Saanich homeowners face trial by ordeal over ecological bylaw

Saanich council has voted to hold a public meeting on whether some residents’ properties should be removed from the Environmental Development Permit Area.

The EDPA is a bylaw that prevents owners of homes within designated areas from making certain modifications to their properties. These could include building fences or even, in some cases, mowing the lawn.

The bylaw is based on the apparently reasonable premise that certain endangered habitats such as Garry oak ecosystems need special protection. However, it has become controversial for two reasons.

First, there is considerable disagreement about what counts as an endangered habitat. Some owners insist there are no at-risk species on their land.

Second, when the EDPA was adopted in 2012, exceptions were not made for existing owners. As the saying goes, no one was grandfathered.

I wrote at the time that this was eminently unfair. Several homes had their assessed values plunge overnight. For example, one property fell in value from $1.7 million to $754,000 — a drop of more than 50 per cent. And elderly owners found themselves trapped in houses no one would buy.

If council were prepared to impose such a loss on innocent bystanders, it seemed compensation was owed.

But the point I want to raise here has to do with a different matter — the proposed public meeting. Some owners have asked to be excluded from the EDPA, and council says it will hold a town hall session next month to canvass the issue.

This seems to me a gross procedural abuse. By all means, consult voters on the broader question of whether the bylaw makes sense. By all means, seek input on whether it should be amended or dumped.

But council has no business running individual owners through what amounts to a public gauntlet. All that invites is a free for all, in which a handful of properties are taken hostage to resolve a dubious and hotly disputed policy.

Why should decisions that might cost residents huge losses be put up to auction in this manner? What special knowledge do participants in a public meeting possess that would entitle them to render judgment on such a technical matter?

There is also, in this kind of meeting, the opportunity for settling grievances and playing out personal animosities.

I appreciate it sounds antidemocratic to oppose seeking feedback. Why shouldn’t the community’s views be heard?

But we don’t have direct democracy in Canada, as they do in Switzerland, where people show up at meetings and vote on issues large and small. We have representative democracy, in which politicians decide for us.

And with good reason. Democracy is only safe as a governing principle when its weight is dispersed across the population as a whole. It becomes tyrannical when employed to hound individuals.

Put another way, we need distance when adjusting uniquely personal matters. That’s what elected governments are supposed to do — take heated issues out of heated forums and resolve them in a calmer and more orderly manner.

It seems clear what’s going on here. Saanich councillors have a hot potato on their hands. Whatever option they choose, there are going to be angry voters.

Council wants a fig leaf to hide behind, and this meeting is intended to provide it. But that’s no excuse for subjecting homeowners to a form of trial by ordeal.

Greater Victoria, with its two universities, a provincial Environment Ministry and more municipal planning departments than you can shake a stick at, has all the experts required to settle this matter.

Cancel the town hall meeting, convene a panel of specialists to offer advice, then behave like responsible politicians and make a decision.