Why I Support (just a little bit of) Amalgamation
Amalgamation of Greater Victoria municipalities is back in the news again. After a couple of quiet years, it was announced the the Citizen Committee on the amalgamation of Saanich and Victoria would finally start its work next fall. This was a committee that was supported by voters in the last election, four years ago. I suppose that given it is an election year again, there was concern that there had to be an appearance of fulfilling the wants of the electorate even if it has taken way too long.
I know that many of you may not be fans of amalgamation and that is okay. After a Twitter debate the other night, I thought that it would be best if I had my position down in one place so that I wouldn’t feel the need to enter into the same discussion over and over as we get closer to the Citizen Committee actually doing their work. What really surprised me about some of the comments I have read from people about amalgamation, are the fears that people have about it. Those fears seem to be leading us down a very antagonistic path of creating “us and thems” in the very small space of Victoria.
I am not going to get into the long and drawn out history of either how we ended up with thirteen municipalities or why we continually talk about changing it, while doing nothing. There are a lot of rabbit holes out there on the internet for you to go down if you want to. I do want to talk a little about why some of the arguments that you will hear against it are, in my opinion, incorrect or spurious. After that, I will get into the specific examples of amalgamation we should be considering in Victoria and why I think it is important.
Why We Shouldn’t Amalgamate
It is not going to save us money - You will see this before anyone even starts trying to argue that we should amalgamate to save money. As soon as any hint about a thought of amalgamation comes up, you will see people saying that there is no evidence that amalgamations result in tax savings for residents. I always look at these comments a little funny (they remind me of David Letterman’s Don’t blame Conan bit from a decade ago), because generally people aren’t saying we should do this to save money. While I get the fun in poking holes in the arguments of conservative penny-pinchers on making government smaller, I just don’t think this is a driving force behind amalgamation and I don’t think it should be either. I know people will on occasion say, “Well think how many less mayors and council members we will need!” and anyone that says that has an inflated sense of how much those politicians make or no concept of just how large our municipality budgets are. Council costs are peanuts compared to the hard costs of garbage collection, administration, waterworks etc which don’t go down by the amount of city divisions, it increases in line with municipal size and population, so theoretically it should balance even on amalgamation. So I guess this argument is just correct. It isn’t going to save us money, but the thing is, that this is not the point nor should it be.
We will end up with Rob Ford for Mayor - I must have heard this three or four times on Twitter the other night. I am not a fan of the style of government or politics Rob Ford represented, but I just have to stop and shake my head, this is simply not a possibility with amalgamation in Victoria and certainly not in the discreet example of amalgamating with Saanich. The idea that this has any veracity is actually pretty insulting to the citizens of Saanich (which is kind of what I was meaning in the “Us and Them” politics that are being created here). Both the last example on financial savings, and this one are speaking to the 1998 amalgamation of Toronto. Now beyond the fact that almost a quarter century has passed us by, Victoria is quite obviously not Toronto in so many ways. First, we have less than 10% of the population. Our outer boroughs are about a 10 to 20 minute drive away compared to the hour or so you can travel in traffic and still be in Toronto. Also when talking about politics, we are a much more left-leaning population than Toronto on a whole. Anyways, we are not 1998 Toronto is really the basics. The reason that Rob Ford is brought up is because he was Canada’s Trump and it is being used to scare people rather than actually have them spend even a moment actually considering whether we should have amalgamation. Which always makes me wonder why we shouldn’t just let people make their own decision on it or possibly why we are trying to scare people…
Outlying Neighbourhoods Will Be Ignored - This is a real risk of an amalgamation and this is usually when you start to hear about the other amalgamation example, Halifax. The amalgamation of Halifax occurred in 1996 which makes it officially more than a quarter century ago. It is a compelling example for us because Halifax and Victoria are very similar cities in population and demographics. While overall I think that the Halifax example has not been one of outstanding success nor dramatic failure, a key failing that is raised is that the outlying parts of the new municipality feel like they are not getting the same level of service as core Halifax. Seems like a solid argument so far, but there is a key difference between what is being proposed in Victoria and what was created in Halifax, and that is size. The total size of the Capital Regional District, including the Gulf Islands, is 2340 sq km, there has been no consideration of amalgamating the entire CRD into one city and I would be fully against it. In comparison, the Halifax Regional Municipality is 5475 sq km or more than twice the size of the CRD. So yeah, I can imagine that if you lived in Lake Cowichan and had to travel down to Victoria for permits or bring up garbage collection problems, you might not feel you are getting the same service as those living in the core. Amalgamation in Victoria, in its worst form, would be less than 500 sq km or less than 10% the size of Halifax. The amalgamation of Victoria and Saanich would be about 125 sq km. I think that alone means that there is no useful comparison to be had in the discussion and certainly means that the concern about outlying areas in Halifax got a raw deal so we shouldn’t do it are completely not relatable. Before I get into the benefits of Victoria and Saanich amalgamating, I do want to talk about the broader idea of amalgamation in Victoria.
Broad Amalgamation of the 13 Municipalities
When amalgamation is brought up, perhaps to avoid thinking about it too much or just because in comparison to Halifax the size is so small, it is often assumed that all 13 municipalities (Central Saanich, Colwood, Esquimalt, Highlands, Langford, North Saanich, Metchosin, Oak Bay, Saanich, Sidney, Sooke, Victoria, and View Royal) should just be combined into one giant city municipality. I think that the reason we should never do that is the same reason that we should have amalgamation between Victoria and Saanich (and also the same reason I want to change the neighbourhood boundaries on a smaller scale) is there has to be social common interest; some semblance of contiguous built form and the destination shopping and work patterns should align. Whatever border lines we create should follow these principles as best we can. It is the lack of these pieces that make the current borders feel like they are simply arbitrary.
