Protect our Official Community Plan
Do we want this…
QLNA stock photos of views from Maple Bay Rd, across Quamichan Lake on the left, and view from Mt. Richards on the right
What is the Official Community Plan and what does it do?
Adopted in August, 2022, by a 5 to 1 vote of Council, the Official Community Plan (OCP) guides future decisions on land use, and on key municipal services and amenities such as roads, parks and the natural environment. The OCP is a product of three years of work by the municipality and hundreds of residents informed by numerous studies, surveys, workshops and public hearings all of which helped to capture our community’s vision and values. The OCP is grounded in the requirements of the Local Government Act. One of the most important results of the OCP process was to redefine the Urban Containment Boundary (UCB), a line that directs growth more efficiently into urban area while keeping it away from farmland and rural areas.
Why is the OCP important?
▪ Provides certainty by establishing clear rules that regular people and developers alike must follow, saving time and money for them as well as for the municipality.
▪ Concentrates growth within the UCB which:
▪ Helps to retain our rural character and stunning natural beauty
▪ Preserves agricultural lands to ensure sustainable food sources and security
▪ Preserves watersheds, shorelines, lakes and rivers; protects wildlife habitat and migration corridors; protects sensitive ecosystems and promotes biodiversity
▪ Avoids building in areas that are potentially unsafe, such as on steep, unstable slopes or at the interface of wildfire zones, making emergency access and evacuations challenging
▪ Reduces traffic and air pollution by concentrating new construction in or near developed neighbourhoods and close to transit.
▪ Avoids sprawl and saves the public’s tax dollars by:
▪ Not extending costly infrastructure (water, sewer, roads etc.) to more remote areas.
▪ Enabling the municipality to use existing infrastructure in a concentrated, cohesive way.
No More OCP Amendments!
OCP amendments create exceptions to this well-constructed plan and weaken the integrity of our OCP, essentially invalidating our Vision and Goals and creating increasing uncertainty about the future direction of our community. Since the adoption of the OCP, there have been a number of OCP amendment applications by developers/land owners applying to the MNC to convert rural lands outside the UCB into subdivisions – exactly the opposite of smart growth for all the reasons given above.
Each OCP amendment costs up to $30,000 to process and up to 100 hours of staff time – then has to be brought before Council for consideration with the required public input. The amendment process delays approvals of other development applications by land owners and developers playing by the rules – again, exactly the opposite of what the OCP set out to do!
Why is preserving the OCP more important now, more than ever?
The pressure to develop land in North Cowichan has never been greater. But there is plentiful land to develop within the Urban Containment Boundary as set out in the OCP, and no reason to seek to develop rural land outside it. As a matter of fact, there’s enough land within the UCB to accommodate more than three times our projected housing needs over the next 20 years.
It can be more profitable for a developer to buy rural land, which is cheaper per acre than land inside the UCB, and apply for an OCP amendment to allow a dense development. Recent votes at Council have been almost always in favor of an OCP amendment. We have a choice when an OCP amendment is proposed for an upcoming council meeting: Do nothing, and enable sprawl and densification outside the UCB, permanently ruining our rural landscapes, forests and farm land? Or speak out to protect the qualities that define this beautiful valley for generations to come?
We are at a crossroads. The Municipal Election is coming up in the fall of 2026. If you care about preserving our community’ vision for our future, vote for the OCP in 2026.
…Or this:
Photo from Vesta Properties web of site proposed vision for Kingsview development on Mt. Tzouhalem
