By Published On: March 31st, 20060 Comments on (still) Paving Paradise

The next casualty of the uncontrolled development destroying the Capital Region could be the rural Highlands. The public can see the importance of a broader vision—why can’t our politicians?

*
It might have been just another business-as-usual meeting of the Capital Regional District board about urban development. But normal polite procedures cannot contain it, and the tension starts blowing through like whistles of steam.

“He’s lying,” a biting voice from the public seats whispers in my ear.

“She supports it because she’s subdividing,” says another person, pointing.

After Highlands mayor Mark Cardinal explains to other elected representatives from around the region on the CRD board that his proposal for mammoth development was endorsed by his council, two people behind me grumble muted protests. I’m startled to discover their both Highlands councillors.

“It’s the death of the Highlands,” proclaims another person loudly.

Highlands’ current council “did not vote on nor endorse” Cardinal’s proposal, councillor Jane Mendum clarifies to me later, adding stunning controversy to a plan already tangled in BC Supreme Court over allegations of inadequate public consultation.

Many describe the recurring confrontations over BC old growth forests as “valley by valley battles”. If so, development conflicts in the Capital Region could only be described as fierce, unending urban warfare. Struggles for territorial control rage from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, street to street, and building by building. No sooner does one skirmish come to a gruesome end for some and victory for others (Shoal Point, Royal Bay, Sooke Potholes) than new skirmishes erupt (Cook-Sutlej, Thetis Cove, Bear Mountain).

Meanwhile, there’s a drumbeat of “advice”: Either accept higher densities in core areas, or live with sprawl.

In actual practice, of course, we get both: More highrises shadowing Victoria, and suburbs marching through the western communities and peninsula faster than traffic on the Colwood Crawl.

What’s the real problem, then? Why can’t we create the kind of region we can all be proud of? Is there any peace in sight—in the unspoiled beauty of the rural Highlands, for example?
*
It’s 1999, and an environmental impact assessment consultant draws squares on his serviette.

“The Highlands is the perfect example of how not to develop,” Brian Szuster tells me. “They divided most of it into 20-acre and 10-acre parcels and said, ‘We’re a rural area.’ Well, yeah; but not for long.”

He continues drawing dividing lines, explaining that over time parcels here or there will be subdivided for a community hall, a store, or homes for the kids. And if your neighbour divides off a few lots to sell for a retirement nest egg, why not you? Then, new people move in with new attitudes, new councils get elected, and the process spreads.

He holds up the serviette, dense with squares inside squares. “Next thing you know, it’s all one giant subdivision.”

The fundamental problem, he explains, is the lack of an “urban containment boundary”. We must decide where we’ll allow subdividing and densification and where we won’t, and then stick with the plan. That’s how we end with compact, pedestrian-friendly communities that have ample farms, parks and rural acreages nearby. Otherwise, it’s unplanned, piecemeal development, sprawl and traffic jams unending, loss of greenspace, highrises sprouting haphazardly, and “death through pecking by chickens”.

Despite its mere 1,500 residents spread over large acreages, he concludes unhesitatingly: “The Highlands is doomed.”

*

But our Regional Growth Strategy was supposed to save the Highlands. Indeed, it was supposed to bring visionary thinking, creative solutions and peace to the entire Capital Region landscape.

The RGS process began in 1995. Land use experts had identified various areas in BC where leapfrogging, out-of-control development was causing innumerable negative impacts on agriculture, quality of life, and the environment—the Okanagan Valley, Vancouver and Southern Vancouver Island were frequently cited. So the provincial government passed a detailed law requiring municipalities in these areas to sit down together and develop cohesive, consensus-based regional visions for guiding urban growth.

By 1999, consultations from Sooke to Sidney were in full swing. But a dramatic schism between the politicians involved, and the general public, was becoming evident.

All our municipalities already had OCPs (Official Community Plans, the guiding documents for municipal development) in place, and had no desire to change them at someone else’s behest. Most local politicians simply wanted to stitch these OCPs together with creative language and call it the “Regional Growth Strategy”. This would minimally meet the new law’s requirements, and they could all get on with developing the way they pleased.

One kink emerged: The RGS law also mandated public consultations. Citizen representatives and general participants from across our region held meetings, called in experts­ and explored alternate futures. They started envisioning controlled growth in “walkable centres” and “transit-linked towns” which would maximize protected greenspace and make housing more affordable. They sketched core population areas, ideal traffic corridors, mixed-use buildings and ecotourism expansions. And in contrast to the politicians, the public participants overwhelmingly felt every municipality’s OCP should change for the betterment of the region as a whole.

The schism was widely acknowledged. I was researching the subject for Monday, and Colwood mayor John Bergbusch complained the public RGS process had taken on “a life of its own”, while Langford mayor Stewart Young called it “a waste of taxpayers’ money”. Langford’s future developments, Young insisted, would be decided by “nobody outside of Langford”. Even environmentalist Highlands mayor Bob McMinn was lukewarm. Though municipalities had already voluntarily created regional decision- and cost-sharing agreements covering water and sewage services, McMinn argued any plan requiring area municipalities to similarly transfer any urban development powers to the CRD board was just a “grandiose scheme” residing in “political unreality”.

