More Freedom of Information data surfaces, this time from Saanich, regarding the May 7, 2024 UDI event at the Union Club: “Pathways to Progress: Uniting Land Use and Transit Strategies for Sustainable Growth”
The Urban Development Institute (UDI) is a registered lobbying organization for real estate and development interests on the BC Lobbyists Registry.
The event, which featured Mayor Murdock of Saanich among other speakers, was followed that evening by the majority of Saanich Council including the Mayor, approving the decoupling of the Saanich Local Area Plans from the Official Community Plan Bylaw, thus rendering them legally non-binding. The UDI had lobbied Saanich for the decoupling of the Local Area Plans from the OCP 2 years before it happened. The decoupling of the LAPs would enable combining major densification of land-use along transport corridors, including that of Quadra/McKenzie, something that the UDI had lobbied the Province on extensively during the same time period.
By Sasha Izard
March 8, 2025
At the Feb 11, 2025 Saanich Special Council Meeting in regard to the Quadra/McKenzie draft plan, I mentioned during public input the May 7, 2024 UDI event at the Union Club, and was immediately cut off by the Mayor, who refused to allow myself to continue speaking. He claimed that my statement of his attendance at the event was an “allegation”. When I stated that it is “a fact”, not an allegation, he proceeded to cut me off again and ultimately cut my mic entirely, and theatrically called a recess to the meeting, storming off with the rest of the Council.
He also claimed that my speech was off-topic, yet another member of the public afterward finished my speech without interruption by the Mayor. If the speech was off-topic, why did he only prevent myself from reading it, and not the other speaker who was allowed to finish the speech without interruption?
The speech was on-topic, perhaps too on-topic for the Mayor to allow me to finish it. The UDI had lobbied the Province extensively on policies that would affect the Quadra/McKenzie area, combining major enforced land-use changes along proposed so-called rapid transit corridors, with two maps of the Quadra/McKenzie proposed and potential future RapidBus lines in their lobbying presentation with accompanying letter to David Eby in 2022 when he was the Minister Responsible for Housing, something that I was going to mention in the speech that I was prevented from giving.
Additional finds from Freedom of Information reiterate that my speech on the Feb 11, 2025 evening was markedly on-topic.
Freedom of Information responses from BC Transit, and the District of Saanich (see below) show that Bills 43, 44, 47 (which I have shown in previous articles were the result of UDI lobbying of the Province), and proposed rapid transit lines including RapidBus lines in the Capital Region; were key subjects of the discussion at the May 7, 2024 UDI event. The event featured the Mayor of Saanich and other speakers including the Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure at the time Rob Fleming, Victoria’s Mayor Alto, Matthew Boyd (Director of Corporate & Strategic Planning at BC Transit), the Chair of the UDI Capital Region Ben Mycroft (Director of Development at Gablecraft Homes), and Ryan Berlin (Senior Economist and Vice President of Intelligence at Rennie, the company of Bob Rennie, the so-called “Condo King” in Vancouver)
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The Saanich FOI results:
On April 9, 2024, the UDI sent an email inviting Mayor Murdock to attend the following event:
The Mayor’s secretary asked if the Mayor would like to attend the event, noting that a police board meeting would have to be rescheduled.
Less than an hour after the UDI’s invitation, the Mayor responded enthusiastically to the proposal: “I would be happy to join them. Sounds like a great discussion”.
3 days later on April 12, 2024 the UDI wrote:
On April 17, 2024 Mayor Murdock responded:
Whenever something is presented from government or government officials, I tend to look at the last items presented, rather than the 1st.
“5. Urban Densification:
Considering evolving urban development patterns, how can transit infrastructure and service planning adapt to effectively serve both existing and future neighbourhood, while also promoting densification and sustainable growth?”
Given that this is exactly what the UDI had lobbied the Province on, it was interesting that Mayor Murdock would be asking much the same type of question as the organization.
The UDI responded to Murdock the same day:
On May 1, 2024 the UDI wrote the Mayor again:
The FOI also revealed that the meeting had been accepted by the Mayor’s office, although the date it was accepted is not mentioned, nor is the date of the subsequent information about it mentioned.
Note another Freedom of Information request revealed the Mayor’s calendar for May 7, 2024. The following is the section around noon:
On May 2, 2024 the UDI wrote the Mayor again:
The following date on May 3, 2024 the UDI wrote again:
It is worth noting that at the time of writing deanmurdock.ca notes that the Mayor previously worked for the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure:
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The UDI didn’t mention of course it’s role in getting that legislated.
