The development lobby proposed decoupling the Saanich Local Area Plans from the Official Community Plan. They got what they wanted 2 years later.

The development lobby proposed decoupling the Saanich Local Area Plans from the Official Community Plan. They got what they wanted 2 years later.

By Sasha Izard
March 4, 2025

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On June 22, 2022, Saanich consulted for its new Official Community Plan, the Urban Development Institute (UDI) a registered lobbying organization on the BC Lobbyists Registry, representing billions of dollars in development/real estate interests from its hundreds of paying corporate member companies, whose identity has now been hidden by the UDI from the public.

The UDI proposed: “one of the biggest opportunities to move forward is to decouple the LAP out from the OCP.

*Nothing is consistent, LAP used as the dominant policy often LAP being part of the OCP creates problems/confusion
*MF housing opportunities so limited in the old LAPs, focus on
*”protecting SF at all costs” (biggest hurdle)
*Procedural win would be do say the OCP is the primary doc
*We know what the good planning principles are, OCP provides flexibility, e.g. 4
storey buildings in Neighbourhoods but LAP undermines this”

Note: SF stands for Single Family Home, MF stands for Multi-family home, OCP stands for Local Area Plan and LAP stands for Local Area Plan.

2 years later, on May 7, 2024 Saanich did exactly as the had UDI proposed. Despite overwhelming opposition from the public at the April 30, 2024 public hearing that ran close to 1am in the morning and in written correspondence, the majority of Saanich Council just over a week later, approved decoupling the Local Area Plans from the Official Community Plan Bylaw and adopting them as legally non-binding Resolution instead. Simultaneously, a new Official Community Plan for the District was adopted, over a year and a half before it was necessary to be completed by the Province. Only Councillors Brownoff and Chambers were opposed.

Earlier that day Saanich’s Mayor Murdock who had been a key proponent of decoupling the Local Area Plans from the Official Community Plan since taking office, was a featured speaker at an event of the UDI lobby titled: “Pathways to Progress: Uniting Land Use and Transit Strategies for Sustainable Growth” at the Union club.

The event details read “The question of whether land use is leading transit, or transit is leading land use, is a fundamental one in urban planning and transportation policy, with significant implications for how cities develop and function. As the Capital Region continues to experience substantial growth, it is crucial to synchronize development and transit strategies.”

The UDI got what they wanted on that day, with the Local Area Plans being decoupled from the OCP later that evening, but the question must be raised. Why were expensive Local Area Plan updates undertaken only 2 years before that with the UDI serving as a stakeholder on them and being consulted on them by the District of Saanich, if the UDI wanted to remove them altogether, and make a new OCP the primary document, as ultimately happened?

Mayor Murdock had taken office in October of 2022. He didn’t lose much time. A month later, he was promoting decoupling the Local Area Plans from the Official Community Plan.

To quote a Capital Daily article dated December 14, 2022:

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

“In Saanich, local area plans are incorporated into the OCP bylaw. But because some local area plans don’t match the OCP’s priorities on issues such as density or building height restrictions, the district can’t then interpret a particular development as being consistent with its OCP and push it past a public hearing.

“I think we are among the few municipalities in the province that does this,”
Murdock said.

The district is trying to figure out if it is possible to update the OCP— a process currently underway and expected to be finished next year—in a way that recognizes that some of the local area plans are out of date and contrary to the goals of the OCP.

“We need to explore what decoupling would look like—that would certainly help us to move things forward,” he said.”

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Councillor Colin Plant was another key proponent of decoupling the Local Area Plans from the Official Community Plan. As Saanich in 2024 had not properly informed the public about the imminent changes to take place to their Local Area Plans, it took considerable dialogue with Councillor Plant and a staff member to even figure out that the disabling of the Local Area Plans was imminent in the spring of 2024.

Dialogue between Councillor Plant and Saanich Staffer Reveals how the Local Area Plans (LAPs) are Being Nullified in the New Proposed Official Community Plan (OCP) for the District: – CRD Watch Homepage

Through the Looking Glass: How Saanich Politicians and Staff are in the Process of Disabling the Local Area Plans Without the Public Realizing it. – CRD Watch Homepage

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It took significant investigative work published on CRD Watch to even figure out that the decoupling of the Local Area Plans from the OCP was imminent in the spring of 2024. Even the community associations were unaware of it. I informed them however. Cordova Bay and Cadboro Bay had the last 2 Local Area Plans (jokingly referred to as the last laps) that were still active at that point; the others had been ‘paused’ by Council several years earlier. Alerted to the issue by myself, the Cadboro Bay and Cordova Bay community associations wrote in opposition to the decoupling of the LAPs just before it took place. Despite all this, the UDI seems to have been well aware of the likely decoupling of the LAPs from the OCP 2 years earlier.

They even discussed it with Saanich before the District had received any Council direction on it yet, as it was put in the minutes of the UDI’s video conference with Saanich on April 26, 2022. This was 2 months before the June 22, 2022 workshop on Saanich’s OCP update.

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 – CRD Watch Homepage

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

“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 “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, they are registered as the UDI’s in-house lobbyist on the BC Lobbyists Registry.

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Conclusion:

The Mayor of Saanich does not like when this history is brought up, but it must be documented, remembered and never forgotten. During the Feb 11, 2025 Saanich Special Council Meeting, the Mayor pre-emptively prevented myself from speaking about these items to Council, on the basis that what I was mentioning was not related to the Quadra/McKenzie Plan update, but paradoxically, he wouldn’t allow me to show how it was. Why not?

The UDI lobby certainly does not deal with topics in isolation, in its unfettered and uninterrupted (not even by public attendance at them, which is prevented) dealings with Saanich.

As it was put in Saanich’s OCP consultation with the UDI:

ATP = Active Transprotation Plan.

Why then must the public be forced to put blinders on by only discussing items in isolation thus breaking the context around them?

Is that why the majority of the Council followed senior Saanich staff’s recommendation to eliminate Open Forum last fall?

As the UDI also put in their Sept 12, 2023 presentation to View Royal Council:

“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.“

Don’t try to mention that sort of multi-governmental activity though and how it relates to Saanich urban planning, without expecting to be cut off from the mic by Saanich’s Mayor though.

How could the adoption of the new Official Community Plan, and the decoupling of the Local Area Plans from it, not be related to the proposed Quadra/McKenzie Plan? It was nothing, but prerequisite for it and the UDI had lobbied the Province on forcing density in areas around rapid transit lines under a map of the proposed McKenzie and potential Quadra RapidBus Lines at the same time in the spring of 2022, that it was proposing that Saanich ditch its Local Area Plans from its OCP.

The UDI’s line of attack on the Saanich Local Area Plans would be two-fold. It would simultaneously go after the municipality, and the Province to undermine them. 2 years later in the spring of 2024 with the new Housing Bills from the Province, and the new Official Community Plan for Saanich, they got what they wanted from both.

Why did the majority of the elected officials follow the development lobby’s agenda and not that of the public? Why did it not properly inform the public about the imminent rendering of their Local Area Plans to be legally non-binding?

In a democracy, the people are supposed to be in charge. In British Columbia when it comes to urban planning, the development lobby are firmly in the driver’s seat.

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