One James Bay property. Two years of tax records. A gap that demands an explanation

Steve Orcherton recently wrote in the Times Colonist that many Victoria homeowners are opening their 2026 property tax notices and discovering something that does not seem to match the public messaging coming out of City Hall. He questioned how residents are hearing about a roughly 9% increase while many are experiencing substantially larger increases on their actual bills. A 9.28% figure was repeated in council chambers, in press releases, and in local media coverage. For most homeowners, it landed as unwelcome but manageable news. Interesting. I decided to take the Steve Orcherton challenge and review my own tax notices with a fine-tooth comb for 2025 and 2026. After doing so I have to conclude it’s difficult to dismiss his concern.

Remember these are the real numbers.

The property is a condominium in James Bay. The assessed value rose from $836,000 in 2025 to $889,000 in 2026, an increase of $53,000 or 6.34%.

That assessment increase matters because residents are often told that higher taxes are simply the result of higher property values. But this example shows something very different.

The difference is not a rounding error. It is not an anomaly. It is a structural feature of how property tax increases are communicated to the public and it deserves scrutiny.

The Numbers, Straight From the Notice

Let's start with the facts as they appear on the documents themselves.

Assessed value:

• 2025: $836,000
• 2026: $889,000
• Increase: $53,000, or 6.34%

Total tax bill:

• 2025: $4,354.27
• 2026: $5,032.31
• Increase: $678.04, or 15.57%

That is not a typo. The total bill on my property increased by fifteen and a half percent, more than 1.6 times the figure widely cited by the City.

And critically, the assessed value only went up by 6.34%. That means rising property values cannot explain the bulk of this increase. The overwhelming driver was higher levies and higher spending.

What Makes Up Your Property Tax Bill

To understand how a "9.28% increase" produces a 15.57% bill, you need to understand what appears on a Victoria property tax notice. Most homeowners assume it is only a City of Victoria bill. It is not.

The notice is a combined collection document. The City acts as a collector for multiple taxing authorities, each imposing their own levies. The 2026 notice for this property breaks down into three distinct sections:

Section 1: Provincial School Tax

This is not a City charge. It is set and collected by the Province of British Columbia.

• 2025: $921.19
• 2026: $1,041.82
• Increase: 13.09%

Victoria City Council has no authority over this figure. But it still appears on the same bill and it still must be paid.

Section 2: Regional and Other Agency Levies

This section covers charges from the Capital Regional District, the Capital Regional Hospital District, BC Assessment, the Municipal Finance Authority, and regional transit.

• 2025: $607.45
• 2026: $676.62
• Increase: 11.39%

Again, most of these are outside Victoria Council's direct control. But they are not outside the homeowner's wallet.

Section 3: City of Victoria Municipal Taxes

This is the portion City Hall is responsible for, the section most relevant to public debate about Council's spending decisions.

• 2025: $2,825.63
• 2026: $3,313.87
• Increase: 17.28%

Read that carefully. The portion of the bill that is directly attributable to City Hall decisions increased by 17.28% not 9.28%.

The Most Dramatic Line Items

Within the municipal section, three charges stand out.

Policing was the single largest driver of the increase on this notice:

• 2025: $987.07
• 2026: $1,225.22
• Increase: 24.13%

General municipal levy:

• 2025: $1,736.87
• 2026: $1,929.84
• Increase: 11.11%

Municipal debt charges:

• 2025: $97.48
• 2026: $154.60
• Increase: 58.60%

That last figure, a 58.6% increase in debt charges in a single year, deserves its own conversation. It signals that debt-financed capital spending is beginning to show up materially in residential tax bills.

So Where Does the "9.28%" Come From?

This is not a case of the City making something up. The 9.28% figure likely reflects a specific and legitimate accounting measure, probably the increase to the municipal operating levy, calculated on a citywide average basis, before the effects of assessments, debt service, policing cost-sharing, and other line items are layered in.

That number may be accurate as a description of one narrow slice of the budget. But it is misleading as a description of what homeowners will experience.

There are several reasons the gap is so large:

Assessments redistribute the tax burden. When some properties rise in assessed value faster than others, they absorb a larger share of the total levy. Homeowners whose assessments rose faster than the citywide average will see disproportionately higher bills.

Policing costs are a separate line. Victoria's police budget, and the residential share of it, is not always prominently featured in the headline municipal tax increase figure. But it shows up clearly on the notice.

Debt charges grow independently. As the City takes on more debt to finance capital projects, the debt service charges on residential bills increase separately from the operating budget discussion.

Provincial and regional levies stack on top. No matter how disciplined Victoria Council is with its own budget, a provincial school tax increase of 13% or a CRD levy increase of 13% adds directly to the homeowner's bill.

The result is that a resident listening to the budget conversation at City Hall and a resident opening their tax notice are, in a real sense, hearing about two different things.

What This Actually Means for You

If you own a home in Victoria and you received your 2026 notice recently, there is a reasonable chance your bill increased by significantly more than 9.28%. This James Bay example, a mid-range residential property with an assessed value near the City's average, suggests the real-world impact for many homeowners may be in the 14–18% range or higher.

If your assessment rose faster than 6.34%, your bill increase likely exceeded even this example.

If you applied for the Home Owner Grant (worth $570 for most homeowners, $845 for seniors), your net payment is lower, but the gross levy still increased at the same rate.

And if you are a renter these costs flow through to rents. The gap between what Council announces and what property owners pay is eventually reflected in the rental market sooner or later.

Three Things Victoria Residents Should Demand from the Next Council

The problem here is not necessarily that the City is acting in bad faith. Local governments often communicate using internal accounting conventions that have genuine technical meaning. The problem is that those conventions have become a barrier between residents and reality.

Here is what clearer public communication would look like:

1. Publish the all-in residential estimate, not just the operating levy change. When Council approves a budget, the public communication should include an honest estimate of what a typical homeowner, accounting for school tax, regional levies, policing, and debt will likely see on their actual notice. Not the narrowest possible number. The realistic one.
2. Break out policing as a separate public discussion. The Victoria Police Department budget is the single largest driver of the municipal portion of the tax increase on this notice a 24% jump in one year. That is a significant policy choice. It should be debated explicitly and publicly, not buried in a combined municipal total.
3. Explain debt charges before they compound. A 58.6% increase in debt charges will not remain a small number for long if capital borrowing continues at its current pace. Residents deserve a plain-language explanation of what debt commitments have been made, what future bills will look like, and what is driving the borrowing.

The Bigger Picture

Victoria is not unique in this problem. Municipalities across Canada communicate tax increases in ways that systematically understate the lived experience of homeowners. It is a structural feature of how local government finance works, multiple taxing authorities, complex assessment mechanics, and political incentives that reward announcing the lowest defensible number.

But understanding the system does not mean accepting it.

So, in James Bay, when I opened my notice showing a $678 increase, or a 15.57% jump, and the public record says, "roughly 9%," something has broken down. Not necessarily in the numbers themselves, but in the obligation governments must communicate honestly with the people they serve. The tax notices hide these figures because they can only be derived if you take out your 2025 assessment and do the simple math involved. Most people I assume just accept the headline figure of around 9.0% or the widely reported %9.28 and believe that is what their increase is. Clearly that is wrong.

The data on these two tax notices makes this clear. They are not ambiguous. The gap is real, it is large, and we deserve a straight answer from City Hall.

Arthur McInnis is a law professor and former projects lawyer who sat as a part-time member on the Inland Revenue Board of Review, Hong Kong’s “Tax Court” for six years. He is running for Victoria City Council in 2026.

Mayor Marianne Alto has an explanation for Victoria’s 10.44% property tax increase. It is not her Council’s fault. It is somebody else’s. “If you’re going to continue to expect local governments to do things like having an impact on social housing or social services, even some aspects of policing,” she told the Times Colonist, “then you have to have a more serious discussion about the sources of income for local governments.”

This is the downloading argument. Senior governments, the province and the federal government, are pushing their responsibilities down to municipalities, leaving cities to pay for programs they were never meant to fund. It is a politically useful argument. It is also false.

The City of Victoria’s own Draft Financial Plan proves it.

What the Law Actually Says

Municipalities in British Columbia exist because the province created them. Under the Community Charter and the Local Government Act, municipalities have defined powers and defined responsibilities. Roads, water, sewer, fire protection, bylaw enforcement, and parks are the core functions of a BC municipality. Provincial and federal governments retain responsibility, among other things, for health care, mental health, housing, income assistance, immigration, and transit. That division is not a matter of opinion. It is constitutional law.

The Community Charter does give municipalities broad authority to spend on community “well-being.” That authority is permissive. It means the city may spend on other things if it chooses. It does not mean the city must. Every dollar Victoria spends on social services, housing programs, and health-adjacent services is a choice made by this Council, not a legal obligation imposed from above.

