Handout from Ratepayer Meeting last night

Mayor Garlick handed out copies of "The Process to Amalgamate Victoria's Municipalities", from a Vancouver Island blog.

Reprinted here in its entirety:

"Amalgamation has been in the local news of late and I have heard too many people say the government could just impose amalgamation or that the Minister could just impose a referendum to create a new amalgamated Greater Victoria municipality.  This is not the process in B.C.  I am writing this posting so that people understand the process of what it would take to get amalgamation in Victoria.

B.C. has a long history no forced amalgamations of local governments.  The last time a forced amalgamation happened in B.C. was in 1974 by the NDP in the case of Kamloops and Kelowna.  The current government has gone as far as to make it clear in the Community Charter that amalgamations cannot be forced by the province.  One result of voluntary amalgamations in B.C. has been that when amalgamations have happened they have been community supported positive successes, as opposed to the experience in Ontario, Quebec or Nova Scotia.

Here is the rundown of the process as it is outlined in the Local Government Restructure Program:

1.  Local governments express an interest in the idea and tells the provincial government they want to consider amalgamation.

2.  Local governments create a committee to prepare an amalgamation study.  The committee oversees the preparation of the amalgamation study and conducts public consultation.

3.  Amalgamation study is done -- B.C. government provides all the funding for the study as well as ministry staff to help.

4.  Committee recommends to the Minister if a vote is to go forward on amalgamation or not.  Minister provides offer of funds for the newly amalgamated local government.

5.  The vote is held, if it is voted in favour of by a majority in each municipality the province creates the new amalgamated municipality.

What is most important understand here is that there is no formal way for the public or the province to start the process.  Legally in B.C. it is entirely an issue for local government to start the road to an amalgamated local government.

It is also important to understand the fifth step.
The formal vote creating the new municipality has to pass in each of the existing municipalities.  If Saanich, Victoria, Oak Bay, Esquimalt and View Royal were all to be a new proposed municipality the vote would have to pass in all five.  If the vote was 90% in favour in the first four but 51% against in View Royal, the whole thing fails.

Could the province force step five immediately?  
In theory, they have the power to force a vote on a new municipality that would encompass two or more existing municipalities, but this is unrealistic for a number of reasons:

• The vote would have to be for a defined new municipality.  This would have been developed by the province without the cooperation of the existing local governments.  The new municipality would have too little buy in to have any chance of success in a vote.
• Local governments are elected and not including them in a major decision on change to their structure is undemocratic and arrogant.
• It goes against existing government policy of not forcing amalgamations.
• No government or Minister of the Crown is going to burn all their political capital on an approach to the issue that is more or less guaranteed to be a political shit storm.
• Many MLAs are former municipal councillors so they are unlikely to go out of their way to antagonize their former colleagues.  Municipal councils are also the farm team leagues for provincial politics.  Any party that forced a vote on amalgamation could ruin the chances of them getting a new crop of candidates for future elections.

The government could in theory remove the restriction in the Community Charter that stops the province from forcing amalgamations and not have any vote at all but the reasons above would apply even more so if this were done.

It is also important to remember that local governments are creatures of the provincial Crown  and not fully self-governing.  Local governments need formal approval of the provincial government to make any change to their structure and this formal role of the Minister leads people to think that the Minister has the right to mess with local governments.  Policy, tradition and precedence make it clear that the Minister is restricted in how far they can interfere with local governments."