The Urban Development Institute (UDI) lobby cleared its de-linked online Members Directory within a week of its existence being mentioned on the radio. Branches of the Canadian Government, along with the UDI continue to hide their paid memberships in the lobby.
February 4, 2024
Sasha
On January 25, 2024, I conversed with Adam Stirling on his radio show about the UDI development/real estate lobby in British Columbia and its memberships. Stirling asked how I was able to see the UDI memberships, since as I had pointed out, they had taken them down from their websites. I said that they are still accessible on a third party website that collates for the UDI its membership directory at the following URL:
Within a week no memberships showed anymore on the third party membership directory. Myself and others have a backed up copy of the full directory made days before they predictably de-linked their websites to it in November of 2023.
The UDI is a legally registered lobbyist group, despite that their spokesperson/executive director who is registered as in-house lobbyist for the organization denied to the government that they are a lobbyist group at the September 12 View Royal Committee of the Whole.
The UDI has also refused to answer the question as to whether or not they are a lobby, when I emailed them at:
They are clearly hiding their membership directory from the public, which includes numerous branches of the government and they are still asking for government joins on their new website UDI.org. When the UDI pulled down their branch websites several months ago, which included their membership directories, I contacted the CRD and the municipalities in it that are still paying members of the UDI to put on their websites that they are a member of the UDI for the purposes of transparency.
Only one municipality, Esquimalt complied. The rest are hiding from the public that they are members of the UDI. This shows that numerous local governments and the CRD are hiding from the public that they are paying members of the lobby, at the same time as the lobby is hiding that they are members of it.
By following the lobby's lead of hiding their memberships in it, the CRD and various local governments can be seen to be working against the public's interest, while serving the interests of the lobby.
