Face it: No one likes being told what to do against your will. We kick up a fuss starting as children and pretty much carry it to our graves.
And the ego of politicians, in particular, is such that they hate it when other politicians issue a command. It is especially galling when that command intrudes on what they consider their turf – and doubly so to discover that the authority over that turf actually rests with others.
It was predictable, then, that before capitulating to the BC NDP government this week on the issue of housing density, most of West Vancouver’s council had to tell us they were holding their noses in doing so.
Among the performative highlights: Coun. Linda Watt called the provincial government “authoritarian,” Mayor Mark Sager said the move “makes me ill,” and Coun. Sharon Thompson pronounced the imposed rezoning bylaw as ineffective.
With their sentiments out of their systems, they had to recognize that if they chose to make this their hill to die on, it would indeed come to be the case. Constitutional authority rests with the province – municipalities are not recognized as a separate level of government, even if many of us consider them to be. They are “creatures of the province,” with powers and responsibilities derived from provincial legislation, so it is not authoritarianism to exercise that authority on occasion. We may not like it, but it is what it is.
I first wrote about this oncoming NDP imposition in 2022, when it became obvious the David Eby government was pinning blame on many municipalities for moving too slowly in expanding their housing stock. It generally helps politically to deflect. Our council has generally been living in denial along the way, thinking that little old West Van was too small to make a difference in the province’s objective of a mass housing supply and that we’d be able to stay under the radar as it did so.
Not so.
West Van is a delicious target for class warfare, and class warfare is a staple of the NDP playbook. We are perceived by this government as privileged and entitled, opposed to change, anti-development – a community that wants time to stand still, that wants people to stay away, won’t contribute to ease the province’s housing shortage, and deserves what’s coming to it.
Eby would have been overjoyed if council would have flipped the bird this week and decided not to pass a bylaw that would permit 313 single-family lots, almost all in Ambleside and Dundarave, to now host between three and six units.
The premier needs some villains. He has realized in recent weeks that the Oct. 19 election is the political fight of his life. The BC Conservatives have come from nowhere to be within the pollsters’ margin of error, and their ascension shows no sign of an imminent plateau. More than half of the province wants change.
The Eby government’s suite of housing proposals introduced earlier this year were thought to be timed with strategic savvy – in time to make people feel something was being done, even if they didn’t yet see results. It turns out, though, that the public had already apprehended the crisis and pronounced senior governments as a large part of the problem.
The NDP has no chance to win either seat in West Vancouver, so there would have been nothing to lose locally and possibly quite a bit to gain elsewhere to make the district the housing-hostile poster child.
Eby will now need to look elsewhere for adversaries.
The Conservatives, meanwhile, will have to decide if the bylaw change in West Vancouver and elsewhere in the province is worthwhile or worth undoing. Its housing policy is still skeletal – a stable supply, a crackdown on money laundering, but not much more – and its fortunes depend in no small way on encouraging construction without discouraging communities. The NDP’s supply-shaming – its “naughty” list of places not in lockstep with its plan – has only bred antagonism on an issue that ideally would stimulate commitment instead of mere compliance.
But such are its ways, and West Vancouver wisely chose not to give Eby an opportunity.
Kirk LaPointe is a West Vancouver columnist with an extensive background in journalism. His column runs biweekly in the North Shore News and he can be reached at [email protected].