What Victoria Is Spending On

Read the Draft Financial Plan and the downloading argument collapses on contact with the numbers.

Community Safety and Bylaw Services nearly doubling in a single year. The department’s own mandate states it addresses “public safety concerns, including those related to homelessness, street disorder and community conflict.” Homelessness response and mental health outreach are responsibilities of Island Health and BC Housing. The city is not required to fund them. It chose to.

The Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion runs programs on transgender inclusion, immigration integration, and the United Nations’ International Decade for People of African Descent. Human rights are governed by the BC Human Rights Code and the Canadian Human Rights Act. There is no gap the city is legally required to fill. This office has no basis in any statute that defines municipal responsibility.

The Youth Bus Pass Program provides free transit for residents under 18. BC Transit is a provincial Crown corporation. Transit fare policy is a provincial decision. Victoria property owners are subsidising a provincial service.

The Rent Bank provides emergency loans to tenants facing eviction. Income assistance and emergency financial support are provincial programs under the Employment and Assistance Act. The city is running a social assistance program from the property tax base.

Supporting Housing Transition funding helps people move out of homelessness. BC Housing and Island Health operate transition housing programs for exactly this purpose. This is a municipal supplement to an underfunded provincial program, paid for by Victoria property owners.

Canada Day Celebrations fund a federal statutory holiday that the federal government already funds through Canadian Heritage’s Celebrate Canada program.

One of Victoria’s Own Councillors Agrees

Councillor Marg Gardiner voted against the budget. She told the Times Colonist that “the financial plan takes the city beyond its core responsibilities” and pointed specifically to the City’s plan to spend more than $17 million over three years on civic disorder and safety.

That is a sitting Councillor confirming, in plain language, exactly what the Draft Financial Plan shows. The mayor’s downloading argument does not survive scrutiny from her own chamber. This Council is spending property tax dollars on programs that are not within municipal jurisdiction.

The Downloading Argument Reversed

Mayor Alto is correct that municipalities should not be expected to fund social housing, social services, and health care from the property tax. She is wrong about who is doing the expecting. No law, no statute, no provincial directive requires Victoria to run an EDI office, fund a rent bank, provide free transit passes, or nearly double its community safety budget. These are choices made freely, under the discretionary “well-being” power in the Community Charter, by this Council. Voluntarily absorbing the province’s financial burdens and then protesting the inevitable cost is not “downloading.” It is a deliberate expansion of the municipal mandate, sold to the public under a false premise.

Arthur McInnis is a law professor and former construction lawyer campaigning as a Councillor for Victoria City Hall in 2026. He believes good governance begins with saying plainly what a decision will cost, who benefits from it, and whether residents were genuinely consulted before it was made.

Every property owner in Victoria just received their annual tax notice. Along with the bill, the payment options, and Mayor Marianne Alto’s signed cover letter, you received a full page describing the City of Victoria’s Reconciliation Contribution Fund and a detachable remittance form asking you to make a voluntary donation to the Songhees and Xwsepsum Nations as an act of reconciliation. Let’s think about that.

Why I Am Writing This Now

Victoria property owners have been receiving this notice since 2022. I have been receiving it since then too. What has changed for me is not the notice it is that I now have a platform from which to comment on it.

I come to civic questions as a lawyer, and lawyers are, at bottom, proceduralists. That is not a limitation, it is the discipline. Whatever else divides us politically, the one thing the rule of law demands of everyone is that power be exercised correctly: within jurisdiction, through authorised processes, with proper democratic sanction. Performing checks on this is all a lawyer can reliably offer. Not the right answer on policy but the insistence that the process used to reach it was legitimate.

What has drawn me more deeply into Victoria’s civic life, starting with the Bayview rezoning, through the passage of the OCP, and fleeting to pause on this fundraising appeal now is a recurring and very troubling pattern; that is, the basis for the Council’s actions and the procedures they follow are too often wrong or unsupported. Not wrong in small, technical ways that can be waved aside, but wrong in ways that go to the heart of whether decisions are made by the right body, exercising the right authority, in the right manner. That pattern concerns me regardless of the subject matter. Aside from this, if Mayor Alto wants to use the tax notice to ask residents for a contribution to the Salvation Army, or to gorillas in Rwanda, or frankly whatever the heck she wants, I have no objection aside from what I have raised. Again, all I expect is that she has the statutory authority to do it, Council has specifically endorsed it, and the process is sound. I genuinely do not care about the destination as there are more of them than can possibly be counted. No, I care instead, deeply, about the road taken to get there. When that road is the wrong road, as I believe it is here, I will say so. That is what I have been using this Forum for and if you are a regular reader, you should be getting the idea. That is, there seem to reasonable objections to decision after decision of this Council. In my view at least, so many in fact that it’s very legitimacy now seems doubt.

I also want to be direct about where I stand before I make the argument: reconciliation with Indigenous peoples is a genuine obligation, and the Songhees and Xwsepsum Nations deserve better than what this program delivers. Again, what I am challenging here is not the goal. It is the legal foundation, the jurisdictional basis, and the process behind the use of an official government tax document to pursue it. In my view all three are seriously deficient.

What the Tax Notice Actually Is and What It Is Not

The annual property tax notice is a statutory government communication issued pursuant to British Columbia’s municipal taxation framework. Its purpose is to notify property owners of taxes imposed, payment deadlines, and available statutory programs and payment methods. It is issued pursuant to the Local Government Act RSBC 2015, cap 1 and Community Charter SBC 2003, cap 26. Every property owner receives it. No one can opt out.

It is not a charitable fundraising vehicle. Yet that is precisely what the City has made it into.

The Community Charter SBC 2003, cap 26, the foundational statute governing what BC municipalities can and cannot do is unambiguous on the limits of municipal financial authority: a municipality may not impose fees or taxes except as expressly authorised. The city sidesteps that constraint by describing these contributions as “voluntary.” But voluntariness does not resolve the underlying problem. There is no provision in the Community Charter or the Local Government Act that authorises a municipality to solicit charitable contributions through its statutory tax correspondence. The power does not exist because it was never granted by the legislature. Municipalities have only those powers the legislature has given them, and this one was not among them.

The Mayor's Justification does not Hold Up

The Mayor opens her appeal with this:

“In 2015, the 94 Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada made clear that municipalities like the City of Victoria have a key role to play in reconciliation and that reconciliation is about more than words. It must also include actions.”

This claim does not withstand scrutiny.

The 94 Calls to Action is a public document. Anyone can read it. And when you do, a striking fact emerges: of the 94 Calls to Action directed at governments, institutions, churches, law societies, corporations, schools, and the medical profession, municipalities are mentioned explicitly in exactly two.

Call to Action 43 calls upon municipal governments, among many others, to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a framework for reconciliation.

Call to Action 47 calls upon municipal governments again, among many others, to repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery.

Call to Action 57 calls upon municipalities, among other levels of government, to train public servants on Indigenous history, residential schools, Indigenous rights and law, and Crown–Indigenous relations, while also developing practical skills in intercultural understanding, human rights, conflict resolution, and anti-racism.

That is it. Three calls. Two of the calls advocate policy positions while one is a recommendation on training. None involve fundraising. None involve inserting a solicitation into a tax notice. None describes municipalities as having a "key role." The overwhelming weight of the 94 Calls to Action falls on the federal government, on provincial and territorial governments, on churches, on law societies, on medical and nursing schools, on law schools, on corporations, and on post-secondary institutions. The municipal role, as defined by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission itself (TRC), is specific, limited, and entirely distinct from what the Mayor is doing.

The word "key" is the Mayor's word, not the TRC's. It does not appear in the document in relation to municipalities. It is an embellishment, and it is doing significant argumentative work here. It is being used to suggest that the TRC itself has authorised or even required the kind of action the Mayor is taking. It has not. The second part of her statement, that reconciliation must include actions, not just words, is a reasonable sentiment. But a reasonable sentiment is not a mandate. And a rhetorical flourish drawn from the spirit of a document cannot substitute for what the document says.

The Mayor has invoked the moral authority of the TRC to justify inserting a fundraising solicitation into an official City tax notice. The 94 Calls to Action do not support that justification. Residents are entitled to know that.

The Jurisdiction Problem

The deeper issue is constitutional. Reconciliation between the Crown and Indigenous peoples is not a municipal matter. Section 91(24) of the Constitution Act 1867 30 & 31 Vict, c 3 (UK), assigns “Indians, and Lands reserved for the Indians” to exclusive federal jurisdiction.

