It is time to admit that 13 municipalities in the core region are too many and increasingly unaffordable.
Doug Pascoe Jul 16, 2026
- this Article also received a response from Robin Farquhar, former UVic President (See Below1)
A commentary by a Saanich resident.
Let us stop pretending that Saanich, with roughly 125,000 residents, is a rural municipality.
Yes, a significant portion of the district remains protected by the Urban Containment Boundary and the Agricultural Land Reserve or is not designated for settlement for the foreseeable future.
But the mythology of “rural Saanich” has been overtaken by reality. Rapid urban development is already reshaping the Uptown-Douglas corridor, University Heights, Royal Oak, Tillicum, Quadra, McKenzie and Shelbourne.
These are not distant or hypothetical changes. They are happening now.
Nor should anyone overlook the west side of Douglas Street, which has for decades been home to hundreds of small commercial and light-industrial businesses. These businesses provide essential services to residents of both Victoria and Saanich.
They are also a critical part of the employment base and the business tax base for both municipalities. With Mayfair and Uptown immediately adjacent, this area is increasingly functioning as a downtown for Saanich.
The discussion about amalgamation also needs to move beyond simplistic claims about municipal budgets. A municipal budget is not one single thing.
It is an aggregate of several major cost centres: governance and administration; operations, including public works, parks, and emergency services; infrastructure; and borrowing or debt for future projects.
There is a general understanding that amalgamation may do little, at least in the short term, to reduce costs in the first two areas.
Much of that spending involves unionized employees whose wages and benefits are broadly comparable across municipalities. But that does not answer the more important question: what about the rising costs of infrastructure and borrowing? This is where the real fiscal pressure is emerging.
The argument for relying on shared services across the capital region is also often overstated. In practice, shared services are political quicksand.
A quick look at the Capital Regional District shows that its core regional responsibilities are limited to major services such as water supply, sewage treatment, landfill and regional parks.
Local councils continue to vigorously guard their authority to provide and charge residents for local services.
Calls for common recreation facilities, fire services or policing are routinely resisted. The result is a region with multiple police departments, numerous fire chiefs and separate recreation commissions, all serving communities that are deeply interconnected in daily life.
Recent media coverage has made the real issue increasingly clear: The major driver of current and future tax increases will be infrastructure renewal and the cost of borrowing.
Across the region, municipalities have either recently built, are building or are planning major new projects that will deplete reserves or require substantial borrowing. These include municipal halls, fire halls, police stations, recreation centres and public works yards.
This is especially relevant to any discussion of a possible Victoria-Saanich merger. Both municipalities are facing major upgrades and replacement of municipal yards, each likely to cost well over $100 million.
Similar pressures are evident elsewhere, from Oak Bay’s roads and sewer upgrades to planned police facilities on the West Shore, municipal halls on the Peninsula and major CRD water supply projects. These are not isolated costs. They are regional realities.
Instead of defending municipal fiefdoms established decades ago, it is time to admit that 13 municipalities in the core region are too many and increasingly unaffordable.
A merger of the two largest communities, Victoria and Saanich, representing more than half the region’s population, would be a sensible place to begin. This would not be a forced merger, but one made by the electorate exercising their democratic franchise with the benefit of impartial and factual information.
As a 10-year resident and now retiree from an amalgamated Abbotsford, it is clear the path toward a governance model built for the future has to start somewhere.
Victoria and Saanich should be that starting point.
Follow up response below:
Candidates should reveal views on amalgamation
Re: “Victoria-Saanich merger would be sensible first step,” comment, July 16.
This commentary includes several valid arguments in favour of amalgamating Saanich and Victoria, including the improved effectiveness and efficiency that would result.
Another important advantage is that such a municipal merger would undoubtedly lead to better representation and greater accountability by local politicians to their constituents.
The reason for this is that such governance restructuring would inevitably entail the introduction of a geographical ward system, whereby electors in each major neighbourhood of the “new” city would vote for their own councillor, who would be clearly responsible for representing the interests of that particular neighbourhood and for keeping its residents informed of council’s actions and plans.
Consideration should also be given to requiring that candidates for a council seat reside in the electoral riding concerned, which is not currently the case here.
I am a native Victorian who moved back almost a decade ago after spending 29 years in Ottawa, including the periods both before and after Mike Harris’ provincial government imposed municipal amalgamation there.
Despite some predictable “growing pains,” the contemporary merged municipality of Ottawa (like others that were similarly restructured across Ontario) is widely perceived as far superior to its balkanized predecessor.
Our provincial government has told Victoria and Saanich to seek voters’ views on this subject during October’s municipal elections, so the new councils will have to consider the outcome soon after taking office. It would be wise to get the candidates’ views about this on the record before going to the polls.
Robin Farquhar
Victoria
- read above. ↩︎