Shawn O'Hara: Welcome everyone. My guest today is John Treleaven, who has spent 32 years in the Canadian Foreign Service working abroad and in Ottawa in a variety of positions with a trade and economic focus. As Trade Commissioner, he served the Canadian business community in São Paulo, San Juan, London, Puerto Rico, San Jose, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Manila, and Ottawa. In 1997, he was appointed Canada's ambassador to the Philippines. In Ottawa, he served in a variety of senior positions with a focus on Asia, the policy direction of the Trade Commission service, and on assignment to the Privy Council office jobs strategy task force.

In 2000, he left the Foreign Service to join the Saskatchewan Trade and Export Partnership (STEP) as President and CEO. STEP is a public-private partnership providing international trade services to over 250 Canadian exporting companies. As principal of the Sidney-based Treleaven Consulting Group, John continued to deliver international business solutions to a range of private and public sector clients across Canada and abroad between 2005 and 2018. He was a director of a number of internationally focused Canadian organizations, including the Forum for International Trade Training, the Hong Kong Canada Business Association, and the Saanich Peninsula Chamber of Commerce.

He is past chair of the Board of Mercy Ships Canada and Chair of the Board of Grumpy Taxpayers of Greater Victoria. He has received numerous awards including an honorary doctorate in humanities from the University of Bago in the Philippines, the Queen's Jubilee Medal, and the Saskatchewan Centennial Medal. Welcome, John. That's a very impressive background and history.

John Treleaven: Thank you for that, and thank you for the invitation to join the conversation today.

Shawn O'Hara: Thank you for that background. What really interests me today is the Grumpy Taxpayers and what inspired you to start this organization?

John Treleaven: To tie everything together, I've spent most of my career working with Canadian companies seeking to expand their opportunities abroad, so I had a pretty broad understanding of the challenges they faced as international trade participants or would-be participants. When I worked at Saskatchewan Trade and Export Partnership, I became aware of the role that provinces play in creating an environment in which businesses can take risks for their shareholders and employees and serve the needs of customers around the world.

But when I retired from that and we moved here in 2005 and I joined the Saanich Peninsula Chamber of Commerce, I became acutely aware very quickly of the role that municipal governments have to play in the success or failure of businesses. All business transactions happen at the municipal level, and therefore the issue of the business friendliness of municipalities has a direct impact on the prosperity of provinces and a significant impact on the prosperity of this country as an international trading nation. Don't forget, more than half of our GDP is generated either importing or exporting products from Canada, and of course we're in a trade war. We are vulnerable.

People are a little bit concerned that we're shipping too much to the United States, that we're too dependent on that market. That's the wrong language. Canadian export companies have been extremely successful in the United States. That's a good thing. If we are to move away from that, to diversify our trade, only customers will diversify Canadian trade, and all the diversification efforts will be rooted in their municipalities—in the company and the employees of the company and whatnot. But the business environment at the municipal level is critical. That brings us to the Grumpy Taxpayers of Greater Victoria. With the Saanich Peninsula Chamber of Commerce, I spent a very long time working particularly with North Saanich, Central Saanich, and Sidney on the issue of business friendliness.

Exactly what happened was, 11 or 12 years ago, the board of the CRD voted itself a 100 percent pay increase in the first session of a new term of office. We felt that they should have done that in the last meeting of the previous term before the election. We thought that was manipulative and should be challenged. A group of us were sitting around saying, what's going on here? At that moment, we formed the Grumpy Taxpayers of Greater Victoria—not as a lobby group. We are non-partisan. We just want these 13 municipal governments to succeed in all of their dreams, but with transparency, accountability, and the understanding that they are custodians not just of municipal services, but of the economy of British Columbia, if you take all 161 right across the province.

What we have been advocating and asking questions about are issues of transparency and accountability, which matter to taxpayers. We are not against paying taxes, but we're very concerned when taxpayers' dollars are wasted, when the impact is hidden, or when tax monies are diverted for non-municipal causes on occasion. That inevitably brought us into the discussion, not of amalgamation—political amalgamation—but of service coherence across this city of 460,000 people with 13 sovereign municipal governments. We've been asking questions and publishing. We do publish a newsletter. My friend and colleague, Stan Bart, who is past chair, is a prolific writer. From time to time, I do interviews, and what we're really doing is asking questions. Why are there 18 fire chiefs? There's no city in the world of 460,000 people with 18 fire chiefs. At another level, as I've already mentioned, the economy of British Columbia happens every day in the municipalities, and the accumulation of that activity becomes the provincially common.

