Sooke’s Director of Corporate Services denied that a document showing who was responsible for renewing the District’s UDI membership (in contravention of a council motion) was in the District’s custody and control. Now after much of the year has passed, I have a copy.

Sooke’s Director of Corporate Services denied that a document showing who was responsible for renewing the District’s UDI membership (in contravention of a council motion) was in the District’s custody and control. Now after much of the year has passed, I have a copy.

The District of Sooke Council unanimously voted that the District withdraw from the UDI in early 2025.

Previously, the District’s CAO had renewed Sooke’s membership in the lobbying organization, despite a Council directive that the elected officials would decide first whether or not to renew the membership after hearing the UDI explain their activities to them. The UDI, which represents its paying member organizations involved in real estate and development, never showed up.

The District’s CAO, Raechel Gray, initially claimed that she wasn’t aware of the “oversight”, mentioning new staff hires and a staff misinterpretation of the elected official’s motion as a reason. The CAO admitted at a later council meeting that she was the one responsible. However, the documents showing the responsibility, according to the Corporate Officer, could not be found…

That is until the missing information suddenly appeared many months later:

By Sasha Izard
Sept 20, 2025

On March 11, 2024, a Sooke resident, brought up the issue of the District being a paying member of the UDI, an organization registered on the BC Lobbyists Registry.

Councillor Batemen, responding to this, put forward a motion that Sooke discontinue the District’s membership with the UDI. Surreal deliberations followed, which revealed that the councillors (not the mayor), were pretty unaware of what the purpose of the UDI is.

The elected officials did not vote for the District to join the UDI. Staff had made that unilateral decision using corporate funds years earlier. Council determined that evening that the elected officials would decide whether or not to renew the District’s UDI membership, once they have received a delegation from the UDI to explain their organization and their lobbying activities to them. They gave them up to a year to do so. After over a year, the UDI did not show up and they informed the District that they wouldn’t do so in the foreseeable future.

Only months after the council motion was made that the elected officials would decide, District staff unilaterally renewed the membership in contravention of the council motion.

Did the District of Sooke violate its own Motion? The District went ahead and renewed its paid membership with a registered lobbying organization for development and real estate interests, without publicly meeting with it first to ascertain the functions of the organization. – CRD Watch Homepage

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. – CRD Watch Homepage

A few days after the meeting, I made a Freedom of Information request to the District regarding its communications with the UDI and information about meetings with it.

At a mere 43 pages returned in the response, the District appeared to me to be evasive about communications with the UDI. The District of Saanich in comparison, delivered more pages than Tolstoy’s War and Peace in regard to a similar FOI that I had made previously.

Did the District of Sooke Destroy Communications Material with and/or Regarding the Urban Development Institute (UDI), a Registered Lobbyist Organization Representing Development and Real Estate? – CRD Watch Homepage

The Mystery of Sooke’s Transitory UDI Communications Continues – Reveals Failure of the BC Freedom of Information System to Provide Transparency Around Lobbying – CRD Watch Homepage

The BC Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) Refuses to Search the District of Sooke’s Records to Determine if Information Regarding its Communications with and about a Registered Lobbying Organization for Development and Real Estate (the UDI) were Purged and/or Withheld from a Freedom of Information Request. – CRD Watch Homepage

As the year for the UDI to address the public officials was ending and with no evidence of the UDI planning to do so in sight, I started getting suspicious. I made a Freedom of Information inquiry on Feb 18, 2025 to the District of Sooke for:

“Receipts and invoices between the District of Sooke and the Urban Development Institute (UDI), particularly in regard to the District’s membership with the UDI. Date range: Jan 1, 2024 to Feb 17, 2025”.

As an expected likely-scenario, the FOI response from the District revealed that the staff had renewed the membership several months after the meeting anyway, despite the March 11, 2024 council directive that the elected officials would decide:

The previous annual membership invoice also included in the FOI, revealed that the timeline for the UDI membership renewal that staff had provided to the elected officials at the March 11, 2024 meeting had been incorrect. The staff claim at the meeting was that they had only recently renewed the membership, so the issue in their view was not time sensitive (thus council decided to give the UDI up to a year to respond). In actuality, the date on the invoice that had been provided to the District by the UDI for the membership, indicated the membership renewal period had been for July of 2023. Thus the membership was up for renewal in July of 2024. In the summer of 2024, District staff renewed the membership again, against the council motion that had been made several months earlier.

On March 11, 2025 (exactly a year after the March 11, 2024 council meeting) I emailed Sooke’s Mayor and Council about this.

At the end of the email I asked:

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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Councillor Jeff 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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Raechel Gray, the CAO was cc’d in the the councillor’s email.

