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Did the District of Sooke Destroy Communications Material With and/or Regarding the Urban Development Institute (UDI), a Registered Lobbyist Organization Representing Development and Real Estate?

May 18, 2024
By Sasha Izard

In April, I wrote an article titled: Now, or Never?  Sooke Mayor and Council, Upon Learning that the District is a Paying Member of a Registered Lobbyist Organization for Development and Real Estate, Face ‘Tough Decision’ as to Whether or not the District Should Leave it.

The article was about a March 11, Sooke Council Meeting at which the issue of Sooke’s membership with the UDI led to a motion from a Councillor that Sooke discontinue its membership with the lobbyist organization, as had the Districts of Saanich and View Royal, the previous year.

A set of deliberations took place, at which it was apparent that there was a great amount of confusion among the Mayor and Council as to the nature of the UDI and its lobbying activities, which a number of elected officials claimed that they had been unaware of.

Among questions that arose, was the question of who was the target of the UDI’s lobbying activities? Was it the District of Sooke itself? Was the UDI lobbying on its behalf? Was it only other branches of government being lobbied?

The politicians based on their statements didn’t seem to know. The District joined the UDI as a paying member without votes from elected officials.

Not too many days after the meeting took place, I sent the following Access-to-Information Request, or “Freedom of Information Request” (FOI) to the District of Sooke.

In the FOI I asked for:

“All communications from Sooke with and regarding the Urban Development Institute (UDI) over the last 3 years. Also any documented information about any meetings with the UDI during that time.”

The FOI that I eventually received from Sooke contained a mere 43 pages. This amount seemed to me to be providing only a snapshot of some select communications and other info regarding the UDI over the last 3 years, rather than a full account of what I had requested.

The previous year in 2023, I had made an FOI request to the Municipality of Saanich.

The following was the finalized request:

“All information and records related to the District’s, including staff’s and Council’s,
interactions with the Urban Development Institute. Please exclude any promotional
material regarding upcoming courses, events, webinars or, luncheons etc. Please
include emails about Saanich staff or Councillors attending those functions. Legislative Services: Do not include any notification of upcoming Council agendas.

Time frame for requested records: January 1, 2018 to March 16, 2023“

The end result was a completed FOI containing more pages than Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace.

Why then was Sooke’s FOI for a similar search only containing 43 pages? Sooke like Saanich previously, is a member of the UDI. Saanich discontinued its UDI membership in 2023, and even despite that has received a barrage of communications material since. Sooke on the other hand continues their membership with the UDI, albeit it is in the process of consideration of potentially ending the membership within a year.

I made the FOI to Sooke, upon considering the likelihood that the UDI’s communications to Sooke would be similar to their communications with Saanich, which contained vast amounts of material propagandizing the UDI’s preferred policies, including suggestions of reducing costs for developers by municipalities.

Such material in my view would be evidence of lobbying activity toward the municipality; yet such evidence in comparison is sparse, if at all existent in the Sooke FOI.

I sent an email to Sooke FOI asking:

“Thank you.

Is that all the communications over the last 3 years?“

The response from Sooke was:

“These are all the District’s communication records from the past three years. Please note that many email communications are considered transitory and are not required to be retained by staff if they do not document a specific business decision. However, at the time of an FOI request, we gather all records in the custody of staff, whether official or transitory.“

Although that statement is particularly vague, (perhaps intentionally so?) the way I read it personally is that potentially many, if not the majority of communications by Sooke with and/or regarding the UDI may have been deleted and/or destroyed.

This led to myself pondering many questions.

Some of the questions that came to mind, I subsequently found to have been covered in this article titled:

“DISPELLING MYTHS ABOUT RECORDS RETENTION IN CANADA“
By Stuart Rennie, JD, MLIS, BA (Hons.)

The article was a very interesting read, particularly the section:

“MYTH 5: SINCE EMAILS ARE TRANSITORY, EMAILS ARE NOT RECORDS AND NOT PARTOF A RECORDS RETENTION SCHEDULE” (p.14-p.15)

The information in that section about the Loukidelis Report in British Columbia was also particularly interesting.

In regard to the question that arose at the March 11, Sooke Council meeting as to whether or not Sooke is being lobbied by the UDI, or is the UDI lobbying on behalf of Sooke? I think the most interesting thing to note is that records that were kept regarding the District’s communications etc., with the UDI that were revealed in the FOI, do not answer the question.

Was the answer previously to be found in deleted and/or destroyed communications etc.?

I think it pretty clear that the vast amount of information in comparison from the Saanich FOI showed that Saanich was being lobbied by the UDI, not that the UDI was lobbying on behalf of Saanich, yet the same was not overly apparent from the sparse Sooke FOI.