Now, there are two major cities in Canada that have no mayors. Metro Vancouver, a city of 3 million plus, has no mayor, and Greater Victoria, a city of 460,000 people, has no mayor, no regional elections. Nobody stands for election and says, here is where I want to take the region, here are the main regional issues they want to deal with. In the end, that amount of fractured governance puts an inordinate tax burden on the taxpayers and creates an environment in which it's more difficult for businesses to establish and flourish than it otherwise might be. That's where it all comes together.

As I say, we are non-partisan. We've had a number of successes. If you're in the business of seeking to influence public policy, it's not a football game. It doesn't end after the fourth quarter. You can't always track the progress of the ball down the field as you can in a football game. But it's been an interesting journey. We're about to enter our 12th year. We've had tremendous reaction. I think people realize we're not out to have any—well, we're totally nonpartisan. I just want to keep stressing that. When we started, after a round of golf at Cordova Bay Golf, just after the board of the CRD had given themselves a 100 percent pay increase in the first meeting of the new year, we had no idea how many coconuts would fall from the palm trees in our path that we would have to be obliged to pick up and run with for a while.

Well, the coconuts keep falling, and we spend a lot of time thinking about how it could be better. Maybe a city of 460,000 people is harmed when there are five police forces, and perhaps businesses have a hard time growing from a small neighborhood municipality across the city, never mind across the province. Anyway, that's the kind of consideration, but basically transparency, accountability, and value for money for taxpayers' dollars.

Shawn O'Hara: Is amalgamation a strong discussion considering the police forces and the fire departments?

John Treleaven: Service integration, we discuss a lot. Amalgamation, of course, is happening. I think three election cycles ago, in each of the 13 municipalities, a slightly different question was asked around the issue of studying the implications of amalgamation. If I'm not wrong, in all municipalities, that vote was in favor of a study of amalgamation. Like so many other reports and initiatives that had to do with growing this community together, those results have been largely ignored, except in Victoria and Saanich, who are going through a very interesting process.

The Citizens Assembly, I think 48 citizens chosen randomly from both municipalities, have done a masterful job of studying and bringing recommendations. They've recommended amalgamation, and the further processes will continue. We wrote a submission to the Citizens' Assembly. Our submission was entitled The Power of the Apostrophe because this is not just an assembly of citizens; this is a citizens' assembly in which the citizens own it. For a brief moment, the elected councils of Victoria and Saanich have to listen to the Assembly of citizens.

It's a very interesting legislative process that the province has put together for that mechanism. In our brief, again, we're very non-partisan. All we suggested was that the community deserves to be thanking the 48 people involved. We suggested that they be bold. This is a time for 48 citizens from across those two municipalities, but together they represent 210,000 people, to get down to brass tacks and have a real impact. It will be interesting to see how the process continues. Other than feeding into that Citizens' Assembly process, obviously amalgamation has been around for years and has done a wonderful job of advocating on behalf of that issue. But services are extremely important to a municipality.

When Mike Harris forcefully amalgamated and created the Greater Toronto Area, 70 percent of municipal services were already uniform across that region because the voters in all the metropolitan districts had concluded that they only needed one police force, not ten ambulance forces and all that. Here, there's great resistance to even consider service integration. One of our focuses has been that, let the politicians do what they'd like to do, but we don't need five police forces. It's been through that lens that we've looked at things, but more generally just transparency and accountability.

Shawn O'Hara: What we run into with that duplication is a police chase example, and it makes the news frequently enough here. An incident happens, say in Langford, and the person eventually makes it into Oak Bay. Each of those police forces along the way have to be notified and either do something or not because the police force from one doesn't have the jurisdiction to go right through.

John Treleaven: My wife and I had moved to Sidney at the time the Lee family died in a knife attack in Oak Bay. What happened was there was a 911 call made from that house that there was a problem, there was an attack underway, and it was an evening. The Oak Bay police officer on duty was attending to other duties, so the call went to Saanich and eventually Victoria Police joined. At about three in the morning, the Oak Bay Police Cruiser came. Now picture this: there are cruisers in front of that house, there's been a 911 call, and they sat there until seven in the morning trying to decide which police force of the three was responsible for that incident. The family bled to death, and by the way, that story is absolutely true. I've heard it twice now from the former Chief of Police of Victoria. There's more to this fractured governance than simply, oh, we each like to design our parks a different way. It's very serious. From the business perspective, you need predictability and consistency to encourage you to risk the capital to establish your business and grow it. The fractional governance model is not optimal, let's put it that way.

