s voted on withdrawal might be, the UDI couldn’t have missed the impact of what transposed that evening.
Ratification
The motion, in order to be acted upon, still required ratification from council. A week later, at the November 21 View Royal Council Meeting under section 8.2 Committee of the Whole Resolutions, Cllr. MacKenzie asked to modify the motion that the Township of View Royal's UDI membership be terminated immediately, and that it be changed, so that the membership be allowed to expire; which would happen in the next 2 months.[ii]
MacKenzie elaborated on the proposed change in motion with the following words:
"I think that just like having our membership and logo on their sends a message, I think that also immediately terminating it also sends a message, and I think that either way we should also be a bit more neutral in approach and just allow it to expire, especially since we've already paid the fee and might as well just allow it to.”
Cllr. Rogers spoke next, mentioning that when there were concerns in the CRD with a membership in another organization; in that case, it was decided to simply allow the membership to expire.
MacKenzie's new motion was voted on and carried without opposition.
The minutes read: "MOVED BY: Councillor MacKenzie SECONDED: Councillor Rogers C-154-23 THAT the Town not renew its Urban Development Institute membership. CARRIED"
Although, the previous motion with its "political statement" had become watered down, the result of the council discontinuing the Township's UDI membership and thus being the second municipality to do so in the CRD in the same year, was definitely a message understood by the UDI and it was definitely something they did not want to happen.
It took place at a crucial moment in time, when the Provincial Government was pushing through Bills 44-47, ultimately invoking closure to get it passed, and which looked by many to be granting the UDI its Christmas wish-list at the cost of public input at the local government level and at the cost of municipal sovereignty when, it comes to determining zoning.
View Royal had responded to these changes by writing a letter to the BC Auditor General calling for a full audit of Bill 44 and for looking into potential conflicts of interest. They also publicly held what they called their "last public hearing" in protest.
The UDI Pulls Down its Branch Websites
The same day that View Royal Council chose to confirm and thus finalize its discontinuing of its UDI membership; the UDI Capital Region, the UDI Okanagan, and the UDI Pacific Region took their websites down.
The UDI Capital Region website https://udicapitalregion.ca/ was then redirected to https://udi.org/about/capital-region, udiokanagan.ca was redirected to Okanagan | UDI - Urban Development Institute, and the UDI Pacific Region website UDI.bc.ca was redirected to UDI.org: UDI - Urban Development Institute, British Columbia
One result of this abrupt move, was that vast amounts of the original content including pdf documents on the UDI's websites, instead had their web addresses (Urls), redirected to the new website, which thus cut off the original content. The new website contained hardly any information, in comparison to the old website; which some observers considered convenient, given that the UDI were becoming under the public microscope for their role in recent government actions. The UDI appeared to have walled off much of its information from the public and now required a membership password to see more information on their website.
Archived versions of the UDI Capital Region's, UDI Okanagan's and the UDI Pacific Region's former websites can still be accessed through the Archive.org Wayback Machine:
UDI Capital Region – Your voice in the local development industry (archive.org)
Home - Urban Development Institute (archive.org) (UDI Pacific Region)
Home - Urban Development Institute (archive.org) (UDI Okanagan)
However, many of the pdf documents and pages are no longer accessible, as they were not included in Archive.org Waybackmachine snapshots.
The new website UDI.org at the current time of writing (Dec 31, 2023) although lacking a members directory for the public to see, at the same time, still invites "government" to become a member.
I subsequently contacted all the CAOs of remaining UDI member municipalities in the CRD, asking them in the interests of transparency and accountability to inform the public on their websites of their membership status with the organization. As the year 2023 concluded, only one municipality, the Township of Esquimalt had complied. Thus, by the year's end, the remaining municipal members in the CRD and the regional government the CRD itself, could be seen to be hiding from the general public, the fact that they are members of the development and real estate lobby.
A Common Practice in BC?
The Township of View Royal was now scheduled to end its UDI membership in the near future, having been the second municipality in Greater Victoria to do choose to do so, in 2023. View Royal’s episode contained many interesting and intriguing twists and turns, that often consisted of councillors having to piece together the often difficult to discern facts about the organization, and ultimately getting them straight in the end.
These multiple deliberations on the subject at View Royal, partly as a result of official procedure and partly as a result of downright confusion at times, made Saanich’s earlier withdrawal look far more straightforward, and in many ways much less complicated. This isn’t necessarily the case, but from the vantage of the webcasts of the meetings, it can easily have the appearance of being so.
I didn’t write this article simply to take a look at this issue in View Royal, but rather to show the View Royal episode to be a symptom of a much deeper, perhaps even systemic phenomena taking place across much of the CRD and indeed across much of the Province of British Columbia.
