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On April 24, 2024 Citizens protested outside Saanich City Hall over the imminent likely rendering of their Local Area Plans to be legally non-binding. This is set to be accomplished by Council not including the LAPs in the new proposed Official Community Plan (OCP) Bylaw, the final hearing for which was to take place at the Tuesday April 30 public hearing.

Many residents have been outraged that they have not been informed about the disabling of the Local Area Plans, nor consulted, nor even provided a referendum on them by the District.

Many residents also pointed out that democracy involves the rule of the people, and yet it appears that Saanich Council has intentionally been avoiding the public’s will by setting the Local Area Plans to be disabled behind their backs.

A number have also pointed out that the local media have refused to report on what is happening with the disabling of the Local Area Plans, leading to questions of developer influence on the so called local-media, the financing of which owes much to real estate ad revenue.

10s of thousands of dollars have been spent by the District in recent years in updating Local Area Plans only to set them to be rendered legally non-binding.

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2 responses to “Citizens Protest the Likely Imminent Disabling of the Saanich Local Area Plans”

  1. James D Anderson Avatar
    James D Anderson

    im sorry but this article is misleading and badly dated. Saanich Council because of backlog of badly dated OCP and a dozen LAPs that staff could not commit to update these in reasonable time frame so four years ago announced they would delay adding new LAPs to the current work load. Instead Council decided they would focus on housing policy and instead of new LAPs they provide budget funds to give priority to “Corridors and village Centres”. so the new priorities were still high profile local neighborhood planning but instead of traditional emphasis on primarily single-family areas they would sharpen the focus to planning for Shelbourne Valley ,Mckenzie and of course Uptown Douglas. These were areas where there was most pressure and priority to update land plans to support commercial centres and plan for ATP upgrades. This seems to have been a reasonable assessment of needs,opportunties and budgets.  

    By fortuitous circumstance, the update of older LAPs for both Caddy Bay and Cordova Bay were underway and for the past 3 years or more a series of regular neighborhood workshops and review of draft plan options were provided. I personally attended at least 4 half day major workshop for Caddy bay . There the the debate focused primarily on small extension of the village and whether some specific properties would be available for 3-6 story mainly multi use re- development would be approved. Over time in response to resident concerns the draft plan underwent major revisions and even recently came forward with few last-minute amendments. The zoning for majority of the land area remains as single family. There was a general consensus regarding the plan but of course not everyone was happy. But for the article to support protest about lack of an LAP nor opportunities for resident to have provided input is simply incorrect.

    The agenda for April 30 Saanich council mtg is posted and copies of all the various OCP, corridor plan and for both CB LAPs are attached. Protesters seem to have simply ignored or missed their chance for community deliberation but can’t claim they did not have the opportunity. The protesters may not like the plans but they cannot claim to have been ignored and not given numerous opportunities to be heard.

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    1. mehdi najari Avatar
      mehdi najari

      “James Anderson, would you please first tell the people of Saanich if you have any conflicting interests on this subject.  Please let us know before we take your accusation of misleading seriously.  I am a retired working class man who has been living in Saanich for the last 36 years and have no material interest, except being an ordinary resident. There is no record of public engagement of citizens of Saanich on the development of the proposed OCP. This proposed OCP does not belong to the people of Saanich. It is the developers’, speculators’ and investors’ OCP.

      There is a simple question to ask about it. Who will benefit from this proposed OCP. Clearly there will be a lots of money to be made by developers, land speculators and investors and we the ordinary taxpayers will pay with the huge tax increases in the next two decades for the destruction of our neighborhoods. The proposed OCP is chalk full items from the developers’ wish list, which will eliminate the voice of the people from deciding what kind of development they would like to see in their neighborhoods.

      It will devastate the urban environment and ecology and it will drastically reduce natural permeable surface area, tree canopy cover, urban biodiversity including very important backyard biodiversity, increase the urban temperature in the summer and reduce livability and urban natural areas.  But it will be a huge payout for profiteers.

      During the pandemic, when they told the public to stay away; developers, development industry consultants and planners and their friendly politicians got together and developed the Saanich Housing Strategy and this OCP will fulfill their wishes and not the Saanich residents’ wishes and views.

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