We’re still waiting for Aragon to submit their formal proposal to Saanich. Maybe they think we’ll lose interest and just move on — but not a chance, Cordova Bay! With 1,655 signatures on our petition, we've made it clear: we’re paying attention, and we care. We're not going anywhere.

Please see this opinion article from the Vancouver Sun, on B.C.'s Bill 13, Bill 15 and the end of urban democracy: These bills give the province the tools it has long sought: faster approvals, fewer checks and less local resistance.    

In British Columbia, democracy is being redefined — not through elections or referendums, but through legislation with quiet names and sweeping consequences.

Bill 13 and Bill 15 are not household names. But together, they represent a fundamental reordering of power between the province and its municipalities. Framed as tools to accelerate housing and infrastructure, these bills do far more than expedite permits. They hand the province unprecedented authority to override local planning, ignore zoning bylaws, and silence public consultation.

Bill 13, deceptively named the Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, amends the Housing Supply Act, Local Government Act, and Vancouver Charter to give the provincial government the power to nullify any municipal bylaw that conflicts with provincial housing mandates. Zoning, subdivision controls, building permits, affordable housing provisions — all are now subordinate.

Bill 15, the Infrastructure Projects Act, allows the province to take over permitting for any infrastructure project deemed of “provincial significance” — including schools, hospitals, and transit-oriented developments. In Vancouver, where much of the land already falls within designated transit areas, this amounts to near-total provincial planning authority.

Certified professionals, appointed by the province, can now stand in for municipal staff. Let’s not forget that the “external experts” appointed for previous housing legislation were closely aligned with the development industry.

The problem is compounded by how these bills are drafted: dense, technical and opaque. Few outside of legal or planning circles fully understand their implications — which, perhaps, is part of the point. If the public knew what was at stake, the response might look very different.

Together, Bills 13 and 15 mark a profound departure from the planning principles that have governed B.C.’s cities for decades. Where previous legislation set targets and guidelines, these bills enforce compliance. If municipalities don’t act fast enough, the province now has the legal tools to act for them.

Some opposition voices, including the Union of B.C. Municipalities, are beginning to sense that something isn’t right. But much of the concern has focused narrowly on Bill 15’s environmental review process, overlooking the deeper implications for local land use authority. Bill 13, which arguably has greater consequences for zoning power, has flown almost entirely under the radar.

The justification rests on a now familiar claim: that municipalities are the bottleneck preventing housing from getting built. But as of 2025, the Vancouver region is facing a glut of approved but unbuilt condos and rentals. Developers are delaying projects — not because cities are slow, but because the numbers don’t pencil out. High interest rates, soaring construction costs, and unaffordable unit prices have created a logjam.

The problem is not process. It is profit.

There is also a deeper fallacy in the supply-first narrative: the idea that simply adding housing makes cities more affordable. Vancouver added twice as much housing as Montreal, yet remains far less affordable. If supply alone lowers prices, this shouldn’t be possible. But housing is shaped by more than zoning. Urban systems are complex. Correlation is not causation.

A 2024 analysis by Patrick Condon and Thomas Kroeker drives this home. Since the 1960s, Vancouver has added more housing per capita than any other major North American city. Yet it is also one of the most unaffordable. Over that same period, prices rose by 600 per cent relative to incomes. The driver wasn’t a lack of supply, but runaway land value.

The “land price residual” — the value of land after subtracting construction costs — has exploded. And without mechanisms to capture that value for the public good, affordability remains out of reach.

Other forces — low interest rates, global capital, the financialization of housing — matter more than zoning. Unless we tackle land value directly, more supply alone will only enrich landowners.

Condon and Kroeker point to better models: Vienna, Singapore, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Vancouver once had its own: in the 1980s and ’90s, the city captured up to 80 per cent of land value gains from rezonings and reinvested them in public benefits, including affordable housing.

So why the rush now? The answer may lie in political convenience. These bills give the province the tools it has long sought: faster approvals, fewer checks, and less local resistance. The Urban Development Institute, a key industry lobby, has been pushing for exactly this shift.

What results is a planning system governed by exception. Provincial mandates become de facto zoning. Public hearings become optional. Municipalities are left to rubber-stamp decisions they didn’t make.

If a provincially fast-tracked project fails, who is accountable? If a bylaw is overridden, who pays the political price?

Vancouver, unsurprisingly, is ground zero. Its charter has been amended so that even if a neighbourhood plan allows six storeys, a developer can apply for 20 — and the city must process it. This isn’t just a change in scale. It’s a change in who gets to decide what cities look like.

And often, those making the decisions don’t live in the communities they’re reshaping. They are detached from the everyday realities of the places their policies transform — from the parks, shops, and transit stops that give neighbourhoods their shape.

Urban planning has always involved a tension between expertise, politics, and public voice. These bills resolve that tension by cutting out two of the three. What remains is a top-down exercise in implementation, stripped of dialogue or dissent.

When local planning becomes provincial command, cities stop being communities shaped by their residents. They become construction sites governed by spreadsheet.

Erick Villagomez teaches at the school of community and regional planning at the University of British Columbia. He is also a founding editor at Spacing Vancouver.

We will continue on with our petition. Thank you all very much.

Best Regards,

Dan Horth