Letter regarding Official Community Plan Review
Detailed correspondence critique of the OCP project, capacity assessments, and public consultation methods.
On March 18, 2025 I sent a letter to council regarding the OCP project. Among the issues I identified in that letter were the lack of an OCP capacity assessment and the uninformed nature of the public consultations.
Yesterday, May 5, a memorandum from Urban Systems regarding the OCP Review and Update – Housing Capacity Analysis and Land Use Scenarios was added to the agenda for the OCP Advisory Committee meeting of May 5.
The Urban Systems memorandum is a report that details a partial evaluation of capacity for development in the current OCP. The report identifies that the current OCP has sufficient capacity for development for at least 29 years, the span from 2021 to 2050. This timeline goes significantly beyond the provincially mandated 20-year capacity horizon.
It is unfortunate that this assessment was not conducted earlier, it could have prevented the wasted public engagement that I detailed in my March 18 letter. Given this new information, it is now clear that, not only were the public poorly informed prior to consultation but the authors of the consultation material were also uninformed.
The community growth consultations had a clear focus on increasing the areas of Neighbourhood Centres and Community Corridors as well as increasing the allowable height. Now, given the capacity study, there is clearly no need for increasing those areas to add more capacity. However, the What We Heard Report in the May 5 committee agenda provides a very favourable set of responses to open ended questions about “expanding” density areas. To call the results absurd is an understatement; they are predictable responses to questions with no context and no explanation of what “expand” means.
The following examples are provided to demonstrate the low reliability of the outcomes when consultation is designed and conducted without adequate knowledge. This is from the 2025 Community Growth Survey, What We Heard Report:
The survey certainly solicited responses that are very favourable to expanding the Neighbourhood Centres. The problem is that in 2022 View Royal already demonstrated that there is little chance of successfully expanding these areas. Why has this project regressed to the point where lessons learned two years ago are now forgotten?
The expanded Hospital Neighbourhood Centre as shown two years ago. The proposed expansion takes in Galloping Goose and Trans Canada Highway and Hospital lands. None of that will be developed. The 2025 survey made no mention that this entire blob falls within the newly legislated Transit Oriented Area where 10 and six story buildings must be allowed by law.
The expansion of the Six Mile blob does include some private land that could be developed on the north side of the E&N. It also covers an area of recently developed residential lots as well as a large part of the Trans Canada Highway and the CRD Water Services land.
The Lakeside Village Neighbourhood Centre from 2011 has all been recently built out. This area has nowhere to expand, but the blob was redrawn to include the Six Mile Road right-of-way and the back yards of the recently built homes across the road.
Finally, we come to Burnside Neighbourhood Centre. In 2025 the public is still being asked if this blob should be expanded or if the buildings should be taller. Two years ago, the proposed OCP change was to remove this from the list of near future development because it is already recently completely built out. This was known in 2022 but now in 2025 the town has forgotten their own work and, once again, tried to solicit public support for further densification in this built out area.
Many other examples could be shown but I am not sure that anyone is paying any attention to these issues. My question to the council is: How can you proceed with a project that is so determined to repeat the actions that caused the failure of the last OCP update?