CRD Watch Homepage

28 February 2024

RE Quadra McKenzie Corridors

To Council and Planning Staff

I understand that today is the last day the public has a chance to voice input into the QMS study.

I’ve attended most of the sessions at Reynold’s School and felt from the start that we (the public) were on rails and there was no opportunity to provide input into the process other than in segregated tables. By design, there was no opportunity for the public to express views to the assembled on the overall plan. Yes, we could express views at separate tables with at most 10 participants on particular aspects of the proposals, but not on the overall direction of the project.

If this process and the overall proposal was before the public during the last election, I don’t think more than one or two of the successful candidates for council would have supported it. In fact, I think they would have campaigned against it.

Most showed great concern over the environment, protecting the tree canopy and protecting Saanich’s quality of life. No one campaigned on creating canyons of apartment blocks through the heart of the community and building apartment blocks up to the borders of our parks.

Having attended most if not all of the public sessions at Reynolds, I only observed one councillor attend one meeting so she could gauge reaction to the plan. The sessions attracted 90 to 140 people per session (many of them the same people), not exactly a lot of public participation (~0.2%) in a city of some 117,000.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a conference on Climate Change and Security at UVic. One of the panelists on the final afternoon was Councillor Teale Phelps Bondaroff. In his address to PhD candidates attending, he noted how difficult it is to get the public engaged in civic matters and just that week, Council had passed a huge spending commitment (if I recall correctly, it was around $90 million) and that only a couple of residents had enough interest to attend the session. Perhaps one reason is that going to council meetings is largely a waste of time. When

a citizen does appear and make their 3-minute presentation, councillors sit stoic with no expression and rarely if ever ask questions or comment on the resident’s presentation. It appears that Council has already made up its mind on whatever issue is before the Council, so making a presentation may let off a little steam, but it’s rather pointless.

This QMS process, with a hired consultant to MC the show and race through the sessions is not the way to encourage public participation. Most people know when they are being railroaded, and there does not seem to be any sidings on this rail line.

At an informal community organized Saanich Citizens Forum earlier this year, Councillor Chambers noted that during COVID with the bans on public gatherings Council lost contact with the community at large. But at the same time, the developers retained access to the administration and councillors. This QMS seems very much like their voices were not only heard but also accepted.

Saanich was at the forefront of welcoming the Provincial Government’s Bill 44 which removes the District’s ability to zone areas of the city as single-family homes (which is most of the District) and prohibits the holding of hearings in re-zoning applications by developers. No councillor campaigned on that. I understand that Saanich hosted Minister Khalon when he made the announcement of the forthcoming housing densification legislation. While other local municipalities like Oak Bay and View Royal objected to the legislation, Saanich was silent …

indicating support. (Is there any family link between Khalon Developments [a luxury home developer] and Minister Khalon?)

The language the process uses can be quite misleading. Its use of “village” is a case-in-point.

Ask anyone what a village is and they will likely refer to Estevan Village, Caddy Bay or previously Cordova Bay, or a small village in Eastern Canada or on one of picturesque villages used in the many British TV shows. A village is definitely not an intersection of 16 or even 8 or 6 story buildings.

Something not addressed, is the cost of significantly upgrading utility infrastructure let alone roadways to accommodate the massive increase in commercial and residential buildings and their occupants.

This process is not addressing Saanich’s carbon emissions. Saanich just reported that it’s far behind in the targets Council has set for reducing carbon… only halfway to its 2023 targets.

Ripping up roads and pouring more cement and laying down pavement all have significant carbon consequences. Building houses and apartment blocks generate huge CO2 emissions. A Scottish study set the carbon emission for a 2-bedroom town house at 80 tonnes CO2e. A 2023 US Department of Energy using current building practices calculates the CO2e emissions of building of a 1,858 sq ft home at 92 tons. The scale of building proposed in the new plan would really blow Saanich CO2 emissions targets out the window.

While the plan relies on ever increasing population in Saanich, the World’s population is starting to fall with the biggest decreases, estimated at over 1 billion, in Asia, Europe and North America by 2021. The only continent where populations are projected to grown beyond 2050 or so is Africa. In Canada, our population would be falling were it not for immigration. A few years ago, the Federal government and outfits like the Globe and Mail started pushing for a Canada of 100 million by 2100. There is no support for this and both the Feds and the Globe & Mail are already having second thoughts. It is likely that the feds will implement policies and practices to slow the rate of growth after bringing in record numbers of immigrants during a housing crisis. As a significant portion of the growth was targeted at attracting ever more foreign students (UVic has 4,500, Camosun some 1,500), but the feds are already slowing down the numbers and should the federal government change in the next election, the numbers could collapse as Poilievre has declared that universities and colleges will not be able to recruit foreign students unless they can prove there is housing for them. (Universities and colleges have chased foreign students who pay double the tuition of Canadian students to make up for

underfunding by the provinces – who want to cut taxes not increase them to pay for the costs of a modern, advanced society.)

While there may be some opportunities for public input over the remaining 10 months before Council adopts the planning staff’s recommendations, I fear that the plans will be cast-in-stone and any ability for the public to have meaningful input will be limited and weak as Council seems to be so heavily invested in this project.

May I suggest, you pause the process and come up with a more genuine effort to seek public input and provide much more information as to the costs and consequences of proceeding with any plan to the public in a more honest and less rushed fashion.

Sincerely

Don Scott