Upcoming UDI event at the Union Club featuring Saanich staffers, sponsored by Rennie the company of the so-called “Condo King” in Vancouver.
By Sasha Izard
April 1, 2025
The UDI advertised the event:
“Have We Found The Missing Middle? Progress and Lessons Learned One Year After Bill 44 brings together municipal planners, engineers, and developers to discuss the successes and challenges of implementing small-scale, multi-unit housing in the Capital Region. This panel will explore what’s working, the barriers that remain, and the opportunities to improve the development process.
Join us at our April Luncheon for an insightful conversation on how policy, infrastructure, and market conditions are shaping the future of Missing Middle housing.”
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In a previous article, I showed how the Ministry of Municipal Affairs had been working with and in parallel to the UDI, a Provincially registered lobbying group for real estate and development interets, towards many of the same goals, and that the former Minister of Municipal Affairs, Nathan Cullen, put forward a memo to cabinet on proposed Provincial intervention into Local Government zoning, something that Bill 44 rammed through in the BC Legislature a year and a half later would achieve.
Bill 44 was, a crowning achievement of what the UDI had been lobbying the Province on from the waiving of public hearings on a vast scale to the forced blanket upzoning across the Province of single family homes into much denser and often pricier per-capita so-called missing middle housing.
Now, flush with an air of self-congratulation over Bill 44, the UDI is holding an event regarding it with 2 Saanich staffers, Harley Machielse of Saanich engineering and Carley Friesen, Acting Manager Housing Policy and Planning, District of Saanich.
The UDI, a registered lobbying organization representing hundreds of corporate members involved in development and real estate, and Saanich are quite fond of the word progress, especially when it’s used describe the advancement of a development agenda in the public sphere.
Last year, Saanich’s Mayor, was also a featured speaker at a UDI event at the Union Club titled: “Pathways to Progress: Uniting Land Use and Transit Strategies for Sustainable Growth.” Saanich’s Local Area Plans (LAPs) were rendered legally non-binding later that night, and a new Official Community Plan (OCP) was adopted a year and a half before it was required to be completed.
Freedom of Information revealed that Saanich and the UDI had discussed decoupling the LAPs from the OCP 2 years before it had happened, and before there was any direction on it from Council by that point.
Saanich’s Director of Engineering Harley Machielse also appeared in that Freedom of Information (FOI response). He had attended UDI-Saanich liaison Committee meetings in.
Carley Friesen Acting Manager Housing Policy and Planning had also taken part in a UDI session with Saanich:
Prior to working for Saanich, Friesen had been part of Saanich’s Housing Strategy Task Force as one of 3 “members of the community at large”. At same time as her presence in this role on the Task Force, she was Senior Planning Analyst in the BC Public Service.
Screenshot above of the most recent section of Friesen’s work experience on her LinkedIn profile at the time of writing. and most recent section of volunteer experience below.
Carley Friesen – Senior Planner – Housing – District of Saanich | LinkedIn
The Saanich Housing Strategy Task Force is the same group that brought Missing Middle to Saanich, and was referred to as a “stakeholder task force” in the press. The Task Force had many members with connections to the UDI and to real estate.
Greg Gillespie for example was a UDI director while he was on the Housing Strategy Task Force:
Greg Gillespie, BSc, PMP – Principal – Gillespie Land Management | LinkedIn At the time of writing April 1, 2025
Mark Holland has been a chief educator at the UDI, and also a Board member of the UDI Okanagan:
Mark Holland – Professor – Vancouver Island University | LinkedIn
Various others on the task force have worked for UDI member organizations and/or companies.
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Conclusion: As Saanich staff continue to meet with the UDI in closed unrecorded backroom meetings that the public are forbidden from attending, and heads of departments and the Mayor are featured speakers at UDI events at the Union Club, the question remains, why are the public prevented from attending these events, or at least seeing recordings of them?
The UDI likes to have a seat at the table with government, while at the same time it successfully lobbied to have the public gagged in front of their elected officials, through the removal of vast amounts of public hearings across the Province, first through staff claimed OCP compliance of development proposals, and now their strongest success in this regard has been Bill 44. Now they can celebrate this triumph together with local government workers, all in in the name of progress at the Union Club.
And what about the missing middle?
Now the UDI is celebrating Missing Middle as progress in an event with Saanich staff.
As I showed in another article previously, the UDI and those involved with it had lobbied for missing middle to multiple levels of government from both inside and outside the governmental system.
In 2022, the former Chair of the UDI Capital Region, Adam Cooper admitted to me on Social Media that the point of the proposed Missing Middle Housing Initiative (MMHI) was not to deliver affordable housing.
To reference George Carlin, you know it’s a dream, because you have to be asleep to believe in it.
The sequel to this article can be read here:
FOI reveals content of discussion regarding Bill 44 and ‘missing middle’ upzoning at the Union Club between Saanich Staff and the UDI, a registered lobbying organization that advances development/real estate interests. “For background, in June 2024, we rezoned approximately 25,000 lots in Saanich.” “Neighbours may not know until they see signs of construction”. “Saanich wanted similar outcomes as Province” – CRD Watch Homepage
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See also:
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” – CRD Watch Homepage
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
Appendix: Event details
CRD Watch Homepage 
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