For Mayor · District of Highlands · 2026

Fresh clarity, energy and focus on what's worth protecting.

Our water, our ecology, our rural character, and our safety. Preparing this community and the region for threats nobody envisioned twenty years ago takes a strong, respected voice, one the community can be proud of and the region already listens to. We owe a great deal to the mentors who led us to this place, and part of the work now is making room for younger leaders to pick up the stewardship and carry it on. I'm asking for your vote on October 17.

Gord Baird resting on a rocky Highlands bluff with his dog, the forested valley spread out below
Scafe Hill, where I live
Why I'm running See the record

Food and water

A junk yard and a gravel pit, now an orchard of more than 650 fruit and nut trees. And twenty years designing the water systems that other governments took up as standards. That's where the work starts.

A voice at the region

Twelve years on council, twelve at the region's water tables, four of them chairing two commissions at once. Highlands gets one vote. My job is to make it carry.

Staying rural

I'm not looking to remake the Highlands. I want to protect what makes it special, and be ready for what comes next.

Why I'm running

Good governance puts politics and division to the side.

I want to protect what makes Highlands special, and be prepared for what comes next.

Twenty-one years ago Ann and I came to the Highlands to build as sustainably as the code would allow. The neighbours welcomed it. Along the way our eyes were opened to the struggles at the council table over development. What prevailed was a green, protected Highlands, focused on water, privacy and rural character.

The community has just spent six years telling us what it wants in the South Highlands. Our job is to sell that vision, not to revert to what suited us twenty-five years earlier. Highlands has matured, and the newer residents moved here for what we created and preserved.

To keep a small community resilient and robust, the newer voices have to be able to share their ideas. My goal is to make sure every idea can be shared safely, and that curiosity at the table lets every idea be considered. That's how collaborative decisions get made, and how we step back from the polarization that has come to dominate politics.

And I'd use the seat. Highlands has one vote at the regional board, and one voice among the Westshore communities. One vote is all we get. A strong voice is what makes it carry.

More on why now

The South Highlands Local Area Plan took years, and a task force who gave up their evenings for it. Council amended the Official Community Plan in 2025 to bring the community's vision into adopted policy. Selling that vision is the part still ahead of us. I won't disrespect those wishes in the mayor's chair by reverting to the status quo.

The OCP is a good document. It has aged well, it has had its updates, and it shaped the Highlands into what it is today. My concern is a simpler one. A lot of people have moved here in the past ten years, and to build an inclusive community we have to ask whether there are things missing.

You chose this place deliberately, and most of you haven't been asked for much since. I'd like to change that. The committees and the work parties are where a small municipality actually gets governed — and we could use more hands.

I'm a fourth-generation View Royal resident, drawn here twenty-one years ago when the Highlands Stewardship Foundation encouraged us to build Eco-Sense. Since then I've built things, run businesses, grown food, and spent the last stretch of it at the regional tables where decisions about our water get made. The region knows the voice by now. I'd like to put it to work at home.

About Gord

A changing climate shaped everything we built here.

Eco-Sense started as our answer to that. It ended up as something other governments asked us to help them write.

Ann and I raised our two kids here, on a farm where the outdoors was the backyard. They're grown now and on their own. That's the Highlands I want to protect: a place worth growing up in, and worth coming back to.

Gord Baird smiling under the kiwi vines at Eco-Sense, holding a green campaign sign reading Elect Gord Baird.ca for Mayor
Under the kiwi vines at Eco-Sense.

Climate change and everything that comes with it drove the work. Drought, fire, water that doesn't behave the way it used to. On our farm on Compton Road we regenerate soil, restore habitat, harvest rainwater, treat greywater and grow food. All of it inside the ecology of the place rather than on top of it. So when I talk about water it isn't theory. I've helped write the rules other communities use.

More about my background

I have a broad range of interests, but most of my time goes to the farm. It was a junk yard and a gravel pit before we started. It's now a thriving orchard of more than 650 fruit and nut trees.

