Letter to Councillor Thompson in regard to your comments during the deliberations regarding the City’s membership in the Urban Development Institute at the City of Victoria Sept 4, 2025 Committee of the Whole
By Sasha Izard
Sept 11, 2025
The following is a letter that I sent to City of Victoria Councillor Dave Thompson on Sept 10, 2025:
Hello Councillor Thompson,
You will recall that recently on Sept 1, 2025 I sent you and the other City of Victoria Councillors the following letter in regard to the Sept 4 Councillor Member Motion that the City of Victoria end its membership with the Urban Development Institute:
Letter sent to Victoria’s Mayor and Council and City Manager’s office, regarding the City’s potential withdrawal from the UDI development/real estate lobby. – CRD Watch Homepage
I did not, however, get the impression that you read that letter based on your deliberations at Council. I suggest that you review it closely so that you are informed on the subject of development industry lobbying in the City of Victoria, and not merely speculating about it during important council deliberations on the issue.
I observed closely the deliberations on the subject, and transcribed the content so as to analyze the discussions involved.
This can be helpful to you as well moving forward.
The transcription of your deliberations I’ve added to an appendix at the end of this letter.
I will add my own commentary to your comments below, so that you are more fully informed on this issue and that you are under no illusions as to the UDI and the City’s relationship to it, as you proceed forward on the issue of lobbying in the municipality, which is also on the agenda tomorrow, and will appear in the near future as the UDI withdrawal motion was temporarily postponed to be deliberated on soon after the issue of a potential municipal lobbyist registry.
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“I could end up supporting this motion. UDI does do lobbying, that’s for sure.” – Cllr. Thompson
I am glad that you have acknowledged that the UDI does lobbying. The UDI Capital Region’s recent Executive Director denied to View Royal council at their Sept 12, 2023 Committee of the Whole that the UDI is a lobbying group, despite that the person who said that, were registered at the time, as the UDI’s in-house lobbyist on the BC Lobbyists Registry. The UDI’s active registry information and history for the UDI’s lobbying activities is extensive.
In the light of that information, View Royal’s Mayor and Council unanimously voted to terminate their municipality’s membership with the UDI on November 14, 2023, a decision that was ratified a week earlier, on November 21, 2023. The UDI Capital Region pulled down its website udicapitalregion.ca the same day and it has remained down since. The UDI also pulled down its extensive members directory containing hundreds of corporate entities and has not reposted it. However, a backed-up copy of that directory was made and posted publicly by CRD Watch. The City of Victoria is a member listed on it, yet the City has not posted that information on its own website.
The UDI is not transparent. Not only have they permanently pulled down their members directory from public view, but they have also pulled down their extensive list of backroom committees that meet with branches of government. They have one such committee set up with the City of Victoria, the UDI & City of Victoria Liaison Committee.
“I don’t know if they’re, if they consider themselves primarily a lobbying organization.” – Cllr. Thompson
The UDI is indeed primarily a lobbying organization.
The following was from the front page of the UDI Capital Region website before it was taken down at the end of 2023:
“PRIMARY AREAS OF FOCUS
Government Relations
We are the public voice for Capital Region’s development industry, liaising with local governments and the media to promote balanced, well-planned and sustainable communities.”
“Your voice in the Capital Region’s development industry
Join the team of industry leaders and professionals who are influencing the issues that affect your bottom line.”
The UDI Edmonton Metro has also been incredibly explicit at their targeting of municipalities and their planning departments on their website. The following was a screenshot of http://www.udiedmontonmetro.com/influence taken within the last 2 years. That webpage was later taken down and replaced. I guess they realized that the reference to influence was too explicit. They later redirected to a new page called “Our Impact” Our Impact – Urban Development Institute Edmonton Metro. The Link to “Our Impact” on their front page can be seen in the 2nd screenshot below:
Note: The target of their influence and “advocacy” (The UDI files its lobbying activities with the BC Lobbyists Registry frequently as “advocating”): is District Planning, including municipal and elected officials.