I find that the View Royal episode shines a light on a phenomena happening over much of the CRD and across much of Province, and that this episode would come to illustrate well, that what happened in this regard of the Township’s membership join. It is a microcosm of a macrocosm that has and is still taking place in regard to the lobby’s methods of infiltrating both local and regional government systems in B.C. (and likely beyond) through membership joins, and often in other ways as well, including those that go unrecorded e.g. UDI-municipal-liaison committees, which go not only unrecorded, but are out are out of view to the public, as they cannot attend them either, (as far as I’m aware from the District of Saanich’s example). How the public can be denied viewing of such meetings between the lobby and staffers in a supposed democracy, where the public is by definition supposed to be in charge, is a question that I think needs both asking and answering.
As the UDI membership joins are a microcosm of a macrocosm among local governments, so they are also a microcosm of a macrocosm of membership joins in the lobby from an incredibly diverse array of branches of all levels of the Canadian government.
Although technically there only two levels: The federal and the provincial. Among these also include numerous branches, and UDI membership joins are present in both Federal and Provincial Crown Corporations and at least one Statutory Body and at least one Statutory Authority. These two levels, federal and provincial, also include the sub-levels of regional and local governments of which have been discussed.
The UDI seems to target all levels of government in their lobbying efforts, if to gauge from their literature (much of which has recently been taken down from their websites), yet I have only found one level that they are registered on (post-2005), which is the provincial level.
That isn’t to say their lobbying activities aren’t registered elsewhere, I simply haven’t been able to find anywhere else where they are registered.
After doing considerable digging through access-to-information (FOI) requests, and carrying out extensive communications with the municipalities in the CRD that joined the UDI as members, and with the CRD itself; I was able to find many of the dates of membership joins. However, no municipality, other than the municipality of Saanich (which had an open vote several years ago that was published in the paper at the time), found any evidence of votes by elected officials leading to membership joins for their organizations.
This included not only the regional government, the Capital Regional District (CRD), which the UDI Capital Region targets and has a permanent seat on its Regional Housing Advisory Committee (RHAC), but it revealed that the majority of the municipalities in the CRD; had joined the lobby without votes by elected officials.
To say that this is a major issue of democracy, transparency and accountability in Greater Victoria, with one of the hottest and priciest real estate markets in the country and in a province with an economy that has come to rely heavily on the industry, is an understatement to say the least.
Many questions arise about sustainability, the limits of growth and the far-reaching impacts on the environment by the industry in the province. Many questions also arise over the subject of whether or not this this same model is playing out over much of the province. Provincial Bills 44-47 certainly indicate that it is, and in the City/Metro area of Vancouver this is all the more apparent. As an individual I don’t have the time and energy, nor resources to investigate and document what is happening in all these places and beyond as to what has happened with the lobby.
If anything, I do hope that some readers might pick up the torch and do the same for their communities as well, regardless of where they are. The development/real estate lobby has become a global phenomenon and has global implications and consequences.
Before concluding this article, I will mention that I encountered considerable obstacles during the FOI process from numerous municipalities in gaining the information and documentation about municipal membership joins with the lobby, that often made it seem that the FOI process is there to stifle and stymy the general public from learning such information (at one point for example, after essentially asking only two overarching questions: (when did the City join and how did it join?) the City of Victoria FOI office actually replied to me “this office is unable to answer any further questions related to the UDI”, to even hearing from various municipalities how relevant records have likely been destroyed at some point.
The almost invariable response that would eventually come from municipalities would be that at some point in time a staffer (who always seemed to be undetermined and thus anonymous) signed them up.
The most co-operative, forthcoming with information, and helpful municipality by far, after I contacted them on September 19, 2023 to make an FOI for information regarding the municipal membership join, was in the end, the Township of View Royal.
I had asked the precise date and time that View Royal joined the UDI. I asked: whose idea was it, for the municipality to join? Who authorized it, and when? I also asked for any documents and information regarding the district joining the UDI and for any documents showing a signature approving joining the UDI.
All of this I received right down to an invoice and a receipt side by side.
My message for municipalities across the province and beyond? Keep a close eye on what your planning departments, especially their heads and corporate administrators are doing. Who are they meeting with and what are they meeting about? This may be a possibility without functioning lobbyist registries at the local and regional levels. As staff are unelected, they don’t receive the same kind of scrutiny as politicians. What they are doing, they might think are in the public’s interest, but it should be the public in a democracy that decides what is in their interest.
