A city that works.
What should we hope for our city? What do we have the right to demand — for ourselves and for our children?
The time for complaining is over. The time has come to imagine a city that works, want it with everything we have, and build it together — with realism and method.
A City That Works is an independent, non-partisan policy framework for the City of Victoria, drafted by residents who want practical results from their local government. It is 0% ideological, 100% pragmatic — its only loyalty is to what works elsewhere and can work here.
This is not a party. There are no whips, no candidate slate, no exclusivity — just a public menu of evidence-based municipal policies, costed and sourced, open for adoption by any candidate.
Five Pillars · One Foundation
Every measure belongs to one of five pillars, anchored by a foundational commitment to right relations with the host Nations. 100 active commitments in total — every one costed.
Victoria is built on the unceded traditional territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking peoples — today represented by the Songhees Nation and the Esquimalt Nation. Any serious program for the City must recognize this and build it into how the City operates, not just how it speaks.
The full program includes specific measures on government-to-government working tables, Indigenous procurement, lək̓ʷəŋən place names, cultural protocols, and urban Indigenous services. See Foundation measures M1–M5 →
How to use this framework.
There is no exclusivity and no campaign attached to this document. The goal is to raise the standard of debate — to make it normal for Victoria candidates to publish costed, measurable, sourced platforms with quarterly accountability.
- Endorse the framework in whole or in part
- Adapt individual measures to your platform
- Challenge the cost estimates and source links — publish your own
- Multiple candidates can run on these ideas, and they should
- Read the Program below
- Suggest improvements — every measure is open to criticism and correction
- Ask your candidates which specific measures they support
- Share with neighbours and community associations
- This framework was drafted from publicly available research and reporting
- If you have technical expertise and want to contribute corrections or new measures, please contact us
- Credit attaches to the underlying idea, not the framework
Whoever you are, Victoria should work for you.
0% ideology. 100% pragmatic.
We started where the truth is most visible: the budget. Politicians make promises; numbers don't lie. Victoria's operating budget grew 29% in three years, from $297.9M to $384.1M proposed — with over 53% going to salaries and benefits, VicPD's budget nearly doubling in a decade, and no competitive benchmarking, AI, or smart infrastructure deployed. For every problem a Victorian faces daily, we applied the same six-step method.
No major new public project without these five steps.
The Dowler Place file proved why this matters. Under this framework, no project skips any step.
What the City actually controls.
Before making promises, we must be honest about what the City of Victoria actually controls. Many of the problems residents face fall under provincial or federal jurisdiction. We advocate aggressively to senior governments for action in their domains — but we never promise what isn't ours to deliver. See the full plain-language guide →
Every measure, in full.
82 original measures plus 18 sub-measures added through gap-analysis cycles — 100 active commitments, every one with its full text and budget impact. Filter by pillar, or search by keyword.
12 commitments. Measured every quarter.
Twelve numerical targets, each tracked publicly, each with a baseline. Every quarter, the scorecard is published. No excuses, no spin — just results.
| # | Commitment | Target | Baseline |
|---|
The Balance Sheet.
A safer, cleaner, greener, better-managed city — with tax increases on a credible glide path back to inflation + growth. Spend smarter, not more.
Honest about timing: these are steady-state figures at the end of a four-year implementation. Year-one savings are a fraction. The full net-headroom math is in the Savings & Revenue Analysis.
Any increase above the cap requires a supermajority (6 of 8) and a public explanation.
What we are — and what we're not.
- Non-partisan and open
- Costed and sourced
- Measurable and quarterly-reported
- Adoptable by any candidate, in whole or in part
- Open to correction by anyone with expertise
- A political party
- A candidate slate
- Exclusively held by any one candidate
- Final — every measure is open to refinement
- A substitute for the work of the host Nations or senior governments
- →Govern like managers — measure, adjust, deliver
- →Consult before building — and listen to the answer
- →Visualize before constructing — AI imagery and GIS analysis, not demolition
- →Protect the environment with results, not slogans
- →Enforce the rules that exist — before inventing new ones
- →Respect taxpayers — every dollar audited, every quarter reported
- →Cost every promise — no measure without a budget line
- →We don't do ideology — we do results
- →We don't make promises we can't measure
- →We don't pick fights — we fix problems
- →We don't spend first and justify later — taxpayers decide on big new projects
- →We don't try things in real life when we can simulate them first
- →We don't deploy public surveillance — better lighting, not behavioural AI
The honest answers.
The questions we hear most — and the answers we stand by. More are answered on the full FAQ page.
This framework is open.
This is a framework, not a campaign. It is open for adoption, adaptation, and improvement by any candidate or civic organization in the Victoria 2026 election cycle. Multiple candidates can run on these ideas — and they should. The goal is to raise the standard of debate.
For residents
Get a quarterly digest of which measures are advancing, which are stuck, and what the next council needs to hear from you.
For candidates & organizations
There is no copyright restriction on the use of this framework. Attribution is appreciated but not required. Adapt freely.