My volunteering runs along the same lines as the things I like teaching. Pruning and harvesting the Caleb Pike orchard. Pressing juice with community members for the Heritage Park Society. Supporting the community garden, from the education side through to drilling rock for the fences and installing their solar. Ann and I put the better part of 400 hours into building the Eagles Lake washroom, and we still service it to this day. Not glamorous, but meaningful. Perhaps every politician should clean a public washroom.

I started the original broom-composting program for the Broom Bash, which made about 200 yards of composted soil to get the community garden going. I'm past president of the BC Fruit Testers Association, a non-profit for people who grow fruit at home. In my younger years in the automotive sector I chaired the South Island Automotive Retailers Association, and Western Canada ACOAT, a collision-repair business group.

Outside the farm, council, the CRD Regional Water Supply Commission and the volunteering, I run a water design and consulting business. Three to five potable rainwater harvesting designs a year, and consulting mostly for other local, regional and provincial governments. I'm also paid to present on building science, permaculture, composting and compost toilets, food forestry, water in all its forms (soils, crops, collection, conservation), along with sustainable energy and how people actually live with all of it.

I co-authored a book on compost toilets, was technical editor on the Province's greywater and compost toilet standards, technical advisor on Metro Vancouver's Non-Potable Water Reuse Guidebook, and worked on water policy for the Regional District of Nanaimo and Islands Trust. Ann and I were key mentors for Canadian Geographic and Shell Canada's Energy Diet Challenge.

There's a well-documented history of the work in hundreds of media pieces, including the Knowledge Network, and we were featured in the Royal BC Museum's year-long Free Spirit exhibit.

Twelve years on council here, and twelve at the region's water table. The smallest community in the CRD ended up chairing the water supply for all of it. That's the experience Highlands would take into the mayor's chair.

12 yrs
Councillor, District of Highlands
12 yrs
CRD Regional Water Supply Commission. 4 as Chair, 4 as Vice-Chair
$350M+
Five-year regional water capital plan stewarded as Chair
21 yrs
Building, farming & designing water systems in the Highlands

My Record

Twelve years on council. Most of it close to home.

Measured in things that got built and decisions that stuck.

The detail behind each, plus one still in progress

Initiated the Asset Management Plan

I brought it forward and it was voted down. I brought it back, and the second time it carried. It's now the core of how the District plans and funds its infrastructure, so we repair and replace on evidence instead of waiting for something to break. The council record shows the dates and the votes.

Got groundwater counted as a natural asset

I pushed to get natural assets into that framework, groundwater above all, using what I know from the water side to make the case. Once an aquifer is on the books as an asset, it gets budgeted for. That shift matters more than it sounds.

Led the aquifer mapping, now pushing for a watershed plan

I was the persistent push to advance our groundwater monitoring through to the mapping of our aquifers, lineaments and wells. The next push is towards a watershed management plan.

Started Safe Soil, now taken up by the Province

I initiated the Safe Soil program and took it to UBCM, where it was supported. The Province saw the value in it and took it up, and ran the trial through the Ministry of Agriculture.

Started the vegetation strategy that became the CRD's tree planting program

I initiated a Vegetation Management Strategy through Highlands council to deal with dead and dying trees. The CRD took up the cause, and it became their regional tree planting program.

Took sand and gravel extraction out of the OCP

I initiated the removal of “Sand and Gravel” extraction from the Highlands Official Community Plan.

Wrote the District's first FireSmart grant application

The first one the District ever submitted, and it was successful. FireSmart has been running here since. Free, confidential home assessments are available at firesmart@highlands.ca.

Turned the Broom Bash into the community garden's soil

I developed the broom-composting program at the Broom Bash, and it made about 200 yards of soil for the community garden. Metchosin and Sooke have since picked up the approach. Invasive weed in, growing medium out.

Ran the workshops for anyone who turned up

Twenty years of community presentations on integrated food systems, and on water: groundwater, greywater, composting toilets, rainwater harvesting, conservation for agriculture.

