The Victoria-Saanich Citizens' Assembly held their first session on Sept. 21, where 48 randomly chosen members of the public deliberated on whether the municipalities of Saanich and Victoria should amalgamate.
As part of an eight-month process, assembly members will explore the costs, benefits and disadvantages of amalgamation between the two municipalities, and making a recommendation to the respective councils.
Richard Johnson, a member of the assembly project team, said the first session, which was held at Camosun College, mostly comprised of assembly members getting to know each other and exploring why they wanted to be involved in the conversation.
"They sit at round tables together and participate in facilitated conversations around 'why did you volunteer for the assembly, what do you hope to learn' and 'what are some of the things that you value about municipal governance and about the region where we live,'" said Johnson.
Throughout the session, Tracy Underwood, UVic assistant professor of Indigenous studies, John Lutz, UVic professor of history, and economist Robert Bish shared presentations with the assembly, explaining the history of the municipalities, the operation of local governments, and the factors that lead to municipalities to consider amalgamation.
Mayors Dean Murdoch and Marianne Alto both attended the first hours of the session, thanking the participants and emphasizing the importance of the members as representatives of Saanich and Victoria residents.
"It's exciting to see this finally getting off the ground," Alto said in an interview with Black Press. "Even the first few hours [were] very indicative of an extremely eclectic group of people. They are all very keen, very committed, very interested and from so many different backgrounds."
Alto explained the history of her involvement in the amalgamation conversation, starting during the 2014 municipal election where she, as a Victoria council member, urged other municipalities to put the question on the ballot. Only Oak Bay voted against "being amalgamated into a larger regional municipality," with Saanich, Central Saanich, Sidney, Langford and North Saanich voting in favour of further exploring the option in the future.
In 2018 the citizens' assembly started being planned with support from the province, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic the process was temporarily halted.
"One of the things that I've been most interested in this whole conversation is less about the classical conventional sense of amalgamation than it is about the notion of how do we better provide services to our communities," said Alto. "You look at it objectively and you think there's probably a more efficient and more productive and a more qualitatively advantageous way to provide different services, whether they are emergency services or planning services or service delivery."
Saanich council member Nathalie Chambers hasn't been "convinced of the merits of amalgamation", and says amalgamation could negatively affect Saanich public safety, housing legislation, and rural and agriculture lands.
She says amalgamating with Victoria could be a threat to farmlands, which make up about half of the municipality, because developers could bring projects to Saanich's rural areas, especially with new provincial legislation such as bills 44, 46 and 47, which aims to enable more, denser developments, and allow municipalities more power to develop over farmlands.
"We are the most food insecure province in Canada, with the best farmland and soils," she said. "So, we are vulnerable to lobbying speculation, and so is the province, who manages the Agricultural Land Reserve."
Assembly meetings will be closed to the public until April 2025, when there will be a final meeting with other Victoria and Saanich residents. There is also an opportunity for public submissions at https://victoriasaanich.ca.