Shawn O'Hara: So getting back to the public safety part, even before you moved here, one of our rare bad snowstorms—I’m in the West Shore area—and one of the municipalities completely cleared their roads, the other didn't, and people were driving down the road like they normally do and crashing into a snowbank.

John Treleaven: That was the big snowstorm. My wife has relatives here, and they were trapped in their house. The story of that one is, when I was with the Saanich Peninsula Chamber of Commerce, I arranged the first tour of industry, which we do every year to give people a chance to understand how their municipalities earn a living. That was a terrible storm, and Viking Aviation at the time was in its old wooden hangar, which collapsed. The mayor of Central Saanich at the time admitted publicly that, because they were asking in an interview, did you hear what happened to Viking Air, that their whole building collapsed? The mayor said publicly, I never understood what they did. Excuse me. Major employer right in the neighborhood, and they've just lost everything, and you're the mayor and you don't understand what they did? That kind of neighborhood governance model is not optimal for the larger economy. The larger economy is one of the largest cities in Canada, which, by the way, does not sit at the table in the Federation of Canadian Municipalities of large municipalities, because we're 13, not one. That's another story.

But together, we're one of the largest cities in Canada. That table of big city mayors meets quite regularly with the Federal Minister of Finance on issues like infrastructure. We're not there.

Shawn O'Hara: Anyway, so, and we have the CRD, the Capital Regional District, and they are appointed by the municipalities.

John Treleaven: Their members are made up of people elected through the municipality, but they themselves are—I don't get a chance to vote for anybody at the CRD level. There's all sorts of—let's put it this way. We live in one of the best places on earth. There's absolutely no question about it; this is a beautiful city. The province and the country—we're privileged. Our concern as Grumpy Taxpayers is that we could be so much better. We're not knocking Victoria at all. It's a lovely place to live, but it could be a lot better, fairly easily.

Shawn O'Hara: This is paradise. I like what you said about that all business is at the municipal level, so even if they're strictly exporting or if they're a tech business that does no business locally, they still actually—even if they've got remote workers who happen to require licensing—they're still regulated by a municipality.

John Treleaven: Yes, and I think the ideal situation for any municipality, large or small, is for the business community, the members of it, to be wandering around, telling each other's stories about how wonderful City Hall was to them. Like, terrific, I had a problem, they solved it. I don't know that that happens all that frequently. Now, this is mostly me, not Grumpy Taxpayers. What people don't seem to understand is that only people pay taxes. Businesses never pay a tax under any circumstances, only at the time of bankruptcy. If, God forbid, the accountant says, look, use some of your equity to pay your GST bill, but—

Too many politicians seem to think that there are two taxpayers: people, homeowners, and businesses. Of course, there's always a differential at the property tax level between what commercial industrial land is assessed and what residents are assessed. There's a reason for that. The UBCM, when they did a study on property taxes, pointed out that businesses get to deduct the tax, and that's why the ratio is higher. The rates are higher without explaining why they get to deduct the tax. They get to deduct property taxes because they're paying with revenue that's not part of their business.

It just seems to me that our tax policy generally would be more conducive to the establishment and growth of business if governments at all levels understood that businesses are wealth generators and tax collectors and people are taxpayers. Taxes have to come. There's no question about that. But there are too many examples. The highest ratio of property taxes on commercial industrial land in the province of British Columbia are in North Saanich—highest in the province, out of the 161 municipalities. 

What's in North Saanich? An airport. You and I pay that tax every time we use the airport. Did I mention BC Ferries? There are brilliant businesses around the airport that, as you just said, many of whom have no domestic customers but employ several thousand people creating value for customers all over the world. I don't quite understand why the folks in North Saanich aren't exceedingly proud of being the hosts to companies that produce a bit more than half of everything manufactured in this whole region, in this whole city, in the whole regional district. It's important because municipalities have a huge role to play in the prosperity of all of us. Therefore, the hospital services, the education services, the public services generally—

All Grumpy Taxpayers are seeking is an open and transparent governance model that makes sense for taxpayers, makes sense for those who step into the public square and the employees who serve those needs, and that is responsive to the needs of a community.