Pushed emergency preparedness down to the neighbourhood

I've supported strengthening the District's risk assessment and Emergency Program, run through the Highlands Fire Department and backed by our Neighbourhood HELP groups. In a forested place that burns, the readiness that counts is the kind that lives on your own road.

Pushed ten years for the roadside trail and bike lanes assessment

I pushed for ten years to get it done, and it was completed this past year. The report is invaluable. It also found that practical implementation would cost more than we can carry, and would modify the roads so much they'd lose their character. That's a real answer, and worth having.

Still in progress: traffic calming on the cut-through routes

An idea I've worked through with residents and staff, though it hasn't reached council yet: deterring cut-through traffic at peak times without holding up residents leaving home, and without interfering with emergency responders. Staff have identified grant funding to assess it alongside other options and run a trial. It was meant for the first Committee of the Whole after the 2026 budget. As mayor, who sets the final agenda, I will ensure we have it on the agenda early in 2027.

The regional side, in short

Twelve years on the region's water commissions, four of them chairing two at the same time. Highlands council appointed me; commissioners from thirteen jurisdictions chose me to chair. These aren't ceremonial seats. When a Highlands matter is on the table, CRD directors and staff come to me.

Chair, CRD Regional Water Supply Commission

Governing the drinking water for about 420,000 people. Four years in the chair, after four as Vice-Chair. A $350M+ five-year capital plan, $72M of it in 2026 alone: the 2022 Master Plan rollout, dam-safety work, the future filtration plant. The 2025 Strategic Plan renewal sets the priorities for the next five to ten years.

Chair, Juan de Fuca Water Distribution Commission

Four years, held alongside the RWSC chair, serving Langford, Colwood, View Royal, Metchosin, Sooke, parts of Highlands, several First Nations and the JDF Electoral Area. It's where I led the first CRD service to finish a full Asset Management Plan: a 20-year roadmap covering roughly $2 billion in infrastructure. Other CRD services are using it as the model now. Unglamorous work…it's also how you avoid learning about a pipe the day it fails.

Development Cost Charges, on generational equity

My job in the chair was to make sure every position got a full hearing before the vote. I support where it landed: existing water users shouldn't be paying for the infrastructure that growth requires. The JDF program was renewed on the same principle.

The first water user agreements with First Nations

Developed with several Nations, the first of their kind in the service.

Hydro generation in the supply mains

I raised this twelve years ago. The water is already moving under pressure, so the energy is already there. The last commission meeting of the term funded the design.

Thermal cameras in the Sooke Lake and Leech watersheds

I supported the trial and the rollout. They've picked up wildfire starts thirty kilometres out, and automation is beginning now. The same approach could be replicated across the CRD or through CREST, which would back up the Highlands Fire Department and our Emergency Support Services.

I've held the line on factual precision the whole way through. When the numbers didn't support the story being told, I said so. Decisions that reach 420,000 people should rest on evidence.

The CRD Regional Water Supply Commission meeting around its horseshoe table, with BC and Canadian flags and hybrid video participants on screen
Chairing the CRD Regional Water Supply Commission. Thirteen municipalities and electoral areas at one table.
Gord Baird at a Highlands community market table beside the Essential series building and sustainability books, in front of the historic Caleb Pike log building
At the Highlands market, with the Essential building & sustainability series. Ann and I co-authored one of them.

What people are saying

From people who've watched me work.

Their words, not mine.

“As an almost lifelong student of leadership I have come to recognize that it requires a combination of: relationships; initiative; hard work; outside the box thinking; strong listening; communications; and the ability to build consensus wherever possible. At our District's Special Council Meeting of August 26th, I witnessed all those qualities displayed by Gord Baird in the quest for a good outcome for the Highlands. He demonstrated true leadership. This is why I endorse Gord Baird as the Mayor our Highlands needs now and in the future.”
Scott Richardson 23-year Highlands resident, 16 of them as Chair of the Highlands District Community Association

The Community Plan

The people who'll steward this for the next twenty years should help write the plan.

Ours was hard fought and it's almost twenty years old. It works. The question is whether anything is missing.

