North Cowichan Council made the right decision last night when, by a 4-3 margin, it decided to uphold the principles of the municipality’s new Official Community Plan.
But the tenor of the debate left me feeling we’re not yet at the point where we can say it made this crucial decision for all the right reasons.
Municipal politics have never been more complex or important than they are today, and the 2022 update of our OCP is a case in point. As a document that will guide decision-making for the next decade or so it will have to be read and re-read for its full reach and implications to be appreciated.
It speaks to environmental issues from a global-to-local perspective; provides guidance on essentially humanitarian issues like homelessness; looks to sustainability and stability by focusing on a ‘regenerative economy’.
If you wanted to design a course in principled decision-making, it would make a pretty good syllabus. Perhaps the day will come when historians look at documents like our OCP and say, ‘It was ahead of its time.’ Hopefully the survivors of the environmental and social degradations we are now witnessing won’t end up saying, ‘It was too late in coming.’
Councillor Bruce Findlay, whose motion to offer a two-year ‘amnesty’ to property owners whose land was removed from the municipality’s Urban Containment Boundaries, said he was acting on behalf of the people who elected him.
That’s old school any way you look at it. The election’s over, councillors are now tasked with thinking and acting on behalf of all the citizens of North Cowichan, and (here’s the rub) to do that job properly in the 21st Century they have to place their decision-making in a global, humanitarian context.
I voted for a council that takes all that into consideration when it approves zoning, influences community policing, builds a road.
Note: I am a board member of the Chemainus Residents Association, and attended the Feb. 1, 2023 meeting of North Cowichan Council from that perspective.