As the elected officials of Sooke didn’t know the answer to this question; if they are to review Sooke’s own surviving records regarding the UDI and communications with it, they are also unlikely to find the answer.

The elephant in the room question then, is if Sooke’s own records are not conducive to its Council making informed decisions based on sparse historical knowledge of the relationship with the organization that Sooke is a paying member of, then how can Council determine whether or not they are being lobbied by they organization are a paying member of?

During the March 11 Council Meeting, a subsidiary motion was brought forward to give the UDI almost a year to explain themselves to the Council prior to Council making a decision as to whether or not Sooke should remain a paying member of the organization.

Why are they relying on the UDI to provide the truth to them, rather than simply looking at Sooke’s own internal records regarding the District’s relation with the UDI?

At the September 12, View Royal Committee of the Whole, the Executive Director of the UDI, told View Royal Council “UDI is not a lobbying group”.

At the November 14, View Royal Committee of the Whole, the Mayor of View Royal noted that the UDI Executive Director’s comment was inaccurate, as evinced by the Urban Development Institute’s registration as a lobbyist organization on the BC Lobbyists Registry. Further, as it later turned out, the Executive Director at the time of their statement on September 12, was registered as the UDI’s “in-house lobbyist” on that registry.

Having this time around determined in light of the registry’s information about it, that the UDI is indeed a lobby, it took less than 5 minutes of deliberations for the View Royal Council to unanimously vote to terminate the Township’s UDI membership, a decision which was ratified a week later at the November 21 Council Meeting.

Why then is Sooke not relying on their own knowledge of the UDI, rather than trusting the UDI to be open, clear and honest to the public about the nature of its lobbying activities, when it hasn’t in the past?

When I contacted the UDI by email asking them if they are a lobby, the UDI did not respond. Neither have they responded to a number of other enquiries by myself and the press about their activities.

So there it is: the elected officials in Sooke are in a haze as to what the UDI is doing with its lobbying activities, and their own records are hardly more enlightening, leaving them to rely on their decision as to whether or not to continue paying the lobby with district funds for membership, to the lobby itself, which has a poor track record of telling the truth publicly about their organization’s lobbying activities.

The Sooke FOI however did reveal some interesting information. Although I won’t go into all of it for this article. It is worth noting that the same Executive Director mentioned, had reached out to senior Sooke staff to increase Sooke’s involvement with the UDI, a pattern which has been observed elsewhere. This push for increasing Sooke’s involvement with the UDI had been justified by the Executive Director based on comments they had seen from Mayor Tait that the Mayor found the idea of more engagement with the community to be likeable.

Although the Mayor had clearly had much previous experience connecting with the UDI as evinced in their deliberations regarding it at the March 11 Council meeting, one would not get an impression of that experience during the last 3 years based on the FOI content.

One wonders how with all that previous experience connecting with the UDI, had the Mayor not realized that it was a lobbying organization offering representation to its corporate members, including the prospect for them of influence in the political realm? Had they ever looked at the UDI Capital Region’s website, prior to its having been taken down on November 21, 2023, the same day that View Royal Council ratified their decision to discontinue the Township’s membership with it?

Had they ever looked at the list of private corporate entities that the UDI offers representation for their paid memberships in it? The UDI has been hiding that members directory from the public ever since November 21, as well.

Why are the Mayor and Councillors of Sooke reliant now on the UDI to explain their lobbying activities to them, when they haven’t explained these to the public in the past? Why are the Mayor and Councillors seemingly incapable of determining that for themselves and acting accordingly in a timely manner, so as best to suit the public’s interest that they were elected to represent?

Is it because they are hamstrung from doing so by Sooke’s own inadequate retention of their own communications with the lobby? I think if there is evidence of anything in this FOI, that it is precisely that such lack of retention of information leaves an inadequate basis for proper informed decision-making by its officials and staff.

If so, Sooke should in my opinion change this policy regarding lack of information retention, at the very least so that its elected officials can make proper informed decisions regarding the use of tax payer funds, rather than being left in a dark fog and seeking to fill in the gaps from the lobby which has more than once failed to publicly tell the truth about its own lobbying activities.

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The saga continues: 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



References:

Dispelling+Myths+Records+Retention+in+Canada.pdf (squarespace.com) By Stuart Rennie, JD, MLIS, BA (Hons.) (A very interesting read).

UDI.org (The UDI’s current website about itself).

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 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 BC NDP Government’s Forced Housing Targets and Shutting Down of Public Hearings have their Origin from the Development Lobby

Does the Provincial Government of British Columbia Legally Recognize the Existence of Any Lobby? – Creatively United Community

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

The CRD and 5 Local Governments in Greater Victoria are Keeping their Development/Real Estate Lobby Membership Status out of Sight from the General Public

The Urban Development Institute (UDI) Caught Misleading the Public Again – CRD Watch Homepage