Saanich bylaw was flawed
Avote by Saanich councillors reflected the divisions in the municipality over an environmental-protection bylaw that sparked a campaign by homeowners. At a public hearing on Saturday, councillors voted 5-4 to scrap the Environmental Development Permit Area bylaw. The EDPA was passed in 2012, with the laudable intention of protecting sensitive areas such as the dwindling Garry oak meadows, but it was flawed.
About 2,200 single-family properties were affected by a system that owners said was unfair, oppressive and based on faulty evidence. Defenders said it was a progressive and much-needed law to protect threatened areas.
It took a while for owners to begin running into the roadblocks that the bylaw set up. Then the horror stories began to pile up, as some people discovered they couldn’t build fences or make other seemingly innocuous changes to their properties.
As the reach of the bylaw became clear, owners said their property values were dropping, because potential buyers didn’t want land that was frozen.
Opponents said the aerial mapping used to determine the sensitive areas was inaccurate and not backed up by inspections on the ground. Those who hired independent consultants to assess their property, as the bylaw allowed, said the municipality dismissed the consultants’ findings.
Citizens have to know that the laws governing them are fairly applied, are not unduly restrictive, are based on accurate information and have effective avenues of appeal. With serious doubts on all four of those points, outrage was inevitable.
Council ordered a study by Diamond Head Consulting and held public meetings to try to fix the problem without trashing the bylaw, but by Saturday’s public hearing it was clear that half measures wouldn’t be enough. So many people wanted to take part that the district rented gym of the Pearkes Recreation Centre to hold the crowd. About 50 people spoke.
When it was decision time, Mayor Richard Atwell and councillors Karen Harper, Susan Brice, Leif Wergeland and Fred Haynes voted to rescind the bylaw. Councillors Dean Murdock, Colin Plant, Judy Brownoff and Vicki Sanders voted to keep it.
“It had lofty goals, but it has had unintended consequences and it lost social licence with the public,” Atwell said.
It’s a bitter outcome for those in the community who worked for 10 years to get the bylaw written and passed, and who defended it when the backlash began.
Where opponent Martin Ward said the bylaw represents an “evangelical environmentalism” that “appears to bully and cajole residents,” bylaw supporter Ben Kerr said council’s decision is “not based on objective reasoning; it’s based on who is yelling the loudest.”
Although councillors voted 6-3 to have staff report on developing a biodioversity strategy, replacing the EDPA is likely to be more difficult than writing the original. Residents will be more vigilant and more critical of any overreach in a new policy.
Difficult as it might be, council must not let the matter drop. Since Europeans came to the Island, development has changed its face and continues to threaten fragile ecosystems.
The EDPA was a poorly executed attempt to reach an important goal. The goal is still worth striving for.