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Six for council, and one for mayor

For four years we have kept track of what this council decided and what it cost. We looked at everyone running against that record, and these are the people we feel we can stand behind so far, with our reasons for each.

Our six for council

And for mayor

All six are also endorsed by the Victoria Firefighters union, as of September 23. What that means

Why we are doing this at all

For four years this network has done the same steady work: reading the agenda, going to the meeting, checking the numbers and writing down what was decided. Endorsing candidates was never the plan. What we wanted, and still want, is a city hall that talks with residents before it makes up its mind.

We are speaking up this time because other groups already have. The Victoria Labour Council settled on a full slate of eight names for the eight council seats, privately, before nominations had even opened, and a coalition of advocacy groups is preparing letter grades for everyone running. If we said nothing in that company, the only organised voices in the race would be the ones asking for more of what the last four years gave us. So we would rather say plainly who we are voting for, and show our reasoning.

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What we read, and the one question we asked

We built this site around six issues: governance and public trust, development and neighbourhoods, housing and affordability, the urban forest, transportation and infrastructure, and safety and well-being. Every one of them is documented on this site against council's own record, with the sources linked.

We read every campaign website in the field, along with public statements and, for the sitting councillors, their voting records. Then we asked one question about each of them: on our six issues, has this person already shown the judgement we are looking for, rather than simply promised it? Six people have, so far.

Nobody signed anything, and no money changed hands

  • No money has changed hands in either direction. We have not donated to any campaign, and no campaign has paid us anything.
  • Nobody signed a pledge. We judged people on what they have already said and done in public, so you can check our reasoning against the same material we used.
  • This is not a slate. The six are not running as a team, they have not agreed a common platform, and they owe nothing to each other or to us.
  • If any of them wins and then votes for the things this site was built to question, we will write that down too.

What each of the six has already done

Two are sitting councillors and four would be new. Each name links to that candidate's own website, because we would rather you read them in their own words before you take ours.

Meet them in person

Marg Gardiner

Marg Gardiner

Council · Incumbent Firefighters' pick

Sixteen years with the James Bay Neighbourhood Association before she was elected, and the councillor who has most consistently been the dissenting vote on the decisions documented on this site. She voted against the 2026 budget on process grounds, saying the annual budget ritual is fundamentally flawed, and she is running on zero-based budgeting and measurable results. On governance and on taxes she has been saying for four years what this network has been saying.

marggardiner.ca
Stephen Hammond

Stephen Hammond

Council · Incumbent Firefighters' pick

He brought forward the motion that became Victoria's stronger renoviction bylaw in August 2026, so a renter forced out for a renovation now gets between five and twenty-four months' rent, depending on how long they lived there. He is a landlord, and he brought a tenant protection motion anyway, then spent a year getting it through amendments. That is the kind of work we want more of, and it is why we still push him on the one piece the bylaw left short.

votestephenhammond.ca
Arthur McInnis

Arthur McInnis

Council · New candidate Firefighters' pick

A law professor and former international construction lawyer with more than thirty years in governance work. His platform is the most specific in the field on the machinery of accountability: an integrity commissioner, a lobbyist registry, a public inventory of city-owned land, performance dashboards, and a ninety-day public consultation before any tax increase above inflation. Four of those are items this network has asked for by name.

arthurmcinnis.ca
Karen Rothe

Karen Rothe

Council · New candidate Firefighters' pick

A career British Columbia public servant who has worked on Metro Vancouver's regional growth strategy, wildfire evacuation policy and search and rescue funding. She has done the unglamorous part of the job in other governments and knows what an infrastructure plan has to contain. She is running on transparent decisions and on a downtown revival built with neighbourhood associations rather than around them.

karenrothe.ca
Wendy Bowkett

Wendy Bowkett

Council · New candidate Firefighters' pick

A former leader of the Victoria Downtown Residents Association with an MBA and board service at the 9-10 Club soup kitchen. She follows council meetings in unusual detail and can tell you what was decided and what it cost from memory. She is asking for clearer public reporting on council decisions and for a safety system that includes non-police crisis response, which is the combination of consultation and safety this network has argued for.

wendybowkett.ca
Melissa Cseszko

Melissa Cseszko

Council · New candidate Firefighters' pick

Born and raised in Victoria and a downtown small business owner for five years, so she sees the state of the core every opening shift rather than in a staff report. She is running on predictable downtown conditions and on stronger oversight and performance measurement at city hall. On safety she talks about what was actually spent and what actually changed, which is the question this network keeps asking.

melissacseszko.ca

And for mayor: Bruce McGuigan

You get one vote for mayor, and ours goes to Bruce McGuigan. His name links to his own website, so read him in his own words first.

