FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Clarification of an earlier error is available at the bottom of this post.**
Capital Region Municipal Amalgamation Society (“AmalgamationYES”)
June 18, 2026 “Province breaks commitment to Victoria-Saanich citizens”
The directors of the board for the local governance reform society known as AmalgamationYES are once again disappointed in the provincial government and local political leadership.
As reported in May, we have been asking the Province (municipal affairs ministry) for months now to update the public with information regarding their status on commitments made to the residents of Saanich and Victoria to hold a binding referendum this fall on the recommendation of an independent Citizens’ Assembly, i.e. a ballot question on October 17th to give approval for the two municipalities to merge into one unified city, a process known as amalgamation.
This week, we discovered correspondence from the Minister to our Mayors dated in April.
This letter was not provided by the Minister to the public nor the media (nor to ourselves via FOI request). It was buried in a recent agenda package for the District of Saanich’s Committee of the Whole meeting five days later on Monday, June 22. The letter is dated April 29.
In it, Minister Boyle essentially tells the Mayors that she will NOT provide the necessary Ministerial Order, and therefore the municipalities will not receive what is required to hold a binding referendum on Amalgamation (as recommended by the $750,000 VSCA study).
To be clear, the Minister has been in receipt of the Victoria-Saanich Citizens’ Assembly (VSCA) final report and recommendations since she was sworn into Cabinet. Moreover, the municipalities finished their debates and collaboration and sent the decision to the minister’s office last fall in 2025. The ball has been in her court ever since.
The minister claims that she requires more information on transition costs, i.e. obligations to her ministry budget, before she will provide for a Binding Referendum via Ministerial Order. Be that as it may (or may not), she has had nearly a year to make that request, and this is the first time we are hearing anything about it.
Recall that her predecessor and current cabinet colleague, Minister Ravi Kahlon told Global News in 2025 that “the Province would not stand in the way” because with respect to the post-VSCA decision to move forward with amalgamation, “that’s up to the people of Victoria and Saanich”.
Moreover, under Premier John Horgan’s leadership in 2018, the ministry of municipal affairs (under Selena Robinson at the time) received a financial report of notably shallower detail, and still provided a ministerial order for the binding referendum on amalgamation between Duncan and North Cowichan. Furthermore, Dr. Evert Lindquist, UVic Urban Studies professor, reviewed the technical report and believed it was sufficient, as did the other advisors, to move forward on a binding referendum.**
We at AmalgamationYES take no delight in pointing out the delays and dereliction of duties of this provincial government.
But, we also do not wish to see yet another non-binding plebiscite on this issue. The people have already spoken in this manner, twice! And twice they have supported moving forward so that we might hold an actual binding referendum. And this time, it follows after a deliberative democratic study, and with an overwhelming consensus recommendation that the two municipalities should amalgamate, suggesting it would occur in time for a first unified city election of one mayor and ten councillors in 2030.
The next time voters in Saanich and Victoria have a ballot with a question about amalgamation, it needs to be a BINDING referendum. Only one final ballot question, please.
We believe there is still time – provided there is political will – to make this happen for October 17, 2026.
** An earlier version of this post made an error. It stated that “Dr. Enid Slack, Director of the Institute on Municipal Finance & Governance and Canada’s foremost expert in municipal finance, found the VSCA reporting more than sufficient”.
While Professor Slack was involved in the VSCA, she provided no opinion on the matter; it was Dr. Evert Lindquist, UVic Urban Studies professor, and others, who found the VSCA report sufficient. We apologise for this mixup. The copy above has been edited accordingly (within an hour of release).
April 29th letter attached: