Two West Shore mayors are asking Saanich council to mind its own business, after Saanich staff made a recommendation that could derail an unprecedented land swap.
Saanich planners are recommending the municipality’s councillors reject an amendment to the regional growth strategy that is necessary for a land swap between Langford, Metchosin and the Beecher Bay First Nation to go through.
“A Saanich elected official should have no say in what happens 20 kilometres away,” Langford Mayor Stew Young said. “This thing is so bloody ridiculous. … It’s just more evidence that the regional governance system and growth strategy do not work.”
The land swap would involve adjusting the boundary between Langford and Metchosin. Beecher Bay would transfer to Metchosin three parcels of Crown land, totalling 250 acres, that are being offered to the band as part of a treaty package. The parcels would be protected as green space.
In return, Beecher Bay would receive partial ownership in a proposed business park on land currently straddling the Langford and Metchosin border. The boundary adjustment would place 367 acres of Metchosin lands within Langford, including all the land for the business park. Being within Langford boundaries would allow access to sewer services not available in Metchosin.
The boundary adjustment needs approval from other municipalities because it requires expansion of the regional urban containment and servicing policy area — where urban growth is supposed to be contained — under the regional growth strategy.
The Capital Regional District board unanimously supported the creation of a bylaw to do so on Nov. 9. Each municipality must respond by Jan. 9, or its support will be assumed.
In their report, Saanich planners said the boundary adjustment would represent a “significant” change, adding land almost the size of Mount Douglas Park to the urban containment area.
“Land would be added at the periphery of the existing regional urban containment boundary, in a location that is not in close proximity to any existing major growth centre or major transportation infrastructure,” the report said, noting that limited transit service is available in the area. The project fails to manage growth, encouraging urban sprawl and creating a growth centre on the fringe of the urban containment area, it said.
Young said the report shows Saanich staff’s lack of familiarity with the area, where the Westshore Parkway is under construction. And he said the word “periphery” fails to recognize Langford’s core as a major growth centre.
Turning down the proposal would be a hit for economic development and traffic in the region, Young said. The proposed business park would create an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 jobs, balancing residential development on the West Shore.
“They’re just talking about land use, but you have to look at the bigger picture,” he said. “If you have land use that doesn’t involve jobs for the people living there, you end up creating suburban communities that are job killers.
“If this is how regional growth is implemented in our region, it obviously isn’t going to work.”
Metchosin Mayor John Ranns said the project has the same goal as the Saanich planners: creating compact communities.
Adjusting the boundary would allow economic development to be confined to the urban containment area. If the deal falls through, however, Beecher Bay’s parcels would stay within Metchosin, outside the urban containment area. First Nations land is not subject to the regional growth strategy, he said, and Beecher Bay would be free to develop.
“We don’t want density spread out through our entire community. We want to keep it within the urban containment boundary,” Ranns said. “If you put a high-density development in the middle of our community with no taxation authority, it would pretty well finish our community. I wonder if the Saanich planners would like the same thing to happen to theirs.”
