Undue Influence: BC NDP Government appointed giant Commercial Real Estate Company as Housing Advisor to North Saanich
CBRE released its “Provincial Advisor Report and Recommendations” for North Saanich on April Fool’s Day 2026, and that isn’t a joke.
CBRE currently has a 7200 square foot industrial property up for sale in North Saanich.
As Provincial Advisor to North Saanich, CBRE determined that the Urban Containment Boundary is slowing development.
By Sasha Izard
June 24, 2026
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Yes, just when you thought that the BC NDP couldn’t sell out more to development and real estate, by supplanting public urban planning with enforced corporate interests over that of communities and ecology; they become even more brazen and shameless than ever.
On Jan 28, 2026 – Darron Kloster and Michael John Lo reported that the BC Provincial Government, had hired CBRE as their appointed advisor to North Saanich. As they put it: “CBRE Development Strategy and Consulting is the consulting arm of one of the world’s largest commercial real estate services and investment firms.”
However, their brief article was accompanied without a word of critical thinking on the issue. Not a thought about ‘potential’ conflict of interest could be found. Reading the article one could easily come to the impression that it was just business as usual. Kloster has been known for his coverage of business over the years for the Times Colonist.
Province appoints North Saanich’s housing advisor – Victoria Times Colonist
While the appointment of CBRE as advisor to North Saanich on meeting its provincially mandated housing targets, might have been business as usual, to the Times Colonist – it is a far cry from what most people would expect for a provincially appointed advisor to a municipality.
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CBRE, a company with business interest in North Saanich.
Not only is CBRE the new provincially appointed advisor to the municipality, but the giant commercial real estate country has business in the district as well.
The following is a listing for a CBRE industrial property in North Saanich selling for almost $2 million according to CBRE’s website at the time of writing:
Archived version: 1952 Mills Road – CBRE Victoria
1952 Mills Road – CBRE Victoria
Screenshot:
Zoomed:
Location: North Saanich, BC
Opportunity: 3,400 SF Freehold Light Industrial Opportunity
CBRE Limited is pleased to offer the opportunity to purchase a new-build freehold industrial building at 1952 Mills Road in North Saanich, BC. Expected to complete in Q2, 2026, the Property features 3,400 SF of building area, 3 loading bays, 8 paved surface parking stalls, and office space. CS-1 zoning provides occupiers with a wide range of potential uses. The location is exceptionally convenient, steps from HWY 17 and the Victoria International Airport. There is potential to lease a portion of the facility, providing buyers flexibility in utilization.
Property Size: 3,400 SF Building | 7,200 SF Lot
Property Type: Industrial
Price: $1,950,000
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The following is from CBRE’s brochure for the property at the time of writing:
Archived version:
Wayback Machine
Brochure-1952-Mills-Road-1.pdf
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So why was a giant commercial real estate company with at least one business interest at North Saanich appointed by the provincial government as the district’s advisor on meeting its provincially mandated housing targets?
Why hasn’t the media asked this question?
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On April 1, 2026 CBRE’s final report for the Ministry of Citizen’s Services was completed.
Archived version:
Wayback Machine
NorthSaanichAdvisorReport.pdf
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The report’s finding under its second item on its Executive Summary on page 2., might come across as frankly inappropriate:
“Urban Containment Boundary Misalignment: The Urban Containment Boundary (UCB) does not align with the need for additional housing supply in the District, preventing the application of Small-Scale Multi-Unit Housing (SSMUH) legislation across key growth nodes and limiting the density the District can support.
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Let’s face it, we are in unsustainable growth-based capitalism, and so a giant commercial real estate company determining for a local government that too much land is protected, and could instead be covered with dense housing with low ecology in the lots (SSMUH) should not even be surprising at this point.
For many it was obvious that corporate interests were going to come after the UCB, it was only a matter of time. Now here it is, the UCB positioned as a barrier to the local governmentreaching the housing targets of its provincial masters.
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At the same time as the BC NDP government was ramming through the infamous housing bills, including Bill 44 which contained the SSMUH legislation, the Urban Development Institute (UDI), a registered lobbying organization for development and real estate interests on the BC Lobbyists Registry was pulling down its members directory from public view.
You can still view a backed up copy from around that time at the following link:
Public Release of the Urban Development Institute (UDI)’s hidden members directory dated to the beginning of 2024. The directory contains dozens of government branches that are hiding their memberships in the registered lobbying organization for development and real estate interests from the public. – CRD Watch Homepage
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Not surprisingly, CBRE was a paying member of the UDI – and most likely probably still is.