Also keep a close eye on both elected and non-elected officials, who are serving on government committees. Have and are they involved with lobbies and/or work for companies that are members of lobbies?
What happens when politicians and staffers leave office? Are they then hired by lobby member companies? In my municipality Saanich, all three elected officials that left the municipality in 2022 passed through the revolving door and were hired by UDI member companies afterward. One of these companies even had a city councillor from another district working simultaneously as their VP of corporate strategy and another councillor I am aware of from a neighbouring district is working for a UDI member company as we speak as well.
Also please keep an especially close eye on your media. Are they doing their job, or have they too joined the lobby and/or operate more as their public relations outlet, than a genuine outlet carrying out investigations for the sake of the public’s interest? Is their business model reliant on profits from industries, that as a result, they might not be carrying out the most critical coverage on these, when they should be?
Whether or not, the public may or may not think that lobbies are working in their interests and/or the interests of others in British Columbia, in Canada and beyond is not the issue. Bridging what should be the gap between lobby and state in any government calling itself a democracy amounts essentially to the creation of a bridge that being crossed, is I think a traversal far too far for any democracy.
If a lobby comes forth offering gifts in the form of potential benefits, whether in the image of a lobby or in the image of something decidedly different, is it wise to accept them?
Allowing to happen, or allowing to continue to happen, the construction of such a bridge and thus enabling it to be crossed; invites another possibility. At what point does the drawbridge eventually get pulled up, and the public can no longer regain access to the building? At that point the situation is far too late…
With the vast reduction in public participation taking place in municipalities in BC, something pushed by the UDI in the form of lobbied advocacy to drastically reduce, if not eliminate public hearings; and with public participation at council meetings in the City of Victoria at an all time low, have we almost arrived at this point? If so, is it in some cases, too late to pull back?
The elected officials of View Royal showed that it is possible. May it be a crucial lesson for the Province of BC. In the so-called Age of Enlightenment, one of the key things called for in the interests of good governance, was the separation of lobby and state. In British Columbia and Canada in the 21st century, this issue couldn’t be more crucial for democracy.
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Appendix: A Bridge, or a Tunnel?
In offering finishing thoughts to this article, I provided the image of a bridge representing the merger of lobby and state. One reader offered an alternative image; a tunnel, an analogy, which I find very intriguing and worth considering. I turned it into an appendix, not only because it provides great food for thought on the subject, but also because I find the image of a tunnel, or tunneling to be of an activity that potentially undermines the whole edifice of a state, that refers to itself as a democracy.
The tunnel analogy was as follows:
“I wonder if a bridge is really what is happening? There should be a bridge between the state and the public. The same bridge should be used by those who wish to influence and profit from the decisions of the state. The important part is that everyone who uses the bridge does so in a transparent way; the public and the state must be able to clearly see what business is being conducted. The press should watch the bridge closely and report on the parade of users - and loudly proclaim any misuse.
In the case of the UDI (and perhaps other lobbyist groups) they are not satisfied with using the bridge alongside all the legitimate users. Nor are they satisfied with using a bridge that only leads to the elected officials who can be fickle or difficult to persuade. Instead, they planned and built a tunnel for their own use. They built the tunnel by hiding their primary purpose, lobbying, and disguised themselves as housing advocates and education providers (indoctrination), who should have direct access to the employees of the state.
They provide the indoctrination without the elected officials even being aware of it. The tunnel bypasses the elected officials. The tunnel runs through the bureaucracy (who now use a few tax dollars to pay to have the tunnel come to them) and it is entirely hidden from the public who are still trying to use the bridge (to little effect). The indoctrinated bureaucrats then indoctrinate the elected officials, who must trust the bureaucracy (professional reliance).
The press may, or may not, be watching the bridge, but there is nothing to see there (and there is clearly another tunnel that goes directly into the press room that the owners of the press are aware of and condone). And yes, one of the consequences is going to be that the tunnel builders and the bureaucrats will work to convince the elected officials to close the public bridge (or pull up the drawbridge) and we won't ever be able to reopen it.”
Notes to Part II.
[i] The ad was put out by Tall Cedars Recruitment. It began:
“CHIEF ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER, TOWN OF VIEW ROYAL
September 16, 2023 Flo Follero Pugh
"The Town of View Royal is looking for its next leader.
The Role: View Royal is looking for its next Chief Administrative Officer, following the retirement of the incumbent. You are visionary person who is ready to lead an amazing organization and accomplish big things.”
[ii] The minutes of the Nov 2021, 2023 council meeting can be found here:
Town of View Royal - Document Center (civicweb.net)
The video can be watched here: 2023 11 21 Council Meeting on Vimeo 1:23:50
