This commentary by a North Saanich resident originally appeared in the Times Colonist on July 29, 2026.
North Saanich is being told to reshape itself to meet housing numbers the province has never convincingly shown belong here.
The headline number — 419 net new homes by July 2029 — can sound harmless, even desirable. More homes must be good, surely.
But that number is helping drive pressure for major changes to North Saanich’s planning framework, including expansion of the regional urban growth boundary. Before that happens, the province should be able to answer a very basic question:
Why 419?
That is the first problem.
The 419-unit target is 75 per cent of a Provincial Housing Needs Estimate for North Saanich. The Housing Target Order confirms the number and the 75 per cent factor, but the municipality-specific calculation showing exactly how the underlying estimate was built has not been made public.
The separate Housing Needs Report requires North Saanich to plan for 2,493 additional units over 20 years.
But that number is not a simple forecast of local population growth, either.
It combines projected household growth with extreme housing need, a share of regional homelessness, estimated suppressed household formation, rental-vacancy adjustment and additional housing demand.
Those may all be legitimate matters to study.
But adding them together does not prove that North Saanich is the appropriate place for every resulting unit.
That brings us to the second problem.
North Saanich is entirely outside the Capital Regional District’s urban containment area.
The Regional Growth Strategy exists precisely because regional growth is not supposed to be spread evenly everywhere. Its statutory purpose includes avoiding urban sprawl, using infrastructure efficiently, protecting agricultural and environmentally sensitive lands, and providing appropriate housing.
Yet the standardized provincial housing methodology partly pulls North Saanich’s projected growth toward the growth rate of the CRD as a whole.
In practical terms, a rural municipality outside the urban growth area is being treated much like a municipality expected to participate normally in metropolitan growth.
What appears to be missing is the obvious next step: adjust the result for the fact that the regional plan deliberately says most of that growth should occur somewhere else.
That is not a technical footnote. It is the whole point of regional planning.
But adding them together does not prove that North Saanich is the appropriate place for every resulting unit.
That brings us to the second problem.
North Saanich is entirely outside the Capital Regional District’s urban containment area.
The Regional Growth Strategy exists precisely because regional growth is not supposed to be spread evenly everywhere. Its statutory purpose includes avoiding urban sprawl, using infrastructure efficiently, protecting agricultural and environmentally sensitive lands, and providing appropriate housing.
Yet the standardized provincial housing methodology partly pulls North Saanich’s projected growth toward the growth rate of the CRD as a whole.
In practical terms, a rural municipality outside the urban growth area is being treated much like a municipality expected to participate normally in metropolitan growth.
What appears to be missing is the obvious next step: adjust the result for the fact that the regional plan deliberately says most of that growth should occur somewhere else.
That is not a technical footnote. It is the whole point of regional planning.
The third problem is more troubling still. The planning process is being run backward.
The Housing Supply Act says the minister must consider the Regional Growth Strategy when setting a municipal housing target.
The sensible sequence is therefore: Determine housing need, examine the community’s Official Community Plan and Regional Growth Strategy, consider infrastructure and regional priorities, then establish an appropriate local target.
Instead, North Saanich received a standardized target first.
When that target proved difficult to achieve under the existing planning framework, the province appointed an adviser to identify barriers to meeting it. The province is consulting on measures intended to increase housing supply after North Saanich completed 12 of its first-year target of 60 units.
The danger is obvious: Set the number first, then push aside whatever planning principles stand in its way.
Regional plans can change. Housing targets can change, too. If the two conflict, both deserve reassessment.
It is not reasonable to assume automatically that the target is correct and the regional plan must yield.
There is also a fourth question: affordability.
North Saanich and the Saanich Peninsula are highly desirable places with expensive land and a buyer pool extending far beyond existing residents.
Rezoning can increase development opportunity, but the municipality cannot force private owners to build, decide when construction will occur, or determine what market housing will sell for.
In this area, market housing will not be affordable, but the adviser report is silent on that topic. Wouldn’t housing affordability be a central theme?
More zoning capacity is not the same as more homes. More homes are not necessarily affordable homes.
So what exactly does success look like?
If 419 expensive market homes are completed but housing remains unaffordable to the people whose needs justified the intervention, has the policy succeeded?
North Saanich is not asking to be excused from growth.
It is asking for something more basic: a housing target whose arithmetic can be explained, whose regional allocation makes sense, and whose promised housing benefits can be demonstrated.
Before changing the regional plan to fit the target, the province should first prove that the target fits the region.
Springfield Harrison
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