The honour of the Crown, the constitutional principle animating reconciliation, binds the federal and provincial Crowns. Municipalities, including the City of Victoria, are statutory corporations created by provincial legislation rather than the Crown itself, and they do not independently bear the constitutional obligations of the Crown in the same manner as federal or provincial governments. While municipalities may participate in reconciliation initiatives, consultation processes, and government-to-government relationships as a matter of policy or delegated authority, the underlying constitutional duty remains that of the Crown.

The city has pointed to BC’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) SBC 2019 cap 44 as the legislative framework for its reconciliation commitments. But DRIPA binds the provincial Crown. As municipal law specialists Julia Tikhonova and Reece Harding explained in a Young Anderson client bulletin published shortly after the Province released its DRIPA Action Plan, DRIPA did not itself directly amend the Local Government Act or Community Charter to confer new constitutional powers or duties on municipalities; rather, its significance for local governments lies in the potential future alignment of provincial legislation with UNDRIP principles. The City of Victoria cannot borrow jurisdiction from a provincial statute that does not extend to it.

This precise objection was raised at Council in March 2022. Councillor Stephen Andrew voted against establishing the fund at the committee stage, stating that the motion was “yet another foray by this Council into what is plainly provincial and federal jurisdiction,” and that residents were free to make contributions to local Indigenous nations independently without a city-administered program (Global News, 24 March 2022; Times Colonist, 23 March 2022). Andrew called it “virtue signalling.” His characterisation of the politics may be debatable. His characterisation of the jurisdiction is not.

The Governance Problem Is Worse Than the Legal Problem

The Reconciliation Contribution Fund was approved by a majority of Victoria City Council on April 7, 2022, following a committee recommendation on March 24 (Greater Victoria News, Jane Skrypnek, April 2022; CBC News, 25 March 2022). That was the Helps Council, the Council that completed its term when Victoria voters elected a new Council in October 2022.

The April 2022 resolution directed staff to include the fund in property tax notices “beginning in 2022.” It contained no end date. It required no annual renewal. It was an open-ended administrative direction but it has been treated as a permanent authorisation ever since.

Mayor Alto’s Council, the Council that Victorians voted for, has never put this program to a vote. It has now appeared in consecutive annual tax notices since 2022 on the authority of a resolution passed by a Council that no longer sits. There is no publicly available evidence of any subsequent Council resolution authorising continuation of the program under the current administration that I was able to uncover. I am open to correction and concede searching four years of Council records is not an easy task.

If it is the case that the ask has not been subsequently reauthorised then that is not how democratic accountability works. The principle that each elected Council is responsible to the residents who voted for it means that consequential, ongoing programs require current democratic authorisation, not perpetual delegation from a predecessor Council’s open-ended direction. The longer this runs without a fresh vote, the more it resembles administrative autopilot rather than deliberate governance.

The fund has, by its own metrics, been a modest undertaking. According to CHEK News, the 2022 tax forms generated 161 voluntary contributions totalling $36,153 (CHEK News, 10 July 2022). That is not a figure that suggests overwhelming public demand. It is a figure that suggests a City Hall initiative with limited organic uptake which makes the absence of a fresh Council review more striking, not less.

Authorised or Not?

Mayor Alto’s signed cover letter in the 2026 tax notice deserves further scrutiny. It is not a Council resolution. It is not labelled as a communication “on behalf of Council” or “authorised by Council resolution.” It is the Mayor’s personal communication, delivered through a mandatory government document to every single property owner in the City.

Under section 116 of the Community Charter, the Mayor’s role includes providing leadership to Council, chairing meetings, and critically “reflecting the will of Council” in external communications (Province of British Columbia, “Mayor and Councillors,” last updated 28 February 2024). The Mayor is the political head of the municipality, but that authority is exercised on behalf of Council, not independently of it. When the Mayor’s personal letter in a statutory government document advocates for a specific program, one whose current Council authorisation is, at best, implied, the question of whether the Mayor is speaking for the Council or for herself is not a trivial one.

At least two questions arise. Did Council authorise the specific content of Mayor Alto’s 2026 letter? Did Council direct that the reconciliation solicitation be included in this year’s tax notice? Those are reasonable questions that ratepayers are entitled to ask, and the City should be able to answer them reference to a Council resolution and vote, not a reference to a decision made by a different Council four years ago.

The Pressure That Isn’t Neutral

There is a meaningful and often overlooked difference between a charity soliciting your support and a government soliciting your support through the same envelope as your tax bill. When you receive your property tax notice and find a remittance form asking you to donate to a reconciliation fund, you are not receiving that form as a neutral third-party ask. You are receiving it as part of mandatory government correspondence, from the same institution that assesses and collects your taxes, framed as a civic and moral good.

That is not a neutral ask. It carries the implicit weight of institutional authority. A ratepayer who declines does so on a form that came from City Hall. The civic symbolism of that, the government, through its tax machinery, asking you to contribute to a cause it has endorsed creates a pressure that a standalone charity drive does not. It deserves to be acknowledged honestly, not dressed up as a simple opt-in program. That dynamic becomes even more pronounced when viewed through the eyes of residents who are newer to Canada or less familiar with the country’s constitutional and historical landscape.

A recent immigrant to British Columbia whose first language is not English could reasonably experience such a request very differently from a long-time resident familiar with Canadian routines. Faced with multilingual municipal communications, tax notices, and reconciliation contribution requests before fully understanding the structure of Canadian federalism or the historical context of Indigenous–Crown relations, some newcomers may perceive the request less as an optional civic initiative and more as an expected governmental obligation or social expectation attached to living in Canada. That possibility makes clarity, accessibility, and careful explanation especially important in public-facing municipal communications before even considering the legal foundation.

Here’s What’s Left

None of this is an argument against reconciliation as a value or against meaningful relationships between the City and the Songhees and Xwsepsum Nations. It is an argument that reconciliation, precisely because it matters, should be pursued by the level of government that has constitutional jurisdiction over it, through mechanisms that are authorised by statute, with clear and current democratic approval from an accountable elected Council.

The current Council should put this program to a fresh vote. An open debate, with a clear resolution, a recorded vote, and accountability attached to every name would at minimum establish that the program has current democratic authorisation. The fact that this has not happened in nearly four years of the Alto Council’s mandate is not a detail. It is the issue.

Arthur McInnis is a law professor, former construction lawyer and candidate for Victoria City Council in 2026.

Sources

• British Columbia, “Mayor and Councillors,” gov.bc.ca, last updated 28 February 2024

• British Columbia, Community Charter, SBC 2003, c 26, consolidated to 12 May 2026

• British Columbia, Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, SBC 2019, c 44

• British Columbia, Local Government Act, RSBC 2015, c 1, consolidated to 12 May 2026

• Canadian Press, “City of Victoria moves ahead on Indigenous reconciliation fund,” Global News, 24 March 2022

• Canadian Press, “Victoria council debates First Nation reconciliation fund option for property taxes,” Times Colonist, 23 March 2022

• CBC News Staff, “Victoria council committee supports voluntary Indigenous reconciliation fund,” CBC News, 25 March 2022

• CHEK News Staff, “Victoria reconciliation fund option on 2022 property tax forms generated 161 contributions: city,” CHEK News, 10 July 2022

• City of Victoria Committee of the Whole, meeting minutes, 24 March 2022 (reconciliation contribution fund recommendation)

• City of Victoria Council meeting minutes, 7 April 2022 (approval of reconciliation contribution fund)

• City of Victoria, “Reconciliation Contribution Fund,” victoria.ca, accessed May 2026

• City of Victoria, “Reconciliation Contribution Fund,” victoria.ca, accessed May 2026

• Constitution Act, 1867, 30 & 31 Vict, c 3 (UK), reprinted in RSC 1985, App II, No 5

• Jane Skrypnek, “Victoria approves voluntary reconciliation payment program for property owners,” Greater Victoria News, April 2022

• Julia Tikhonova and Reece Harding, “Province Releases DRIPA Action Plan: Implications for Local Governments,” Young Anderson Client Bulletins, 5 April 2022

• Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action (Winnipeg: TRC, 2015)

Victoria’s Crystal Pool replacement project carries a $209.2 million price tag, $140 million more than the 2017 estimate of $69.4 million. While the city has attributed this increase primarily to construction inflation, industry benchmarks show that inflation accounts for only about $35 million of the rise, leaving roughly $103 to $105 million unexplained by market forces alone. The rest is a story about choices.

The main driver is scope expansion. The approved facility is 52 percent larger than originally planned, featuring a 50-metre Olympic pool instead of a 25-metre pool, a leisure pool with lazy river, multiple hot pools, underground parking, and enhanced building code requirements. Years of project delay compounded costs during the steepest inflation period in 2021 and 2022. The city never provided ratepayers with an updated, inflation-adjusted refurbishment alternative, which might have cost $80 to $100 million, leaving voters to choose between the status quo and a $209 million replacement without a credible middle option. The architect HCMA Architecture and Design was terminated by Burnaby in 2023 after designing a comparable facility that came in 81 percent over budget, yet Victoria retained the same firm without a fixed-price commitment or apparent competitive re-evaluation. Finally, the city never commissioned an independent value-for-money analysis comparing conventional procurement to alternative delivery models such as public-private partnerships or Design-Build-Finance arrangements.

