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Saanich and a lobbying organization for development and real estate discussed decoupling the Local Area Plans from the Official Community Plan in the spring of 2022

The removal of the Local Area Plans (LAPs) from the OCP Bylaw, thus decoupling them and rendering the LAPs legally non-binding, took place 2 years later in the spring of 2024

The Mayor of Saanich Dean Murdock addressed the lobbying organization, the Urban Development Institute, at the Union Club on the same day that Saanich Council approved the decoupling of the Local Area Plans from the Official Community Plan, and the adoption of a new OCP.


By Sasha Izard
Nov 27, 2024


The following section of the UDI’s minutes from the following 2022 meeting with Saanich, was retrieved through freedom of information:

PH stands for Public hearing. OCP stands for Official Community Plan. LAP stands for Local Area Plan. DP stands for Development Permit and ADP stands for Advisory Design Panel.

Of particular interest is:

“iii… How do LAP’s factor in?
1. Yes they do factor in.
iv. Decupling of LAP’s from OCP
1. No direction from council yet.

How could Saanich and the UDI have been discussing decoupling the Local Area Plans from the OCP, if there was no direction from council on this yet?

According to the FOI response, 2 months later, on June 22, 2022 “All members of the Municipal Liaison Committee-Saanich Subcommittee were invited” for “UDI Workshop – Phase 1 OCP Consultation”

The following is excerpted from that section:

SF stands for single family housing. MF stands for multi-family housing.

About 2 years after this meeting, on May 7, 2024 – The majority of Saanich Council voted to pass a new Official Community Plan (OCP) by unusually passing both third and fourth readings of the proposal that same evening, thus rendering a new OCP into existence on that date, while at the same time Saanich’s Local Area Plans (LAPs) were rendered legally non-binding by removing them from the OCP Bylaw (something the Mayor had referred to as “decoupling” the LAPs from the OCP. The new OCP wasn’t actually due until the end of 2025. Why was it as so many commented, rushed through so quickly?

Earlier that day on May 7, 2024, Saanich’s Mayor, Dean Murdock presented at an Urban Development Institute event at the Union Club in downtown Victoria.

The event was called: “Pathways to Progress: Uniting Land Use and Transit Strategies for Sustainable Growth”

The speakers included the Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Rob Fleming, Victoria’s Mayor Alto, Matthew Boyd (Director of Corporate & Strategic Planning at BC Transit), Mayor Murdock of Saanich, the Chair of the UDI Capital Region Ben Mycroft (Director of Development at Gablecraft Homes), and Ryan Berlin (Senior Economist and Vice President of Intelligence at Rennie)

The Sponsors of the Event were: Rennie, the company of Bob Rennie (the so-called “Condo-King” of Vancouver) and the Urban Development Institute itself.

Both Mayor Murdock and Minister Fleming who presented at the event have been proponents of pre-zoning along transportation corridors, something that the UDI has lobbied the province for years to achieve.

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As the UDI Capital Region’s Executive Director stated to View Royal Council at the Sept 12, 2023 View Royal Committee of the Whole:

“We do extensive policy work, um, and this is where we look at informed changes across all levels of government. So we try to align the uh, policies, that are being, um brought forward by the federal government, the provincial government, and the municipal government, and to kind of help them align, so that they don’t, uh, collide with each other.“

“UDI representatives get together with the directors of the develop or the departments that work directly with development, and we exchange information and we help the municipalities out by creating working groups that can inform and, and help make decisions, uh for your policies.”“

They also stated on that day (Sept 12, 2023):

“UDI is not a lobbying group. We pride ourselves on working collaboratively with all levels of government by sharing information and working together“.

Yet the UDI is a lobbying group. They are registered as a lobbying organization on the BC Lobbyists Registry and they lobby the government very frequently. As for the UDI Capital Region Executive Director who said that and took part in the June 22, 2022 OCP update workshop with Saanich on, they are registered as the UDI’s in-house lobbyist on the BC Lobbyists Registry.

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In 2023, the development lobby was seeing the Saanich OCP at that time as a barrier, but also an opportunity to prevent public hearings:

To quote the Times Colonist:

“And now there’s this other [Shelbourne] project that meets the OCP and Saanich staff recommended no public hearing, but they’re going to a public hearing anyway,” he said. “I don’t get it.”

Edge said the OCP process is open to the public and is created with public input, yet in the case of the Shelbourne condo project, the district decided to slow things down.

“Now we’ve got small groups of people who are flooding the council chambers and getting public hearings against the [district’s] professional staff recommendation,” he said.

“Saanich often comes up with these great strategic plans and has for the past few years about how they’re going to expedite housing, but on the ground, when you submit a project, you don’t see any of that. It’s just regulatory obstruction and cost.”

Kathy Whitcher, executive director of the Urban Development Institute, said some developers have found working with Saanich difficult, but she understands there are plans to change.

“They’ve hired some more staff and they do recognize that they have an issue and so they’re working on it, which is great,” she said.

As for some projects being able to skip the public-hearing process, Whitcher said that’s always been an option.

“It’s actually been around for years, it’s just that the municipalities weren’t using it,” she said, noting it has come to light because of the length of some public hearings. “It’s a tool that the industry has kind of been promoting to help speed up the process — if your project aligns with the OCP, then you shouldn’t have to go to public hearing.

Like Edge, Whitcher notes that the public is already involved in creating the OCP, which means municipalities are duplicating the process by having public hearings when a project already complies.

As for Murdock, he argues there has been a noticeable shift in support for creating more homes in the district as the need for housing has been made clear.

To that end, the district is about to launch a study seeking public input on how to update neighbourhood zones to allow for housing types like duplexes, triplexes, multiplexes and townhouses.

“It will present council with some options that will allow us to move forward with updating those neighbourhood zones so these housing types can happen much more easily,” Murdock said.

https://www.timescolonist.com/business/its-a-process-saanich-aims-to-make-housing-approvals-more-efficient-6723610

Murdock didn’t mention that the Local Area Plans were in the way of that type of zoning, but he had previously called for decoupling them a month after taking office as Mayor:

How changing a planning oddity in Saanich could speed up housing approvals – Capital Daily

Whitcher didn’t mention that the UDI had lobbied the Province extensively to waive public hearings, and Bill 44 which was tabled in the Legislature half a year later mandated vast removals of public hearings across the Province, something that UDI activity had led to, while mandating upzoning neighbourhoods to the sort of housing types Murdock had envisioned.

Bill 44 required that Districts updated their OCPs by the end of 2025, yet Saanich updated its OCP over a year and a half before it was required. The new OCP Bylaw was conspicuously missing the Local Area Plans. The direction from Council to achieve that decoupling arrived 2 years after the development lobby had discussed it with Saanich staff.

Saanich after enough pressure was itself was compelled to decouple itself from the UDI:

Saanich bails on membership in developers’ organization – Victoria Times Colonist

However, that decoupling was in name only. Saanich continues meeting and working with the UDI behind the scenes with its UDI’s liaison committee with Saanich, that the general public are forbidden from attending.




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See for more detail regarding the Mayor and the UDI event at the Union Club:

After a Comedic Exchange of Emails, BC Transit Admits that it has a Membership with the Urban Development Institute. The Implications of that for BC, may be more Tragic than Comic. – CRD Watch Homepage

See also: Saanich says it’s working to speed up housing approvals – Victoria Times Colonist

LETTER: Local governments should distance themselves from lobbyists – Saanich News

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