I replied to Jeff (the CAO was also cc’d):

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.

[…]

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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Sooke’s CAO Raechel Gray replied 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 28^th meeting when staff will receive direction from Council on renewing the UDI membership.

Please let me know if you need anything further.

Thanks,

Raechel

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I had a significant degree of skepticism towards the CAO’s comments. Why would newly hired staff have been responsible?

I have to give Raechel, the CAO, something of a benefit of the doubt though in regard to her response. She was not present at the March 11, 2024 meeting. There was a staff member filling in for her at the meeting.

However, as a CAO she is responsible for the day to day operations of the District, and responsible for familiarizing herself with the proceedings of the meeting, whether she was present or not, and understanding the council decisions, their implications, and ensuring the implementation of them in the District would be her responsibility. As it would turn out, I was correct in this regard, it was her responsibility.

I made the following FOI request to the District (FOI 2025-011):

“All communications/documentation about the decision and who made it and who was responsible, for the District to renew its membership with the Urban Development Institute that was renewed in July of 2024”

On April 24, 2025 Sooke’s Director of Corporate Services Jessica Bagnall delivered an FOI response.

The FOI response contained my own email dialogues (as shown previously) with Councillor Bateman and the CAO. There was nothing else included in the FOI response.

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I replied: Hello Jessica,

Why is my emails with Council and staff after the decision was made, the only documentation that was provided for the decision, who made it and who was responsible for it?

I see in nothing here, who made the decision and who was responsible for it, nor documentation of that decision, until after the fact. How can that be?

– Sasha Izard

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Bagnall responded:

Dear Mr. Izard,

In response to your FOI request (FOI 2025-011), you were provided with the any and all records that fall within the scope of your request. To clarify, the membership renewal in July 2024 occurred due to staff error. As confirmed in the released records, staff mistakenly processed the invoice believing Council’s directive applied to the 2025–2026 term.

Council had in fact passed a motion in March 2024 to postpone the renewal decision until after receiving a presentation from UDI. Unfortunately, that direction was overlooked during a period of high staff turnover and volume of financial transactions.

If you wish to pursue a review of the FOI response, information on how to contact the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner was included in my original reply.

—————————————————————————————————

Hello Jessica,

I learned the circumstances from my previous communications with Sooke.

The issue is that the documentation of who authorized that specific business decision is still missing from the FOI.

I did essentially the same FOI request a couple years ago to View Royal, and the result was forthcoming. Why is Sooke not releasing that information?

Thank you,
Sasha

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Bagnall replied:

Greetings,

Please note that Freedom of Information Requests are only subject to records within the custody and control of the District. After conducting a thorough search, we have produced and provided any and all records that were available and fell within the scope of your request.

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I replied:

How is it possible for the record of who authorized the business decision to not be in the custody and control of the District?

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Bagnall replied:

Thank you,

To address your question, under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIPPA), the District is obligated to provide access to records that are in its custody and control. As previously noted, following a thorough search, the records released to you constitute the full extent of what is available and within the scope of your request.

Further to your inquiry regarding decision-making documentation: the District adheres to established records management practices aligned with the Local Government Management Association (LGMA) Records Management Manual. According to this guidance:

Transitory records—including many emails—are defined as those that serve no ongoing informational or evidentiary value. These may include drafts, duplicates, informal notes, or internal meeting scheduling.
Records are only retained if they document critical business decisions, support compliance obligations, or have operational or legal significance.
Records that are transitory in nature, even if once held by former or current employees, are not required to be retained and are not systematically preserved in our records repository.

While the District is not required to retain transitory records, we do include any still within our custody and control in FOI searches. In this case, such a search was conducted, and all available records that met the criteria of your request were disclosed.

Should you wish to pursue this further, you are entitled under Section 52 of FOIPPA to request a review by the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC). Details on how to initiate that process were included in our earlier correspondence. Please note that staff will not be responding further to this request, please direct any concerns to the OIPC.

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I replied:

“Records are only retained if they document critical business decisions, support compliance obligations, or have operational or legal significance.”

The District of Sooke paying for membership in an organization is a critical business decision. Did Sooke dispose of that record as being transitory?

Thank you,
Sasha Izard

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Bagnall did not respond.

I forwarded the exchange to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) and wrote:

I am reporting this as denial of access to information by the District of Sooke.

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I also emailed the OIPC and Bagnall with the following:

Sooke’s use of the word critical in its claim, appears unsubstantiated by

The claim:

“Records are only retained if they document critical business decisions, support compliance obligations, or have operational or legal significance.””

This is what Sooke’s records management Bylaw states in comparison: District of Sooke

“Integrity and Authenticity Maintained
7. The records management system must maintain the integrity and authenticity of records made or kept in the usual and ordinary course of business”.

