The June 13 Zoom meeting for public input on Saanich’s strategic OCP update showed a disturbing lack of democracy.
The hosts were Vancouver-based Modus Planning. The format was bizarre. We were provided two topic questions at a time that we could answer. Naturally, I asked: “Are we limited to asking questions only on these two topics?” I also asked: “So we are being tunneled into what we can possibly ask?”
Nothing removed my impression of this.
My first topic question was: “Will Saanich arrange a vote by residents to determine if they want pre-zoning? If not, how is the documented development lobby-pushed move to silence the public on a vast amount of rezoning applications through pre-zoning democratic? This is very relevant to the topic, because the CCV plans seem to be dependent on pre-zoning.”
A consultant from Modus read my question, but wavered and paused over the word democratic. They couldn’t bring themselves to say the word. Instead, they skipped it and continued on with the rest of the question without saying it.
I responded: “Is democracy a word that is taboo to the discussion about pre-zoning, as the word in the question was not read by the person reading it?”
The consultant responded that they were trying to keep the questions brief.
I responded: “Leaving one word out from the quote made it briefer for the purposes of time constraints? I find that very difficult to believe, especially since the speaker paused when skipping the word.”
The disturbing reluctance to use the word democracy in a meeting that should have been about democracy, given that this is one of the few forms of public input on the entire official community plan of Saanich, is something that I found appalling.
Then those running the Zoom meeting got to pick and choose which questions/comments to put onto a digital board of ersatz sticky notes.
Modus and North Saanich split over their OCP update process only a few months earlier, and with their inability to even say the word democracy here, I’m not at all surprised.
Sasha Izard
Saanich