Shawn O'Hara: People also feel that businesses should be taxed, should pay their fair share, or just tax the business.

John Treleaven: Yes, but they should realize that businesses never pay a tax. The money has to come from their customers. The customers become customers because of the value the business creates for them, the value the employees create, the value the shareholders create. Now, of course, businesses spin off a lot of taxes through their employees and dividends, but as a business, they don't. Years and years ago, I was at a conference in Toronto run by the Canadian Manufacturers Association, and the president of the CMA stood up and said three sentences that I have used in most speeches, so I'll use it today, Shawn, if you don't mind. 

He said, “You know, governments can't create jobs. All they can do is create programs, raise taxes, hire people to execute the programs. If the tax dollars disappear, the employees are laid off and the program disappears”. Then he said, “Companies don't create jobs”. He said, “Never in the history of business did the chairman of the board of a company phone the president and say, hire people. Never happened. Only customers create jobs”. That's the real challenge of business, of any business: to create value, to solve a problem that a group of potential customers have who are prepared to pay, of course, more than the solution costs.

And the difference is profit. You can take that construct and put it into municipal government. Customers create jobs, people pay taxes, businesses don't. It all centers on the individual, and I just think that we Grumpy Taxpayers—well, we're not into all of that. We're talking about municipal governance, but fundamentally, if more people understood that businesses don't pay taxes, they collect taxes, then what happens is a municipality comes to their businesses and says, how can we help you get more customers? Maybe repave the road, maybe increase the water service, or whatever. There is a huge impact that municipalities have on businesses, on all of us. Frankly, it is the most important level of government. 

Among other things, we salute everyone who enters the public square at the municipal level because they are going to be faced with issues that are way beyond their ability to control, but are apparent to everybody in town on the streets every day. It's a very difficult situation for municipalities, maybe particularly these days. I salute the efforts of anybody who steps into that. We have some very fine municipal public servants—municipal politicians, great public servants as well—who tackle problems every day that impact all of us very directly, but do not have the constitutional authority or the financial ability to actually solve them. They only have the ability to handle them. That's very difficult. Going back to the point that the whole economy of British Columbia, the economy of Canada, is created at the municipal level.

I was on the board of the Saanich Peninsula Chamber, and the newly elected mayor of Sidney was speaking to what became the Sidney Breakfast Club, where you and I met years ago. Larry Cross was the mayor. I went to it at the Dakota, and I knew Larry because he had been our counselor liaison to the chamber board. He gave a very good presentation, a very fine public servant. Afterwards, I went over to him and said, Larry, when councils are newly elected, do they ever take a tour of their communities? Well, no, because they're all from the community. Why would they have to take a tour? But I said, does everybody on council today understand how, let's say, Sidney or the Peninsula, earns a living? No. So we organized the first Saanich Peninsula Chamber of Commerce tour of industry. 

We went to nine businesses. We had most of the councils from the three municipalities, and we had the three mayors. It was quite fascinating. No names, but the mayor of one of those municipalities came out of a family-oriented, family-run, family-owned, fully manufacturing business, completely state of the art, serving the needs of the local market. He turned and said, I never knew what they did. He had been mayor for three terms. This was a business in a small town in his town. The containers show up in the morning and they leave in the evening. Just ridiculous. From then on, the Chamber has organized tours of industry for municipal leaders. Until COVID hit, we would get about—we now have a bus—we get about 90 people or 60 people running around figuring out how the economy works at the municipal level. There was that level of dissonance. Businesses there, people are here. No, it's got to be more holistic. I think we have, over time, in the Peninsula, people understand that.

Shawn O'Hara: I have been on that tour. Very valuable. So three terms, that would be nine years at that time and not knowing everything that's going on. People have that view, that business, for example, getting to tax. They should pay tax except if they can have an environment where they're making money and they're able to pay their people so that they can be invested in the community. I don't mean part-time, I mean real, so that they can buy—because a house here can be a million dollars—if they can live close to where they work. If they can buy that property, be invested, live here, stay here, that benefits the whole community. Spend their money, go out to eat, go shopping. That benefits the whole community.

John Treleaven: I'll drop another one on you if you don't mind. I took history in grade 13. I took history in university. I took Latin in grade 13. Math is not one of my big skills at all, but over the years thinking about it, I believe that all new net tax dollars are triggered only by business transactions. There's all kinds of repeat triggers through an economy, through society, but net new dollars only get created by business transactions, and municipalities are where most of those transactions happen. We need and have very good municipal leaders and extremely capable public servants working at the municipal level. But we need to do more.

