Who is in charge in Sooke, the elected officials, or District Staff? Staff went ahead and renewed District’s paid membership with registered lobbying organization for development and real estate interests anyway, despite clear Motion from the elected officials that Council would have to make the decision prior to membership renewal.
By Sasha Izard
March 15, 2025
In a recent article I posed the following question:
Did the District of Sooke violate its own Motion?
On March 11, 2024 Sooke Council had made the following motion:
“THAT Council postpone the decision [regarding whether or not to discontinue the District’s membership from the UDI] until Council has received a presentation from the Urban Development Institute, prior to membership renewal.“
Less than 4 months later, Sooke District staff effectively ignored that motion and went ahead and renewed its paid membership with a registered lobbying organization for development and real estate interests anyway, without the Councillors publicly meeting with it first to ascertain the functions of the organization (as their motion had required).
Staff at the March 11, 2025 Council meeting had also provided an incorrect timeframe regarding the District’s UDI membership, which allowed Mayor Tait and other Councillors to delay deciding on the District’s paid membership with the lobbying organization for up to a year (Councillor Bateman wanted to decide on the issue the night it was raised, ASAP as he put it). By March 15, 2025 that year has passed and the UDI has still not met publicly with the Councillors on the issue.
This brings up a serious question: Who is in charge in Sooke, the elected officials, or District Staff?
Also, why are municipal staff collaborating with a lobbying organization that advances corporate interests involved in development and real estate to planning departments and out of public view?
I contacted the elected officials of Sooke, as well as their CAO; and asked them about the mistakes made regarding the membership renewal and timeline. The CAO affirmed that these were mistakes made by staff. The CAO stated that they were unaware of these mistakes, until I had informed them of the actions recently. The dialogue can be seen below.
I also informed the elected officials and the CAO about the seriousness of the issue and showed direct evidence that the UDI was influencing municipal planning departments and that they had advertised to their paying members including governmental, through their policy and advocacy updates newsletter seeking municipal workers (including Sooke’s) to be involved in their advocacy work. The UDI registers its lobbying activities with the Province as “advocating”.
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On March 11, 2025 I sent the following email to Sooke’s Mayor and Councillors and also to the District Chief Administrative Officer (CAO):
Subject: Question for Sooke Mayor, Council and CAO regarding the District’s renewed Urban Development Institute membership.
Exactly one year ago on March 11, 2024 Sooke Council made a motion “to postpone the decision [whether or not to renew the District’s UDI membership] until Council has received a presentation from the Urban Development Institute prior membership renewal“.
Regular Council – 11 Mar 2024 – Minutes – Html
A year has passed, and the UDI have not provided Council any presentation.
At the Council Meeting in early 2024, Mayor and Council appeared under the impression from staff that the District’s UDI membership had been renewed for the year (in actuality it was set to expire in less than 4 months after the meeting).
The following is a transcription of that section of dialogue:
Cllr. McMath: When is the last time we paid the membership fee?
Staffer: That’s what I was just checking, I was, I was just gonna confirm, I believe we’ve already renewed the membership for this year, so.
Cllr. McMath: So, there’s no rush here, yep.
Mayor Tait: So is it po, so OK, so it’s renewed for the year.”
Mayor Tait subsequently reasoned: “OK, so perhaps to postpone decision until Council has received a presentation from the UDI? And that could be sometime this year.”
This led to the following motion which was carried: “THAT Council postpone the decision until Council has received a presentation from the Urban Development Institute, prior to membership renewal”.
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Staff at the meeting appear to have been under a misimpression that the District’s UDI membership had been recently renewed for the year. In reality, the membership was set to expire in less than 4 months time from that Council Meeting that took place early in the year. I have an invoice and a receipt for (see attached file) of the last 2 membership renewals. The District by March 11, 2024 had not recently renewed its membership with the UDI, and certainly had not done so yet that year. At that point the District’s membership with the UDI had last been renewed the previous year in July of 2023, as revealed by not only the invoice, but as was also confirmed to me today by the District’s finance department.
The membership was in actuality, set to expire 4 months after the March 11, 2024 Council meeting where it was decided on “to postpone the decision [whether or not to renew the District’s UDI membership] until Council has received a presentation from the Urban Development Institute prior membership renewal“.
Without Council having received a presentation from the UDI (as was necessitated by the motion: prior to renewing the District’s UDI membership), the District went ahead and renewed the membership (July 2024-2025) anyway, 4 months after the meeting. The membership renewal took place in July of 2024.
Why did staff renew the District’s UDI membership, despite Council not having received a presentation from the UDI prior to membership removal, as the motion necessitated?
This is a very important question, and I ask for a response from each of you.
If elected officials make a decision, district employees are not to operate contrary to it.
Thank you very much,
Sasha Izard
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Later in the day, Sooke’s CAO responded:
Hi,
Thanks for reaching out with your questions. I wanted to provide some further information below from the staff level. When the meeting occurred in March, 2024 staff incorrectly believed that the 2024/25 UDI membership had already been renewed and took the Council resolution wording to mean that the 2025/26 UDI membership would not be renewed until UDI presented to Council. As such, UDI is currently scheduled to attend the April 28, 2025 Regular Council meeting as a delegation as Council requested. After that meeting staff will be seeking direction from Council on if the District will be renewing the UDI membership for the 2025/26 year.
Please let me know if you need further clarity and I hope to see you at the April 28th meeting. Council meeting agendas can be found here The District of Sooke – Home and are published the Thursday before a Council meeting.
Thanks,
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I replied:
Hello,
Thank you for your response,
“When the meeting occurred in March, 2024 staff incorrectly believed that the 2024/25 UDI membership had already been renewed”
Council was also under the same impression as staff when they made their motion, as a result they were referring to the timeline that staff had suggested at that point. For staff to then have determined that council was operating on a different timeline is anachronistic.