Victoria councillor Geoff Young, then CRD chair and one of few politicians lobbying for a strong RGS, summarized: “The attitude is completely different at the public participation sessions than around the board table. I think the public does have a broader vision than the politicians.”

Basically, our elected representatives insisted on retaining all decision-making powers in their respective municipal fiefdoms, without regard for regional consequences.

Finally, a compromise of sorts was reached.

The CRD’s Regional Growth Strategy, adopted in 2003, included many visionary plans, and a monitoring program. At the same time, it was loosely and creatively framed so that no municipalities had to significantly change their existing OCPs. The RGS had become a collection of laudable notions to be enacted largely through voluntary self-regulation.

But there was one rock-solid, invaluable centrepiece: A regional urban containment boundary. We’d collectively drawn a limit on how far we’d allow intensive development to go. This boundary was one of the only regulations in the RGS that was clearly and strongly defined—on a map.

It looked like the Highlands wasn’t doomed.

*

Flash forward to March, 2006: Submission of Highlands’ “Regional Context Statement” to the CRD. In its RCS, a municipality explains how it’ll meet the goals of the growth strategy it signed onto.

However, four months earlier, a pro-growth mayoral candidate squeezed out a 28-vote win in a Highlands election so embattled that merely 62 votes separated the most and least popular council candidates. Now, with the RGS’ ink still drying, Highlands mayor Mark Cardinal wants to blow a 258-hectare hole in the urban containment boundary to allow Langford’s huge Bear Mountain development to potentially spread all the way to Goldstream Park. Fully 6.5% of the Highlands’ area, currently greenspace, could be developed.

The CRD’s Planning Committee recommends against it. Municipal politicians from across the region on the CRD Board make the final decision.

Ironically, Bob McMinn, now just another powerless citizen, speaks against the proposal, arguing for a strong RGS.

Cardinal’s pitch shifts like haphazard urban development. He says the Highlands has “financial issues”, “no reserves” and a tax base that’s “too small”. But when others note the Highlands has no deficit, no pressing needs, and hasn’t raised taxes in eight years, he concedes he’s “not here crying poverty”. His real goal, he says, is to concentrate development around Bear Mountain to protect other Highlands areas from development pressures. Later, though, he sidesteps any commitments to preventing developments elsewhere, and returns to complaining about low monetary reserves.

Many CRD board members are perplexed, responding with words like “unknown”, “uncertainties” and “lack of details”. It’s all regionally important greenspace; why so much development at once? Where will the water come from and sewage go, with what impacts on the Millstream watershed? Who’ll pay for that needed Bear Mountain Parkway interchange? Will Highlands request another urban boundary extension later?

All these regionally significant questions are left largely unanswered.

Supporters on the board say the CRD should proceed with an “open mind” and “have faith” in the Highlands’ intentions, arguing that the RGS is “not a stone tablet” and this development is in its “spirit”—which one board member then describes as “intentionally vague”. (See meeting minutes here.)

If anything becomes clear, it’s that no one’s even trying to suggest this development could be good for the region as a whole.

Regardless, the CRD board, in a tense 10-9 vote, grants approval. (Perhaps symbolically, traditionally stalwart RGS support from Victoria was fatally weakened when Mayor Alan Lowe abstained due to his company’s Bear Mountain architectural contracts.)

Next, every municipality must sign off on the precise re-drawing of the urban containment boundary, or dispute-resolution mechanisms kick in. While unanimous acceptance may seem unlikely, Greater Vancouver’s RGS experience has shown individual municipalities become reluctant to be the ones to shoot down other municipalities’ requests for changes or leniency, for fear their own future transgressions will be resisted. Mutual back scratching quietly prevails.

And this is probably the very bluff Cardinal is playing; otherwise, why bring the proposal this far?

*

All of which explains why many of us dislike sprawl but also resist densification in our own neighbourhoods. It’s now clear that, without a strong regional vision in place, this apparent contradiction makes perfect sense.

I live in James Bay. Guarantee a new park in Colwood, and I’ll accept fifteen stories next door. Show me the peninsula farms I’ll be saving forever, and I’ll accept five more. I’ll live amidst skyscrapers and send cheques to the Highlands if you show me the suburbs I’ll actually be preventing and the light rail that’ll whisk me to parks, farms and my community garden plot in minutes.

But if the western communities and peninsula will encourage sprawl regardless of my actions, then why wouldn’t I wrestle to protect James Bay’s “little town” feel? Because what else have I got?

And indeed, the 2004 RGS monitoring report notes the density in our urban areas is increasing. But guess what: Since 2001, the CRD has lost over 200 hectares of Agricultural Land Reserve and 1,000 hectares of sensitive ecosystems. We’re getting both densification AND sprawl.

Clearly, though many politicians complain an RGS “handcuffs” their municipality, developments themselves become the truly irremovable, concrete handcuffs.

Provincially-enforced amalgamation might negatively affect some governing, but for regional growth issues, it would likely be a boon. How else can we make it so that we, and our municipal politicians, have nothing left to defend but the region as a whole?

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Originally published in Focus magazine, April 2006.

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