As elected officials, there should be no confusion when you finally do make the decision as other municipalities and the regional government have recently – whether or not to discontinue the City’s paid membership from the lobbying organization representing the interests of hundreds of companies that profit from development and real estate, and have sought successfully and continue to influence all levels of governments to influence the issues that affect their bottom line.
The following is a quote from the former 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.”
The following are goals in the UDI’s Constitution:
“to familiarize the public and government agencies with the problems and objectives of the development industry”
“to promote co-operation and efficient relationships between all persons, firms, corporations, regulatory and government bodies and other agencies involved in and associated with land assembly and development”
As the UDI Capital Region’s former Executive Director put it to View Royal Council on Sept 12, 2023:
“We do extensive policy work, um, and this is where we look at informed changes across all levels of government. So we try to align the uh, policies, that are being, um brought forward by the federal government, the provincial government, and the municipal government, and to kind of help them align, so that they don’t, uh, collide with each other.”
The UDI through its lobbying activities has set itself up as the generator of housing policy for all levels of government despite that they only register lobbying activity on one level of government, while simultaneously they have set their role up to be officiating between all levels of government in aligning the policies, much of which they have lobbied for government to implement, while they are selling influence to their paying corporate member organizations in development and real estate in the former of paid memberships in the organization.
Do you not see a major issue of conflict of interest here?
“I will say that I don’t think they’ve done very effective lobbying on housing policy.” – Cllr. Thompson
The UDI thinks otherwise. Not only do they consider themselves to have so much power and influence that they are able to not only generate policy for branches of government and help make decisions for them, but they consider that their role is to align such policies at all levels of government.
As they humbly put it: “PRIMARY AREAS OF FOCUS
Government Relations
We are the public voice for Capital Region’s development industry, liaising with local governments and the media to promote balanced, well-planned and sustainable communities.”
I am doubly surprised that you do not seem to think that the UDI has been very effective at lobbying in regard to housing policy. Your spouse is an MLA, and should be fully aware of their extensive and effective lobbying to the Province that is registered on the BC Lobbyists Registry.
As has been documented extensively, the recent Housing Bills are a direct response to UDI lobbying:
Freedom of Information reveals that the Province of B.C. was working to implement what the registered lobbying organization, the Urban Development Institute, had been pushing for. This culminated in the recent Housing Bills that override local government authority on zoning. – CRD Watch Homepage
How the Development and Real Estate Lobby Pressed Mandatory Housing Targets, Mass Upzoning, Captured Official Community Plans, and Made the Shutting Down of Public Hearings the Norm in British Columbia Under the NDP Government – CRD Watch Homepage
The above article contains extensive diagrams showing how the vast extensive network of UDI lobbying operates through all levels of government to successfully achieve the industry’s objectives, which are primarily targeted at achieving upzoning, and OCP changes that can and have made the industry vast profits, while vastly reducing public input in such processes.
The following is an extensive index of articles and research showing the UDI’s influence on the Province’s recent housing bills that overrode municipal sovereignty on zoning policy and public input:
Index of articles revealing major lobbying influence on B.C. Provincial Housing Bills and Housing Targets. – CRD Watch Homepage
“I can only recall one instance where UDI lobbying was used at council and that was the letter that UDI sent in opposing climate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” – Councillor Thompson
This brings an elephant in the room question. If the UDI is lobbying against what council is pushing forward in regard to the environment, then why is the City of Victoria a paying member of the UDI? It was not the elected officials that voted for the city to join the UDI as a paying member, although now that this has been brought to light the decision is before the elected officials to make.
I find it surprising that you don’t seem to recall the UDI’s lobbying in regard to the CRD water Developer Cost Charges (DCCs), which it also lobbied municipalities on extensively. I also find this surprising given that you are Director of the CRD, which is a federation of the municipalities.
