At July 6 Saanich council meeting, three motions resulting from SYC work unanimously passed
Photo courtesy of Teale Phelps Bondaroff.
During the July 6 District of Saanich Council meeting, the Student Youth Council (SYC) — a community-led pilot project aimed at helping Saanich youth learn about and participate in local government — turned in their 2025–2026 end-of-term report, which proposes a permanent youth advisory committee.
August Kirby, the twelfth-grade student at Claremont Secondary School who initiated the council, says it began when he asked his teacher, Mark Neufeld, what youth participation in politics looks like.
“They don’t,” Kirby said. “They don’t look like anything if they’re not there.”
In early 2025, Neufeld suggested reaching out to Saanich Mayor Dean Murdock, to talk about starting a youth council. “Dean Murdock, I think, is a particularly youth-focused person. So as a mayor, he was a great guy to have this conversation with,” Neufeld said.
Saanich Councillor Teale Phelps Bondaroff had approached the mayor about a youth council around the same time, and Murdock connected them all. Neufeld said that Kirby worked on the project for almost a year; “There were times I would have given up on the process… but [Kirby]was unrelenting,” he said.
Participating schools had teachers appointed to select their respective youth representatives. “We ended up getting a great crew,” Neufeld said. Six of eight schools in the district participated, with a total of 14 students involved.
The group began meeting regularly in November 2025, where they learned about all aspects of local government, heard from guest speakers, and developed policy motions.
An initial priority for SYC members was choosing an area of focus, so they sent out a youth engagement survey, which received 319 responses. In comparison, the Saanich council’s 2026 budget survey had zero respondents below the age of 18.
Kirby said that the SYC came up with about 20 issues to tackle, and survey respondents put forward the same list of issues. “So the survey came back, and echoed exactly what we felt,” he said.
The three main issues that emerged were transportation, affordability, and safety. “[Transportation] seemed like the most feasible, quickest way to make change on all of those bases,” Kirby said.
In the July 6 meeting, Phelps Bondaroff brought forward three motions that resulted from SYC work, all of which unanimously passed.
The first motion asked the council to receive the SYC’s end-of-term report for information, and asked the Council to consider establishing a permanent youth advisory committee. The report documents SYC’s work during the pilot term and flags need for greater youth engagement in the district.
The proposed solution in the report is a permanent youth advisory committee. Phelps Bondaroff told the Martlet that there are seats reserved on Saanich advisory committees for youth, but “[they] are often unable to fill them because it’s a big ask.” He also said that it may be intimidating for youth to participate in an environment surrounded by adults with expertise on the issue.
The comprehensive end-of-term report was written by Phelps Bondaroff. “We wanted to make sure we captured everything, so there was institutional memory,” he said, “so the next Saanich Council can use the information that we gathered to inform the decisions they make about a future youth council.… We wanted to honor their work.”
The second motion called on the council to endorse, in principle, the Reconciliation Corridor Initiative (RCI) process — an Indigenous-led project exploring potential to realign the dormant corridor with the needs of the Lək̓ʷəŋən Nations. The project is exploring the potential for passenger rail service on a portion of the corridor between Vic West and Westshore Parkway.
The SYC came across the RCI in their research after choosing transportation as one of their focuses.
“We saw it as an opportunity to take about 20 000 cars off the road a month in that ‘Colwood Crawl’ area,” Kirby said.
The third motion asked the council to direct the mayor to write to B.C. Premier David Eby and relevant political ministers, calling on the province to expand the “Get on Board” program, which lets youth 12 and under ride BC Transit and TransLink transit services for free.
The motion calls to expand the program to include youth up to and including the age of 18. Additionally, it calls to explore working with the Ministry of Education and Child Care to add curriculum elements that train youth on using transit safely.
“It’s added to by the fact that in the City of Victoria, you can get a free bus pass to go anywhere,” Kirby said, referencing the City of Victoria Annual Youth U-PASS program which lets youth between the ages of 13 and 18 apply for a free BC transit Youth U-PASS.
Saanich does not have a similar program, despite being served by the same transit system.
“These young people are not only engaged, but they’re voting for more meetings to discuss municipal policy, to learn more, to engage more, and that was incredibly inspiring,” Phelps Bondaroff said.
Kirby emphasized the importance of engaging with youth. He said he finds youth usually don’t struggle to speak with adults. “It’s really the adults that have problems talking to youth because they don’t know what to say.… They don’t know if they can talk in their big words, they try to sugarcoat it, which leaves youth feeling like they’re not a part of the conversation.”
“This youth representation in politics is super important for building better futures for kids and for adults,” Kirby said.