What the Benchmarks Actually Say

The Statistics Canada Building Construction Price Index and the BC Construction Association both confirm that non-residential construction costs in Vancouver rose by approximately 50 to 52.5 percent between 2017 and 2024. The BC Construction Association’s Fall 2025 Economic Report is blunt: building costs have risen more than 50 percent since 2017, running at more than twice the rate of general consumer inflation, with the most severe spike concentrated in 2021 and 2022. Costs in Vancouver are routinely used as a proxy benchmark for Victoria where each city’s respective advantages and disadvantages largely offset each other.

This is a real and documented phenomenon. The construction sector absorbed genuine shocks: supply chain disruptions, labour shortages, and material price surges that were largely outside any municipality’s control.

Where the Math Stops Adding Up

The 2017 estimate for the Crystal Pool replacement was $69.4 million. Apply Statistics Canada’s 52.5 percent BCPI escalation to that figure and you arrive at approximately $105 to $106 million by 2024. The approved budget is $209.2 million. That leaves an unexplained gap of roughly $103 to $105 million. The city attributed $76.5 million of the increase specifically to labour and materials inflation. Against a BCPI-justified increase of approximately $35 million on the original scope, that figure is overstated by roughly $40 million unless the city is blending an inflated baseline that already incorporates scope expansion.

Not the Same Building Anymore

The critical point that gets lost in the inflation narrative is this: the 2017 estimate and the 2024 budget are not for the same building. The approved facility is 52 percent larger in floor area than what was originally contemplated. It features a 50-metre Olympic-length pool in place of the original 25-metre pool, a leisure pool complete with a lazy river, multiple hot pools at different temperatures, saunas, a gymnasium, and underground parking. Underground parking alone added $15.5 million. New BC Building Code energy and climate requirements added another $14 million.

Strip out the 52 percent size increase and remove the parking and building code additions, and a scope-adjusted like-for-like figure lands at roughly $108 million, almost exactly what the BCPI benchmarks would predict for an inflation-adjusted rebuild of the original facility.

Delay as a Cost Multiplier

Delay compounded every one of these factors. The project was first costed in 2017, deferred in 2020 when Council declined to spend $750,000 on a feasibility study, and then shelved through the pandemic. Each year of inaction meant repricing against a construction market that, particularly in 2021 and 2022, was moving at an historic pace. A project that might have been constructable for $130 to $140 million in 2019, even with modest scope enhancements, became a $209 million project by the time Council finally committed.

What Voters Were Never Shown

When the Crystal Pool project re-entered active deliberation after 2020, the feasibility process considered only replacement options. Refurbishment, which as far back as 2016 had been estimated at $40 to $56 million, was quietly abandoned without being recosted or subjected to the same rigorous analysis as the replacement scenarios. By 2025, HCMA Architecture and Design had never been asked to produce an updated, inflation-adjusted refurbishment estimate for public comparison.

A properly costed refurbishment option, one that addressed the failing mechanical systems, waterproofing, and accessibility deficiencies identified in the facility assessment, might well have come in at $80 to $100 million after applying BCPI escalation, delivering a serviceable facility at less than half the cost of what was approved.

The Architect Question: Design Risk Without Cost Certainty

HCMA Architecture and Design was awarded the Crystal Pool design contract in December 2017 for $3.3 million. This was a conventional design services contract, not a design-build arrangement. Under a design-build contract, the architect and contractor jointly assume risk and commit to a fixed price; under a pure design services contract, the architect produces the design and the construction cost risk remains entirely with the municipality. Victoria has explicitly confirmed that no fixed-price guarantee exists for the Crystal Pool project.

HCMA was the architect on Burnaby Lake Aquatic and Arena facility, a broadly comparable civic recreation project. In August 2023, Burnaby city staff reported to Council that “the project as currently designed cannot be constructed for the approved budget” and the city terminated its agreement with HCMA. The facility was originally estimated at $187 million in March 2022; by the time of HCMA’s termination, the design had come in at $337.6 million, nearly double. Burnaby’s mayor called the costs “ridiculously expensive.”

When a $55.8 Million Cushion Is Not Independent

The approved $209.2 million budget is not simply a construction estimate. It is structured in layers. The base construction and project cost sits beneath two substantial add-ons: $24 million in contingency for unforeseen issues during construction, and $31.8 million as a cost escalation allowance for price increases from inflation and market volatility between now and the end of construction, which is not expected until approximately 2030. Together these total $55.8 million, representing approximately 26.6 percent of the entire approved budget held in reserve against future uncertainties.

The difficulty is that both figures were derived from and sized against HCMA’s own cost estimates, not an independently commissioned risk analysis. Asking HCMA to assess the risk of cost overruns on its own HCMA-designed project is structurally analogous to asking a contractor to audit their own invoices. Given that the BC Construction Association’s Fall 2025 report identifies continued inflationary pressures in the BC construction sector, a $31.8 million escalation allowance on a base construction cost of over $150 million across five years is not obviously conservative. The $55.8 million in provisions does not make the budget robust. It makes the budget optimistic with a cushion.

This Was a Decision, Not an Inevitable Outcome

Over a decade of deferral, the Council’s project ambitions expanded substantially. Its scope grew to reflect aspirational programming goals rather than the original replacement mandate, and soft costs grew proportionally alongside the larger budget. Inflation accelerated all of this. It did not cause it.

Ratepayers who voted in the February 2025 referendum approved borrowing nearly $170 million on the basis that rising construction costs left the city no choice. They deserved a fuller account of how much of that cost was chosen, not imposed, and they deserved a genuine alternative to consider.

When Ideology Narrows the Menu of Options

The 2022 municipal election produced a Council in which Mayor Alto and five Councillors received formal endorsements from both the Victoria Labour Council and the BCGEU, both organisations publicly opposing Public-Private Partnerships as a matter of explicit policy. That opposition is not entirely without basis, as there are documented Canadian examples where P3 arrangements delivered neither the cost certainty nor the value-for-money that proponents promised. The P3 model is not a panacea.

The point, however, is not that a P3 would necessarily have produced a cheaper Crystal Pool. The point is that a rigorous, independent value-for-money analysis was never commissioned, never presented to the public, and apparently never seriously considered. When a Council’s ideological alignment with organised labour forecloses even the consideration of alternative procurement models, the resulting $103 million gap between what construction inflation justifies and what the project costs is not simply a product of market forces. It is, in meaningful part, a product of the choices that political alignment made unavailable.

Arthur McInnis is a former head of the Construction Practice Group for Asia at Clifford Chance in Hong Kong, at the time the world’s largest law firm.

The Bayview Place rezoning is routinely defended as an unavoidable response to the housing crisis. That framing is not wrong; it is incomplete. What the city approved in January 2024, nine towers ranging up to thirty-two storeys on the last undeveloped Inner Harbour frontage, was one of the most consequential rezonings in Victoria’s history. What the city did not do is equally significant: it sidelined the planning discipline specifically designed to ensure that growth is fiscally sustainable over the long term. The result is a textbook case of growth without asset stewardship.

This is not a dispute about building heights or neighbourhood character, though both matter. It is a question of whether the city treated Bayview Place as an integrated component of a long-term system of public assets, or merely as an isolated development opportunity to be maximised now and reconciled later. The evidence points firmly to the latter.

The Fundamental Principles of Asset Management

For some time the Province of British Columbia has encouraged local governments to adopt modern asset management practices. Through the Asset Management British Columbia Framework and the Union of British Columbia Municipalities, local governments are urged to integrate land-use decisions with infrastructure capacity, lifecycle costs, service levels, and long-term risk. These frameworks exist specifically to prevent municipalities from approving growth that creates “hidden liabilities” for future councils and taxpayers.

In the case of Bayview Place, this lens was conspicuously absent. The city proceeded with a “growth-first” strategy, effectively deferring the true costs of the project onto future generations.

The Ownership Myth and the Infrastructure Handover

A central misunderstanding in the Bayview Place debate is the role of private ownership. While the developer, Focus Equities (or related vehicles), owns the land and the towers, the project necessitates a massive expansion of public infrastructure.

Under the “Build-and-Transfer” model common in North American development, the developer constructs the internal roads, water mains, sewer lines, and sidewalks. However, once construction is finalised, ownership of these assets is transferred to the City of Victoria. From that moment forward, the city, and by extension the taxpayer, is legally and financially responsible for the decades-long lifecycle of those assets, including their operation, maintenance, and eventual replacement.