CBRE had 3 paid memberships in the UDI at the time, including one at its office in downtown Victoria on Fort Street. These were its entries as they were listed on the directory:
(778) 891-8815
1021 West Hastings Street, Suite 2500
Vancouver, BC V6E 0C3
- MAP
- (604) 662-3000
1026 Fort Street
Victoria, BC V8V 3K4
- MAP
- (250) 386-0000
1021 W Hastings St
Suite 2500
Vancouver, British Columbia V6E 0C3
MAP
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About half a year, before the now infamous housing bills were passed through the legislature, Bill 44’s predecessor came into force.
It was Bill 43, aka the Housing Supply Act.
The Act would lead to provincially mandated housing targets and advisors being appointed for some municipalities, including eventually North Saanich.
As I showed in an earlier article, Documents obtained by Freedom of Information revealed that the Urban Development Institute (UDI) and the Province of BC collaborated on the Housing Supply Act, including the Province having had top lobbyists in the UDI sign Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) with the UDI while advising the province on the upcoming legislation that would override local government autonomy.
Documents obtained by Freedom of Information reveal that the Urban Development Institute (UDI) and the Province of BC collaborated on the Housing Supply Act. The Act would lead to Provincially mandated housing targets and advisors being appointed for some municipalities. – CRD Watch Homepage
The Government of British Columbia had top figures in the most powerful lobbying organization for development and real estate interests in the province, sign Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) as they advised the Province on adopting mandatory/enforceable targets for municipalities and for other upcoming housing legislation to be able to override local government autonomy. – CRD Watch Homepage
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In March of of 2022, the UDI made a lobbying presentation to David Eby, where it called for mandatory housing targets, which were enforceable with a carrot and stick approach of incentives and penalties.
You can see the presentation slides in the following article.
Public release of UDI March 10, 2022 presentation slides, agenda, and lobbying letters to David Eby. – CRD Watch Homepage
Here are some of the slides from that presentation:
Note on the above slide that the UDI wanted targets to be measured by building Permits, not by completions.
Yes, you read that correctly one of the punishments for not meeting housing targets that the UDI lobbied the province for, was “curtailing the regulatory powers of those [municipalities] who do not” meet their housing targets.
Prior to enforceable housing targets, there were already housing targets for many of the municipalities in the province, including for most of the local governments on Southern Vancouver Island.
These were the so-called Housing Needs Reports (HNRs), where almost a monopoly on their creation across the province was attained by another UDI member company, Urban Systems.
Urban Systems has been involved with the creation of so many urban planning documents across the province, that at times, I have come to consider that they are by far the most influential company guiding urban planning across the Province.
I have listed many of Urban System’s overlapping planning guidance in the following article:
How the proposed “RapidBus” lanes in the Capital Region, including on McKenzie, were used as part of the UDI development lobby’s push for enforced densification/upzoning along rapid transit corridors, during their lobbying to David Eby in 2022 – CRD Watch Homepage
In other words, having outside corporate influence guiding the hand of dictating or enforcing housing targets for municipalities is nothing new.
As the housing bills were being debated in the legislature in the fall of 2023.
Green MLA at the time, Adam Olsen asked critical questions regarding Urban Systems and whether it was receiving a monopoly-like status on housing needs reports, which bill 44 would mandate more rounds of in the future.
Kahlon was visually uncomfortable and rather than answering Olsen’s questions, quickly invoked closure to end the debate, and force the bill through without anymore deliberation.
In 2025, Kahlon would be shuffled out of his Ministry of Housing position, only months after a provincial housing advisor was appointed to the District of Oak Bay.
There had earlier been questions raised about his brother’s development company and a development application in Oak Bay, an issue that the province was quick to bury under the sand.
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Upon obtaining a vast sea of results from freedom of information about the UDI’s influence on the Province – in November of 2024, I wrote the following article:
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
Excerpt from Freedom of Information:
The article was essentially a sequel to an article I had written just before the housing bills were passed:
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
At that time, I had already noted the patterns that the UDI were behind the housing legislation. I even charted out diagrams of their influence and that of their member company Urban Systems on the development and implementation of provincial housing policy.
I also noted that in both 2011 and 2017, the UDI had donated directly to the BC NDP.