However, most of the UDI lobbying to local governments does not take place openly, it happens behind closed doors in the form of unrecorded backroom meetings with staff. As mentioned, it was not the elected officials that signed the City of Victoria up to be a member of the UDI development lobby, it was staffers.
These backroom meetings as mentioned are called the UDI & City of Victoria Liaison Committee meetings. Freedom of information results have shown extensive lobbying in such meetings.
“So, my reasons for maybe supporting today’s motion are a bit different. I’ve heard a lot from citizens wanting to get rid of, wanting the city to get rid of its membership in the UDI, for various reasons.” – Cllr Thompson
I appreciate your open-mindedness on this issue and regard to public concerns.
“I’ve heard of costs and, I’m assuming that it’s .01% of the budget or less. I don’t see that as being a significant reason.”
The UDI development/real estate lobby makes it relatively inexpensive for branches of government to join it, in comparison to the costs of their private corporate member companies, which they provide government influence to in the form of lobbying activity.
By having government members join, the UDI is then able to advertise to their corporate members which represent billions of dollars of outside industry interests to how much inside access and clout they have with all levels of government.
If to think of it from their perspective, the industry lobby should be paying government to join it, not having government pay it to be a part of it. As lobbyists they should be approaching government officials, not having government officials using tax dollars for admission fees to approach the UDI at their events. I call this lobbying in reverse.
The UDI wants government branches to join (they invite them to do so on their website UDI.org), so they make membership for branches of government relatively inexpensive. They stand to make much more money for their member organization from their inside-access ability to influence government, especially through backroom meetings with it. Government joining the UDI is like a proverbial finger trap. While it is very easy to get in, it is very difficult to get out. This is a technique used in marketing. Opt-ins are easy, opt-outs are difficult and time consuming. They make it easy to get in, so much so that they make it exceedingly easy for branches of government to join the lobby as paying members, without votes from elected officials, and they have been observed (through Freedom of Information) achieving this by contacting government workers directly, and also as you received in your recent letter, the UDI advertises to municipal workers to be involved in their advocacy work through their newsletter. The UDI files lobbying activities frequently as “advocating”.
The membership fee however, is only part of the cost of being in the UDI. Hosting even a stakeholder meeting with the UDI costs many hundreds of dollars as revealed by FOI.
In addition, the City pays elected officials and staffers to attend unrecorded UDI lobby events e.g. luncheons and seminars.
The costs of attending these events can be close to $100 per person, and the membership fee only gives something like a $15 per person discount, which is negligible.
The amount of the costs are not the main issue however as you noted. The issue is that the City is paying the industry lobbying organization to be a part of it at all.
“I have heard conspiracy theories about council influence. I doubt that very much.
I can only speak for myself.
I made it clear, long before running for election that I’m strongly in favour of more housing, much more housing, and that’s my position.
I don’t care what the UDI says about that.“
During the last local government election campaign you received hundreds of dollars of donations for your campaign from those associated with and/or executives of UDI member companies – companies such Geric Construction, Jawl Construction, Jawl Residential, Pooni Group, and Abstract Developments. Similar campaign donations have been made to many of those on Council.
Regardless of whether you consider that to be evidence of council influence, it is the documented evidence of considerable sources of your election campaign funds during the last election.
Source Elections BC:
FRPC – Local Election Contributions Search Results
This alone is a very good reason for the elected officials to not have their local government be a paying member of the lobby that has those same companies on it, and for which in each instance at least one employee from all of those companies mentioned, has served on the UDI Capital Region’s board of directors at one time or another, and some of them have been Chairs of that organization in recent years.
These are companies that have major projects in the City of Victoria and major applications that come to council.
“There’s a chance, though, that for some folks that are out there who are not really aware of UDI’s roles and what it does and doesn’t do and what it does and doesn’t do effectively” – Cllr. Thompson
I actually get the impression including from your own statements during the deliberations, that those least informed about what the UDI’s roles are and what it doesn’t and doesn’t do, and what it does and doesn’t do effectively – are the elected officials themselves.