The “blind spot” in the Bayview Place approval is the absence of a Lifecycle Cost Impact assessment. The city has not publicly demonstrated that the property tax revenue generated by these nine towers will exceed the long-term costs of maintaining the infrastructure required to service them. Without this data, the city is essentially accepting a massive private gift today that may become a massive public deficit tomorrow.

The Sewage Flow Finesse as a Case Study in Pre-Approval Manipulation

The infrastructure transfer problem was not abstract. There is a specific, documented example of how the technical record submitted to Council understated the true servicing burden of the Bayview Place rezoning and it involves sewage flows.

The City of Victoria has a long-standing policy governing new development applications: any rezoning that would generate higher sewage flows than the original zoning must attenuate the additional flow on-site, releasing to the municipal system at no more than the maximum peak flow permitted under the original zoning designation. This is a sound principle. Applied correctly, it prevents a developer from effectively downloading a sewage capacity subsidy onto the public system. The question is whether it was applied correctly at Bayview.

Focus Equities retained Stantec Consulting, a firm with a long-standing retainer relationship with the developer, to calculate the permissible sewage flows for the site. On September 7, 2022, Stantec engineering technologist Deb Becelaere submitted a report to the city setting out those calculations. The critical number was the pre-development Peak Dry Weather Flow (PDWF): 33.14 L/s. That figure, drawn from an earlier Stantec report dated April 10, 2012, would serve as the ceiling against which all future attenuation requirements would be measured. The higher that baseline, the less the developer is required to attenuate. The manipulation lay in how the 2012 baseline was constructed.

The Roundhouse site at the time of the 2012 report was zoned industrial: M1 Limited Light Industrial (7,150 sq m), M2 Light Industrial (20,475 sq m plus 4,895 sq m of rail easement), M3 Heavy Industrial (3,270 sq m), and a small SRS Single Family Residential parcel (1,570 sq m). To arrive at the highest defensible pre-development flow, and thus the most permissive attenuation ceiling, Stantec calculated flows based on the most sewage-intensive uses the zoning bylaws theoretically permitted: car washes, gas stations, restaurants, manufacturing plants, dry cleaners, and laundromats. The 2012 report was candid about what it was doing. It acknowledged that the scenarios used were “not a realistic proposition” and that “the scenario presented here is a very unlikely one in practicality.” It further admitted that this method “allows for an infinite number of potential scenarios” and that flows calculated this way could “match and exceed the post-development sewage flows.” In other words, the methodology was selected precisely because it could produce a pre-development baseline high enough to neutralise the attenuation requirement for whatever came next.

The 2022 Becelaere report then compounded those already-inflated assumptions. It used 900 square feet as the average condo size and estimated two people per unit, noting this was a “conservative” population density estimate, conservative, that is, in the direction of underestimating future residents and therefore underestimating future sewage flows. For hotel uses, where the area designated for hotels was acknowledged as unknown (there may be as many as three hotels in the development), Stantec folded hotel flows into residential calculations using the same conservative assumptions. The word “conservative” appears twice in the Stantec reports. Both times, it means conservative in the direction that benefits the developer and reduces the attenuation obligation.

The practical result: by building a 2022 attenuation analysis on a 2012 baseline constructed from hypothetical heavy industrial uses that were never going to materialise, Stantec produced a pre-development flow figure that made the rezoning’s sewage burden look manageable. The city accepted this analysis. No independent peer review of the sewage flow calculations appears in the public record. The rezoning proceeded on figures the consultants themselves described, in writing, as based on scenarios that were “very unlikely in practicality.” This is precisely the kind of hidden liability that asset management frameworks are designed to prevent, and precisely what the city’s approval process failed to catch.

A National Historic Site as a Cultural Service

The Esquimalt and Nanaimo Roundhouse is not merely a collection of old buildings; it is a National Historic Site and a primary cultural asset. Under the city’s Sustainable Service Delivery Framework, heritage assets are defined by the “Level of Service” they provide to the community in terms of identity, tourism, and civic value.

By approving thirty-two-storey towers in immediate proximity to this low-scale industrial heritage site, (thirty-seven by my calculation) the city has prioritised floor-space ratio over the preservation of a public asset. High-density “podium and tower” designs introduce significant environmental stressors, including altered wind patterns and shadow impacts, which can accelerate the deterioration of historic masonry and timber.

The city has treated the National Historic Site as a “backdrop” for development rather than a sensitive public system that requires a dedicated stewardship plan. If the scale of the new development compromises the integrity of the historic site, the city has effectively depreciated a non-renewable cultural asset to facilitate a short-term real estate objective.

The Impact of New Provincial Legislation

The urgency of this critique has intensified since the original rezoning vote. Between 2023 and 2025, the Province introduced Bills 44, 46, and 47, mandating increased density near transit hubs and reforming how Development Cost Charges and Amenity Cost Contributions are collected. In June 2025, the Province also amended the municipal liabilities and short-term capital borrowing regulations, giving municipalities expanded authority to take on debt for capital projects without a referendum or alternative approval process, changes explicitly designed to accelerate infrastructure delivery in growing communities.

These changes accelerate the housing delivery pipeline while simultaneously compressing the margin for error. Bill 46 permits collection of funds for initial capital costs, but provides no mechanism for long-term infrastructure renewal. The expanded borrowing authorities introduced in 2025 make it easier for the city to take on debt, not to manage it wisely. By approving Bayview Place density without a rigorous asset management plan, Victoria is “front-loading” growth while leaving its back-end sustainability plan entirely blank. In this legislative environment, asset management discipline is no longer optional. It is the only safeguard that remains.

Mandatory Reporting Is Now Underway

The Province of British Columbia moved to mandatory reporting for local government asset data in 2025. The City of Victoria is now required to provide detailed information in three categories: Capacity versus Demand Utilisation (how much room remains in the pipes and roads before they fail); Asset Age and Condition (the physical state of infrastructure inherited from developers); and Financial Linkage (confirmation that the Long-Term Financial Plan is directly tied to Asset Management Plans). This reporting regime is now active.

Bayview Place will be among the first major test cases under these rules. If the density of this project causes the surrounding infrastructure to reach capacity limits prematurely, the city will be obligated to document that failure in its provincial reports potentially jeopardising future infrastructure grants from the Canada Community-Building Fund and exposing the fiscal gap that the original approval left unexamined. Mandatory reporting does not fix the problem. It makes the problem impossible to hide.

A City-Wide Pattern Shows the Evidence Is Now Accumulating

Bayview Place would be troubling enough in isolation, but it is not in isolation. The same governance failure, approving large capital commitments without rigorous lifecycle cost analysis, appears across Victoria’s most significant recent projects.

The Crystal Pool replacement is the most telling current example. Victoria voters approved a referendum in February 2025 to borrow up to $168.9 million toward a project now budgeted at $209.2 million. The pool was built in 1971. Decades of deferred maintenance and three separate Council cycles of indecision produced a facility so degraded that the city must close it entirely in fall 2026 while construction proceeds over a five-to-six-year window. The debt servicing alone will cost $1.23 million in 2026. This is asset management failure made visible: a public facility allowed to deteriorate past the point of affordable rehabilitation because no Council wanted to make the politically uncomfortable decision earlier. The Bayview Place infrastructure pipeline is heading down the same road, except that the assets are newer, less visible, and buried underground.

The Christ Church Cathedral Commons rezoning, which Council approved at the May 2026 Committee of the Whole, adds a further dimension. The Anglican Diocese sought rezoning for up to four buildings of eight to eighteen storeys on the Cathedral block, with the stated rationale that development revenue is needed to fund $30 to $50 million in seismic upgrades to heritage buildings. The Heritage Advisory Panel recommended the application be declined, specifically citing the absence of a detailed financial analysis demonstrating that the proposed scale was actually required to fund those upgrades. Council approved it anyway. The pattern is consistent: heritage assets are treated as leverage for density rather than as public goods requiring dedicated stewardship plans. The Roundhouse lesson was not learned.

Victoria’s Johnson Street Bridge replacement, budgeted at $77 million, completed at $105 million, three years late, was supposed to be a turning point. The city’s own project manager published a lessons-learned report at the time noting the inadequacy of the contingency fund and the failure to present Council with a clear account of the risks it was assuming. Debt servicing on the bridge alone, combined with the $775 million CRD wastewater treatment plant, will cost taxpayers over $50 million in interest charges through at least 2040. None of that institutional memory appears to have survived into the Bayview Place approval process.

