A community plan we can rely on.

A vocal and persistent group seeking to influence Council’s view of a small part of Colwood’s town centre has helped prompt Council to direct the Planning Department to study changes to the OCP, including a Gentle Infill Strategy for their area within Colwood Corners.

Colwood’s Official Community Plan was created through a citywide public process. Residents were given notice and opportunities to participate. Professional planners did the work. Taxpayers paid for it. Council adopted the result.

So should a relatively small number of objections raised later be able to drive changes to a plan that was created for the whole city?

People who were comfortable with the adopted OCP should not have to repeatedly come back to Council just to say, “I still support the plan you already adopted.”

If the broader growth framework is going to change, that decision should involve the broader community again — not be driven only by the people who happen to object most strongly after the fact.

That is a question of fairness. And it is a question of whether the planning process is truly democratic.

Is this democratic?

Colwood already decided where major growth should go

Colwood Corners was deliberately identified as one of the city’s primary growth centres, where greater residential and commercial density would be concentrated.

The purpose was to give the community a clear framework: more growth in some areas, more gradual change in others.

Residents could choose where to live knowing what was planned around them. Businesses could decide where to locate and invest based on the growth the City said was expected.

That certainty is one of the main reasons an Official Community Plan exists.

View Colwood's OCP

Growth doesn’t disappear - It moves

If less growth is accommodated in Colwood Corners, Colwood’s need for housing and population growth does not disappear.

That growth still has to go somewhere.

Changing the balance could mean more pressure on townhouses, multi-unit housing, or other forms of additional density in neighbourhoods that were expecting considerably less change.

That is why this is not simply a Colwood Corners issue.

Where Colwood puts its growth can ultimately affect what happens around your home, on your street and in your neighbourhood.

Council can study a Gentle Infill Strategy for the future. But studying a possible new approach does not, by itself, change the OCP. Until the OCP is formally changed, the plan already in force should continue to guide decisions.

Add your voice

Most residents do not spend their evenings attending every Council meeting or writing letters simply to say, “I still agree with the plan.”

They should not have to.

Once a citywide planning process has been completed and the OCP adopted, people should be able to reasonably rely on it unless and until it is formally changed.

Public concerns and input should be heard and given due consideration. However, they should not be used to determine or constrain the property’s appropriate zoning.

Rather, site-specific concerns should, where appropriate, be addressed through the development permit process, in which design, form, landscaping, access, and other development details can be properly evaluated and accommodated.

A citywide plan should not have to be defended one neighbourhood at a time.