Instagram story viewer> @bcpoliticswatch> Posts

BC Politics Watch

@bcpoliticswatch

2K

followers

3079

following

Holding Victoria’s civic power accountable. What happens here affects all of BC. Satire on Instagram. Full investigations on Substack

POSTS STORIES REELS

Times are tough in Victoria. Even city councillors need a side hustle.

In 2024, Councillors Jeremy Caradonna and Matt Dell moved to raise council pay 25 per cent, arguing that being a councillor is a full-time job. Councillor Dell already has a full-time job as a Director of Legislation with the BC government.

Two full-time jobs, or one very generous side hustle? And with the Conservatives taking over, how long does the day job last?

Full-time, part-time, or side hustle? Tell us in the comments.

#VictoriaBC #yyj #yyjpolitics #VictoriaCouncil #BCPolitics BCPoliticsWatch by @bcpoliticswatch

Everything starts in Victoria. The NDP usually have been in the driving seat. @junonewscom As the song goes, “Everybody wants to rule the world.” #bcpoli #victoriaelection Never seen anything like this in local politics than what has transpired in Victoria - unchecked. Assault on civic justice and democracy. by @bcpoliticswatch

Everyone hits a point where it’s time to leave. Some people take the hint gracefully. Others buckle in, grip the desk and announce they’re not going anywhere. Victoria City Hall, take note: the job was always on loan from the public, and sooner or later, you’re done. by @bcpoliticswatch

BREAKING: City Solicitor Stacey Grubb has resigned from the City of Victoria. The City has confirmed her departure.
On 20 October, members of the Sustainable Victoria Network hand-delivered a letter to City Hall asking the City to hold off declaring the official election results until every ballot was accounted for. The City Solicitor was copied. The City declared the results the next day, and the mail ballot numbers are still unpublished. The network says those ballots were never counted, and that it has received only acknowledgements of receipt.
So we’re asking:
Why did the City Solicitor resign, and when?
Was she advising the City on the network’s letter before she left?
Who is now the City’s lawyer on the election questions?
What happened to the mail ballots, and how many were never counted?
When will the City give the network a formal answer?
Our anonymous tip line is in our bio.
#VictoriaBC #yyj #yyjpoli #BCPoli #VictoriaElection2026 by @bcpoliticswatch

Too busy governing to answer for a ball field?

The City of Victoria tried to keep Mayor Marianne Alto, former Mayor Lisa Helps, City Manager Jocelyn Jenkyns and former Councillor Jeremy Loveday off the stand. Its excuse: officials would have "little time left for governing." The City of Victoria argued that its elected officials have a form of judicial immunity from testifying. The BC Human Rights Tribunal rejected it. All four have been ordered to testify.

Here's the story in three numbers.

$2,500: what the families planned to spend on a skinned infield at Pemberton Park, paid for with a Little League grant and laid by parent volunteers. They didn't ask the City for a cent. They needed its permission, and the City didn't give it.

$675,630: what Victoria paid one law firm last year.

$0: what the players' lawyers are charging. They're working pro bono.

In 2016 the mayor wrote that better fields were "essential." Nearly a decade later, the girls' case is still waiting for a hearing, and the City won't say what it has spent fighting them.

The hearing opens November 16. Listen in by phone: email the Tribunal by November 9.

Send this to someone in Victoria who pays property tax. Full story at the link in bio.

#VictoriaBC #yyj #HumanRights #WomenInSport #bcpoli by @bcpoliticswatch

Canada is not a serious country. On Thursday, Prime Minister Carney released Canada’s first national security plan in 22 years, and twelve days earlier Victoria handed foreign and domestic actors the playbook on how easy it is to interfere in our elections.

The City removed voting locations, left about 2,300 mail ballots sitting at Canada Post and lost voter check-in at eight schools on voting day. None of it was publicly referred to the RCMP, even though covert foreign interference in a Canadian election, municipal elections included, can now mean life in prison.

Federal elections are protected by the RCMP, CSIS and the Cyber Centre, while Victoria handled its breakdowns with press releases, and the Province should send this to the RCMP now.

Read the full investigation on Substack. Link in bio.