“and took the Council resolution wording to mean that the 2025/26 UDI membership would not be renewed until UDI presented to Council.”
I have read the transcript of that meeting. How is it possible that staff took Council’s motion to mean the 2025-26 membership? The motion is very clear.
This was the motion as revealed by the Minutes: “THAT Council postpone the decision until Council has received a presentation from the Urban Development Institute, prior to membership renewal.”
Why did staff renew the membership prior to that meeting?
Did the elected officials instruct staff to renew the membership?
If staff realized that they were incorrect about the dates of the membership at the meeting, did they inform the elected officials about this when they found out?
Thank you,
Sasha Izard
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The following morning, Councillor Bateman responded:
Hello Mr. Izard,
Thank you again for your close attention to this matter.
Clearly there was confusion over the date of the membership renewal, and this to me falls into the category of an entirely human and understandable oversight given all else that District staff must deal with.
More to the point, I am happy to know that we’ll hear from a UDI representative directly on April 28. Council will then be in the best possible position to determine whether the membership should be renewed or not.
I welcome your correspondence and backgrounders to inform our discussion that night. Please share it with council, Ms. Gray and the info@sooke.ca email address.
sincerely,
Jeff
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I replied:
Hello Jeff,
Thank you for your response.
While I understand human error, and can easily give getting the wrong date, at a Council meeting a pass, I cannot understand, how the staff would then go ahead and renew the membership less than four months later, given that the Motion made by the elected officials was very clear: “THAT Council postpone the decision until Council has received a presentation from the Urban Development Institute, prior to membership renewal.”
I look forward to the CAO’s response to the 3 questions that I provided them on this issue. It is very important that staff be following the will of the elected officials, especially when it comes to whether or not the District should be a paying member of a registered lobbying organization representing billions of dollars of corporate interests among their paying member companies involved in real estate and development, which I think was much the essence of the important issue that you raised on March 11, 2024.
This is a screenshot of the UDI Edmonton Metro page from a couple years back.
Note: that the UDI is selling the idea of influencing planning departments to its members is very notable:
Also the UDI has advertised in its newsletters getting municipal employees involved in their advocacy work. Note the UDI files its lobbying registrations on the BC Lobbyists Registry as “advocating”.
The following is a quote from the UDI Capital Region’s Executive Director at the Sept 12, 2023 View Royal Committee of the Whole:
“UDI representatives get together with the directors of the develop or the departments that work directly with development, and we exchange information and we help the municipalities out by creating working groups that can inform and, and help make decisions, uh for your policies.”
As such it becomes major cause for concern in a democracy, when staffers are signing up without votes by elected officials entire municipalities to be paying members of such a lobbying group, especially when a motion was made THAT Council postpone the decision until Council has received a presentation from the Urban Development Institute, prior to membership renewal.
The first human error, I can understand, but was the second example of staff renewing the membership again anyway less than 4 months later a mistake as well?
Thank you,
Sasha Izard
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Noticing after that I’d missed an important detail, I wrote in addition:
P.S.
That section of the UDI’s policy and advocacy updates newsletter when the UDI Capital Region Executive Director advertised:
“If you are working in a municipality listed here and would like to be involved in our advocacy work, please contact KathyWhitcher@UDI.org”
One of the municipalities it was listed under was Sooke.
In other words, this is direct evidence that the UDI was attempting to get Sooke municipal workers involved in their advocacy work. As you saw previously, the UDI files its lobbyist registration activities as “advocating”.
This is the same UDI Capital Region Executive Director who said:
“UDI representatives get together with the directors of the develop or the departments that work directly with development, and we exchange information and we help the municipalities out by creating working groups that can inform and, and help make decisions, uh for your policies.”
And here the Sooke staff have gone and again signed the municipality up as a paying member to the lobbying organization without the permission of the elected officials, and even in contravention now of the elected officials’ own motion: “THAT Council postpone the decision until Council has received a presentation from the Urban Development Institute, prior to membership renewal.”
For more context around the above pictures please see: Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs: “conflict of interest rules under the Local Government Act and Community Charter do not apply to local government staff.” – CRD Watch Homepage
Thank you again,
Sasha
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Sooke’s CAO responded again next:
Hi Mr. Izard,
I am happy to answer your questions below:
Why did staff renew the membership prior to that meeting? – As Deputy Mayor Bateman advised you – it was human error why the membership was renewed. There are thousands of accounts payable transactions that are processed by staff every year and unfortunately the invoice covering the period between July/24-July/25 was processed by staff in error. It is very rare for Council to direct staff to not pay an invoice prior to something happening and we had a significant number of new staff join the District over the last year and this direction staff had received from Council was overlooked last year.
Did the elected officials instruct staff to renew the membership? – No – as I state above the staff who spoke to Council were under the impression that the direction on whether or not to renew the UDI membership would come from Council as part of the 2025/2026 UDI renewal so Council has yet to provide further direction to staff on this matter. As mentioned previously, UDI was originally scheduled to present to Council in February, 2025 but had to cancel and their delegation with Council has been rescheduled to April 28, 2025.
If staff realized that they were incorrect about the dates of the membership at the meeting, did they inform the elected officials about this when they found out? – I only became aware of this oversight this week when you brought it to Council and my attention.
I apologize for the confusion this has caused and look forward to seeing you at the April 28th meeting when staff will receive direction from Council on renewing the UDI membership.
Please let me know if you need anything further.
Thanks,
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I replied simply:
Thank you for your response.
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Conclusion:
I’ll leave the reader to make a conclusion for themself.
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See also:
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. – CRD Watch Homepage
CRD Watch Homepage 
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