Transcript: Special Meeting of Council - 27 Jul 2026

Okay. Good evening everyone. This is a special [clears throat] meeting of council Monday, July 27, 2026. Called to order at 5:00 precisely. [clears throat] We look to councelor Deatista for territorial acknowledgement. Thank you, chair. We wish to recognize and acknowledge the Wasanic people on whose traditional territory we live, we learn, and we do our work. Thank you very much. Um, look to introduction late items. I assume there are no light late items. I [clears throat] see none. I look for approval of the agenda with no late items. Sorry, [clears throat] I'm losing my voice. Council me seconded. Council Marshall. Um, questions, comments? None. Those in favor? Unanimous.

So now we'll go into item five which is the public participation period and as we have some guests here tonight I'll just go through the rules of procedure. Persons wishing to address council must state the name and m municipality of residents for identification and also the topic involved. Questions [clears throat] and comments must be on topics which are not normally dealt with by the municipal staff as a matter of routine. Uh questions and comments must be addressed through the chair and answers given likewise. Debates with or questions of individual council members will not be allowed. No commitments shall be made by the chair in replying to a question. Matters which may require action of the council shall be referred to a future meeting of the council and the speaker um must use respectful language and refrain from making offensive gestures and signs and is limited to speaking for 3 minutes or less and as authorized by the chair to speak for a longer period of time. A total of 20 minutes will be allotted for public participation period unless extended by a vote of council.

So the first person please come forward. Thank you. Is that uh working? Good evening uh mayor and council. Uh my name is Peter Chandler. I'm a resident of North Sanage and also the chair of the North Sanage Agriculture and Food Advisory Committee. Uh tonight I'd like to to address agenda item number five, which is public participation. Six weeks ago at the June 15th in camera meeting, a concern was raised with sufficient urgency to require an immediate shutdown of the volunteer advisory committees. It [snorts] was publicly announced. council believed that the behavior of members of the committees could amount to a breach of the code of conduct.

Understandably, the chairs of these advisory committees have diligently sought to resolve this issue by corresponding with the CEO, with mayor and counsel, speaking up at public participation periods, and offering to meet in person. Yet six weeks later, the fundamental questions remain unanswered by the district, including what was the source of information that triggered the shutdown of the advisory committees? What was the issue? And is it still a continuing concern? Why did the district publicly accu publicly accuse all 21 member community volunteers of improper behavior? And what is the expected timeline of this process? Are the advisory committees essentially disbanded? All of these questions have been asked previously, but none have been answered.

Surprisingly, at the July 13th council meeting, the mayor introduced a verbal aid item that declared that members of the advisory committees that were also on working groups, the harvest hub, the tree bylaw, the seniors bylaw, were no longer under suspension. This motion seemingly acknowledged that there was no misconduct by 12 of the 21 volunteers, but only because they were also on a working group. A commitment was made by the district to undertake their review as expeditiously as possible. However, tonight will be the third inc camera meeting since the decision to close the committees and the only public comment made by the district so far about these volunteers seems entirely unrelated to their concerns of misconduct.

As previously stated, we these the chairs, we look forward to resolving this issue as soon as possible and again offered to meet in person and further in the interest of an expedited process, I will gladly meet with council under section 91-2-B of the community charter that allows persons other than council and staff to attend an inc camera meeting. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Greg Warner and I live in North Sanage. I would like to comment on item 6 A2 of the agenda. This item indicates that a device has been received that is subject to solicitor client privilege. This item is purposely vague for legal reasons and I understand fully the reason for that. What is curious to me is that on the June 15th meeting, another vaguely worded announcement, council publicly placed 21 volunteer members of the three advisory committees under unnecessary public scrutiny in defiance of very clear privacy guidelines that council has established for itself. Without first informing the committee members, council suspended meetings of the three committees and public publicly announced it has directed staff to conduct a review of the behavior of com of committee members for a possible breach of the district's code of conduct.

I am aware as previously mention mentioned that that chairs of three suspended committees submitted an email on July 6 requesting an apology from the council and that committees be reinstated. The letter was sent to staff through the appropriate channels as directed by staff at the council meeting of June 29th. Having received only a tur response from staff regarding the letter of June July 6th, the letter was submitted to mayor and council on July 16th. The mayor acknowledged receipt of the letter on July 20th. The matter was apparently to be discussed at an upcoming inc camera meeting. Reading in the recap of the meeting of July 13th, it states that working groups restored. Council voted to end the suspension of the harvest hub tree bylaw and seniors working group.