Here are some other articles that I wrote subsequently documenting the UDI’s influence on the creation of provincially mandated housing targets:
The Urban Development Institute lobbied the Province of BC to implement what they called “Global Housing Targets”. The Province would deliver new Housing Bills in response. – CRD Watch Homepage
The “Hong Kong Model, transit density – Setting expectations and having clear guidance. MDE [Minister David Eby] First step target approach”. UDI Executive Committee Meeting in April 13, 2022 with David Eby when he was the Attorney General and Minister Responsible for Housing. – CRD Watch Homepage
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In the fall of 2025, I documented how David Eby admitted to the so-called Vancouver Condo King Bob Rennie, the UDI were key influence in regard to the creation of forcing housing targets on local governments, transit oriented areas (Bill 47) and other key components of the housing legislation.
The David Eby Confession: Premier Eby talking to the ‘Condo King’ Bob Rennie, finally spilled the beans in front of the camera, on how UDI lobbying played key role in the creation of the Provincial Housing Bills. – CRD Watch Homepage
David Eby Before and After: How David Eby’s former criticisms of the political influence of the so-called ‘Condo King’ of Vancouver Bob Rennie, when Eby was a member of the opposition; turned once in power, to Eby becoming Rennie’s political follower. – CRD Watch Homepage
While Eby was telling the condo king how influential he was over his government and hence over local governments – in the fall of 2025; by the summer of 2026, the provincial and federal governments announced that they would be buying up a major amount of empty condo units effectively bailing out the developers for their own recklessness, using public funds.
As Carney and Eby bail out reckless development industry with billions of dollars of public funds, WorkBC has retired its Cost of Living Calculator. – CRD Watch Homepage
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Conclusion:
British Columbia, the place where its government was convinced by the developers to force municipalities to build an oversupply of housing units, and then bails out the developers due to an oversupply of housing units, while simultaneously still forcing municipalities to build an oversupply of housing units.
Rennie several years recommended to Eby an abundance of housing supply as the solution to the housing crisis. Now Eby and Carney were bailing developers like him out over it after years of government catering to the development industry led to a situation even the industry couldn’t take anymore.
The BC NDP since coming to power in 2017 have embodied corporate capture of public policy. This is most clear when it comes to the forced capture of urban design by corporate entities, and by corporate policy.
As the UDI Capital Region’s former Executive Director told View Royal Council on September 12 of 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.“
Over the years North Saanich residents have repeatedly opposed UDI influence over North Saanich.
LETTER: Report highlights development-driven agenda for North Saanich | Vancouver Island Free Daily
North Saanich hires interim planner as they look to adopt zoning bylaw | Peninsula News Review
North Saanich considers revisions to OCP process as Mayor Geoff Orr counters criticism | Saanich News
Survey finds little support for increased density in North Saanich | Saanich News
Community group calls on North Saanich to stop OCP review | Saanich News
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The UDI’s meddling in local government affairs however is difficult to brush off, even when the municipality isn’t a member of it.
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The UDI got their housing targets from the province, and their member company CBRE once being appointed by the province has determined that the Urban Containment Boundary is in the way of development.
Provincial advisor makes housing recomendations for North Saanich | Saanich News
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It would be funny, if it weren’t so pathetically sad. What a banana republic this province has become. Only, the climate here doesn’t support bananas. It supports instead, a rapidly declining rainforest environment/ecology. It also supports a development industry which simultaneously out of control, in control. For the industry, the ecology of Vancouver Island, including in North Saanich is in the way of its potential profits to be made from construction. For the industry, the Urban Containment Boundary is a boundary only to its potential profits, and must eventually be eliminated.
If we are to change this situation, the people of Vancouver Island must stand united and push back together.
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See also:
Index of articles revealing major lobbying influence on B.C. Provincial Housing Bills and Housing Targets. – CRD Watch Homepage
Presentation by Sasha Izard to the Special Committee to Review the Lobbyists Transparency Act – CRD Watch Homepage
Too much heat: The UDI pulls down its list of backroom committees that meet with the Government of British Columbia and Local Governments – CRD Watch Homepage
Index of articles regarding proposed plans for Quadra/McKenzie and transit-enabled development upzoning. – CRD Watch Homepage
Index of CRD Watch articles concerning the environment/ecology. – CRD Watch Homepage
Index of articles regarding Law and Bylaw – 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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