The province has directed the districts of Oak Bay and West Vancouver to speed up changes in their housing-approval processes in hopes of getting more housing built faster
But Oak Bay Mayor Kevin Murdoch said the steps the province wants the district to take were already underway.
Murdoch said the province had its staff go through the district’s bylaws and processes and decided to require Oak Bay to delegate more decisions to staff, something the district was already in the process of doing.
“They’ve essentially bypassed [council’s] consideration of what we would consider to be minor. But it was work underway that our staff and external consultants have already done,” he said. “They just had provincial staff duplicate that.
“I don’t personally understand why the province is choosing this allocation of resources, but they are, and so that’s really their call.”
The directives require Oak Bay to amend its development application procedures bylaw to delegate minor variances to municipal staff by the end of this year. They had previously been given until the end of January 2026 to do so.
Oak Bay is also required to amend its parking facilities bylaw for multi-unit residential buildings to require a minimum of one parking stall per unit. The bylaw currently requires a minimum of two parking stalls per unit.
While the mayor maintains that the work on delegating to staff was underway, the parking requirements were expected to be included in the district’s update of the Official Community Plan that should be complete before the end of the year.
Oak Bay is also required to provide updates on its work updating its Official Community Plan, and amending its Building and Plumbing Bylaw in relation to blasting activities.
The directives come after the province appointed independent advisers to review the lack of progress on housing construction in Oak Bay. Those advisers reported back this year saying the district had made “reasonable efforts” to meet housing targets.
Two years ago, Oak Bay was included in a list of 10 municipalities that would be required to hit targets on new home construction.
The district managed to deliver only 16 of 56 net-new units target in its first year.
The District of West Vancouver, which delivered 58 of its 220 first-year housing targets, has been directed to amend its Official Community Plan bylaw to increase density in some areas. It must also include in future progress reports the type of development applications and number of housing units considered and rejected.
Oak Bay initially argued provincially appointed advisers were unnecessary, as it had already implemented all provincially required policy changes, while it noted the district had a number of development proposals in stream.
Murdoch said that is still true.
“Everybody’s still feeling out how to work with the new changes from the province, but I think generally speaking we’re seeing positive signs,” he said. “There’s certainly been some significant uptick in some of the small-scale multi-unit housing, and we’ll see what happens as we go through the OCP review.”
When the housing targets were first announced, the province suggested municipalities hitting their targets would be more likely to get funding for amenities, while communities that didn’t meet them, or failed to show enough progress, could face provincial intervention.
