For Mayor · District of Highlands · 2026
The Highlands has been home for twenty-one years. Ann and I raised our kids here and grew our food here, and somewhere in there I learned how water actually moves through this rock and forest. Twelve of those years I've spent serving you, on Council and at the region's water table. Now I'd like to serve as your Mayor.
I designed water systems and taught them for twenty years. Now I help govern the supply for 420,000 people.
Twelve on council too. Four of them chairing two water commissions at the same time. The region already knows who I am.
I'm not looking to remake the Highlands. I'd like to keep it what it is, through a decade of change.
Why I'm running
That's most of what I'm running to protect. That, and the plans this community spent years building.
The pressures are real. Housing costs, climate, the price of everything, a region expanding at our doorstep. None of it gets easier if we spend four years arguing with each other instead of working the problem. I'd rather we take the hard questions on together and still be on speaking terms at the end of it.
I'd also use the seat. Highlands is small; it doesn't have to be quiet.
The South Highlands Local Area Plan took years, and a task force of residents who gave up their evenings for it. Council amended the Official Community Plan to bring its direction in, so it's adopted policy now. That was the easy part. Actually building what the community asked for is the part still ahead of us. It's the main reason I want the chair.
The OCP itself is a good document and I'd defend most of it. But parts are dated, and a plan that describes a place as it was can't do its job. It needs a refresh done with the community, not at it.
A lot of people moved here in the last ten years. 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
At Eco-Sense, sustainability isn't a slogan. It's how my partner Ann and I have lived for two decades.
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.
On our demonstration 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 governance it isn't theory. I've helped write the rules other communities use.
I design and build, and I've put that to work here as a volunteer. The Eagles Lake washroom. The mechanical systems at the Twinflower bathroom. The broom-composting trials that made the soil for our community garden, and then the garden's fence and its solar array.
An automotive centre, consulting, building, farming, designing rainwater systems. A working life of self-employment teaches you budgets and accountability, and how to deliver when every outcome lands on your shoulders. You earn the result. Nobody hands it to you.
For twenty years I've taught and written publicly on water, permaculture, composting, food forestry and building science. Well over 200 articles in print, on radio and on television. I've also been retained to write water policy for other governments: technical advisor on Metro Vancouver's non-potable water re-use work, technical editor on the Province's greywater and composting-toilet standards, and water policy for the Regional District of Nanaimo and Islands Trust.
Whatever two decades at Eco-Sense have taught us about water, soil, building science and growing food, we give away. Tours, talks, workshops, and the neighbour who turns up at the gate with a question about their well. That last one is the best part of it.
The region handed its water supply to a councillor from its smallest community. Budgets, infrastructure, and thirteen jurisdictions that all have to end up agreeing. That's the experience Highlands would take into the mayor's chair.
My Record
Twelve years governing the drinking-water systems the Capital Region runs on. Real authority over budgets and infrastructure, and over what gets built twenty years from now.
These aren't ceremonial seats. When a Highlands matter is on the table, CRD directors and staff come to me. That's standing you earn. Then you spend it, protecting Highlands and helping the region get its hardest calls right.
Highlands council appointed me to the Commission. Commissioners from thirteen jurisdictions then chose me to chair it: four years in the chair, after four as Vice-Chair.
The reinvestment that keeps the regional system reliable and seismically sound: the 2022 Master Plan rollout, dam-safety work, and the future filtration plant. In 2026 alone, a $72M capital program.
The long-range blueprint. It's moving now from what to build into how and when.
Refreshing the commission's priorities for the next five to ten years.
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.
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.
Four years chairing the commission that delivers water to the western communities, held at the same time as the RWSC chair. 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: what we own, what condition it's in, what it's worth, and when it has to be replaced. 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.
Keeping cost recovery fair and current, so new growth carries the cost of the capacity it needs.
Serving Langford, Colwood, View Royal, Metchosin, Sooke, parts of Highlands, several First Nations, and the JDF Electoral Area.
Delivered for the Highlands
Twelve years on council, measured in things that got built and decisions that stuck.
It didn't have majority support at first. I helped move it from a contested idea to the core of how the District plans and funds its infrastructure. We repair and replace on evidence now, instead of waiting for something to break.
I pushed to get natural assets into that framework, groundwater above all. Once an aquifer is on the books as infrastructure, it gets protected like infrastructure. That shift matters more than it sounds.
I supported carrying the monitoring program through to a full map of our aquifers, lineaments and wells, and directing staff to develop a watershed management plan. Local evidence, for the decisions coming at us.
I developed the broom-composting program at the Broom Bash, and it made the soil the community garden sits on. Metchosin and Sooke have since picked up the approach. Invasive weed in, growing medium out.
Presentations on integrated food systems, and on water: groundwater, greywater, composting toilets, rainwater harvesting, conservation for agriculture.
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.
Where I Stand
A direction, rather than a list of things I'll promise to deliver by Tuesday.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We live in the Coastal Douglas-fir zone, one of the most threatened ecosystems in British Columbia.
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.
Water is my life's work. I designed it and taught it for twenty years before I ever helped govern it.
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.
Highlands sits within the territories of as many as seven First Nations. Reconciliation is a relationship, and relationships take time and showing up.
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.
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.
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
Twelve years of meetings will tell people what you're actually like. Here's what I'd expect to be held to.
I listen before I decide. Sometimes it changes my vote.
I explain my reasoning on the hard decisions, including the unpopular ones.
I take the science seriously. I take the person who has lived on that road for forty years just as seriously.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 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
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.
| Municipality | Rate |
|---|---|
| North Saanich | 1.35810 |
| Metchosin | 1.80634 |
| Highlands | 2.05100 |
| View Royal | 2.34277 |
| Sidney | 2.49655 |
| Colwood | 2.67380 |
| Sooke | 2.73747 |
| Central Saanich | 2.84073 |
| Langford | 2.96074 |
| Saanich | 3.27460 |
| Oak Bay | 3.42060 |
| Victoria | 3.72290 |
| Esquimalt | 3.94230 |
| Year | Rate |
|---|---|
| 2023 | 1.59930 |
| 2024 | 1.73790 |
| 2025 | 1.84000 |
| 2026 | 2.05100 |
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
A Vision for the Next Four Years
No grand new direction. Keeping a small rural community intact through a decade of change, and getting people working together while we do it.
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. Twelve years in, the job is to stay responsive and to finish what the community started. Not to coast.
Surveys, Committee of the Whole, standing advisory committees. Public input while a decision can still move.
Actioning the regenerative-development plan, and showing what it looks like built. Water security included.
Highlands as the community others look to on watershed and green-space protection. We don't need to copy urban service models.
Capacity we can actually afford: grants, partnerships, shared services. Without growing the budget or the staff list.
Asking before deciding. Good decisions need time and real public input, and I've pushed for both more than once. As mayor I'd re-engage people directly: resident surveys, Committee of the Whole meetings brought back, and standing advisory committees that pull resident and expert voices in early, the way the Regional Water Supply Commission's Water Advisory Committee does. A well-run meeting is one where everybody gets heard, and the solution the room builds together is the one that holds up.
The South Highlands plan, finished. The community asked for regenerative development in the South Highlands, something more imaginative than the industrial-commercial default. That vision still hasn't been properly shown to anyone. The pragmatic move is to action the plan and let residents and the region see what it actually looks like. I'll carry it across the line.
Leading the region on protection. Highlands has been quietly engaged in the region for years, and quietly overlooked for about as long. I want to turn that quiet presence into a voice the region hears when decisions reach our water, our roads, and our rural character. We have something to teach the region about watershed and green-space protection. We should stop waiting to be asked.
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.