Did you know for example, that the City of Victoria did not join the UDI as a paying member by a vote from the elected officials? This has been the case in multiple municipalities that the elected officials were not informed of this.
“And I don’t really see much of a big adequate reason for maintaining the membership either.” – Cllr. Thompson
Yes, you are correct.
So far 4 other municipalities in the last 2 and a half years, and the regional government have not found a big adequate reason for maintaining the membership either. Of the 3 councils that voted on this issue, the decision was unanimous among the elected officials to leave on each occasion. Oak Bay and the regional govt, the CRD left by staff decision. The staffers came to the same conclusion.
“And I don’t really see much of a big adequate reason for maintaining the membership either. Um I mean, I get I get lobbied all the time by, uh uh community associations, uh, CALUCs, individuals, uh, with a range of views about housing. I think that if we’re going to be weighing in on a bigger motion, which is not before us today, but about, getting lobbied, I think that we will need to look at all the lobbyists.” – Cllr. Thompson
I disagree with your conflating your actual Constituents as lobbyists. You are their Representative elected by them to serve their interests, that of their community and environment.
The UDI is a lobbying organization representing billions of dollars in outside corporate interests that stand to benefit from favourable land use policy from government for their industry. Representing the UDI through your local government joining it by paid membership with taxpayer dollars and its unelected staffers meeting with it behind closed doors to discuss policy generation and implementation, while on organization time, is not the same as representing your Constituents.
“But for this motion, I’m leaning in favor” – Councillor Thompson
As you are a thinking person, I salute your inclination in this regard.
Although there are several councillors that I will write to on the subject of their deliberations on this subject, I wrote to you first. The reason for that is because of those that I will write to on their deliberations, I think that you have demonstrated the most open-mindedness and responsible willingness for thought on this issue.
I expect that after properly, responsibly and fully reviewing the facts and information presented to you, and through doing your own appropriate and in-depth research, as many other elected officials and staffers have in the last 2 and a half years, that you will come to the conclusion that the City of Victoria should not be a paying member of the development and real estate lobby, and that you will do the right thing by ensuring through your democratic vote, that lobby and state will be separated through your crucial decision.
If you have any questions or additional thoughts on this issue, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Thank you sincerely,
Sasha Izard
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P.S.
“There’s a chance, though, that for some folks that are out there who are not really aware of UDI’s roles and what it does and doesn’t do and what it does and doesn’t do effectively” – Cllr Thompson
Having watched deliberations now from 4 councils on this issue, and having transcribed and publicly posted the deliberations of 3 of the councils – in each instance it was clear that the elected officials were not really aware of the UDI’s roles and what it does and doesn’t do, and what it does and doesn’t do effectively.
The Sooke deliberations were the most interesting in this regard. The elected officials, with the exception of the Mayor who appeared to have had much knowledge of the UDI, after years of meeting with them – wanted to learn what the UDI’s roles were, and to learn what is the nature of the UDI’s lobbying activities and who or what were they lobbying. The elected officials by Motion gave the UDI a year to come to them and explain their organization’s roles including lobbying activities publicly.
After over a year, the UDI did not show up. The UDI cancelled two scheduled meetings with the District and finally notified the District that at that time they did not see a meeting date in the foreseeable future.
The elected officials did not find that acceptable and unanimously voted to discontinue their District’s membership with the lobbying organization.
If the UDI itself refuses to publicly explain its nature and activities to elected officials (who did not vote in the first place for their District to join the UDI as a paying member), then how on earth does it stand to reason that the City of Victoria should be a paying member of a lobbying organization that will not publicly explain their lobbying activities and other roles to a municipality when asked?
If this organization will not state to the municipal elected officials publicly what their organization’s roles and lobbying activities are, then the City has no business being a paying member of such a blatantly untransparent organization.
The UDI Capital Region did previously explain briefly a number of its roles to the municipality of View Royal, but their Executive Director at the time in that speech claimed that the UDI is “not a lobbying group”, despite as mentioned being registered on the BC Lobbyists Registry at the time as their in-house lobbyist.
