The Greatest Conversation – but what’s it about?
February 1, 2015 | 
Author by Roger Stonebanks
A new lobby group will hold a public meeting in February aimed at taking the municipal amalgamation issue to what it sees as the
next stage – a study.
Greater Victoria Conversation is the group and the meeting organizer is Susan Jones, the former president of Amalgamation Yes. The meeting will be held on Tuesday Feb. 24 at SJ Willis Education Centre, 923 Topaz Avenue, from 5:00 p.m. until 9:30 p.m.
The group says on its website that the meeting “is an event intended to provide an opportunity for Greater Victorians to come together and discuss what they want to see in the governance study to be carried out by the Province.” The group also said, “The study about governance and amalgamation will be underway in the near future.”
However, the BC government has not said (as of Saanich Voice Online’s deadline) that it will carry out a study of governance or amalgamation. Community Minister Coralee Oakes did say last November, after the variously-worded referendums, that “I remain committed to provide the support and resources required by the newly-elected local governments, once they have had an opportunity to discuss and review the results in greater detail.”
The GVC described its upcoming meeting as “an opportunity for the 60,000 (75 per cent of 80,000) who voted Yes to some form of regional governance study in the last municipal election to discuss the terms of reference that they’d like included in a study.”
Only two municipalities, North Saanich and Sidney, voted, specifically, for an amalgamation “study.” Central Saanich voted for something similar – a “cost/benefit analysis.” All three Saanich Peninsula municipalities voted to ask the provincial government to fund the “study” or “cost/benefit analysis” – but not for the province to do it. The next step will be the tri-municipal meeting on Feb. 11 at the North Saanich municipal hall. North Saanich Mayor Alice Finall said there will be an agenda item “regarding obtaining provincial financing for a municipally-conducted study.”
The word “study” did not appear on the successful amalgamation ballots in Langford, Esquimalt and Victoria – though Esquimalt did vote for “exploring” service sharing and reduction of municipalities. Oak Bay voted against amalgamation. Five municipalities
- View Royal, Colwood, Metchosin, Sooke and Highlands – did not vote on the amalgamation/governance subject.
Saanich voted for a “governance review” (avoiding the word “amalgamation”) – specifically, the ballot read “Do you support Council initiating a community-based review of the governance structure and policies within Saanich and our partnerships within the Region.” Council is awaiting a staff report before starting its review.
The GVC website identifies more than 30 supporters. Some of them were/are active in Amalgamation Yes which campaigned to have the question to be put on the ballot at the last municipal election. Amalgamation Yes, on its Home Page, encourages readers to join GVC.
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4 Responses to “The Greatest Conversation – but what’s it about?”
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We [Greater Victoria Conversation] are ad-hoc volunteers, grassroots – volunteering to host these meetings with you, the public, residents from all municipalities. We do this so all have a chance to forward thoughts and ideas for the terms of reference to any study that may be done about amalgamation. Thank you everyone who is helping and thank you to those who are attending on Feb. 24.
The Group who are making this possible:
Your Panelist lineup is:
Rob Wickson, Dr. Trevor Hancock, Cairine Green, Jamie Graham, Dallas Gislason, Janet Crocker, Chris Corps and Stephen White
Your Keynote Speaker is:
Dr. Janni Aragon
Your Open-Mic Moderator is:
Tony Joe
Your MC is:
Jo-Ann Roberts
Your expert facilitators, scribes & volunteers are:
Anna Curtin, Olga Minko, Tracy James, Lorne Cole, Neil A Mayers, Shawn Newby, Christina Mitchell, Ben Ziegler, Cynthia Carlsen, Barbara Golder, Neil A Mayers, Shawn Newby, Ben Ziegler, Andrew J. Reeve, Elaine Dagg-Jackson, David King, Karen Harper, Mike Rothe, Michael Walsh, John Olson, Catherine Novak, Jaclyn Casler, Dan Doherty and Dakota
Operations/Supplies – Colin Neilson
Media/Crowdfunding – Rod Phillips, Aaron Hall, Deborah Dickson
Data Coordination – Brian Simmons
Community Web-board – Mike Kozakowski
Founders & Organizers – Lorne Daniel, Shellie Gudgeon
Thank you all!
My personal experience with Greater Victoria Conversation has been, to say the least, mixed. A very active set of conversational threads were removed from their web site; questions I posted to their Facebook site and to their website went unanswered; and I have subsequently been removed from their Facebook Group page. In the meantime material that closely adheres to the Amalgamation Yes material has been posted to the website, with “truthy” wraparound material, truthy referring to material and text which is technically not untrue but is either incomplete or heavily spun, frequently interpreting the source material in ways the material does not support. Several Conversation members have suddenly become active on specific political TC comments sections (note this is in no way wrong) which is only surprising given their absence through all of AY’s posturing and the civic election cycles. And lastly it appears that this “open” and transparent” organization has shifted almost the entire emphasis of its communications implementation to Twitter, without much public announcement. Again, nothing wrong with that but I for one would tend to interpret it as an exclusionary move. Since this organization, ostensibly wide open to all views on amalgamation, refuses to discuss how it intends to process feedback from the Feb. 24 event, or how it intends to communicate those outcomes to whoever it has a connection with in the BC government, inquiring minds might have a few questions.
Your statement that the Provincial gov’t has not said it will carry out a governance study, please see the following comments from the Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development as reported in the Times Colonist:
Writer refers to: Times Colonist, November 18, 2014, “Province agrees to study capital region amalgamation”
The writer quotes Ms. Oakes directly in his article. At this time her Ministry can only be described as knowing it will be called upon to apply its complete lack of experience, knowledge, or education about amalgamation to a completely undefined study that has no framework, no parameters, no guidelines, no mission statement, no defined objectives, and at the end of the day absolutely no statutory powers to do anything about any amalgamation. Care to estimate how much totally wasted taxpayer money that is going to burn through?