A Call for Pro-Responsibility Planning

The approval of Bayview Place reveals a pattern in Victoria’s governance that has now repeated itself across the Johnson Street Bridge, the Crystal Pool, the Christ Church Cathedral Commons, and the CRD wastewater plant: major commitments are made, costs are understated or deferred, and future Councils and taxpayers absorb the consequences. This is not a technical failure. It is a failure of stewardship, and it is structural.

An Official Community Plan is not a flexible obstacle to be adjusted whenever a sufficiently large developer arrives. It is a long-range investment strategy that integrates land use, infrastructure capacity, and fiscal reality. Good planning is not anti-development; it is pro-responsibility. Victoria cannot credibly claim leadership in climate resilience or urban sustainability while approving major rezonings that bypass the very discipline designed to measure sustainability in concrete terms. Bayview Place may still be built. The question for a new 2026 Council, and for voters choosing that Council, is whether the city will finally demand a lifecycle cost analysis before the next major rezoning application lands on the table, or whether it will repeat this pattern until the infrastructure bills come due and there is no one left to blame.

Arthur McInnis is a law professor, former construction lawyer, and led much of the opposition to the rezoning of Bayview Place.

There is a distinction that Victoria City Council consistently fails to make, one that costs residents hundreds of millions of dollars and distorts the city’s housing market in the process.

The distinction is between a developer and a land banker.

What a Developer Does

A developer acquires land with permissible zoning and builds on it. They take on construction risk, financing risk, and market risk. Their profit comes from what they create.

Think of Bosa Properties at Dockside Green in Vic West. They purchased a brownfield site, obtained their approvals, and built. The development proceeded. The risk was real. The reward followed construction.

What a Land Banker Does

A land banker acquires land, often cheaply, often with problematic or inadequate zoning, and waits. They do not build. They hold. Their business model depends on persuading a City Council to rezone the land upward, dramatically increasing its value without any construction occurring.

Dun and Bradstreet’s industry classification is precise on this point. The “land subdivision” category covers establishments primarily engaged in servicing land and subdividing real property into lots for subsequent sale to builders. Land subdivision precedes building activity. Land subdivision is not development. It is land assembly and rezoning for subsequent sale or development by others. The profit is in the rezoning, not the building.

The Bayview Numbers

Focus Equities acquired Phase 2 of the Bayview site, the E&N Railyard lands, the National Historic Site, and the Roundhouse, for approximately $10 to $11 million. In today’s terms, that is roughly the cost of ten to eleven condos.

For fifteen years after that purchase, nothing was built on the Phase 2 site. Nothing.

In January 2024, Focus Equities applied for a rezoning that, upon approval and eventually build out, would yield approximately 1,900 units. At the time, 1,900 Victoria condos would represent something in the order of $1.9 billion in value. That is a rough illustration, not a formal appraisal. But the order of magnitude is the point.

As part of the application, Focus Equities “donated” one parcel of the site to BC Housing, valued at approximately $15 million, roughly fifteen condos’ worth of the total.

A $10 to $11 million purchase. Fifteen years of no construction. A rezoning enabling approximately 1,900 units. A $15 million donation, less than 1% of the illustrative value created, offered as the affordable housing contribution.

What the City Is Actually Doing

When a Council rezones land for a land banker, it is not solving a housing problem. It is transferring value, enormous value, from the public to a private land holder, in exchange for a development promise that may or may not be fulfilled.

The rezoning costs themselves, negotiated community amenity contributions, affordable housing requirements, infrastructure commitments, are not absorbed by the land banker. They are passed along to the builders who eventually construct the project, then to the buyers and renters who occupy it. Those costs in the Bayview case were reported to be in the order of $200 million. Those costs do not disappear. They are embedded in the price of every unit.

By approving the Bayview rezoning, City Council did not create affordable housing. It created a $200 million cost to be borne by future residents, on top of whatever market rates apply at the time of construction, in exchange for a project whose timeline is controlled entirely by the land holder.

This is not a criticism of development. It is a criticism of cities that reward land banking as though it were development, and then pass the costs to residents while calling it a housing solution.

A Simple Principle

Cities should not rezone land for owners who have not built on their existing permissions.

Focus Equities held a 2008 rezoning approval on Phase 2 for fifteen years without constructing a single building. Rather than requiring evidence of progress, or allowing the lapsed approval to expire, the city entertained a new, larger rezoning application from the same owner on the same site.

The principle that should apply is straightforward: demonstrate that you are a developer, not a land banker. Build what you have already been permitted to build before asking for more. If you cannot finance it, if the market does not support it, if the economics do not work, those are signals that the city should not be subsidising the rezoning with public approvals.

The value created by a rezoning belongs to the public that grants it. The city is not obliged to hand it to whoever happened to purchase the land cheapest and wait the longest.

Arthur McInnis is a law professor, former construction lawyer, and candidate for City of Victoria Council in 2026. He has written and taught extensively on construction law, development procurement, and public accountability in infrastructure projects.

On March 15, 2024, City Council voted to raise its own salaries by 25%, from $52,420 to $65,525 annually. The motion was brought by Councillor Caradonna and supported by Councillors Loughton, Thompson, Kim, and Dell. Councillors Hammond and Gardiner voted against it. Councillor Coleman was absent.

The justification was that being a Councillor is, in Caradonna’s words, “actually a full-time gig” that should be compensated accordingly.

That claim does not survive scrutiny. And the salary debate obscures something more important: what Victoria’s Councillors earn, in total, from their elected and appointed roles.

Not Full-Time

The MNP Governance Review, a report prepared for the previous City Council, dissected the actual work of Councillors. Its conclusion: approximately 400 hours of meetings and 400 hours of preparation per year.

Councillor Marg Gardiner, among the hardest-working members of the current Council, put her own standard workload at 25 to 30 hours per week over 45 weeks, roughly 1,125 to 1,350 hours per year. That is a part-time commitment by any reasonable standard.

Councillor Kim, who voted for the increase, routinely noted in email responses that the role is “part-time” and that her “capacities are very limited.” That acknowledgment sits uneasily beside a vote to classify the same role as full-time compensation.

The Median They Chose to Ignore

The Council commissioned a pay review from Drive Organizational Development Ltd. Drive found that the median salary for Councillors across 18 comparable Canadian cities was $55,700. The median for BC specifically was $55,500.

The Council voted itself $65,525, nearly $10,000 above the Canadian median and nearly $10,000 above the BC median. The implicit argument was that Victoria is an exceptional municipality facing exceptional challenges and should compensate accordingly. Perhaps. But “we’re above average” is an unusual standard for public remuneration, and the decision was made without notice, without an agenda item announcing the intention, and without the independent process the MNP report specifically recommended.

The MNP Recommendation They Ignored

The MNP Governance Review was explicit: Councils should not vote their own pay increases. The recommendation was that a Council set pay for the next Council, not itself, precisely because a council voting on its own remuneration faces an obvious conflict of interest.

This recommendation existed in writing, prepared for their predecessor Council, available to every Councillor in the chamber. They voted to ignore it.

Mayor Alto voted against the increase, saying it is “never appropriate for any agency to vote itself a raise under any circumstance.” She was right. The five Councillors who voted yes were not.

The Full Picture

The base salary debate obscures the full picture. Several Victoria Councillors also serve as Directors of the Capital Regional District. That appointment adds approximately $30,000 each to the annual compensation of Caradonna, Thompson, Coleman, and Mayor Alto.

Beyond the CRD, most Councillors sit on additional boards, committees, and authorities. Councillor Kim, for example, receives an additional $4,000 for her appointment to the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority, plus meeting fees of $200 to $400 per session.

None of this is secret. It is all publicly available. But it is rarely aggregated, and the base salary debate rarely mentions it.

A Councillor earning $65,525 in base pay, plus $30,000 in CRD director fees, plus several thousand dollars in board meeting fees, plus whatever they earn in their full-time employment with the provincial government, is not a part-time volunteer making a sacrifice for the community. They are a professional public official earning a professional income from multiple public sources simultaneously.

The public is entitled to know the full number, not just the base salary that makes for a tidier headline.

The Reform That Was Already Recommended

The fix here is not complicated. The MNP report already proposed it: an independent process, set in advance, determining compensation for the next Council rather than the sitting one.

That process removes the conflict. It produces a defensible number. It insulates Councillors from the criticism that they feathered their own nest while residents faced a housing crisis, a homelessness crisis, and a tax increase.

Instead, Victoria’s Council voted itself a raise, without notice, without process, against the explicit recommendation of their own governance review, and then spent weeks managing the public fury that followed.

Councillors Caradonna, Loughton, Thompson, Kim, and Dell should not have voted for this. The process was wrong. The amount was wrong. The timing was wrong. And they knew the governance review said exactly that.

Arthur McInnis is a law professor, former construction lawyer, and candidate for City of Victoria Council in 2026. His platform includes requiring full public disclosure of all elected official compensation from all public sources, and adopting the MNP recommendation on Council remuneration processes.