Thank you again,
Sasha
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Councillor Thompson responded to the email in the evening:
I get a lot of emails every day – many dozens. The large majority of them are lobbying me: advocating that I vote one way or the other – or another, or another – on the many issues before Council. I’m going to guess that it’s 80% or 90% of the emails I receive, if not more. I can now add Sasha Izard and CRD Watch to the large group of those who have lobbied me.
I will bear in mind the points you’ve made, as well as all the points that others have made. I encourage you to continue to engage with Council members, as I encourage everyone else. By the way, do you live in Victoria?
Best regards,
Dave Thompson
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Appendix: Transcription of Councillor Thompson’s deliberations at the Sept 4, 2025 Committee of the Whole in regard to the potential withdrawal of the City’s paid membership in the UDI.
Cllr. Thompson: Thank you, Mayor. I’ll be interested to see what my colleagues say.
I could end up supporting this motion. UDI does do lobbying, that’s for sure.
I don’t know if they’re, if they consider themselves primarily a lobbying organization.
I will say that I don’t think they’ve done very effective lobbying on housing policy.
I can only recall one instance where UDI lobbying was used at council and that was the letter that UDI sent in opposing climate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
That letter was used by today’s seconder.
So to remind people, I think it was yeah, April 6, 2023.
UDI sent in this letter, opposing a motion to accelerate the zero carbon step code. The seconder today read the entire UDI letter into the record in support of her motion to delay adoption and get additional industry consultation.
I mentioned at the time that I could have informed UDI about the errors in their letter, but they sent it between meetings. Morning committee consideration of the motion and afternoon council consideration of the same motion, but when something is said on the public record, it needs to be corrected to the public. So, in the council meeting I spent a fair amount of time going through each of the errors in the UDI letter, and I will do that with the incorrect information that I mentioned earlier today as well, including the information in the Chamber letter.
Anyway, the motion to delay and get additional industry consultation failed over at the committee and at the council. So, my reasons for maybe supporting today’s motion are a bit different. I’ve heard a lot from citizens wanting to get rid of, wanting the city to get rid of its membership in the UDI, for various reasons.
I’ve heard of costs and, I’m assuming that it’s .01% of the budget or less. I don’t see that as being a significant reason.
I have heard conspiracy theories about council influence. I doubt that very much.
I can only speak for myself.
I made it clear, long before running for election that I’m strongly in favour of more housing, much more housing, and that’s my position.
I don’t care what the UDI says about that.
There’s a chance, though, that for some folks that are out there who are not really aware of UDI’s roles and what it does and doesn’t do and what it does and doesn’t do effectively, uh, the membership uh that the city has in the UDI makes the city look bad, uh, and I think for me, that’s the thing that is kind of pulling me in the direction of supporting this motion.
And I don’t really see much of a big adequate reason for maintaining the membership either. Um I mean, I get I get lobbied all the time by, uh uh community associations, uh, CALUCs, individuals, uh, with a range of views about housing. I think that if we’re going to be weighing in on a bigger motion, which is not before us today, but about, getting lobbied, I think that we will need to look at all the lobbyists.
But uh for this motion, I’m leaning in favor, but again, uh interested to see what my colleagues have to say, thanks.
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See also: City Councillors Hammond and Gardiner put forward Motion to “Terminate Victoria’s membership in the Urban Development Institute” “effective immediately”. – CRD Watch Homepage
Letter sent to Victoria’s Mayor and Council and City Manager’s office, regarding the City’s potential withdrawal from the UDI development/real estate lobby. – CRD Watch Homepage
Transcript of City of Victoria Council Deliberation on Motion put forward by Councillors Hammond and Gardiner to “Terminate Victoria’s membership in the Urban Development Institute”. (Sept 4, 2025) – CRD Watch Homepage
Index of articles regarding lobby events and other meetings between government and lobbyists. – CRD Watch Homepage
CRD Watch Homepage 
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