Sasha Izard
Website: SashaIzard.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100084024917308
Are you associated with or running as part of a slate? If so, which one?
No
Do you live in the municipality where you are running, and if so, for how long? If not, what is your connection to that community?
Yes, I was born in and live in Saanich and have lived here for 33 out of
37 years, as such I’ve formed a deep connection with its ecology and community over many years. From the earth we live and to the earth we return.
What is your occupation, and for how long?
I’ve spent much of my life working with ecological landscape preservation, regeneration and agriculture. The removal of introduced plant species, a major problem for local eco-systems, has always been a key focus of my work.
As the sole proprietor of a small eco-landscaping business, I decided four years ago to invest in high grade lithium-ion battery equipment for all power tools and in the process my business was one of the first landscaping businesses in greater Victoria to go all battery-electric.
Tell us about your previous elected and/or community experience.
I’m a member of the Cadboro Bay Community Association.
Why are you running? What’s your motivation?
Sadly, I’ve witnessed the continuous degradation of our local eco-systems throughout my life and I decided to take a stand against this accelerating process by running for council. Bulldozers regularly destroy topsoil and wipe out mature, even supposedly protected trees to build more and more development and Saanich has even taken the step of becoming a member of the Urban Development Institute Capital Region, a key lobby for development in the CRD, which I see as a full circle conflict of interest between lobby and state. Saanich should immediately withdraw as member of the organization.
What are your top three issues?
Put the resident’s interest first over the interests of for-profit development.
Protect the environment. Saanich has regularly allowed the destruction of numerous Garry Oaks and other mature local trees, which should be protected in more than name only, for the interests of for-profit development. This should be halted immediately. The excuse given as quoted in the paper recently for the destruction of four Garry Oaks by the Gorge was: “Saanich staff said that they “did not consider [Garry oaks] a sensitive ecosystem.”
Transparency. Create a publicly available vote billboard to show how Mayor and Council are voting on the issues.
What’s your vision for your community in 25 years?
We should be preserving Saanich and its eco-systems, which means that we should be thinking well beyond the quarterly reports, beyond the election cycle, or even 25 years for that matter. We should be thinking in hundreds of years.
Lately there has been a push to rethink communities 20-30 years down the line in the interests of pro-development. Well what happens after that?
What happens after we’ve densified everything? Do we keep going upward to the sky? What do we expect the Babel model to achieve? If that really was the recipe for success then Donald Trump would be a hero for the environment and the working class based on his towers and we all know that isn’t true. Affordable? Compare prices: NYC, Tokyo, Toronto.
What’s one “big idea” you have for your community?
Ban Housing Speculation Outright. The speculation tax is much like the papal sale of indulgences of old, or all ‘sin taxes’ for that matter.
As long as the government benefits from it financially, they have no incentive to end the practice.
We aren’t going to change the underlying mechanisms of housing prices on the municipal level. This needs to be done at the Federal and Provincial levels, but at the municipality we can communicate with the other levels of government and ask them to do what has to be done to change the underlying mechanisms driving the exorbitantly high housing/rental prices we are seeing. We need to deal with the root of the problem rather than simply dealing with the symptoms created by it.
