Prepare to be Advised!

Hello!  It’s been a while.  We hope you enjoyed the peace and quiet – we sure did. 

It is said that a little madness now and then helps us appreciate the quiet times….and so God invented municipal elections.  A wouldn’t you know it, we’ve got one coming up in about nine months.  In preparation, we’ve loaded up on ibuprofen, ergonomic keyboards and Xanax to make sure we’re ready to deliver all the news you need to know to keep North Saanich rural. 

So, what’s been shakin'?  A whole lot of interesting things.  Let’s start with the Premier-shaped elephant in the room.

As you will all know, over the past couple of years, our dear leader David Eby has introduced a raft of legislation purportedly aimed at increasing affordable housing.  This led to the imposition of “housing targets” on various municipalities, and the subsequent establishment of a "naughty list", naming and shaming just shy of a third of the communities in B.C.  There are a whole lot of problems with Big Dave’s Building Bonanza, but we'd like to mention a couple that are particularly fundamental:

1. The new legislation mandates more housing, full stop.  It does not mandate a single unit of affordable housing.  A municipality could hit its housing targets with nothing but million dollar shoe boxes and they’d be in the clear as far as the Province is concerned.  Let them eat cake!

   
   

2. The Premier's approach relies on the common assumption, beloved to developers far and wide, that if we build enough, the prices will go down.  Problem is, the theory of supply and demand doesn’t hold water in internationally desirable locations.  Examples abound in places like New York, Paris and London, where single family housing is all but extinct, yet affordable housing only exists in the form of government-owned public housing.  This is because leaving it to the free market simply doesn’t work in those economies – the “demand” part of the equation is coming from all over the planet, and it's never-ending. 

   
   

(Vancouver tried to sate that demand.  It tried really hard!  Over the past 40 years, Vancouver has densified faster than almost anywhere else on the continent, and is now the fourth most densely populated city in North America, behind NYC, Toronto, and San Francisco.  But prices never stopped climbing, no matter how much they built, and now Vancouver is a very expensive, heavily-congested nightmare beleaguered by insufficient infrastructure and too much lip filler.  Like it or not, southern Vancouver Island has been discovered as the perfect over-flow market for the planet's love affair with coastal BC.  It’s Vancouver 2.0 over here - places like Victoria have been building like crazy…..but the average price of a home keeps climbing.)

The point we’re making here is that David Eby has doubled down on densification-as-the-answer with all the wisdom and conviction of a first year urban planning student three beers deep at the campus pub, and the direct result is that land is getting more expensive, communities are getting trashed, and developers are getting richer. 

(We’ve mentioned this before and we’ll say it again: we don’t fault developers for trying to make as much money as they can.  It can be a risky industry, and they’ve got to make a living just like anyone else.  We do, however, fault the living daylights out of Mr. Eby and his caucus for taking a wrecking ball to the guardrails communities have worked hard to put in place to ensure responsible development. Not cool, Dave.)

Against that dreary back drop, let’s talk about how all this stuff impacts our neck of the woods.

In the face of the NDP’s legislative temper tantrum, our Council and staff have been taking a responsible, measured approach to planning for growth in North Saanich, as evidenced by our shiny new OCP. But the reality is, outside the areas already designated for additional density, North Saanich is a pretty rural place. The vast majority of the District is unequipped with urban luxuries like sewage, robust water infrastructure (remember when the taps ran dry around Horth Hill a couple years ago?), school capacity, streetlights, curbs, sidewalks, traffic lights, and transit.  But according to the Province, such trivial concerns must not be allowed to stand in the way of development.  Build baby, build! 

Alas, having failed to conjure a single high-rise into existence, we are now being sent to the principal’s office….or rather, the principal is being sent to us, in the form of a Provincially-appointed housing advisor.

When we first heard the term “housing advisor”, the Imperial March from Star Wars immediately struck up in our heads.  You know, the one they play when the scary guys walk in.  And so imagine our utter delight to stumble on this image, which is a rendering of a project which our very own housing advisor is bringing to life on the mainland:

Truly, this is what satirist dreams are made of.