The City of Victoria is looking for its next top people leader. Its own job ad suggests they need one urgently.

One Job, Three Full-Time Careers

Let’s start with what they’re asking for. The City of Victoria wants a single person to simultaneously run strategic corporate HR for an entire municipal government, personally negotiate collective agreements with unions, represent the city in administrative tribunals, advise elected Council members on high-stakes employment issues, manage occupational health and safety, oversee learning and development, and run its Human Resources Information System. This is all while being a “visionary and emotionally intelligent leader” who “thrives in complex environments.”

That’s not a job description. That’s a hostage situation with a pension.

A role this sprawling typically gets divided across at least two or three senior positions in comparably sized organisations. By collapsing it all into one Director role, the city is either setting this person up for burnout or quietly signalling that many of these responsibilities will never get done well.

A Master’s Degree But No HR Designation Required?

The posting demands a Master’s degree. Fine. But it does not require or even prefer a Chartered Professional in Human Resources designation, the professional standard for senior HR practitioners in British Columbia.

More glaring still, this person will be walking into Labour Relations Board hearings, Human Rights Tribunal proceedings, and collective agreement negotiations. These are quasi-judicial processes with real legal consequences. Yet the posting makes zero reference to legal training, labour law expertise, or experience working alongside labour counsel. A seasoned HR generalist with great “people skills” and a Master’s in Organisational Behaviour is not the same as someone who can go toe-to-toe with union lawyers at a tribunal.

Equity as a Bumper Sticker, Not a Deliverable

The city loads the posting with earnest EDI language. There are reconciliation commitments, land acknowledgments, and encouragement for marginalised applicants. It checks every contemporary box.

And then it lists the Major Accountabilities. Not one of them tasks the new Director with designing, leading, measuring, or being accountable for the city’s EDI programs. Reconciliation is mentioned as a “commitment,” presumably a personal value the candidate is expected to hold, rather than as an organisational program they will be responsible for advancing. If equity and inclusion are truly “cornerstones” of the City’s vision, why are they not cornerstones of this executive’s job description?

This is what performative EDI looks like: bold values language at the top with zero operational accountability for those values in the role itself.

Sending a Municipal Email and Hoping for the Best

Here is how a city government responsible for a multi-million-dollar public budget wants executive candidates to apply for its most senior HR position: email one person. No external executive search firm. No structured applicant tracking system. No blind screening process. Just a municipal inbox belonging to a named individual in the City Manager’s Office.

For a role at this seniority and salary level, this approach raises serious questions about confidentiality, data privacy, and procedural fairness. Candidates, especially those currently employed in public-sector roles, are entitled to expect that their applications will be handled with discretion and through a process that minimises the risk of premature disclosure. Routing executive HR applications directly through the City Manager’s office signals exactly the kind of centralised, top-down control culture that drives good leaders away.

The City Cannot Even Agree on the Closing Date

In the body of the posting, the closing date is March 23, 2026. In the sidebar of the same advertisement, it reads March 24, 2026.

One day’s difference. Small, perhaps. But this is a posting published by a People and Culture department that is simultaneously asking you to trust them with workforce strategy for an entire city government. If the HR department cannot coordinate the details of its own job advertisement, what does that say about their capacity to deliver the complex multi-stakeholder programs described in the role?

The Uncomfortable Subtext

Taken together, these issues paint a picture of an organisation that is either under-resourced, internally siloed, or simply not giving this recruitment the strategic attention it deserves.

Victoria deserves strong municipal HR leadership. The community, the workforce, and the unions sitting across the table from this Director deserve it too. But if the city wants to attract the calibre of candidate described in its own flowery preamble, “visionary,” “emotionally intelligent,” someone who “thrives in complex environments,” it might want to start by demonstrating that it can run a clean, credible, and professionally executed recruitment process.

Right now, it has not.

Arthur McInnis is a law professor and former construction lawyer campaigning as a Councillor for Victoria City Hall in 2026. He supports practical governance rooted in operational reality rather than symbolic politics disconnected from the day-to-day experience of residents.

In Victoria’s North Park neighbourhood, First Metropolitan United Church, renamed United Commons, faced a familiar dilemma confronting faith communities across North America: aging infrastructure, declining congregation sizes, and underutilized land. The historic sanctuary at 930-934 Balmoral Road and 1701 Quadra Street represented both a cultural treasure and a financial burden. Rather than selling to a private developer and losing control of their mission space, the church sought a partnership model that could preserve their sacred and community functions while unlocking the development potential of the surrounding land.

The Partnership Model

First Metropolitan United Church, working through the Property Development Council of the United Church of Canada, structured an innovative partnership with Aryze Developments. The arrangement was carefully designed whereby the church would retain land ownership, ensuring long-term control and mission alignment, while Aryze would bring development expertise, capital, and construction capability. Revenue from the completed project would flow to both partners, but the foundational ownership structure remained with the church.

This ownership decision would prove financially transformative, not because of any revenue-sharing formula, but because of how Canadian property-tax law treats church-owned land.

The Vision

The partners envisioned a mixed-use, mixed-tenure community hub. The heritage sanctuary would be adaptively reused as a faith, arts, and culture space, preserving the building’s historic character while opening it to broader community use. A six-storey residential building would rise on the surrounding church land, delivering approximately 129 rental homes, a blend of market-rate and affordable units addressing Victoria’s acute housing shortage. Ground-floor commercial and community spaces would activate the Balmoral and Quadra street frontages, knitting the project into the neighbourhood fabric.

On paper, the program resembled dozens of urban mixed-use projects. In practice, the tax implications made it radically different.

The Tax Foundation and Pre-Redevelopment Exemptions

Before Aryze’s involvement, First Metropolitan’s property already enjoyed substantial tax relief, a status many observers overlook when evaluating the redevelopment’s economics.

Under British Columbia’s Taxation (Rural Area) Act and parallel provisions in municipal charters, land and improvements primarily used for public worship are automatically exempt from property taxation. This is not discretionary; it is a statutory right. The sanctuary itself, the heart of First Met’s mission, was already off the municipal tax roll.

Beyond the mandatory worship exemption, the City of Victoria’s Permissive Tax Exemption Policy allows Council to grant additional relief to non-profit and community uses. The policy explicitly covers land surrounding places of public worship, church halls and land surrounding them, or other property attached and deemed necessary, at 100% exemption for both land and improvements. Victoria’s annual permissive tax-exemption bylaws confirm that First Metropolitan United Church received this treatment: 100% exemption on land and improvements surrounding the exempt worship space. In the City’s reports, the foregone municipal revenue is listed explicitly, year after year.

The practical result is that most or all of First Met’s parcel was already off the tax roll before the first shovel hit the ground for Aryze’s project. The church paid little to no municipal property tax on its North Park site.

Post-Redevelopment Preserves and Extends Tax Relief

When the new mixed-use building is complete, the site will contain a complex mosaic of uses: worship space, non-profit arts and community programming, affordable rental housing, market rental housing, and commercial storefronts. Each use has different tax implications, and the partnership’s structure allows the church and Aryze to minimize taxation across much of the building.

The sanctuary, preserved and continuing to host worship services and faith programming, remains mandatorily exempt as a place of public worship. This exemption is automatic and survives the redevelopment, even when embedded in a larger mixed-use building. That volume of the project is permanently off the tax roll, regardless of Council discretion.

Victoria can continue to treat substantial portions of the redeveloped site as land and improvements surrounding a place of public worship, or as non-profit community space, granting 100% permissive exemption for those components. This can encompass community and arts spaces operated by the church or partner non-profits, non-profit program areas such as meeting rooms, offices, and event spaces, and ancillary land elements like courtyards, plazas, or circulation areas deemed necessary to the church’s mission. Victoria’s recent permissive exemption bylaws show the city routinely exempts large church parcels at 100% for both land and improvements when used for worship-adjacent or non-profit purposes. First Met’s redeveloped property fits squarely within this policy framework.

If any rental units are operated by a non-profit housing society as supportive or deeply affordable housing, those units can qualify for Class 3 (Supportive Housing) designation under BC Assessment rules. Class 3 properties are assessed at a nominal value, resulting in property taxes that are close to zero. Even if the housing does not meet the strict Class 3 criteria, non-profit affordable housing can still be exempted under municipal permissive tax-exemption authority under section 224 of the Community Charter, allowing Council to exempt those affordable units while leaving purely market units and commercial space on the tax roll.

The Financial Advantage or A Tale of Two Projects

To understand the partnership’s financial logic, compare two hypothetical six-storey mixed-use rental projects in Victoria, each with 129 homes, ground-floor commercial space, and community programming.

