UDI Capital Region newsletter from early 2024, shines more light on the UDI advertising “Project Support” from the UVic Real Estate Club to the UDI’s corporate members.

UDI Capital Region newsletter from early 2024, shines more light on the UDI advertising “Project Support” from the UVic Real Estate Club to the UDI’s corporate members.

By Sasha Izard
Dec 18, 2025

BC Housing FOI 292-30-9925 has finally rolled in, revealing (at considerable cost), a vast trove of documents regarding BC Housing employees’ attendance at lobby events and information about them.

This article informed by it however, will focus on a recurring theme covered on CRD Watch, which is the overwhelming influence of the UDI a registered lobbying organization for corporate interests in development and real estate.

Not that BC Housing and the UVic Real Estate and the UDI don’t overlap, they certainly do, with BC Housing’ Provincial Director of Redevelopment having served on all 3 entities simultaneously:

How is it that BC Housing’s Provincial Director of Redevelopment has simultaneously been the Director of a branch of BC’s most powerful lobbying organization for real estate and development interests? And why were they made administrator of BC Housing’s paid membership in that same branch of that same lobbying organization? – CRD Watch Homepage

In regard to the UVic Real Estate Club, see also:

Index of documentation covering the UVic Real Estate Club and development industry influence over it. – CRD Watch Homepage

In particular, this article follows on this earlier one: UDI (registered lobbying organization) Newsletter from March 2023 Advertised “connecting with the University of Victoria Real Estate Club for your next public hearing” – CRD Watch Homepage

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Two UDI newsletters advertised to the lobby’s corporate members connecting with the UVic Real Estate for their public hearings in 2023. I learned this from a Freedom of Information response that I received to UVic, indicating that UVic received these communications and did nothing about it.

This latest FOI received from BC Housing shows that the UDI kept advertising the UVic Real Estate Club in this way in early 2024, before the following month hiding such newsletters behind a members-only access pay wall.

The following newsletter, the prior month, from the UDI Capital Region was sent to a BC Housing employee:

The full letter can be read in Appendix 1, at the end of this article.

The letter was written by the UDI Capital Region’s Executive Director, who left that position in 2025. Whitcher was also a Director of the UVic Real Estate Club at the time, with several other UDI Directors, and several former UDI Directors providing them an overwhelming position of power over the club (only 2 students were on the board in comparison).

Since I forced this issue to UVic’s administration, the UVic Real Estate Club was forced to rename it Board of Directors, the “Advisory Board”.

UVIC Real Estate Club compelled to rename its Board of Directors the “Advisory Board” after it turned out that the board was overwhelmingly dominated by current and past Directors from the same Provincially registered development/real estate lobbying organization. 6 out of 8 of the UVIC club Board members as it turned out, were not students attending UVIC. – CRD Watch Homepage

As revealed in numerous articles, the top financiers and overwhelmingly so of the UVic Real Estate Club are the UDI and its member companies.

At the time of writing, Whitcher’s image holding a microphone is still at the top of the UVic Real Estate Club’s Partner’s (financiers) page. Whitcher has since ended her position on the UVic Rec Board.

Partners — UVic Real Estate

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The following is an excerpt from the 2024 UDI Capital Region newsletter:

See also:

An Expensive Party: Victoria Employee flew to Nashville and back, to hang out with developers at their “Social Event”. Cost to the taxpayer: almost $2000 – CRD Watch Homepage
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The following is a section of the 2024 letter:

Note that Jawl Residential mentioned on the same page, has hosted more than one UVic Real Estate Club event in its buildings that are co-organized with the UDI (Jawl residential is a UDI member). Here is a video of one social event held at the Atrium. Robert Jawl makes an appearance in the video. In the video, bubbly Calabrian wine is poured for the students, after former Mayor of Victoria Lisa Helps speaks. If the video is pulled down, I have it already backed-up.

Spring Social 2024

Poster for a UVic event at the Atrium:

The newsletter continued:

Note: The UVic Real Estate club showed up as a block supporting the Bayview Roundhouse project at a Public Hearing, which I have covered in other articles. The Bayview Presentation Center held a UVic/UDI social event, where food and drink were served.

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Conclusion:

I brought the issues up of unregistered lobbying and the UVic Real Estate Club, recently at the Special Committee to Review the Lobbyists Transparency Act:

Presentation by Sasha Izard to the Special Committee to Review the Lobbyists Transparency Act – CRD Watch Homepage

My presentation can also be read on Hansard: https://www.leg.bc.ca/hansard-content/Committees/43rd1st/lta/20251210am-LTAReview-Victoria-Blues.htm
(My presentation and dialogue with the MLAs started at the 2:30PM mark in the transcript.)

Excerpt from the presentation:

Therefore, as lobbying in the Province cannot in any true sense of the word, be called transparent, I suggest renaming the Act, to the accurately named: Lobbying Registry Act (or Lobbying Registration Act). Alternatively, lobbying could be made fully transparent, which would include having all lobbying activity fully recorded and made immediately without censorship/redaction, available to the public. If that were achieved, and I suggest it be, but I doubt it will be; then yes, the name Lobbyists Transparency Act could live up to its name, and warrant being kept.

As this is not the case, at present, once again I suggest that the Act be renamed the Lobbying Registry Act to accurately reflect what it is, for the most part. I say for the most part, because from what I understand, and from my communications with the BC Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists, unpaid lobbyists are not required to register their activity on the BC Lobbyists Registry.

This creates major opportunities for what I refer to as proxy lobbying, or astroturf lobbying, whereby volunteer organizations e.g. societies, or other groups including student groups lobbying in the same interests of industry that is helping to organize and finance them (e.g. the UVic Real Estate Club), can advance lobbying of other interests without having to register lobbying activity, and that activity can thus, pass under the radar; something that can undermine democracy, while advancing private and/or outside interests – even co-opting the use of the name of a public body, in this example, the University of Victoria, which as it receives significant government funding is classified as a public body under FOIPPA.

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See also:

Index of documentation covering the UVic Real Estate Club and development industry influence over it. – CRD Watch Homepage

UDI (registered lobbying organization) Newsletter from March 2023 Advertised “connecting with the University of Victoria Real Estate Club for your next public hearing” – CRD Watch Homepage

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Appendix 1: UDI Capital Region newsletter, sent to BC Housing Employee in Jan 2024. (Note images that were in the article were not included in the FOI response).