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”
By Sasha Izard
May 23, 2025
Last month I wrote an article titled:
Upcoming UDI event at the Union Club featuring Saanich staffers, sponsored by Rennie the company of the so-called “Condo King” in Vancouver. – CRD Watch Homepage
The event at the Union Club was hosted by the Urban Development Institute (UDI) a registered lobbying organization on the BC Lobbyists Registry that advances development and real estate interests of its hundreds of paying corporate member organizations.
The event took place on April 8, 2025 and featured 2 Saanich staffers: Saanich Director of Engineering Harley Machielse, and Carley Friesen Acting Manager Housing Policy and Planning, District of Saanich.
An excerpt from the Freedom of Information response:
As mentioned in the previous article, several years earlier Friesen had served on Saanich’s Housing Strategy Task Force as one of 3 “members of the community at large”, while she was Senior Planning Analyst in the BC Public Service.
It was the Saanich Housing Strategy Task Force that “provided recommendations that form the main content” of the the 2021 Housing Strategy (Acknowledgements p.4). Thus Carley was not only acknowledged as one of those key providers of content of the 2021 Housing Strategy, but she would become several years later the acting manager of Saanich’s Housing Planning and Policy division which was responsible for carrying out actions within the 2021 Housing Strategy, a full circle remarkable for her having been one of the 3 representatives of the “community at large” on the Task Force only several years earlier.
The Saanich Housing Strategy Task Force was referred to in the press as a “stakeholder taskforce” and included a number of people on it that have had connections to the development and real estate industry, including to the UDI. For example, Greg Gillespie who served on it was a UDI Director, and Mark Holland was a top educator at the UDI, who has taken issue with the root balls of Oak Trees standing in the way of development.
The UDI even advertised to its members in its “Policy and Advocacy Updates” to fill out the Saanich Housing Strategy Task Force’s Survey in 2021. (See Appendix at the end of the article).
The Saanich Housing Strategy Task Force advanced so-called Missing Middle Housing to the District including through its Neighbourhood Homes Study. In 2022, the UDI had also been pushing and lobbying for Missing Middle Housing to the Districts of Saanich, the City of Victoria (where it passed soon after the 2022 local government election), as well as to the regional government the CRD, and to the Province.
Saanich presented some of the content of the Neighourhood Homes Study to the UBCM Housing Summit in 2023. 1_Hartling Pam_Densification and Upzoning_Tues_130_UBCM Housing Summit 2023.pdf
However, by the end of the year Saanich ended up scrapping the Neighbourhood Homes Study, as the Province’s Bill 44, which was pushed through the Legislature in November of 2023 made it redundant, forcing much the same concept across the Province. Bill 44 was nothing less than the culmination of what the UDI had lobbied the Province to achieve, overriding local government autonomy and public input as a result.
On May 7, 2024, Saanich Council passed a new Official Community Plan (OCP) and removed its Local Area Plans from the OCP Bylaw thus rendering them legally non-binding. The Provincial requirements of Bill 44 had mandated that a new compliant OCP be passed at the end of 2025, yet Saanich’s Mayor and majority of Council passed a new OCP over a year and a half before that due date, passing both 3rd and 4th readings in the same night, despite strong resistance from the public, in spite of the fact that few in the public were even aware of the likely imminent disabling of the Local Area Plans. Although the vast majority of the public were not aware that the decision was imminent, the decoupling of the Local Area Plans from the OCP was something discussed by Saanich and the UDI 2 years earlier in their joint-meetings held together.
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
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
Earlier the day that Saanich Council decided to adopt the new OCP (May 7, 2024) Mayor Murdock himself was a featured speaker at a UDI event at the Union Club.
Almost a year after that was another UDI event featuring those involved with the District.
On May 20, 2025 I received a Freedom of Information (FOI) response from the District of Saanich in response to my request for records regarding the April 8, 2025 Union Club event, which featured the 2 Saanich staffers previously mentioned. The response contained 74 pages.
