Coalition cannot be the only voice considered
In response to “Siebring disingenuous about neighbourhood associations”, it’s worth considering who’s actually being disingenuous here.
Here’s a quote from my speech; the words I actually spoke: “I want to be clear. I’m not against community associations. They serve a valuable purpose, and they absolutely deserve a place in the discussion about community planning. But they should never be the only voice at the table. The discussion has to be broader than that.”
Here’s the point: whether the Cowichan Communities Coalition intended this or not, the impression they gave in their presentation to council back in May was that what they really wanted was the power to essentially veto development applications they don’t like. The expectation seems to be that developers would go to these community associations first, where they would seek (and hopefully get) “approval” of their designs before submitting them to staff or council at North Cowichan.
That’s absolutely not the way things work in law. The Community Charter (Section 1 (2) (b)) is very clear that councils — by law — have to consider “differing interests of their communities.” We cannot operate otherwise. And we can’t leave the consideration of those “differing interests” to an outside group to distil for us, and then make our decisions based on that distillation.
Two quick examples. Even five years after the fact, I am still hearing regularly from Chemainus residents who tell me the Chemainus Residents Association was not speaking for them on the Echo Heights file. Ditto for the controversy over Donnay Drive and the Kingsview development. I’ve heard from lots of people who say the Quamichan Lake Neighbourhood Association was not representing their views.
Which is why council cannot rely exclusively on input from the members of the CCC. Those groups simply cannot represent all of the various “differing interests of their communities.”
And that’s why council has always taken broad input on these issues; input from well beyond the scope of the community associations. And if I become mayor, that practice will continue.
Al Siebring
North Cowichan councillor
Mayoral candidate
