My Platform

1. The citizens of this city should determine needed development.
   • Online surveys filled in by anyone from anywhere should not replace the democratic rights of residents who live here. We need to ensure that it is the residents who decide on issues vital to the city.
   • Neighbourhood associations play a vital role in encouraging the engagement and participation of residents.
   • At public hearings for developments, immediate neighbours should have the first right to speak on the issue.
   • The AAA cycling network is crucial for the connection of neighbourhoods with the wider community and region. It requires continued efforts to ensure safety, accessibility, and integration with the transit network.
2. Victoria needs to transform for the better and not blindly use densification as a panacea. A caterpillar can transform into a butterfly without getting as large as an elephant and so, too, can our city.
   • Market-based housing does not meet the needs of local renters or prospective local purchasers. It caters to the investor class and people from elsewhere, creating gentrification and unaffordable housing in its wake. When permitted, it should give locals the first option to purchase.
   • Densification in Victoria will have a mitigating effect neither upon urban sprawl elsewhere nor upon the climate crisis. Blanket up-zoning with 10% below market price for token units will make housing less affordable for locals, and further threaten the city’s natural flora and fauna, including thousands of mature trees.
   • AirBnBs should be put back into the rental market.
   • We need to hold fast to building a better and more liveable city for existing locals, and not over-build and further stress our City’s public services.
   • We need measures to reduce the severe uncertainty felt by low to moderate income renters, be they seniors, working families, or students, as they face real possibilities of renoviction, demoviction and homelessness. Improved tenancy protection at the provincial level is required.
   • Vacancy control limiting the rent increases between tenants, coupled with specific renovation grants applicable only to the landlords providing truly affordable rental stock, should be enacted.
   • We can get more rentals out of the existing housing stock through incentivizing house conversions, and through enacting Residential Rental Tenure zones.
   • The replacement of smaller single-family homes with mansions can be made far more difficult by regulating size limits on new single family homes.
   • Instead of greenwashed planning to gentrify and densify everywhere in the city, and instead of pitting at-risk renters and local home buyers against existing  middle class single-family home owners, we need to mobilize the entire citizenry to put pressure on the federal and provincial governments, who are fundamentally responsible for the housing crisis, to help provide the housing we need, where we need it.
   • The Victoria Housing Strategy identifies the need for “two and three bedroom units close to schools for families earning moderate or lower incomes,” so Co-op housing and multi-unit building based on median income should be our first priority.
   • Continue support for the City’s Victoria Heritage program; the overarching heritage policy for downtown and neighbourhoods; the arm’s-length foundations (the Victoria Heritage Foundation and the Victoria Civic Heritage Trust); and its natural and built heritage, including view corridors.
3. Consideration of the natural systems’ flora and fauna must go beyond tokenism.
   • The city’s Climate Adaptation Working Group and Leadership Plan reports suggest that hotter, drier summers; increased drought like conditions; and extreme rainfall events will be more likely, dramatically affecting our land and ocean-based ecosystems. In the city, the urban forest acts to reduce flood risk and keep neighbourhoods and public spaces cool. The Missing Middle initiative as proposed revealed how little the natural ecosystem is considered by city planners. It is essential that the urban forestry director, the urban forest master plan and the parks department become a more vital part of any development proposal, such that they have the same weight as engineering.
   • Built systems must incorporate suitable habitat and regeneration of natural systems in new or compromised green spaces.
   • The Songhees and Esquimalt peoples, as with all First Nations, have a wider concept of home than does the City’s Development Services. Home is conceived as “the relationships which connect a person to all that surrounds them,” including people, plants, animals, insects and the land as a “place to connect with family, community, ancestors and all of creation.” Ecological restoration as part of city planning is a form of respect and reconciliation.
   • Community gardens, pollinator pathways along city streets, and back yard biodiversity are vital to the health and well being of all the city’s inhabitants.

As your councillor, I will also give my best efforts to achieving each of the City of Victoria’s eight strategic objectives, as part of a working team and in partnership with the community:

1. Good Governance and Civic Engagement
2. Reconciliation and Indigenous Relations
3. Affordable Housing
4. Prosperity and Economic Inclusion
5. Health, Well-Being and a Welcoming City
6. Climate Leadership and Environmental Stewardship
7. Sustainable Transportation
8. Strong, Liveable Neighbourhoods