Key topics of discussion to be had at the event were written a couple months earlier in a UDI message to Friesen (described in the FOI as the “the primary author of the SSMUH work.”), and Carl Purvis Manager of Current Planning at the District of Saanich (formerly Manager of Planning at BC Transit). The UDI had invited Carl to be a featured speaker at the event, but after considering it for sometime he declined the offer figuring other speakers would be a better fit for the subject matter.
The following are some snippets of the discussion from the event:
Note: SSMUH stands for Small-Scale Multi-Unit Housing, which is also known as so-called “missing middle housing”, but with the difficult to pronounce acronym used instead, it becomes much more obscure for the public.
“Saanich wanted similar outcomes as Province
•Increase housing choice in the suburbs
•Allow 4-6 units per lot
•Be very flexible in form, unit sizes, all the way to large family sized units
•permissive with regulation”
“Has there been a noticeable increase in neighbourhood concerns arising
out of this “fast tracking” of Missing Middle (i.e. What challenges do
municipalities face in balancing density goals with neighborhood
concerns)?
•Yes, in some areas of Saanich
• Lots are pre-zoned , and
•no Development Permit is required
• no notification of the surrounding properties.
•Neighbours may not know until they see signs of construction*
•The information is all publicly available on the Development Tracker
• The two main concerns we are are hearing is that height is a concern and tree
removal of course a big concern.
Conclusion:
Although Bill 44 eliminated most public hearings in the Province, something the UDI had lobbied the government to achieve; the close working relationship between the UDI and Saanich including its staff continues, sometimes behind closed doors e.g. Saanich’s joint meetings with the UDI liaison committee, and meetings with developers to receive input on District plans.
Despite Saanich discontinuing its formerly paid UDI membership in 2023, Saanich councillors can still use taxpayer funds up to $500 per person annually to spend on UDI events if they so choose.
At the May 12, 2025 Saanich Council Meeting, Councillor Chambers put forth the following Motion:
“That in the interest of transparency that all meetings between the District of Saanich staff and/or elected officials with development groups and other stakeholders be listed on the District’s website, including dates, times of meetings and posted in advance of them, similarly to how Council meetings are posted.”
Councillor Chambers’ Motion did not receive a seconder from the Mayor, nor from any of the other Councillors and was thus denied even discussion of it.
The FOI material regarding the April 2025 Union Club UDI event featuring Saanich staff shows how the District and the Province’s planning cannot be understood without thoroughly considering the UDI and other lobbies’ overwhelming influence over all levels of the Canadian government.
With Bill 44 is it really the middle that is missing (the cost of the housing is unaffordable by CMHC definition), or is it the missing public, who have been locked out of the political process by being denied Public Hearings on such developments, while the development lobby continues to enjoy special access to government?
See also: Index of articles regarding lobby events and other meetings between government and lobbyists. – CRD Watch Homepage
Upcoming UDI event at the Union Club featuring Saanich staffers, sponsored by Rennie the company of the so-called “Condo King” in Vancouver. – CRD Watch Homepage
Saanich opts to develop Housing Strategy with stakeholder task force – Saanich News
Saanich Housing Strategy Task Force Report_March 2021.pdf
1_Hartling Pam_Densification and Upzoning_Tues_130_UBCM Housing Summit 2023.pdf (See Neighbourhood Home Study on last page).
Neighbourhood Homes_Saanich_FAQs.pdf
Saanich scraps housing study, focuses on provincial rules – Victoria Times Colonist
Saanich OCP hearing brings concerned crowds to council – Saanich News
Citizens Protest the Likely Imminent Disabling of the Saanich Local Area Plans – CRD Watch Homepage
————————————————————————————————
Appendix: Archive snapshot of the UDI Capital Region’s Policy and Advocacy Update for April 19, 2021: “Saanich Housing Strategy Task Force Survey”.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230603074600/https://udicapitalregion.ca/policy-and-advocacy-updates/
CRD Watch Homepage 
Leave a comment