#VictoriaBC #yyj #BCpoli #cdnpoli #ElectionSecurity by @bcpoliticswatch

BC just elected a two-thirds Conservative majority, and they’re going to clean house. Lisa Helps at BC Housing, how long does that last? Allison Bond at the Royal BC Museum, how long does that last? The nonprofits running safe supply. ICBC. BC Ferries. And the local governments that spent four years acting like a second provincial government.

Victoria included. Just watch.

#BCPolitics #VictoriaBC #yyj #yyjpoli #BCElection2026 BCConservatives by @bcpoliticswatch

This is a new day for BC.

British Columbia handed Lorne Doerkson’s Conservatives a majority government on October 24, the party’s first outright provincial win since 1928.

A government is accountable only to the extent that the people it governs can see what it does, ask about it and say what they think without worrying about what follows. Under the last government the space for that narrowed a little at a time, through fees, delays, a closed directory and the caution of people who learned that speaking up carried a cost.

The NDP was rightfully kicked to the curb, but that doesn’t mean the new government should keep its authoritarian habits: the FOI fee, the Bill 9 delays, the locked directory. With an opposition this small, the job of holding the new government to account now falls to British Columbians. For many, this election has brought a real sense of relief and the hope that accountability is possible again. British Columbians in every walk of life want to be proud of their government again, and the surest way for this government to earn that is to give them the tools to hold it to account themselves. After the last nine years, British Columbians deserve that much.

Accountable to British Columbians. Full piece on Substack. Link in our stories.

#bcpoli #yyj #yyjpoli #VictoriaBC #BCElection2026 by @bcpoliticswatch

We have an alternative theory.

For the first time in 16 years, Victoria was about to lose its developer-friendly NDP council majority. Thousands of people whose work depends on that council, across the homelessness industry and the poverty industry, couldn’t let that happen. So they pushed for a provincial election the same month, and all of Victoria’s anger went to the province instead of City Hall.

Council survived, though as the Gang of Four now… with Alto that’s a new Gang of Five. The NDP didn’t.

Our other theory is that David Eby called the election before his caucus could ask him to step down.

Pick your favourite.

#yyj #yyjpoli #VictoriaBC #BCPoli #BCElection by @bcpoliticswatch

The bully has lost its enforcer.

Seven days after Victoria re-elected Mayor Marianne Alto with 44 per cent of the vote, down from 55, British Columbia gutted the NDP and elected its first Conservative government in almost 100 years.

For four years, Victoria City Hall went further than the province asked, then told residents the province required it.

Six-storey buildings on residential streets, with no public hearing.
Three votes to keep the Harbour open, on a block Councillor Gardiner told council had become a magnet for dealers.
Two of the city’s most important public parcels in treaty negotiations, and not one post or notice from City Hall.

Mayor Alto is all by herself now.

Full article on Substack. Link in our stories.

#Victoria #yyj #yyjpoli #BCPoli #VictoriaBC by @bcpoliticswatch

The real Zombie Walk is the provincial workforce dragging itself to work.

The people of British Columbia have spoken. Open the books. Get to work. #bcpoli #zombiewalk #victoriabc #bcndp by @bcpoliticswatch

Lorne Doerkson gave one of the best speeches we have heard from a BC politician in years last night, and it was both simple and electric. He walked out to Fleetwood Mac, called himself a guy from Williams Lake, and spoke about the trailblazers who came to this province looking for gold and a better life. "That is the trailblazing spirit of British Columbia and it never left," he told the crowd in Vancouver.

He also spoke directly to First Nations also as trailblazers. Five weeks ago few people outside the Cariboo-Chilcotin knew his name. He is weapons grade normal, he has taken everyone by surprise, and we are thrilled.

The line we keep coming back to was for the people who feel Victoria forgot them, as if the map stopped at Hope, and he told them the whole map counts now. Our view has always been that whatever happens in Victoria affects all of BC. We have more to say about the local election soon, but nobody wanted the gang of five and Alto in power except those grifting off or with an angle of the system, and the same can be said of David Eby.

#bcpoli #yyj #bcelection2026 #victoriabc by @bcpoliticswatch