It was the strong land stewardship in that plan that made the Highlands somewhere people wanted to move to and raise kids in. Trees and critters. Space, and the privacy that comes with it. That's what was fought for, and it worked.

A lot of families have arrived since, drawn by exactly what the plan protects. Their fingerprints aren't on it. Neither are their ideas.

So I want to put a straight question to everyone living here now: is anything missing, and is a refresh worth doing? That's a question, not a promise. The people who will steward this place for the next twenty years should have a hand in what it says.

More on the plan, and what a renewal would mean

A renewal isn't mainly a document exercise. It's the conversation about what we want this place to be in twenty years. The document is what that conversation leaves behind.

It also costs money and staff time, which is exactly why the community should say whether it's a priority before anyone commits to it. Asking first is cheaper than guessing.

We already know this community can do a planning process well. The most recent update was the South Highlands Local Area Plan: six years, a resident task force, public meetings, and a questionnaire that came back with wide support for a more ecological direction. Council adopted it into the OCP in 2025. That's the standard a wider refresh would have to meet.

And if the answer comes back that nothing is missing, that's a real answer too. It would tell us to spend the next four years implementing the plan rather than rewriting it.

Where I Stand

Five fundamentals I won't trade away.

They've guided every position I've taken so far.

An honest note on how councils work. A mayor doesn't set policy by decree. Council chooses the direction together, and my job is to make sure that choosing happens well.

On the tensions we actually live with

Conservation and private property. Climate pressure and the freedom to use your own land. These are real tensions in a rural place and I won't pretend they aren't. The threats to our forests and our groundwater come from outside, and they keep shifting, so what we do about them has to keep moving too. Good rules are how a small community protects what it has without giving up the independence that drew people here in the first place. I'm not counting rules. I'm watching whether this stays the place people chose.

01

Protecting our rural character

Highlands chose to be what it is: large rural lots, no urban services, forest and rock and quiet. That wasn't an accident. And it isn't up for quiet erosion.

More

I'll defend the land-use framework that keeps us rural. And I'll stay skeptical of the pressures that chip away at it one exception at a time, whether they come from developers, from the growth next door, or just from convenience.

02

Ecological protection & biodiversity

We live in the Coastal Douglas-fir zone, one of the most threatened ecosystems in British Columbia.

More

Our sensitive-ecosystem protections and OCP policies are the reason this place still works as habitat. I'll defend them, and strengthen them where the evidence supports it. That means real inventory and current science, not numbers collected decades ago.

03

Water stewardship & climate resilience

Water is my life's work. I designed it and taught it for twenty years before I ever helped govern it.

More

Here that means a community living almost entirely on groundwater. Protecting our aquifers and watercourses from contamination and overuse, and planning honestly for a drying climate that is already changing how water moves through this ground.

04

Reconciliation & First Nations relations

Highlands sits within the territories of as many as seven First Nations. Reconciliation is a relationship, and relationships take time and showing up.

More

As mayor I'd start that work in earnest on day one, with practical steps that fit the authority a small municipality actually has, and that the Nations themselves help shape.

05

Backing the groups that hold us together

A small community runs on its volunteers. The groups that hold us together deserve steady support rather than whatever's left at the end of the budget.

More

Our core community organizations should get priority attention on funding and support: the Highlands District Community Association, the Heritage Parks Society, the Highlands Community Garden, and the horse club that's just getting going. Listening to neighbours is as much of this job as protecting the land is.

How I lead

The same person at every table.

Twelve years of meetings will tell people what you're actually like. Here's what I'd expect to be held to.

I facilitate. The job at the head of the table is to get the best out of the people around it, not to be the loudest voice at it.

I enable. If someone brings a good idea, my job is to clear the path so it can actually be tested.

Clarity, then energy, then ambition. Each one comes out of the one before it. Nobody gets excited about a direction they can't follow.

I explain my reasoning on the hard decisions, including the unpopular ones.

Ann and I have voted differently plenty of times, and so have I with every other councillor. A difference at the table isn't a division in the community. Or at home.

Fixing how the District works

A fair, predictable process, for applicants and staff both.

