Last winter, when Council was discussing the proposed new municipal hall, I raised a question that I thought we needed to consider.

If we are going to build a municipal hall that could be here for the next 40, 50 or 60 years, what will municipal work look like over that time?

I brought forward a motion asking staff to look at how artificial intelligence, automation and changes in the way services are delivered might affect how much space we actually need in a new municipal hall.

Council voted against my motion.

My point wasn't that I knew what AI was going to do. I didn't then, and I don't now.

My point was that none of us knows.

Think about how much municipal work has already changed. There was a time when almost everything involved paper, filing cabinets, forms and people coming into the municipal hall. More and more of that work can now be done online.

AI and automation will bring more changes. Some work may disappear. Some jobs will change. There may be entirely new kinds of work that we haven't thought of yet.

So, before we spend tens of millions of dollars on a larger municipal hall, I think we should be asking what that might mean for the building we actually need.

After my motion was defeated, I wrote about this publicly in November 2025:

“The question isn't just what we need today or in the next 20 years; it's what kind of work will even exist over the lifetime of that building.”

Almost a year later, I am seeing residents raise the same question.

I don't pretend to know what municipal government will look like 20, 40 or 60 years from now. Nobody does.

But if we're going to make a decision that taxpayers will be paying for and that could shape our community for generations, I think it's worth asking these questions before we build.

November letter to the editor: https://saanichnews.com/2025/11/08/letter-central-saanich-should-consider-ai-before-starting-work-on-new-hall/