Having set the musical score, allow us to introduce the person tasked with solving all our problems; the man with the phased masterplan; the valuation sensation; le roi of ROI; turning place-making into profit-taking – ladies and gentlemen, meet Provincially-appointed Housing Advisor, Russell Whitehead:

Mr. Whitehead works in the Vancouver branch of a little mom & pop operation called CBRE, which touts itself as Canada’s “leader in commercial real estate services and investment”.  Mr. Whitehead is one of several Senior Vice Presidents of Development Strategy & Consulting within the corporation’s Valuation & Advisory Services Group.  Before that, it seems he spent a bunch of years doing roughly the same thing with Colliers Strategy and Consulting.  Before that, going by his head shot, he was twelve. 

In other words, this guy has spent his professional life maximizing profit for developers.  And there’s no question he’s very good at his job – he’s got a hell of a portfolio, some of which you can read about in the article accompanying that lovely portrait of Darth Vader & friends.  We can’t help but notice though, that his marketed expertise doesn’t exactly line up with the rural/agricultural vibe that folks around here have fought so hard to maintain.

You’ve got to hand it to the Province on this one: if the appointment of an expert in "master planning and mixed-use development" from one of the world's largest real estate brokerages weren't so distressing, it would be pretty funny.  Oak Bay’s housing advisor lives on the island, spent decades working in municipal roles, and literally wrote a book about municipal government (and is a very entertaining writer, we note).  Similarly, West Van was partnered up with a former City Manager with a lifetime of experience at the municipal level.  These are people who have spent a load of time in all manner of municipal halls, and almost certainly have an instinctual understanding of the need to show at least a little respect for local voters.  

And what does North Saanich get? A senior VP from a development juggernaut, who makes his living turning "under-used land" - ya know, like North Saanich - into yuppie playgrounds [Ed.: very nice yuppie playgrounds! Please don't sue us!].  A real estate professional whose expertise is antithetical to everything this community has voted for, overwhelmingly and repeatedly, for years.  It’s next-level trolling on the part of the Province and, in that respect, we’re genuinely impressed.

But the thing is, this is not some political chessboard, it’s home.  North Saanich is made of fresh air, healthy ecosystems, farms, chickens, ditches, friendly neighbours, slightly feral children, and one single traffic light.  And we’re not slouching - we’re also home to a bunch of other stuff that benefits surrounding communities: a major ferry terminal, an international airport (complete with Darwin-esque roundabouts which serve to weed out the weaker of our visitors before they even hit the Pat Bay), a RCAF base, Ocean Sciences, Plant Health, a massively over-subscribed recreation centre, three Provincial parks and a whole whack of ALR land – 35% of the District, in fact. 

For many years, residents have fought hard to keep a pretty good balance out here, and the result is something that’s worth protecting.  But judging by their pick of housing advisor, to Mr. Eby and his Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs, North Saanich is nothing but a big ol’ large-scale mixed-use development waiting to happen.

So what happens now? 

Going by what’s happened elsewhere, we expect that Mr. Whitehead will rifle through our things, make recommendations on how to turn North Saanich into one of CBRE’s “new vibrant communities”, and then the Minister will issue a directive instructing our Council to turn those recommendations into reality.  If that doesn’t crush the rebellion, the Minister can take a couple of very simple steps set out in the Housing Supply Act and spur the creation of a tailor-made law forcing North Saanich to comply.

What might the Minister direct, you may wonder? Who knows! Oak Bay's council was directed to amend their development bylaw to delegate certain development decisions to staff. A Provincial minister, ordering a democratically elected council to delegate their decision-making power to unelected staff…..doesn’t sit quite right, does it? 

Democracy has been around for two thousand odd years. It's a foundational part of our society. Canadians tend to feel pretty strongly that if we're going to elect people to represent us with respect to particular issues, they should be allowed to get on with it without substantial interference, including from other levels of government.

But municipalities and everything they control are pretty well at the complete mercy of the Province.  Local governments only exist in the first place because a bunch of MLAs decided to legislate them into being, way back when. Changing the rules as they apply to municipalities (ie through the Housing Supply Act) is unquestionably allowed, even if the changes are drastic (they are) and people hate them (we do). 

But requiring a specific municipal council to amend a specific bylaw to shift specific decisions to unelected people, because the person who happens to be running the Housing portfolio doesn't like the policy decisions the elected council is making? Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Lots of interesting questions to ponder as we wait for the arrival of Mr. Whitehead.  Chief among them: Do you think there will be a parade?  We love a good parade. Shriners! Floats! The CBRE Valuation & Advisory Services Group pipe band! Cross your fingers, everyone.

There's a load of other wild and crazy stuff to tell you about, but we could probably all use a drink at this point.  We’ll write again soon.  Until then, may the force be with you.