These groups will resume operations and report through their respective count council liaison. In doing a quick count, the working groups include 12 committee members. Does it mean that the 12 members are no longer under investigation for possible breach of code of conduct? Does that mean that there are still nine committee members under the cloud of suspicion? How long will this go on? There is an alarming recurring pattern of vagueness, lack of transparency, disregard for due process and privacy in applying the municipality's code of conduct. It is long overdue for council to clear that cloud of suspicion. If there is clear evidence of a material code of conduct breach, council and staff must adhere to the code of conduct with respect to due process and privacy privacy forth with.

This brings me back to item 6 A2 of the agenda. Since council has already announced publicly that there is a a legal issue relating to the committees, I respectfully request that if item 6 A2 is in relation to that legal issue, please disclose this publicly so that committee members and the public are aware that this issue is being dealt with in a timely manner. I respectfully respectfully submit that it is overdue for the cloud of suspicion over all committee members to be lifted. Thank you. Now, mayor and council, uh, staff, and my fellow residents, thanks for making time for me here tonight on the agenda.

And I'd like to beg of you to give me five and a half minutes instead of the three, if that's if you could uh do that. I' I've whittleled this down as much as I can. And that's that's where it ended up. Uh, good evening. My name is Spring Harrison. live on Forest Park Drive and I'd like to comment on the provincial housing targets and the municipality's upcoming response to the housing minister. Uh these remarks summarize the points made in the two reports submitted to you last week, I think, by myself and Mr. Warner. Uh North Sandwich is being required to complete 419 net new homes by July 2029 and a plan for 2493 additional homes over 20 years. Those numbers are often presented as though they were straightforward forecasts of local population growth, but they are not. Uh, so a deep dive into the OCP, the plumbing of the housing targets, the regional growth strategy, the advisory report, and the minister's letter does raise a few red flags. So number one, impartial advice. There is evidence of housing industry corporate influence

over the process. The Urban Development Institute is on record in a substantial amount of FOI material and lobbyist registry records as having made many visits to the ministry and offered uh extensive recommendations regarding housing policy legislation. The CPRE is a very large commercial real estate firm and is a large supplier of property management services to the province. One of the CBRE directors is also a director of the UDI. None of this is to suggest impropriety may exist, but there certainly is the appearance that vested interests may have a close relationship with the ministry. The lack of transparency into disclosing these relationships is very concerning. So, number two, the regional growth strategy.

The housing supply act requires the minister to consider the RGS when setting North Sanage's housing targets. Yet the public record does not explain how the 419 unit target was reconciled with the RGS. In fact, historical urban growth rates were incorporated into the six-part formula referenced below completely ignoring the location ignoring the location of North Sash as outside the urban containment boundary. So, as we know, the RGS is very clear that no more than 5% of regional growth in the CRD should occur outside the UCB. Number three, cart before the RGS. The lack of consideration of the RGS in forming the targets has has now produced a backwards result. Rather than be guided by the RGS as required by the legislation in calculating targets, the RGS was ignored. Then the CB suggested that the RGS/UBC UCB is an impediment that should be set aside. This completely reverses the proper planning sequence and completely undermines its credibility.

Uh number four, target calculations. The provincial targets are calculated by combining four or five different components in addition to what appears to be an inflated projection of household growth. These may all be legitimate matters to study, but adding them together does not establish that the result is a plausible indicator of housing need or that North Sinage itself is the appropriate place for every resulting unit. That question should have been answered through reference to the RGS as is required by the housing supply act. [snorts] And number five, comparison with historical growth. It is informative to compare the proposed housing targets with conventional estimates of growth in the municipality. So, when comparing household growth projections provided by the CRD and BC stats to the growth figures used by the ministry, the 5-year and 20-year targets exceed the growth projections by between 183% and 1,014%.

The [snorts] average is 569%. These numbers hardly seem plausible and come with very little documentation. Affordability. Additionally, nowhere is there any regard for affordability in the proposed housing documentation. A serious housing target policy should consider housing supply, housing need, and housing affordability. None of this means that North San should avoid growth. The municipality has accommodated substantial housing development, often in excess of the 5% maximum, and should continue to accept a fair and defensible share of regional need. But fair share requires a transparent allocation method. Regional demand cannot simply be spread toward every municipality at the regional average when the regional plan deliberately assigns different roles to different areas. [clears throat] So for these reasons and others, the housing targets and the order to achieve them are indefensible.

As the province has not provided a valid starting point for any discussion, negotiation of the housing targets or the urban containment boundary are not options. I and many others strongly recommend that the municipality make these points with the minister and insist that the CBR CBRE advisory report and the minister's letter be paused and reassessed. Thanks very much. Thank you. [clears throat] Anyone else wish