So while the upcoming Citizens Committee is focused on just Victoria and Saanich, I do have an opinion on how a broader metropolitan amalgamation could happen. There are about three different options for how an ideal set of new municipalities should be put together to better reflect the common interests of the citizens while also taking advantage of the new scales to enable better planning. I should also say that the discussion below that pertains to Saanich in particular, should be considered as part of the current Citizen Committee deliberations.
Easiest - The easiest and I think a little misguided, would be to have three municipalities: West Shore, Saanich Peninsula, and Victoria. The West Shore would have the western suburban and rural municipalities of Colwood, Highlands, Langford, Sooke and View Royal. Saanich Peninsula would have Central Saanich, North Saanich and Sidney. While Victoria would have Esquimalt, Oak Bay, Saanich and Victoria. The beauty of this option is that it is an easy division. There are problems though. First, and one I am not going to resolve at all in this article is that Highlands could just as easily go to Saanich Peninsula as West Shore. Perhaps it would be obvious for those that live there and where they tend to shop. It does share the rural character of Central Saanich though. Second, and something I will discuss later, I do think that there are portions of Saanich right now that are problematic in a City municipality and might be better attached to Central Saanich as well. Which gets into the more complicated version.
More complicated - The second option, which I think is perhaps my preferred option, keeps all of the same combinations of municipalities as above with two exceptions to make the transition from city to either suburb or rural areas more clear. First, instead of all of View Royal being brought into the West Shore, it would be divided at the narrow Portage point where the E&N cuts through it. This space is a clear border between the city and suburbs to me. and the physical aspects of the land can contribute to defining this border into the future. The second exception to the first plan, would be as I alluded to before, the Saanich neighbourhood known as Rural Saanich should be annexed from a new larger Victoria and connected to the new Saanich Peninsula municipality. This area is largely made up of large estates and farms. Bringing this type of land use into a new City of Victoria is problematic for the city, as the needs of the residents and businesses there are vastly different from the rest of what should be, an urban city. I know that this does mean that there would be a smaller amount of farmland still within the new city in the Blenkinsop valley but this is much smaller and harder to separate out as it is surrounded on all four sides by housing.
The most complicated - This last version might perhaps appease a greater amount of those that fear amalgamation due to the possibility of some usurping Rob Ford like mayor, as it would eliminate almost all even remotely suburban areas from the new City of Victoria. It keeps View Royal intact and instead divides Saanich even further south and puts the border of the new City of Victoria along Admirals and McKenzie for its entire length from Esquimalt First Nation to the waters of Cadboro Bay. The other two municipalities would stay the same except begin a little south of what I had proposed in the two options above. The areas currently part of Saanich north of McKenzie Avenue would become part of Saanich Peninsula. The new City of Victoria would be already almost completely built out. I think this puts some future land use opportunities out of reach for the new City of Victoria as I think that there are some true opportunities in places like Gordon Head and North Quadra to increase housing supply; both are along major arterials and transit routes to house continued population growth. In any event, at this time we are not talking about broader regional amalgamations and just to reiterate, I don’t think a single giant 13 into 1 city is advisable and would likely lead to some of the problems that people predict.
The Saanich and Victoria Amalgamation
This is all that is actually being discussed (well discussed in October unless they can figure out another reason to delay it…), the amalgamation of the current City of Victoria and the District of Saanich. An idea that makes so much sense to me and yet people can get so mad at even a hint of a discussion of it.
I support this amalgamation because the people of Saanich and Victoria really do already live in one city. If you stand on Tolmie and think that people on the other side of that street are not your neighbour, I would be surprised. Same goes for North Dairy or Richmond. That is because this is a contiguous city past these points and people are not inherently different when you cross an arbitrary border drawn with little thought a century ago. In the urban areas of Saanich like Cedar Hill or Gorge, these areas almost completely homogenous with Oaklands or Burnside Gorge and the people that live in those areas use the same parks and same neighbourhood centres and also share the same downtown.
Which gets to the next clue as to why Saanich and Victoria should unite, Saanich on its own, doesn’t have a downtown (despite attempts to create one). Actually I should correct that statement, it does have a downtown, it just happens that it is currently in the City of Victoria, which is precisely why one hasn’t magically sprung out of thin air in Saanich. Instead Saanich, like Victoria is made up of myriad of urban centres but none really singularly bigger or denser.
The next and perhaps the most important benefit to having a united Victoria and Saanich is the ability to plan our city in a more coherent and sensible way. A city that doesn’t have different types of bike lanes on one road just because they cross a fake line; where urban centres can be focused on and enhanced in conjunction with a larger surrounding area in mind rather than just to the edge the current municipality. A unified approval process for developers so that we can actually start creating a surplus of housing in the City rather than trying to catch-up.
Finally, we can just end at least some of the silliness of pretending that we live in a small city of 90k people when in reality the city is over 200k people in a metropolitan area of 400k people. Where because we have gerrymandered the lines, you can have both a violent city and a safe city in one. We could actually be a member of the Big City Mayors Caucus of Canada, which we currently don’t qualify for, but actually smaller cities like Saskatoon and St. John’s do. I do know it is nice to pretend we aren’t living in a big city in Victoria, but we are and we have big city issues to deal with and anyway we can unite our citizens together will help us achieve those objectives easier.
I know that many of you will not have been convinced and that is okay. I just really felt I needed to get my opinion out on this. I look forward to your reasoned objections in the comments :)