Dear Editor,
I MUST respond to Bud Long’s letter to the editor of June 19th. My letter of June 12th was written from a professional planner’s perspective. It did not advocate for implementation of the Official Community Plan (OCP) “in an extreme form”. Where did Mr. Long get that notion?
An OCP’s implementation is guided by the Municipal Act. The OCP is a legal document. The OCP can be amended through public process and bylaw. While the OCP is not “a holy scripture” (but thanks Mr. Long for the accolade!!) and, since it has been developed through extensive community dialogue (please see Section 1.1.1 of the OCP for details), it is an OCP with considerable public input and support. As I have said many times, including my June 12th letter, our OCP, which was an Update of the 1994 OCP, was one of the most thorough OCP Update processes undertaken in British Columbia.
Mr. Long would do well to thank his fellow citizens for their time and input to the creation of this significant document. He is welcome to disagree but he should not ignore history or rewrite it. Healthy disagreement is a good thing, but when it is cloaked in conspiracy theory, it is not helpful.
After all of the input and opportunity for the community to help frame the OCP, Mr. Long suggests that the OCP should have been submitted to a referendum. Sorry, the intent of the legislated process, which sets out required steps for OCP development and adoption, is intended to avoid OCP by referendum. I have never heard of an OCP going to referendum. In fact, I suggest that the provincial government would frown on such an idea. Because the Council of the day did not hold a referendum, Mr. Long states “that is a strong indication that the council (of the day) feared the proposed OCP would be rejected.” As an independent professional planner who is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Planners, I state categorically (again!) that Bowen’s OCP is a very clear, forward looking, comprehensive and well written document and I can confirm that it had widespread support (not total of course, as Mr. Long demonstrates).
While I do believe that the bylaws Mr. Long references, attached inappropriately to the OCP at the time, were excessive and poorly written, they are not part of the OCP (and should never have been) and should not now be part of the existing OCP conversation. They are simply a ‘red herring’.
Mr. Long also takes issue with my statement in reference to the docks at Cape Roger that “private ownership does not trump public good.” As a professional planner, I stand by that statement and reference Canadian law (with its British roots) that confirms, (unlike the United States where private property rights are enshrined in the constitution) that the public good is a key driver in Canadian land use law. Mr. Long goes on to suggest that my statement somehow condones “property confiscation” and leads to “public larceny.” Again, Mr. Long, we have legal processes in place that set out how the ‘taking’ must be a legitimate public need.
My lesson from living on Bowen for 23 years is this: we need to do more celebrating of diversity of opinion, more creating and promoting respectful dialogue and more honouring the work of our volunteers, while agreeing to disagree but in a collegial way. And, we need to ensure we apply our OCP fairly and comprehensively as guided by the requirements of the Local Government Act. It is our Official Community Plan in name and law.
Sincerely
Dave Witty PhD, MRAIC, FCIP, RPP