In Scenario A, with private land and a private developer, all land and all improvements are assessed and taxed. Assuming a completed assessed value of $80 million and Victoria’s 2025 blended residential/commercial tax rate, the project would face approximately $600,000 to $700,000 in annual municipal property taxes. Over a 25-year hold period, that represents $15 to $18 million in property tax outflows in nominal terms.

In Scenario B, with church land and the First Met-Aryze partnership, the project sits on church-owned land that retains its exemption structure. The sanctuary and worship component is automatically exempt under statute. Non-profit arts, community, and affordable housing components are permissively exempt at 100% under council discretion, but routine under Victoria policy. Market rental units and commercial storefronts are taxable. If 40% of the building’s assessed value is attributable to exempt worship, non-profit, and affordable housing uses, the taxable base shrinks to 60% of the total project value. Annual property taxes drop to roughly $360,000 to $420,000, a reduction of $240,000 to $280,000 per year compared to Scenario A. Over 25 years, that amounts to $6 to $7 million in avoided property taxes.

Why This Matters for the Partnership

The tax savings flow through the project economics in two critical ways. First, a smaller annual property-tax bill means lower net operating expenses for the project entity. For a rental building, this directly improves net operating income and debt-service coverage ratios, making the project easier to finance and more profitable over time. Aryze can underwrite the project with more confidence, and the church’s revenue share benefits from a healthier cash flow.

Second, because large portions of the building are effectively tax-neutral, the church can support a more ambitious program, with more units, more community space, and more architectural quality, without the tax costs that would crush a similar project on private land. This allows the partnership to unlock more development value from the same parcel, benefiting both the church’s mission and Aryze’s return on investment. The church will also likely earn a fixed service fee and receive a participation payment equal to 2% of the aggregate transaction value.

The Broader Implications

The First Metropolitan-Aryze project is not an anomaly; it is a proof of concept for a scalable model. Across Canada, faith communities control thousands of hectares of underutilized urban land, much of it already enjoying statutory or permissive tax relief. When these parcels are redeveloped under continued church ownership, the tax advantages can be preserved and extended to new mixed-use buildings, substantially reducing the property-tax burden compared to conventional private development.

This structure raises important policy questions. Is it appropriate for mixed-use residential and commercial projects to receive tax exemptions simply because they sit on church-owned land, even when the developer partner is a for-profit entity? Do these partnerships represent a creative solution to housing affordability and community infrastructure, or do they erode the municipal tax base in ways that shift costs onto other property owners? Should municipalities formalise guidelines for how permissive exemptions apply to complex church-led redevelopments, ensuring transparency and consistency?

Whatever the answers, the First Met case demonstrates that the ownership structure of urban land can be as financially consequential as zoning, density, or construction costs. For Aryze and the United Church, retaining church ownership was not merely a governance preference, it was a multi-million-dollar tax strategy embedded in the fabric of the deal.

Thus…

The Balmoral/Quadra project stands as an instructive example of how church-owned redevelopment can substantially reduce the property-tax burden on a large mixed-use project, even when the developer partner holds no statutory exemption itself. By leveraging pre-existing worship exemptions, extending permissive relief to non-profit and affordable components, and carefully structuring land ownership, the First Metropolitan-Aryze partnership achieves a tax profile that no private developer on private land could replicate.

For the church, the result is a revitalised mission campus, ongoing revenue, and preserved community control. For Aryze, it is a financially viable project with lower operating costs and stronger returns. For Victoria, it is 129 new homes and community space delivered on land that was largely off the tax roll before the project began, and will remain substantially exempt after completion.

The question for policymakers is whether this model represents the future of faith-based urban development, or whether it demands closer scrutiny as these partnerships proliferate across Canadian cities and municipalities are forced to find the foregone tax revenue elsewhere.

Arthur McInnis is a law professor, former construction lawyer, and candidate for City of Victoria Council in 2026. For six years he sat as a part-time member of the Inland Revenue Board of Review in Hong Kong or “Tax Court”.

Affordability has become a convenient slogan used to justify outsized land-use concessions that deliver private windfalls while producing little broad, measurable benefit. If public policy is going to grant variances, density bonuses, or other exceptions, the return must be verifiable and enforceable affordability, tracked with transparent metrics and real consequences for non-performance. Anything less turns “affordable housing” into a branding exercise that socialises risk and privatises the upside.

The problem is compounded when affordability obligations are set at levels that developers can discharge through cash-in-lieu payments, deferred delivery, or units that are “affordable” only by reference to market benchmarks that are themselves unaffordable to the households most in need.

Genuine affordability requires depth as well as volume: it means targeting income bands that the market will never serve, locking in tenure conditions that survive ownership changes, and building in review mechanisms that adjust obligations as land values move. A commitment that expires after ten years, reverts on sale, or applies only to a fraction of the total unit count is not an affordability outcome – it is a time-limited discount that flatters a headline number while leaving the underlying problem intact. Councils that accept such terms are not solving an affordability crisis; they are managing its optics.

Public safety depends on stable rules, predictable planning, and infrastructure that can actually support what gets built. When a Council treats established plans and zoning as optional, it signals that outcomes are negotiable and that process is for show, which erodes trust and invites more opportunistic proposals. Over-scaled approvals that ignore downstream impacts strain emergency response, worsen congestion, and weaken the ability to fund basic public-realm needs, from lighting and sidewalks to the services that keep neighbourhoods safe and orderly.

Transit works when growth is staged, coherent, and tied to a plan that lets infrastructure lead rather than chase. Random upzoning, ad hoc density jumps, and parking giveaways undermine network design, budgeting, and delivery because they concentrate demand where capacity was never intended. The right approach insists on plan-led density, disciplined phasing, and clear accountability so that mobility investments shape development patterns instead of being forced into perpetual catch-up.

The common thread running through affordability, public safety, and transit is the same: outcomes that serve the public require discipline, not discretion. Discretion, unmoored from enforceable standards, reliably migrates toward those with the resources to influence its exercise. Discipline, expressed through binding obligations, transparent reporting, staged delivery tied to verified capacity, and real penalties for non-compliance – is not a constraint on good development; it is the condition that makes good development distinguishable from bad. A planning system that cannot tell the difference, or that chooses not to, is not a system delivering public benefit. It is a system lending public authority to private gain. Restoring credibility means insisting on specificity over aspiration, enforcement over good faith, and independent verification over self-reporting. Until those standards apply consistently and without exception, “affordable, safe, and connected” will remain a promise that is made at approval and broken at completion.

Arthur McInnis is a law professor and former construction lawyer campaigning as a Councillor for Victoria City Hall in 2026. He believes Victoria can grow and evolve without abandoning the principles of transparency, neighbourhood participation, and democratic accountability.

Accountability, Governance, and the Limits of Good Faith

Accountability is not a feature that can be bolted onto a planning system after the fact. It has to be designed in, with defined reporting lines, published data, and decision-makers who are answerable by name for specific outcomes. The persistent failure of planning processes to deliver on stated objectives is not primarily a resource problem or a technical one; it is a governance problem. When approvals are granted on the basis of representations that are never tested, commitments that are never monitored, and conditions that are never enforced, the system is not malfunctioning – it is functioning exactly as its incentive structure demands. Fixing it requires changing the incentives, not issuing fresh statements of intent. That means shifting the default assumption from good faith compliance to independent verification, and treating any gap between approved conditions and built outcomes as a governance failure that demands a named response, not an administrative footnote.

Good faith is not a governance mechanism. It is the absence of one. Agreements that rely on the continued goodwill of the party with the most to gain are not agreements at all; they are expressions of optimism dressed in legal language. Robust governance requires that every material obligation attached to a planning approval – whether it relates to affordable unit delivery, construction phasing, infrastructure contributions, or public-realm works – be accompanied by a verification trigger, a reporting deadline, and a clear consequence for non-delivery. Conditions that are expressed in aspirational terms, that defer specificity to a later stage, or that assign compliance responsibility to the applicant without independent oversight should be treated as unenforced by design. The Council that accepts them has not secured a public benefit; it has created a paper record that can later be cited as due diligence while the actual benefit goes undelivered.

Democratic legitimacy in planning depends on the public being able to understand what was decided, why it was decided, and what actually resulted. That requires disclosure standards that go well beyond publishing agendas and minutes. It requires proactive release of the technical assessments, financial analyses, and legal advice that inform decisions; it requires post-completion audits that compare approved conditions against delivered outcomes; and it requires those audits to feed back into future decision-making in a structured and transparent way. Without that feedback loop, every decision cycle starts from scratch, which suits those who benefit from institutional amnesia and penalises communities that have learned, through repeated experience, to distrust the process. Restoring trust is not a communications task. It is an accountability task, and it begins with accepting that the deficit is real, that it has identifiable causes, and that those causes will not resolve themselves without structural change.