We aren't the Fraser Institute. We don't have a bunch of economists on speed dial, but when stuff doesn't make sense, we ask a question. When the CRD years ago went in camera to make a conditional expression of support for the PanAm games—I think it was David Black who was advocating—we asked how they could make that statement of support in camera. We asked for the material they used to reach a decision. This was a decision to offer a conditional $30 million from the region to the project. We asked for the material they used to reach that decision. We felt it was improper because that's taxpayers' dollars. We felt it was improper to be discussed in camera. They sent us 130 pages of material, Shawn, fully redacted. Who do they work for? 

We took that to the ombudsman. The Ombudsman's office said, well, the decision was taken to withdraw the application for the games, so we won't pursue the investigation. But about a week later, we got another note saying, no, we're going to take a look because we were not complaining about the games. It was the use of in-camera, it was the governance around the decision. The Ombudsman's office issued a stinging report criticizing the CRD that they would have gone in camera to discuss even a possible $30 million grant.

There have been other things. There's the Langford Rec Center. There was a letter of comfort for the private sector group that was putting in the center here. It's a wonderful center. The letter of comfort from Langford Town Hall called upon the board of the organization that was building and would operate the center to report finances to the town of Langford every six months, which it never did. The current Langford council was suddenly left with 48 hours to decide what to do with this multimillion-dollar facility, and they've had to purchase it for $31 million. Our concern was, we can't accept that the proponents who built this wonderful center didn't comply with the terms of the letter of comfort from Langford. But what we're really upset about was that Langford City Hall never asked for a financial statement, and they were due one every six months.

I come back to Sidney and the Mary Winspear Center had lost two charitable licenses because during COVID, they didn't submit the necessary financials to the CRA. The municipalities—Sidney and North Saanich—both provide funding to the Mary Winspear Center, which is a wonderful facility. I'm not criticizing it. I stood up in a council meeting in Sidney and asked to see the funding agreement between the town of Sidney and the Mary Winspear Center. They received 3 percent of our property taxes, only to be told they didn't have one. They're transferring millions of taxpayers' dollars. 

No, there's nothing hostile here. You have to at least have the funding agreement. My point was very simple: the funding agreement would be really easy. On April 1st, you'll get your money provided we get a letter from the chairman of the board saying that you're compliant with federal and provincial regulations. If that funding agreement had been there, the Mary Winspear Center would not have failed to submit the necessary financials to the CRA. That's the kind of governance gap or compliance gap that should not happen. Grumpy Taxpayers are about fixing those gaps. I can't tell you how shocked I was that the town of Sidney—very well administered and everything else, I know them all well—had never had a funding agreement. I was in the federal government. There may have been over-compliance with grants and stuff from the federal government, but nobody ever got a dollar without signing a contract of compliance.

Shawn O'Hara: My last question is where can people find out more about you and about the Grumpy Taxpayers and also the newsletter you mentioned?

John Treleaven: We have a website, grumpytaxpayers.com. We are on X, and for all of its controversy, the truth is that no platform is as extensively distributed as X. We're on Facebook. We've got about 300 members. A member is an individual that makes a donation. By the way, we're not a charity, so we don't issue tax receipts, but makes a donation every year and they become a member. We have about 300 of those, and our newsletter goes to probably 1,200 or 1,300 people around the region. I will say this: our newsletter is read one way or another by almost every municipal leader in this region. It's well distributed, and we'd welcome interest from anyone for sure. This is our community. We just want to make it better, as do they. They live here, their families are here. We have monthly board meetings. They're open to everybody. We discuss issues and figure out, are we going to write a letter to the Times Colonist, or will I get on to CFAX and say something, or whatever.

As time goes on, we may at some stage look at a stronger presence in social media, but frankly, between you and John Juricic, the Victoria Rumble Room, there's no need for us to get into the YouTube world. I think you guys do a great job.

Shawn O'Hara: Thank you. My guest today has been John Treleaven and thank you so much. We'll have to have you back.

John Treleaven: Been a pleasure. Best of luck in everything you're doing to encourage educated and continuous dialogue in the community.

Links

John Treleaven on LinkedIn

GrumpyTaxpayers.com