On Sept. 23, the majority of Saanich council voted to eliminate open forum, thus ending the last opportunity the public had to address council publicly on the record on a broad (rather than limited) range of topics at city hall.
Couns. Chambers, Bondaroff, and Westhaver voted to preserve open forum. Couns. Brownoff, Plant, Harper, De Vries, and Brice voted to eliminate open forum.
Not one member of the public had spoken, nor written in favour of eliminating open forum. On the contrary, numerous members of the public had previously spoken and written in favour of preserving it. At the previous council meeting (Sept. 9), many members of the public were made to wait until 10 p.m. before they were able to speak in favour of preserving open forum.
Soon after, during the same "special council meeting", all but one councillor chose to continue allowing the unrecorded, unminuted, backroom meetings (that the public cannot attend) between Saanich and the UDI, a registered organization on the BC Lobbyists Registry that offers representation and political influence to its paying member companies that profit from development and real estate.
Coun. Chambers had put forth the following motion: "That committee and other meetings that could include staff and/or members of Council with the Urban Development Institute are minuted, recorded and open to the public."
Couns. Brownoff, Westhaver, Plant, Harper, Brice, De Vries, Bondaroff, and Mayor Murdock all failed to provide Chambers with a seconder for the motion, thus immediately ending it in its tracks.
Two weeks prior to the motion, the majority of Port Moody council voted to release details on an unlisted UDI liaison committee. The District of Saanich has not listed on its website the UDI liaison committee that it meets with.
Sasha Izard
Saanich