The following page is from the UDI’s lobbying letter to David Eby dated March 10, 2022:
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Conclusion:
The FOI material along with the promotional material for the event, reveal that the agendas of transit and land-use involving increasing densification converge, with the UDI (the most influential and powerful lobby for development and real estate in BC), the Provincial Government, its Crown Corporation BC Transit (which is a paying UDI member) and local governments (many of which like the City of Victoria are also UDI paying members) and their elected officials all promoting the same goals together.
The UDI has every reason from its point of view to be pushing the agenda that will increase its paying corporate member company’s profits, yet it seldom phrases its activities in that manner. It used to be more open about that on their previous UDI Capital Region website before it was taken down along with its members directory in 2023. The website had proudly stated that the UDI was influencing the issues that affect your bottom line, although whose bottom line that really is, you can figure out for yourself.
Rather the UDI, like politicians like to doublespeak between affordability and increasing the housing supply often in the same sentence/breath, as if they are one and the same, when they are not.
By utilizing transport corridors to increase housing supply, including through forceful measures as the UDI lobbied to the Province, speculators can make fortunes, especially if they are given advanced notice of what government will do, especially if they are provided timelines.
Is it any wonder why the UDI directors asked the following questions?
Note: The expansion/focussing of development into the western communities and linking them to developments along the Douglas Corridor and through View Royal went back a couple decades to the CRD’s Regional Growth Strategy (RGS), which municipalities under it are required by law to conform to in their Official Community Plans. The CRD joined the UDI as a paying member over 23 years ago, but finally withdrew its membership last year.
The planning for Saanich’s Centres Corridors and Villages planning (CCVs) also goes back at least 2 decades and was made ostensibly to conform to the RGS. The removal of the LAPs from the OCP Bylaw was ostensibly to allow the CCVs to take precedence in the new OCP, but this action also discarded the binding status of most of the LAPs’ areas of coverage which were outside of the CCVs areas (throwing the baby out with the bathwater so to speak). This was something the UDI was quite happy to see.
Speculators also stand to lose large amount of money, if upzoning and transit routes that are used to press upzoning don’t materialize, or are delayed.
For developers, realtors, and investors – speculation along budding transportation corridors, and along budding infrastructure can result in millions made in profits. The relation between politics and land speculation was also a hallmark of New York City’s development in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Famous in this process was the presence of Tammany Hall in the 19th century.
The following has been said of the organization:
“The business community appreciated its readiness, at moderate cost, to cut through regulatory and legislative mazes to facilitate rapid economic growth”
In comparison, the UDI which has positioned itself to influence, guide, and implement policies at all levels of government, is well familiar with weaving through regulatory and legislative mazes to facilitate economic growth. Being able to provide “steady growth” has been one of its key claims/mission statements.
Whether its Tammany Hall in the 19th Century, or a meeting at the Union Club in the 21st, where are the public in driving the future of their communities?
The disabling of the Saanich Local Area Plans the evening following the meeting showed very clearly that the public were not being listened to, but the UDI’s wish from 2 years earlier had been granted. With Local Area Plans out of the way, and new housing bills in place from the Province compelling the UDI’s objectives, a much lobbied-for transit-oriented-development agenda could move full steam ahead, regardless of whether democracy rather than profits had anything to do with the agenda, and regardless of the inevitable costs and consequences to the public and to the local ecology – a topic which doesn’t seem to have appeared in the questions for, nor on the agenda for the meeting that day. As for the answers to the many questions posed for the meeting and the discussions that were to follow? Most likely the public will never hear them.
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See also:
FOI Request to BC Transit yields information about the UDI event: “Pathways to Progress: Uniting Land Use and Transit Strategies for Sustainable Growth” which took place the same day that Saanich adopted its new Official Community Plan and rendered its Local Area Plans legally non-binding. – CRD Watch Homepage
The development lobby proposed decoupling the Saanich Local Area Plans from the Official Community Plan. They got what they wanted 2 years later. – CRD Watch Homepage
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
How the proposed “RapidBus” lanes in the Capital Region, including on McKenzie, were used as part of the UDI development lobby’s push for enforced densification/upzoning along rapid transit corridors, during their lobbying to David Eby in 2022 – CRD Watch Homepage
The Urban Development Institute lobbied the Province of BC to implement what they called “Global Housing Targets”. The Province would deliver new Housing Bills in response. – CRD Watch Homepage
Letter to Mayor Murdock regarding your Chairing at the Feb 11, 2025 Saanich Special Council Meeting – CRD Watch Homepage
After a Comedic Exchange of Emails, BC Transit Admits that it has a Membership with the Urban Development Institute. The Implications of that for BC, may be more Tragic than Comic. – CRD Watch Homepage
A 2017 letter from the UDI to the Federal government offered a series of recommendations, including density targets around transit stations/corridors and for the adoption of TODs (Transit Oriented Developments). – CRD Watch Homepage
CRD Watch Homepage 
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