“If you want to run the District of Sparwood, just tell me… and don’t have a mayor and council.”
–David Wilks
Several B.C. mayors and the president of the municipalities association have joined a chorus of critics calling on the province to pause or withdraw Bill 15, legislation they say was unnecessarily rushed, developed without meaningful consultation, and over-reaching in scope.
“I think that this is a dangerous piece of legislation and steps need to be taken to stop it,” Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie said.
Similar to Bill 7, which the BC NDP government was forced to withdraw following across-the-board backlash to what critics called “authoritarian,” “offensive” and an unwarranted “power grab,” the latest hastily crafted legislation will give the premier and cabinet unilateral power to override municipal authorities and rewrite environmental regulations to push forward any projects deemed “provincially significant” for a wide-ranging myriad of reasons.
“This is a dangerous piece of legislation and steps need to be taken to stop it.”
Malcolm Brodie
“Over the past couple of years, we have seen the province changing the priorities in how they approach legislation, and in some cases, ideas that are developed at a political level have been rushed into law without appropriate and meaningful consultation with stakeholders,” Union of BC Municipalities president, Trish Mandewo, said in an interview.
“We’ve also seen that through the housing legislation, and now we see it with Bill 15.”
Mandewo and a growing number of mayors want the province to pause the Infrastructure Projects Act to give time for the province and local governments to properly consult before legislation is enacted. Municipalities have proven they can work together fast and well, she said.
“The result is [a better] outcome for everyone, including for B.C. residents.”
It’s about ‘giving the province tools’
Bill 15 proposes expediting permitting and approvals for schools, hospitals, long-term care homes, mines, First Nations, private sector and other third-party projects the province determines will create “significant economic, social or environmental benefits for people in B.C. and significantly contribute to provincial priorities such as food security, critical mineral supply, replacement of U.S. imports and disaster recovery.”
One under-reported priority of this legislation is fast-tracking First Nations-owned projects.
“There is no significant land-based project that takes place in this province that doesn’t have direct Indigenous involvement,” Premier David Eby said this week.
“There is no significant land-based project … [without] Indigenous involvement.”
David Eby
“At its core, this legislation is about giving the province tools to take greater responsibility for moving projects along when they get stuck,” said Infrastructure Minister Bowinn Ma in an interview.
“We have heard from so many local governments situations where, even though they are fully on board with a project, the bureaucracy and red tape that they themselves have to go through that is often imposed upon them by the province sometimes don’t make sense.”
One downside, according to Nanaimo Mayor Leonard Krog is “the authority to make the ultimate decisions will rest with politicians… [however] you will also have to consider the political price to be paid for the decisions you make.” Given the current geopolitical climate, Krog predicted the bill may be popular with British Columbians, at least in the short term, if it speeds up projects.
The legislation recognizes we live in a market-based capitalist economy that relies on certainty in the regulatory framework and that “there is a commonly held public sentiment out there that we are regulated to death and that nothing happens, and if it does, it takes far too long.”
In the near-term, Krog thinks this legislation will “send a signal that British Columbia wants to get on with major projects. We don’t want to be seen as a place that’s a poor place to invest.”
Down the road may be another matter.
“It may not be so politically popular if the current government ends up in Opposition, and [the next] government is using this legislation to approve projects it likes,” he observed dryly.
Panned by municipalities, first nations, environmentalists
Mandewo lauded commitments in the bill to streamline the province’s own regulatory processes to speed environmental assessments, saying there are many redundancies that could be improved.
“We are happy to see the province addressing these roadblocks on their side. Where we need them to think and to pause is on the local government side,” she said. “When the province skips over meaningful consultation, the result is unintended consequences, which create a whole new set of problems.”
For Richmond Mayor Brodie, Bill 15 represents an unwelcome intrusion, a “further overreach into the municipal realm,” and a worrisome pattern.
“It is not just that the provincial government, in its infinite wisdom, can override just about any regulation or anything that the municipal government has set in place to safeguard the interests of the city and the residents. This is part of a trend where the provincial government is reaching over, certainly over municipal governments, to an unprecedented level.”
Leadership from the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, the First Nations Assembly and the Leadership Council have also criticized the legislation for its rushed nature and what they allege is possibly unconstitutional and inadequate consultation with Indigenous nations and consideration of the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA). They have asked government to withdraw the bill completely.
Former BC Green MLA Adam Olsen calls Bill 15 “a blatant power grab by the BC NDP. It ignores Aboriginal title and rights, the Crown’s duty to consult First Nations, the minimum standards in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and guts the Environmental Assessment Act.”
Some environmental groups voiced alarm at the “undemocratic fast-tracking legislation,” asserting it will “steamroll over environmental assessments” and otherwise weaken protections for the environment.
Eby government poised to go full-steam ahead
Despite calls from many corners to reconsider, government invoked closure this week on debate of the bill and appears to be moving full-steam ahead.
