The verdict is in. Local Government memberships in the development lobby, no longer fly on Vancouver island.
It’s been about a quarter century since first the regional government, the CRD purchased an Urban Development Institute (UDI) membership, followed by corporate membership purchases in the UDI by various municipalities on Vancouver island.
Ultimately 8 municipalities, the majority on the southern island joined the UDI, which is a registered lobbying organization on the BC Lobbyists Registry. The UDI represents the interests of its paying corporate member companies involved in real estate and development. For a time, it seemed the UDI would gain all the municipalities as paying members on Vancouver Island, but then something shifted.
In 2022, after finding that the lobby had become inseparable from the state, to the point where various levels of state/branches of government from crown corporations and statutory entities to local and regional governments had joined the UDI as paying members – I launched a campaign to separate lobby from state.
The campaign started with raising awareness about the issue, followed by a petition that the District of Saanich withdraw its lobby membership from the UDI, and speaking out together with members of the community about the critical problems and conflicts involved with the relationship between the local government and the lobby, and the development companies it is connected with, and whose project applications the District was poised to potentially grant.
In early 2023, the District of Saanich which covers the widest area and has the highest population of any municipality on Vancouver Island – discontinued its UDI membership. This was a major blow for the lobbying organization.
Saanich bails on membership in developers’ organization – Victoria Times Colonist
Then it turned out that the Township of View Royal had joined the UDI as a paying member that year. Only the mayor had not been informed of this, despite that the Township’s staff had signed up the municipality unilaterally to become a paying member of the UDI, without the approval of the elected officials, as revealed after by Freedom of Information.
In response, the Mayor, Sid Tobias, forced the issue to come before council. The UDI Capital Region’s Executive Director at the time pled before the council, claiming “UDI is not a lobbying group” along with a convoluted explanation of the organization’s myriad activities in helping to create and implement policy with various levels of government and their staffers, which not surprisingly, much of which looked a lot like lobbying.
The Executive Director didn’t however mention that they were registered at the time as the UDI’s in-house lobbyist on the BC Lobbyists Registry. The UDI Capital Region Executive Director disappeared from the UDI’s staff 2 years later. With the fact exposed that the UDI is indeed a registered lobbying group on the BC Lobbyists Registry, View Royal’s Mayor and Council unanimously voted to terminate the membership 2 months later in November of 2023.
LETTER: Local governments should distance themselves from lobbyists | Saanich News
Upon making an investigation through a series of FOI requests to municipalities, it turned out quite shockingly that the only municipality to join the UDI on the island by a vote by elected officials, was the District of Saanich. The other seven local governments in Greater Victoria, and the CRD had joined the lobbying organization as paying members, through backroom staff decisions – often without the knowledge of the elected officials.
Toward the end of 2023, the Provincial Housing Bills were put forward filled with UDI-lobbied-for material. As this was exposed, the UDI pulled down its members directory, along with its branch websites (to be replaced with a centralized UDI.org) – and thus hiding its corporate and governmental members from public view.
They would also take down later on from view, their list of backroom committees that meet with government.
In 2024, the UDI’s fortunes on the island continued to shift downward. In May of 2023, I addressed the CRD Board about the regional government’s membership in the UDI and various of what I saw as conflicts of interest involved running from the CMHC (which pulled its UDI membership around this time) to BC Housing (which still has a UDI membership) to the CRD.
In early 2024, with the UDI Capital Region’s leadership present at a council meeting, as well as the CRD CEO – UDI member company urban systems provided a presentation about water development cost charges, a key issue coming up with the planned creation of the new multi-billion dollar water filtration plant necessary to allow a flood of development in the region. The question is who will be left on the hook to pay for this, the residents through taxes and utilities increases or the development industry who benefits from this added infrastructure? At the meeting, I presented on major ‘potential conflicts of interest involved’ with the CRD’s UDI membership.
Subsequently, I got in touch with the CRD’s CEO Ted Robbins, who was not only cooperative, but instrumental in removing the CRD from its UDI membership after 23, half a year after the meeting in mid 2024.
However, that was not all for the regional government in this regard. The CRD had a committee known as the Regional Housing Advisory Committee or RHAC, where the UDI had a permanent seat, and was advising the CRD on housing policy. Minutes from the committee revealed that the UDI had been trying to get other committee members to lobby for development industry objectives. The word lobby was even included in the Minutes! After, I found out that, the committee was effectively closed to general public attendance. I inquired to those responsible as to the legality of that situation, as closed committees at the local government level (which includes regional governments) is prohibited by Provincial legislation. A couple months later, I was informed that the committee was suspended during ongoing review, that the UDI has lost its permanent seat on the committee, and that if the committee ever opens again which is uncertain, it would be fully open to attendance by the public for the first time.
CRD Cleaning up its act on the Regional Housing Advisory Committee – CRD Watch Homepage
I also presented to Oak Bay Council on more than one occasion on the issue, and spoke to Councillor Paterson about the issue. Oak Bay quietly pulled out of its UDI membership by staff decision in mid-2024. Subsequently, Councillor Paterson put a motion forward before council that the UDI not be a stakeholder on the District’s Official Community Plan (OCP) update.
The vote was a tie, but the tie was broken by the Mayor, Kevin Murdoch – in favour of the UDI being a stakeholder on the OCP update. Incidentally it had been Murdoch, who had put forth the motion at the CRD originally, that gave the UDI its permanent seat, along with a strange system which made it very difficult for members of the public to attend those meetings. They could only be present according to the Terms of Reference through the approval of a member of the Committee + simultaneously the Chair of the Committee. All that had been missing it seemed was a secret handshake.