Most of the friction here doesn't come from the decisions. It comes from a process that leaves people feeling unheard.

I've watched people bring something to the District and leave more confused than when they arrived. I've watched staff spend weeks on questions one early meeting would have settled. Four changes would fix most of that, and none of them require new money.

The detail behind each

Pre-application meetings

Applicant, CAO, planner and mayor at the same table before an application is filed. An hour up front saves months later. It also costs the District nothing.

One written checklist

Every applicant gets the full list of requirements at the start, including what neighbour engagement is expected of them. Staff stop repeating themselves. Applicants stop discovering a requirement halfway through.

Community Information Meetings

Early-phase applications go to the neighbourhood before the design hardens. Some BC communities already require it, and I've watched it work in places I've consulted: the applicant hosts the meeting, staff attend to answer questions on policy, and the proposal is revised before it's formally submitted. Neighbours get heard while their input can still change something.

A Service Delivery Standard

A published timeframe for responding to residents, and a way to check whether we're meeting it. You may not get the answer you wanted. You will get an answer.

None of this guarantees any particular outcome. It guarantees that people know where they stand, and when they'll hear back.

What it costs to live here

Third lowest in the region. Four years running.

Of the thirteen municipalities in the Capital Regional District, only two set a lower residential tax rate than Highlands. They were the same two in 2023.

For 2026 the District's municipal residential rate is $2.05 per $1,000 of assessed value. On a million-dollar home that's $2,051 in municipal taxes. The highest rate in the region would charge $3,942 on the same house.

The rate has gone up. Since 2023 ours has risen 28.2%, which is, to the decimal, the median increase across all thirteen CRD municipalities. Costs went up everywhere. Ours went up by the regional middle.

The numbers, and where they come from
2026 municipal residential rate, $ per $1,000 of assessment
MunicipalityRate
North Saanich1.35810
Metchosin1.80634
Highlands2.05100
View Royal2.34277
Sidney2.49655
Colwood2.67380
Sooke2.73747
Central Saanich2.84073
Langford2.96074
Saanich3.27460
Oak Bay3.42060
Victoria3.72290
Esquimalt3.94230
Highlands municipal residential rate, four years
YearRate
20231.59930
20241.73790
20251.84000
20262.05100

Highlands ranked third lowest in each of those four years, with North Saanich and Metchosin below it every time.

Part of why the rate is low is that Highlands doesn't run a water or sewer utility. The Province's Schedule 704 puts residential user fees and parcel taxes here at zero, against $1,728 in Saanich, $1,250 in Victoria and $2,122 in Oak Bay. No urban services was a choice this community made, and it shows up on the tax notice.

Source: Province of British Columbia, Local Government Tax Rates and Tax Burden, Schedule 702, municipal purpose, residential class (Class 1), 2023 through 2026. Rates are reproduced exactly as published, to five decimal places; figures quoted above are rounded. Residential user fees and parcel taxes are from Schedule 704, 2026. These are the municipal portion only. School, regional district and hospital rates appear on the same notice but are set by other authorities.

Housing, water & staying a community

Room for young families. Still the Highlands.

Young families, aging parents, people on fixed incomes. A community stays whole when the people in it can afford to stay.

Making room for the next generation and protecting the Highlands' form and character are the same task. Highlands will change. The question is whether it changes on its own terms. And the terms start with groundwater, because the real limit on what we can build here is what our wells and aquifers can carry. So the question I'd put to Council is a practical one. How do we modernize housing for young families while holding onto the affordability and character that make this place worth staying in?

How I'd approach it

The Province now permits secondary suites on most Highlands properties. That's the law. Our job is to make it work responsibly, and that starts with keeping our water clean.

Groundwater first

Conservation matters, but the most urgent job is keeping pollution out of our aquifers. When a home runs on a well, what happens to the wastewater nearby ends up in that family's drinking water. Recognizing the impact of on-site systems is part of protecting groundwater. It's also worth being straight about where the authority sits. A municipality doesn't regulate how on-site wastewater systems are installed or how they perform, and that split between authorities is how residents end up let down with nobody clearly answerable. Guarding recharge areas is work we can do, and I'd start there.