Bruce McGuigan

Bruce McGuigan

Mayor · Candidate Our pick for mayor

More than thirty years in Victoria, most of them running the organizations that pick up what city hall drops: executive director of Family Services of Greater Victoria through years of change and funding pressure, a long-time board member and the 2025 acting director of the Victoria Immigrant and Refugee Centre Society, and one of the people who started the Victoria Social Innovation Centre. His first principle is the one this network was founded on: listen before deciding, say what is genuinely open for decision, and show people how their input changed the result. He has promised a citizens' assembly early in the term, paid from his own salary if council will not fund it. On homelessness he wants the goal stated and measured, rare, brief and non-recurring, and he has pressed the incumbent in public on what the City's spending, well over $100 million a year by his count, has bought. On housing he counts homes people here can afford rather than units, and wants the region to plan housing and transit together. Those exchanges are on his Facebook page.

bruceformayor.ca
Group photograph from the Victoria Firefighters union's endorsement announcement: the endorsed candidates with union members, under the union badge and the line This time we need your help
The union's photograph from its announcement.

Victoria's firefighters landed on the same six

On September 23 the Victoria Firefighters union, IAFF Local 730, published its council endorsements, the first time in its 168 years it has taken a side in a city election. Every candidate was asked to sign the union's six public-safety pledges, and the union then backed seven people for council, and nobody for mayor. Six of them are our six for council. The seventh is Jason Heit, whom we have not assessed yet.

They read the field for what each candidate would mean for the people who answer the 911 calls. We read it for how each would treat the people council serves. Two different questions, and the same names came out. Their pledges are worth reading, because most of them are about things council decides:

  1. Two stairwells, not one. No new buildings in Victoria that rely on a single staircase for residents to get out and firefighters to get in.
  2. Crews that are safe on the call. A city plan to reduce street disorder, so firefighters and paramedics are not waiting on a police escort before they can treat someone.
  3. Mental health support before the harm. A permanent budget line for proactive support, rather than compensation after an injury.
  4. Enough crew for a high-rise fire. A public, multi-year plan to close the gap to the NFPA 1710 high-rise standard as the skyline grows.
  5. Fire trucks in the road design. A standing seat for the union and transit operators before any road on an emergency route is redesigned.
  6. Cover for the harbour and Vic West. A long-term plan for the harbour, home to Canada's busiest water airport, and for Vic West, which has two road crossings to the rest of the city.

We have shortened the six. The full statements are theirs, at safevictoria.ca/pledges, and the endorsement list is at safevictoria.ca/endorsed-candidates. The Fernwood residents' group Our Fernwood, Our Victoria backs the same six, and Jason Heit as well. The union is a registered third party sponsor in its own right. It does not speak for this network, and we do not speak for it.

Six so far, and room for more

You can vote for up to eight councillors, but you don't have to vote for eight people. Every vote for someone you feel lukewarm about, or are not sure about, works against the candidates you actually want elected. Because they are all competing for the same eight places.

A ballot with six considered votes is stronger than one with eight where two votes are guesses.

Six people have cleared our bar so far. We are still reading, still going to meetings and still asking questions, so if others show us the same judgement we will say so here. And if you find a seventh or an eighth you believe in, tell us about it.

Whatever you do with your spare votes, do not hand them to the Gang of 5, who voted as a bloc for four years, or to the three newcomers they are backing. Who they are, and who they are backing.

Because, if the same majority goes back in nothing changes, whatever the lawn sign says.

Read the rest of the field anyway

Twenty-nine people are on the ballot for the mayor's chair and the eight council seats. We have listed all of them, with links to their own websites, including the ones we disagree with and the ones we have not endorsed.

If you want to test any candidate yourself, including ours, the benchmark we measure people against and the five questions we think everyone should be asked are both on this site. Bring them to an all-candidates meeting and see what happens.

The mayor decides whether you get heard

The mayor's chair is on the same ballot as the eight council seats. The mayor chairs the meetings, shapes the agenda with staff, and speaks for the city, so the job decides how much of a hearing residents get before a decision is made rather than after it. This is what we are looking for.

  • Consultation that starts before a report is drafted, not after the direction is already set.
  • An agenda residents can see coming, with the evidence behind a project published beside it.
  • A willingness to send a report back when what the public said has plainly changed the picture.
  • Local area plans restored and kept current, so a neighbourhood knows what is coming to it.
  • The tax effect of a decision put in plain numbers before the vote rather than explained afterwards.
  • A chair who truly listens, because that is how we get to the best outcomes for us all.

Bruce McGuigan has put exactly that on paper: listen before deciding, say what is open, show what changed, and a citizens' assembly to prove it. That is why he has our vote. His record, above.

Most people who read this were sent it by someone they know.

Where the deep detail lives

  • the OCP guide walks through the 2025 Official Community Plan clause by clause.
  • the real tax bill traces where the money went, with every figure sourced.
  • the media tracker collects what Victorians have written about city hall, sorted by issue.
  • the glossary explains the terms council uses in plain language.

October 17, and eight council seats to fill

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