Reacting to alarms raised by staff, White Rock council is formally opposing a provincial bill that would take away municipalities’ powers of technical review of development projects.
Bill M 216 (also known as the Professional Reliance Act), a bid to streamline the development approval process, would force local governments to accept technical submissions certified by provincially regulated professionals, rather than local oversight, with only limited exceptions.
But staff are concerned that, as well as eroding local authority, the bill could actually pose a risk to public safety and the environment.
A corporate report co-signed by city planning and development services director Anne Berry, engineering and municipal operations director Jim Gordon, planning and development deputy and chief building official Wayne Berg and fire chief Brad Davie outlined multiple concerns.
“Eliminating municipal technical review could lead to failures in slope stability, drainage systems, infrastructure integrity, particularly in environmentally sensitive areas like White Rock’s waterfront and hillside neighborhoods,” the report states.
At Monday’s meeting (Dec. 1), council voted unanimously to support a staff recommendation to send a letter to the province, to Surrey-White Rock MLA Trevor Halford and the Union of B.C. Municipalities, stating the city’s opposition to the bill.
Sounding the alarm loudly at the meeting was Berry, who noted the private member’s bill was introduced at the end of October but already received second reading in the legislature on Nov. 17.
She also noted concerns about accountability and liability in case of building failures, as well as the bill’s disregard for the 2018 Professional Reliance Review, which has emphasized the need for oversight and accountability safeguards.
“Staff only learned about the bill in the beginning of November,” Berry said, adding that the original deadline for comment was set for Dec. 2 but has been extended to the beginning of January.
“The intent of the bill… is to streamline development approvals and reduce administrative costs, as related to the housing supply,” she said.
“It will require municipalities to accept submissions by provincially regulated professionals as meeting permit and bylaw requirements – sort of a ‘no-questions-asked’ kind of approach.”
“There is also a prohibition on peer review – sometimes we get these reports and need a little extra expertise to review them,” she added, noting that the legislation would only allow limited peer reviews at the discretion of a provincial superintendent.
While the legislation would keep zoning authority, design guidelines and policy decisions with local governments, the absence of technical review authority could have serious impacts, she said.
“Areas that would be affected in White Rock can include building permit processing, development permit processing where we require geotechnical reports and environmental reports, fire and emergency services, engineering-related applications, even tree permits, because of the registered professional requirement for a tree permit application.”
From a liability standpoint, while provincially regulated professionals are required to have insurance, Berry said the question is whether they would have “enough insurance” to cover significant building failures.
Berry also said staff have concerns about how effective the measure would be in actually speeding up the supply of housing.
“The big thing is the liability,” Mayor Megan Knight commented.
“The province keeps wanting to shove thees things through to try to get housing built, and it doesn’t seem like they have the foresight to (say) the City of White Rock is a little different from the City of Langley, or whatever.”
Liability would be limited for individual consultants in a worst-case scenario, she said – they would just go out of business if something went wrong.
She suggested the letter from the city should include asking that the province “safeguards the city from liability falling back on us, and also have these professionals pay into a fund, like a reserve fund, because something – a real catastrophe – could happen and it all falls back on us.
“Just rubber stamping things to get more housing built – it’s just not right,” she said.
Coun. Christopher Trevelyan said that while a case has been made for using developers’ own professionals’ opinions to streamline the process, the province should be willing to cover all insurance costs for any problems that result from taking ultimate oversight away from municipalities.
“If they want to encourage building, great, step up and cover the price tab,” he said.
“The province continues to download stuff on municipalities,” Coun. Anthony Manning added.
“They’re really deflecting the blame from themselves for a lot of the housing shortage. You can’t ‘cookie-cutter’ to lower housing costs,” he continued.
“We have some pretty unique features in our city, and to have something approved by someone who may not be familiar with certain aspects is not right. I wonder where this is going to end.”
“It won’t,” responded Knight.