Instead of the word critical, it says usual and ordinary course of business.

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The exchanges shown above between myself and Bagnall took place from April 24 to April 30, 2025.

On April 28, 2025 was not only the federal election, but council deliberated on whether or not to discontinue the UDI membership that same evening. I spoke to the issue as did a number of residents of Sooke. The result of the deliberations was unanimous. Although the Mayor was not present due to the election (they were a candidate in it), the councillors who were presented, decided unanimously for the District to end its membership with the UDI.

There was another motion on the agenda that evening that I decided to speak on as well as did some residents of Sooke. I questioned its constitutionality. It was a Notice of Motion put forward by Councillor St. Pierre in regard to Section 43. of FOIPPA. St. Pierre’s Notice of Motion was to send a resolution to UBCM to call on the Province to implement various limits in regard to access to information.

After the public input, St. Pierre called for a brief adjournment. I then had a discussion with him in the council chamber. When the meeting continued, he tried to scrap most of the motion. Staff commented that his amendments when he tried to scrap most of it, made the motion too different from his original motion for it to be a continuation of his notice of motion. He withdrew the motion.

St. Pierre’s notice of motion for the meeting and a description of my discussion with him about it during the adjournment can be seen in Appendix 2 at the end of the article.

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This was a hectic time for me. Not only was I out in Sooke dealing with the UDI issue and the S.43 notice of motion, but at the same time BC Housing had launched a 44 page quasi-judicial attempt based on the same section of FOIPPA S.43, to deny me access to information, providing me only a week’s deadline to respond after their completed submission.

Coincidence?

At any rate, BC Housing failed completely, the S.43 notice of motion was withdrawn, and the UDI pullout was unanimous. Although it was a stressful time, I came out victorious on every count. It felt like the equivalent of a hat trick in the game of soccer. 🙂

BC Housing Launched a Quasi-Judicial Attempt to Deny me Access to Information. They Failed. – CRD Watch Homepage

However, after all of that I was drained.

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Something else happened that eventful evening of the federal election and the Sooke council meeting.

The CAO, Raechel Gray admitted during the meeting that she had been the one responsible for the mistake of renewing the UDI membership contrary to the council directive.

Councillor Bateman was content to let that slide, and frankly I probably would have let the episode slide there as well (taking responsibility is a good thing and it is better late than never); if it weren’t for the fact, that I was being denied by the District access to the documentation of that membership renewal decision by staff, despite there being a legal obligation through FOIPPA to provide that documentation.

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After a couple days, the crickets chirped for months…

That is until Sept 18, 2025, when I received the following email from Nancy Owen, the Acting Corporate Officer/FOI Head, Deputy Director of Corporate Services with the subject:

Supplemental Response (Full Release) – Request for Access to Records under the FOIPPA (“Act”) – FOI 2025-011

Dear Applicant,

As part of a further review of the above-noted file, the District has identified one additional responsive record that was not included in the original release.

Please find the additional document attached. This record is a copy of the Urban Development Institute (UDI) invoice from July 2024, which contains account coding and an internal approval stamp used to process payment.

While the relevant correspondence was previously disclosed, this supplemental record is being provided now to ensure the District’s response to your request is complete.

If you have any questions regarding this supplemental disclosure, please do not hesitate to contact me directly.

Sincerely,

Nancy Owen

I’ve included the full FOI response that was in the attached document to the email as an Appendix (1) to the end of this article.

—————————————————————————————————

“As part of a further review of the above-noted file, the District has identified one additional responsive record that was not included in the original release.”

That is not true, there were more than one record that was provided in the supplemental release that was not included in the original release.

“While the relevant correspondence was previously disclosed”

This is also not true.

Summary of the contents of the FOI response:

On July 1, 2024 the UDI contacted Sooke’s CAO, Raechel Gray informing her that it was time to renew the District’s UDI membership.

The following day on July 2, 2024, Gray forwarded the email to Sooke’s Finance department commenting:

“For processing please

Thanks,
Raechel

—————————————————————————————————

The same day July 2, 2024, a payment was made for the annual membership renewal for the time: July 2, 2024-July 1, 2025, as evinced by a receipt in the FOI response.

An invoice was issued the following day July 3, 2025 with SD VISA written in pen above (SD presumably being Sooke District), the amount paid was included on the invoice, along with a signature above the words “Expenditure Approved”.

—————————————————————————————————

I replied,

Thank you Nancy,

Two questions:

1. Whose signature is this?

2. Which account was used to make the coding?

Thank you again,
Sasha

—————————————————————————————————

Hello Sasha,

This message addresses your most recent follow-up regarding your Freedom of Information request.

