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Ministry of Municipal Affairs Presentation from April 13, 2022 provides a glimpse on the processes that led up to the Housing Bills (Bills 44-47) that were put forward in the Fall of 2023.

The document was obtained through Freedom of Information.

This article follows on the work and findings in this article: Freedom of Information reveals that the Province of B.C. was working to implement what the registered lobbying organization, the Urban Development Institute, had been pushing for. This culminated in the recent Housing Bills that override local government authority on zoning.  – CRD Watch Homepage


By Sasha Izard
July 27, 2025


The spring of 2022 was a hectic time. The UDI’s lobbying efforts were paying off as they were hectically and successfully lobbying the Minister Responsible for Housing and Attorney General at the time David Eby, who was soon to be crowned head of the BCNDP (after his only challenger to that position was disqualified by the party elite) and he was made Premier of BC.

The UDI’s radical housing proposals that would undermine local government sovereignty and drastically reduce public hearings, while they themselves maintained special closed door access to the Province, had gained much traction within the Ministry of Housing and also among the Ministry of Municipal Affairs. Both of these Ministries have since become merged into one Ministry in the aftermath of the 2024 Provincial election.

As the previous article mentioned showed: the UDI succeeded with its proposals in getting the Province to put much of them into legislation.

The following document shows that quite well. Content which can be seen as the groundwork for Bills 44-47 were being put in place. These Bills were put forward in the BC Legislature in the Fall of 2023, exactly the timeframe that was predicted in the document.

One paragraph in this document is censored with an s.13 redaction in red. Although it is fine print, it appears to have blocked out a whole paragraph. I doubt censoring this paragraph was appropriate. Why is it the only paragraph censored in the document? I suspect that the paragraph made very clear in hindsight that what was proposed in it was to be in the Housing Bills.


Excerpt below from page 6 of the document showing censored section which was left blank with a small red s.13 in fine print:

The document in full titled: “Overview of Work Related to Housing and the Development Approvals Process Review” is below:

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See also:

Index of articles revealing major lobbying influence on B.C. Provincial Housing Bills and Housing Targets. – CRD Watch Homepage

Public release of UDI March 10, 2022 presentation slides, agenda, and lobbying letters to David Eby. – CRD Watch Homepage

Freedom of Information reveals that the Province of B.C. was working to implement what the registered lobbying organization, the Urban Development Institute, had been pushing for. This culminated in the recent Housing Bills that override local government authority on zoning.  – CRD Watch Homepage

How the Development and Real Estate Lobby Pressed Mandatory Housing Targets, Mass Upzoning, Captured Official Community Plans, and Made the Shutting Down of Public Hearings the Norm in British Columbia Under the NDP Government – CRD Watch Homepage