News from the campaign.

COLWOOD, BC — August 25, 2026 — Rob Martin, Mayor of Colwood from 2018 to 2022 and a seven-year city councillor before that, today declared his candidacy for Mayor of Colwood in the October 17 municipal election, setting up a rematch against incumbent Doug Kobayashi.

Martin is centring his campaign on a single question: what has this council been doing behind closed doors, and why won't it tell residents?

"Council code of conduct investigations involving our own elected officials have been happening in camera for years," said Martin. "Not one has been disclosed to the public. Residents don't know how many there have been. They don't know what any of them cost. And when a resident simply asked, the answer was that it would take a minimum of 30 hours of staff time just to produce the number of investigations and the cost of each one. Not the details. Not the records. Just the numbers."

Behind Closed Doors, With No Accounting

Martin says the issue isn't any single investigation — it's that the City cannot, or will not, tell residents the basic scope of what's occurred. When a resident asked for a simple tally of how many conduct matters have gone to outside investigators, and what the City has paid for them, the City's own response was that it would take a minimum of 30 hours of staff time just to produce that count — because the costs aren't tracked in one place, and years of invoices would need to be manually reviewed and sorted matter by matter.

"This information should already have been prepared," Martin said. "Perhaps the most significant concern raised by the 30-hour estimate is what it implies about council's own oversight of these expenditures. I say this not as a criticism of staff, who are responding to the records as they exist — it's a reflection on the governance process itself. If basic spending on council's own conduct isn't being tracked in a way anyone can quickly account for, that raises a fair question for every resident: what else isn't being tracked properly?"

Transparency for Some, Not for This

Martin points to a pattern he calls hard to square with the current council's own rhetoric. Mayor Kobayashi has campaigned publicly on transparency and fiscal accountability in local government.

"You can't campaign on transparency and accountability, and then let conduct investigations about your own colleagues happen entirely behind closed doors, with nothing disclosed to the people paying for it," Martin said. "Residents deserve a council that lives up to what it campaigns on — not one set of standards in an election flyer and another once the cameras are off."

A Regional Transportation Problem Still Needs Solving

Martin says accountability at City Hall doesn't replace the need for a real plan on Colwood's transportation bottleneck. Residents currently rely on two corridors — Veterans Memorial Parkway and Sooke Road — to reach the rest of the region, a capacity Martin says hasn't kept pace with growth. He points to Kobayashi's vote against the Capital Regional District's Regional Transportation Service bylaw as evidence the current council isn't approaching the problem at the scale it demands.

"Our congestion isn't a Colwood problem you can solve from inside Colwood's borders," Martin said. "It's regional. When the region put a regional transportation authority on the table, Doug voted against it. That's the wrong instinct at exactly the wrong moment."

Martin's Westshore ferry proposal isn't new — as mayor, he championed it as a way to relieve pressure on the West Shore's road network, and a BC Ferries-commissioned pre-feasibility study projected roughly 3,100 daily passengers for a Colwood-area route in its first year. The current council has moved the opposite direction: in late 2025, it voted to strike the reference to a Colwood–Victoria ferry from the Colwood Waterfront Stewardship Plan's implementation strategy, with Kobayashi saying council had never discussed ferry service and raising concerns about waterfront land being used for parking.

"I put this idea forward because it solves a real problem, and the feasibility work backs that up," Martin said. "This council's response wasn't to study it or improve on it — it was to erase it from the plan and pretend the conversation never happened. That's not how you deal with a transportation crisis. That's how you let one happen."

A Record on Cost of Living

Martin is also pointing to his own fiscal record. Property taxes rose an average of 3.6% annually during his four years as mayor, compared with an average annual increase of 5.86% under the current council.

"Accountability and affordability go together," Martin said. "Residents can look at both records — what each council spent, and what it was willing to tell you about it."

About Rob Martin

Rob Martin served as Mayor of Colwood from 2018 to 2022 and on Colwood city council for seven years prior. He currently works as a Relief Terminal Manager and Equipment Operator for BC Ferries at Swartz Bay Terminal. Martin is a candidate for Mayor of Colwood in the October 17, 2026 municipal election.

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