Eby said on May 7 he would meet with Indigenous leaders “to articulate and explain” aspects of the bill, and the following day, during a CKNW interview on Mornings with Simi, he reasserted his government’s intention to pass the bill without any changes.
“I accept that we could have done a better job sitting down with them in advance on the bill,” Eby said in press conference prior to the meeting. But he pushed back on the allegation there was anything unconstitutional about the bill related to DRIPA, saying Indigenous rights and title are protected in Section 35 of the constitution.
“I hope we’re able to reach good resolution on this, because Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities across the province are looking for economic growth. They’re looking for schools and hospitals to be built faster, and that’s what we’re all about.”
Eby said Bill 15 will target projects like schools and hospitals “held up by things like a municipality needing to amend its official community plan before they can give us building permits” or private projects which have significant impacts on the provincial economy.
The premier was not available for comment on the mayors’ or Mandewo’s call for a pause and meaningful consultation.
When asked if government would consider pausing passage of the legislation to give time for the province to consult with municipal leaders, Infrastructure Minister Ma also sidestepped the question.
“You know what? We were grateful to be able to work with UBCM at a staff-to-staff level during the development of our legislation, [and] acknowledge certainly that this legislation has moved quickly, for sure, largely driven by the reality that British Columbians expect us to move quickly on the critical infrastructure that they need.”
“British Columbians expect us to move quickly on the critical infrastructure that they need.”
Bowinn Ma
Ma said her team offered to “bring the president of UBCM into the fold,” but Mandewo and her UBCM team declined to sign non-disclosure agreements. Once policy advances to the legislation stage, anyone who sees it is bound by law to secrecy to ensure the legislature is the first place a bill is revealed.
Madewo clarified: ministry staff reached out to inform UBCM of the legislation, but neither she nor the organization were consulted during policy development, which is the stage at which “meaningful consultation” takes place. Mandewo says she was contacted after the policy had been approved by cabinet and was being drafted into legislation.
The legislative development process has been so swift, it could pass into law before many locally elected officials are even aware of its contents.
Act that caused ‘uproar’ lives again
Aspects of the bill remind Richmond Mayor Brodie of the Significant Project Streamlining Act, brought in by the BC Liberals in 2003, which contained similar override powers to the present-day version. Brodie was on the UBCM executive at the time.
“There was a huge uproar about it,” he recalled. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that doesn’t occur again.”
Frank Leonard was mayor of Saanich and president of the municipalities union when the 2003 bill was passed. He couldn’t recall a single municipality that was in favour of it.
The government of the day said legislation was necessary to ensure that small power projects and things like the Canada Line weren’t held up by municipalities, Leonard said.
“It was all these hypotheticals that ‘Oh, local government could hold these things up,’ which really offended local government because it would override our jurisdiction.”
“Why not be partners in solving our province’s challenges?”
Frank Leonard
To this day, he doesn’t think the legislation was ever used and he had advice for today’s provincial and municipal governments: “Make sure they understand just what the motivation is. Is the legislation really what they need to accomplish it? Or can it be accomplished with some agreements with local government?
“Why not be partners in solving our province’s challenges, rather than bringing in legislation that overrides one government over another?” Leonard said.
‘Creatures of the province’
Municipalities are “creatures of the province” that “exist through legislation only,” concedes David Wilks, mayor of Sparwood, but they know their communities best and create official community plans with residents’ best interests in mind.
Two pieces of provincial legislation, the Local Government Act and the community charter provide clear direction on what councils can and can’t do within our municipalities.
“And now you’re telling us we can’t even do that,” Wilks said.
It’s fine to talk about infrastructure from the perspective of housing, commercial buildings, hospitals or long-term care facilities, but the problem isn’t building major projects, Wilks said. It’s whether the water, sewer and power systems can handle what will be built.
“Hey, I’ll take a hospital tomorrow in Sparwood, but can our wastewater treatment facility handle it? Because if it can’t, and we start dumping raw sewage into the Elk River, I know who I’m getting a call from within 24 hours,” said Wilks, calling the authority overreach in Bill 15 “scary.”
“I’ll take a hospital tomorrow in Sparwood, but can our wastewater treatment facility handle it?”
David Wilks
“If you want to run the District of Sparwood, just tell me you want to run the District of Sparwood and don’t have a mayor and council.”
Mandewo said several recent housing bills followed a similar rushed legislative development process as Bill 15, where the province skipped genuine engagement with local governments, including the encampment legislation, which the BC NDP had to effectively shelve.
She and her UBCM team shared their concerns with the Infrastructure minister and her staff and warned of unintended consequences. The response they got back was that they were in a crisis and must move fast.
Which doesn’t bode well, according to Mandewo. Shortcutting policy development and bypassing stakeholder consultation will result in poor legislation and negative repercussions.
“Transferring power to the province will not lead to better decisions,” she said.
“We all want this infrastructure – who doesn’t want schools or hospitals? So why doesn’t the province work with local governments, rather than… being heavy-handed?”