Bring the suites we already have into the fold

Plenty of homes already have unpermitted dwellings. I'd rather offer a secure, non-punitive path to compliance with fire, electrical, septic and building safety codes than go looking for people to punish. A legal suite is a safer suite, for whoever is sleeping in it, and for the neighbours' water and fire protection.

Use the right tools where groundwater is sensitive

Our aquifer mapping and watershed planning can show where demand is supportable, where it needs strong conservation, and where groundwater simply won't carry it. We should also review how our bylaws apply in groundwater-protected areas, business licensing included. Keeping the wrong activity out of the wrong place.

Whatever gets built, built safe

Our OCP already caps how many homes can be built here, so the job is making sure the ones that do get built are safe in a forested place that burns. Safety has to be built in from the start: FireSmart practices, access and egress that work for a fire truck, and the water-conservation tools I've spent a career on (rainwater harvesting, greywater reuse, efficient fixtures). None of that requires overdrawing our water or raising our risk.

Raising kids who love this place

A childhood with a forest in it.

Kids who grow up loving where they live tend to stay. They also tend to look after it.

Highlands children have something rare right out the back door. Forest, water, rock, and room to roam. I want them to grow up knowing it's there.

Read more

We're close to the region's families and rich in the kind of natural space that's getting harder to find. That's a real advantage for our kids. A child here can learn why clean water matters by standing beside the creek it came out of.

I've spent my life helping people of every age connect to this place, through workshops and tours and plain conversation at the gate. As mayor I'd welcome ideas and partners that give our youngest residents the same head start. The bar stays simple: does it fit the Highlands, and is it right for our kids? Some ideas won't clear it. They should still get a fair hearing first.

Gord Baird teaching a group on the Eco-Sense rooftop, standing between two large solar hot-water arrays
Solar hot water and building science on the Eco-Sense roof. Two decades of this.

A Vision for the Next Four Years

What I'd work on with four years.

Beyond the plan itself, these are the things that need a council's attention next.

Long service is only worth something if it stays curious. The region is changing, the climate is changing, and so are the risks to a small municipality. None of what follows needs a big budget. It needs a council that finishes things.

Transportation that fits a rural place

Safer shoulders on the main routes, traffic calming on the cut-throughs, and commuters onto the regional trail network where it already runs.

Somewhere for our youth

Highlands has led the region on setting land aside. The next step is using the new Westshore Parks & Rec Master Plan to build something here.

FireSmart, kept up

Keep strengthening the program I wrote the first grant for, and keep the free home assessments in front of people.

Services sized to a rural place

Capacity we can actually afford: grants, partnerships, shared services. Without growing the budget or the staff list.

The thinking behind each

Transportation that fits a rural place. We're charged $500,000 in transit levy for a service that barely reaches us. More transit is coming, which is good, and it needs watching, because the Province's density rules around transit routes and park-and-rides can override our zoning. On the roads: safer shoulders on the main routes, traffic calming on the rural cut-throughs, and active-transit commuters onto the regional trail network where it already runs.

Somewhere for our youth. The Highlands has led the region in setting land aside for parks. What we haven't done is build places for our own young people to use. The new Westshore Parks & Rec Master Plan is the lever, and I'd use it here rather than watch it get spent elsewhere.

FireSmart, kept up. I wrote the District's first FireSmart grant application. The program has run here since, and the work is never finished in a forested place. Free, confidential home assessments are available now at firesmart@highlands.ca, and I'd keep them in front of people rather than buried on a page.

Services sized to a rural place. We're about 2,750 people with a very small staff. So capacity has to come from somewhere other than hiring. Grants we actually chase. Shared services with neighbouring municipalities where the fit is real. Partnerships that finish a job without a permanent position attached to it. Adding staff is the easy answer, and it shows up on your tax bill every year afterward.

A row of smiling Highlands volunteers holding fence posts along the community garden work-party line
Community garden work party. The Highlands shows up for itself.