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In 2025, the UDI’s municipal memberships continued to flounder.
On the day of the Federal election, April 28, 2025 – with Sooke’s Mayor Tait away due to her election bid, The Council unanimously decided to end its UDI membership.
The UDI had been provided a year by the council to explain themselves, their lobbying, and their lobbying activities before the council. How could they however? The UDI Capital Region’s Executive Director at the time, as mentioned previously, had told View Royal Council on the record that the UDI is not a lobbying group, despite being registered at the time as the UDI’s in-house lobbyist on the BC Lobbyists Registry. How could they now show up to tell another local government on the record about their lobbying activities, having denied that they are a lobbying organization?
Well, they didn’t. They canceled, showing up once after about a year had passed; and then a couple months later, the UDI cancelled showing up again. In a letter to Sooke the UDI wrote about how they are unlikely to show up in the foreseeable future, and blamed restructuring and staff changes. The only staff change I could find on their website at the time, was that their Capital Region Executive Director was no longer listed as a member of staff.
Another episode during this year of waiting for the UDI to show up, was that the District of Sooke’s CAO had renewed the District’s UDI membership, despite a council motion that it would be the council that would decide, which was made previously, after a member of the public Alan Dolan, had brought up the issue of the District’s questionable membership in the UDI, before council. The CAO denied responsibility for the council motion contravening membership renewal, but then broke down and admitted that they were the one responsible for it at the April 28, 2026 council meeting. It took many months before the District was compelled by the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC), to hand over the information which showed without a doubt that the CAO had been responsible for the decision.
Index of articles regarding Sooke – CRD Watch Homepage
I had also been in contact during this time with Councillor Muri from the District of North Vancouver. Councillor Muri contacted the Mayor about the UDI membership. The mayor subsequently brought the issue to district staff. The staff quietly pulled the district from its UDI membership.
The District of North Vancouver has discontinued its UDI membership. – CRD Watch Homepage
In the fall of 2025, Councillors Gardiner and Hammond put a joint motion forward to end the City of Victoria’s UDI membership, but it would take 6 months of delay from the other councillors – until their motion resurfaced from almost being buried completely in paperwork. In February of 2026, The UDI’s longtime President and CEO, Anne McMullin resigned from her position. In early March, after a nail biter weekend before a budget motion (with the membership renewal date actually having technically just passed after it), Councillor Hammond brought back forth the motion, and to even his surprise, the decision by the council to withdraw the City’s membership with the lobbying organization, was near unanimous, with only Councillor Matt Dell dissenting in the end.
As had been suspected for years, it was almost as if the other municipalities who hadn’t yet left, had been waiting for the City of Victoria’s decision, as to whether or not they would leave. Within the space of just over a month from the City of Victoria’s pullout, all the remaining municipalities pulled out. First, the Township of Esquimalt followed in its withdrawal immediately after, followed by the City of Langford by council decision (with only Mayor Goodmanson who had been a featured speaker at a UDI event dissenting) and finally the City of Colwood pulling out after a motion for withdrawal was put forth by Councillor Ian Ward.
With 8 municipalities pulled out and the CRD, only two elected officials ever voted against their government branches leaving the UDI.
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The removal of the UDI memberships on the island owes many thanks to many people who have stood up for their communities and environment, signing petitions, writing letters to the editor, and to their councils demanding the critically needed separation of lobby and state, for a true democracy to function according to the meaning of that word ‘rule by the people.
Now that this opening phase of separating the local government bodies on Vancouver Island has been achieved, the deeper and in some ways even tougher work must take place for real democracy to be achieved and liberation from the undue clutches of industry over the future of our communities.
Already this has started. When the Township of Esquimalt withdraw this year, it took the added step of the Township’s staff deciding that they would no longer attend paid UDI events. This should repeat elsewhere. In addition, as mentioned, a councillor in the District of Oak Bay, put forward a motion and almost succeeded in removing the lobby as a stakeholder on the District’s Official Community Plan, which in theory should be a plan by the community, not for the community from outside and above.
4 UDI liaison committees (backroom lobby committees that meet with staff unrecorded on government property) continue to exist on the island, despite the membership pullouts. In my view, these are the Trojan horses of the lobby, and a key point of infiltration of the state by outside interests.
The Township of Esquimalt, the District of Saanich, the City of Victoria, and the City of Colwood all continue with these highly questionable backroom meetings. These should be ended, or if not ended at least in the interests of transparency, be recorded with the recordings freely available to the public, and the general public be able to attend such meetings.
Finally, higher levels of government must be separated from lobby and state. 2 Federal Crown Corporations have given up their UDI memberships in the last few years (the CMHC and Procurement Canada), making it potentially that all Federal organizations have withdrawn their UDI memberships. In British Columbia however, many Crown Corporations and Statutory Entities remain paying members of the UDI. These include, BC Housing (which has provided the lobby many 10s of thousands of dollars in funding), BC Hydro, BC Assessment, BC Investment Management Corporation (via its subsidiary Quadreal Property Group, BC Transit, TransLink, the Land Title and Survey Authority of British Columbia.
Numerous backroom UDI committees, meet with the Provincial Government, most notably the Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs; and UDI committees often organized in conjunction with the lobby HAVAN, continue to take place across the Metro Vancouver region. These should be ended, or at least made fully recorded, the recordings available, and the meetings open to public attendance.
It is up to us the public to stand up and demand that our government separate from lobby and state and truly represent the people of British Columbia. Without achieving this, we will not fully achieve democracy in the area during our lifetimes.
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Sasha Izard launched the campaign to separate lobby and state, which he considers critical for the realization of true democracy.