The Province of BC is overriding local government decisions to an alarmingly undemocratic degree, say housing experts and former policymakers.
The NDP government just passed controversial Bill 13 and Bill 15, which give the Province the power to fast-track land use and public sector and infrastructure decisions. A year and a half ago, they passed Bill 44, which expedites development by requiring local government to update zoning bylaws to permit multi-family housing in single-family areas, limits public hearings for projects that are consistent with the official community plan (OCP), and mandates that local governments update their OCP every five years.
Meanwhile, Bill 47 requires municipalities to designate transit-oriented areas within 800 meters of transit hubs for residential towers. And the Housing Supply Act allows the Province to set housing targets for communities suited to the highest projected growth. West Vancouver was one municipality not meeting its targets, so the Province hired an adviser who recently released a report, and the municipality was given directives by the Minister of Housing to amend its OCP for greater density.
But the newest legislation, say critics, goes too far, giving the Province “an unprecedented authority to override local planning, ignore zoning bylaws, and silence public consultation,” wrote Erick Villagomez, Part-Time Lecturer at the University of British Columbia's (UBC) School of Community and Regional Planning, in a piece he shared with media. He said the Province has effectively amended the Vancouver Charter so that a developer application for a 20-storey tower can override an OCP that calls for six storeys.
“They are attempting to put all local planning under provincial control,” he said in an email. It's no longer about incentive, he adds, it’s now an ultimatum.
“For our part, we see the bills as particularly vague and understand they could be used to stifle community feedback and government transparency around the province for land use and housing,” says Karen Finnan, Spokesperson for the Kitsilano Coalition, which recently won a year-long battle against the City by managing to overturn provincial legislation designed to push a controversial project through.
“We believe community feedback is key to building successful communities, so these bills are concerning for many reasons,” says Finnan.
The community group had fought hard against a 129-unit, 12-storey supportive housing project on city-owned land, arguing that a low-barrier shelter for men that included a drug-consumption room was not suitably located. “Low barrier” housing provides access for people who may have addictions, who are low-income, or who may have other complex needs that prevent them from finding housing. But the Coalition argued that there should be more suitable supportive housing adjacent to 450 elementary school students, a daycare, and a children’s play area.
The City had approved the rezoning and asked the Province to create legislation intended to expedite the project. It took effort and legal expense, but the Coalition won an appeal at BC Court of Appeal late last year, which found the legislation unconstitutional. And just recently, the City walked back its decision to approve the rezone and the development.
Darlene Marzari is a former city councillor who served as the Province’s Minister of Municipal Affairs for the NDP until 1996. Marzari has stayed active on community issues, and has come out swinging against Bill 13 in particular, which she argues is designed to give the Province too much power.
“My worst fear was that an incoming provincial government, my government, the NDP, would decide that they would take over zoning of city councils,” says Marzari, seated in her Kitsilano home. “It's an extraordinary provincial power grab of municipal authority and local democracy. That's what Bill 13 does, and it pretends to be just a small Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act.”
Critics argue that land values have spiked 600% since the 1960s, and merely adding more market-rate housing supply will not lead to reduced housing costs. But the prevailing mindset is that if we just add more supply, prices will somehow come down to an affordable level. It's a mindset adopted by government, which believes that zoning laws are an obstacle to progress. By extension, the democratic practice of public engagement in local area plans and at public hearings for rezonings is also often seen as an obstacle — even though it is traditionally the process used by citizens to determine the way their neighbourhoods will grow.
“Zoning is to blame — that’s what the system says, right? But in fact, the system only says that because they want to blame cities for holding back on permits and licenses and development permits,” Marzari says. “People are not aware that not only does [the new legislation] take over local area planning, but it also takes over city planning and any planning, whether it be a school, hospital or a transit corridor that the province deems necessary.”
Housing activist and founder of the popular CityHallWatch watchdog site, Randy Helten, envisions the Province using its new powers to push through an extension of the Broadway subway line to University of BC, and the density that would go with it.
“If the Province designates a project as of provincial strategic importance, they can go in and take over municipal planning powers,” says Helten. “I could see this [new Bill 15] lining up in the near future where the province says, ‘We designate the UBC extension as a significant project,’ and once the pieces are in place, there would be no more public hearings. The Broadway Plan could be extended as far as you could go to UBC, then you would have a swath of very valuable land upzoned.”
Patrick Condon, Founding Chair of the UBC Urban Design program, says the bills “make local planning and citizen input at the local level increasingly irrelevant.” And Ken Cameron, retired Senior Planner for the Greater Vancouver Regional District (Metro Vancouver), said there’s a basic principle and tradition in BC that the province gives local governments what they need to do their job.
“This really goes against that,” he says of the new legislation. Also, the disregard for existing zoning is concerning, he adds.
“The zoning represents years of planning for community development, for infrastructure, for transportation, for even health and other public services. And so, just arbitrarily saying, ‘You can build this kind of tower in this location and that kind of tower in another location if there's a transit hub nearby,’ is just incredibly simplistic.
“This is not to say that there were not some things in the development controls that needed to be fixed, but I don't think there's an adequate understanding of what arbitrary intervention in zoning could create in terms of the cost of community services and the disruption of community planning and development.”
The new legislation by the NDP government also seems to contradict its own legislation that was ushered in by Marzari in 1995, with the enactment of the Growth Strategies Statutes Amendment Act. That Act came out of an agreement between the Province and local governments that there was a need to work together to manage growth.
“The legislation that she introduced, the Growth Strategies Act, was intended to enable regional districts and municipalities to plan together on a regional level with infrastructure and other services, including housing, healthcare and all the rest of it on a regional basis,” says Cameron. “And in this legislation and that legislation that was passed previously, [such as bills 44 and 47], the Province just shows no awareness of the existence of that legislation brought in by an NDP government.”
The Union of BC Municipalities, which represents all local governments in the province, did not take issue with Bill 13, although the organization has asked the province to withdraw Bill 15.
The UBCM said in a statement that they had been briefed on Bill 13 before it was introduced and believe it to be a continuation of the Housing Supply Act.
“While the powers the Province has provided to itself through the Housing Supply Act are substantive and significant, in our view the changes in Bill 13 do not alter the intention of the original legislation (that is, to provide the Province with the same powers in relation to all local governments in BC with regard to housing targets),” said the statement.
In a separate statement, the City of Vancouver said it was “still reviewing these bills and their implications,” and it “works closely with the province to support shared goals around housing, infrastructure, and transit oriented development and our ongoing approach is to work collaboratively to deliver the housing and public infrastructure people need.”
