At the Oct. 21 Saanich committee of the whole, members of the public, including myself, spoke during open forum against its removal. (The majority of council had voted to eliminate open forum on Sept 23, yet it appears that it will continue until the end of the calendar year).
I also noted that the mayor’s claim in the press that the public were unsatisfied with open forum lacked evidence, as many members of the public had spoken on the record at a council meeting and in written correspondence asking for open forum to be preserved, while no member of the public had asked on the record for it to be eliminated.
After I had pointed this out at open forum that evening; during public input at the 27:33 time point, a member of the registered third-party electoral organization Homes For Living, called in and spoke in favour of eliminating open forum. This was the first and only member of the public on record to have spoken in favour of eliminating open forum, and well after council had already voted to eliminate it.
Ironically, by speaking about open forum at this point in the meeting, they were speaking about an item, not on the agenda for public input, something that open forum would have allowed them to do. A point of order was called, and the speaker was asked to speak to the agenda items instead.
HFL endorsed the majority of the current councillors and mayor during the last election. All but one of the Saanich officials they had endorsed, voted to eliminate open forum. HFL pushes the interests of the development industry. It is documented that the development industry had been lobbying to remove vast swathes of public hearings, something that was accomplished by the province in Bill 44.
On Oct. 28, the majority of council voted to remove the statement of address requirement during public input, thus allowing non-residents (including lobbyists) to go undetected during input.
Sasha Izard
Saanich