As previously provided, all responsive records in the custody or control of the District of Sooke have been released, including:

The CAO Raechel’s email directing Finance to process the invoice,
The approved invoice bearing Raechel’s initials,
Confirmation that Raechel authorized the payment, both in writing and at a Council meeting.

In response to your latest question: the signature and account coding approval are from Raechel, the Chief Administrative Officer.

FOIPPA provides access to records, not explanations or answers to questions. As there are no additional records responsive to your request, and the local government has fulfilled its duty under section 6(1) of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act to respond openly, accurately, and completely, this concludes our response.

If you wish to pursue a review, contact information for the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for B.C. is available in the email thread below.

We appreciate your engagement and consider this request file closed.

Kind regards,

Nancy Owen

Acting Corporate Officer/FOI Head

Deputy Director of Corporate Services

District of Sooke

—————————————————————————————————

It doesn’t seem that Nancy noticed a contradiction in her responses.

In her previous email, she wrote:

“If you have any questions regarding this supplemental disclosure, please do not hesitate to contact me directly.”

When I asked two, to the point questions, she answered them very clearly, and then wrote:

“FOIPPA provides access to records, not explanations or answers to questions.”

—————————————————————————————————

I replied:

Thank you Nancy.

That is very clear and helpful.

One last question.

Why was the District unable to locate these documents previously?

Thank you again,
Sasha

I also emailed:

One other question, because it arises from your previous response:

“As previously provided, all responsive records in the custody or control of the District of Sooke have been released, including:

Confirmation that Raechel authorized the payment, both in writing and at a Council meeting.”

I don’t see anything in the responsive records about Raechel authorizing the payment at a Council meeting. Where is that in the records?

Thank you,
Sasha

Appendix 1: Supplemental Response (Full Release) – Request for Access to Records under the FOIPPA (“Act”) – FOI 2025-011

Appendix 2: Councillor St. Pierre’s Motion in regard to Section 43. of FOIPPA, which was to send a resolution to UBCM to place various limits on access to information.

On April 28, 2025 (the same day as the federal election which Sooke’s mayor was running in as an NDP candidate, and was thus not present at the meeting), I addressed the council on the UDI issue prior to their decision whether or not to discontinue the membership.

There was another item that appeared on the agenda that election night, that I had not originally planned to address, and hadn’t prepared a speech for.

Councillor St. Pierre provided notice of motion in regard to S.43 of FOIPPA:

A number of speakers from the public, one in particular voiced and raised important questions to the council and strong qualms, about this proposal that if passed would be taken to UBCM.

I also weighed in on the subject, asking if Councillor St. Pierre had read the Canadian Constitution, and whether or not he had thought of whether his proposal was in accord with it. (How for example could it accord with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms?)

The council took an adjournment, and St. Pierre walked up to speak to me and another speaker that had voiced qualms about this issue.

I asked the councillor, what was the basis for this motion? Could he point out any specific examples of this issue in Sooke? He could not.

He asked what I thought of the Motion. I responded that I thought it was a terrible motion.

He said that the point of his motion is that he wanted to define the term vexatious. I said, me too, I’d love to have the word vexatious defined, by all means, it should be defined!

I suggested scrapping the rest of the motion then, and instead seek to define the word vexatious. This he proceeded to attempt. As the council meeting continued, he sought to change the Motion to simply define the term vexatious and present that to UBCM.

However, the corporate administrator noted that the motion would be too different from the original motion to change it at the meeting. If he wanted to create a new motion, he would have to go back to the drawing board for it, and present a new motion at a different meeting. Thus the Motion that evening ended as suddenly as it had began, in its tracks. The Motion nor variants of it, seem to have arisen again since then.

Who knew the word vexatious could be so controversial and difficult to define?

At the same time as this episode was taking place, BC Housing had launched a 44 page quasi-judicial attempt to deny me access to information using the same section of FOIPAA (S.43)

Although they had months to prepare this surprise attack, I was given in comparison only a week to respond in full to their many paged final submission. I was summarily refused any adjournment to have a reasonable amount of time to prepare a counter-case. I achieved this anyway during that time, even made it out to Sooke to deal with the UDI motion, and as it turned out in addition a motion dealing with the same section of FOIPPA and attempt to limit access to information.

When the dust settled however, the adjudicator agreed with me, that BC Housing was wrong on all counts, that they had misinterpreted section 43 of FOIPPA, and could not deny me access to information neither then, nor in the future.

BC Housing Launched a Quasi-Judicial Attempt to Deny me Access to Information. They Failed. – CRD Watch Homepage

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See also: Index of articles regarding Sooke – CRD Watch Homepage

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