We the signed call upon the Capital Regional District, a fourth layer of government that presides over Greater Victoria and surrounding areas to replace its Regional Growth Strategy with a Regional Balance Strategy instead.

The Capital Regional District has a Regional Growth Strategy that requires that Official Community Plans (OCPs) of municipalities within the region conform to it.

Not only does being bound to such a plan override municipal sovereignty and the power of voters that democracy is based on, but it creates a situation whereby municipalities are being bound to expand their artificial footprint over territories that include unceded indigenous lands and across key sensitive environmental regions, which is devastating for biodiversity and natural ecology/ecosystems as a whole through the process of habitat loss, one of the main drivers of human caused extinction.

Now is a crucial and pivotal time to address this issue.  Regional Growth Strategies last 20 years.  The CRD regional Growth Strategy was created in 2003.  This means that the process is under review, which means that now is the key window of time to address this issue before the CRD gets locked into another 20 years of unsustainable growth that is harmful to the environment and to human health.

There are also major conflict of interest concerns with the CRD's Regional Growth Strategy.  The CRD is a paying member of the Urban Development Institute Capital Region, which is a development lobby that targets, you guessed it the Capital Region, which the Capital Regional District represents.  For the CRD to be paying a member of a development lobby that targets the CRD and according to its statements promotes "steady growth" to municipalities, is a clear full circle conflict-of-interest, especially since the CRD has a Regional Growth Strategy that municipalities within it must conform to, thus overriding municipal sovereignty in determining their own future.

Not only that, but Regional Growth Strategies require municipalities to undertake expensive Housing Needs Reports to base their growth strategies on and numerous municipalities in the CRD have adopted Housing Needs Reports made by companies, which are also paying members of the same development lobby the UDI, that the CRD is a paying member of.  These Housing Needs Reports enforcing a growth based agenda have cost millions of taxpayer dollars among the various municipalities required to undertake them.

Already mandatory Official Community Plan conformance with the Regional Growth Strategy through the OCP has caused major tensions in the municipality of North Saanich, which caused a consulting company to withdraw from the process and one councillor resigned soon after.

Other regions have seen their ecology devastated by the Regional Growth Strategy including the municipality of Langford, where whole areas have had their forested hills removed for development, looking like a moonscape and the critical salmon bearing environment of nearby Goldstream Provincial Park is currently threatened by road expansion.

At the end of the day, "sustainable development" is a nice sounding myth cooked up by the PR industry.  The term is a self-contradicting statement.  Growth is not sustainable on a finite planet and certainly not within the beautiful region with its rich, but very fragile and at the breaking point ecology within the Capital Region.

Please, we the signed call on the CRD to at the very least use logic and a well thought out vision of an actual sustainable future, which seeks a real (non-growth-based) balance with the nature in the region, instead of overwhelming it through an unsustainable model of enforced artificial growth.  After all, if the CRD is tasked with so much responsibility over the environment it presides over, it shouldn't be the cause of its demise through its own growth strategy.



Resources:

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/local-governments/planning-land-use/local-government-planning/regional-growth-strategies

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/local-governments/planning-land-use/local-government-planning/regional-growth-strategies/status-of-regional-growth-strategies


Some articles on the situation in North Saanich:

https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/consultant-for-north-saanich-quits-over-rift-about-how-council-deals-with-community-plan-6757340

https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/north-saanich-residents-oppose-greater-housing-density-criticize-plan-review-4692408

https://www.peninsulanewsreview.com/news/housing-affordability-back-in-as-north-saanich-ocp-review-continues/

Quote in the article:

"“We specifically said who we wanted to interview and we also explicitly said that this engagement does not need to include other agencies or the other stakeholders, (such as) outfits like UDI (Urban Development Institute),”"


Member Directory - UDI Capital Region   Under "C" Entry: "Capital Regional District"


For More Information, Please Contact:

CRDPetition@mail.com