A 353-page report dumped days before going to Council ensures citizens won’t know what the City has in store for them.
VANCOUVER (Dec. 9, 2024) -- TEAM for a Livable Vancouver is challenging City Council to halt its surreptitious Broadway Plan process and instead begin informing and consulting citizens about the transformation of their city.
TEAM’s call for transparency is in response to last week’s release of a complicated, jargon-filled 350-page staff report on Broadway Plan changes, only days before it comes to Council. The first 300 pages were released Dec. 4, another 53 on Dec. 5, and the report goes to City Council Dec. 11 for consideration and approval.
The size of the report, the short timeframe to respond, and the pre-holiday season timing guarantees that citizens will remain uninformed and unengaged about plans to double down on a plan that is already causing significant problems. The amendments end restrictions on the number of towers that can be built on many blocks, allow significantly higher towers in many areas and exceed provincial density requirements around transit hubs.
Even before the amendments, about-to-be-demovicted tenants are complaining about failures in what former mayor Kennedy Stewart promised would be the strongest renter protections in Canada. And residents of long-established low-rise neighbourhoods are shocked at proposals for 20-storey high-rises that will destroy the look and feel of their communities.
TEAM takes the opposite approach to the ABC-majority City Council’s secretive strategy. TEAM’s policies, available on its website, include: “Improving transparency by publishing all materials that relate to public proceedings - such as staff briefings to Council - at least one month prior to any discussion by Council, and ensuring that residents, businesses, and local groups are notified of their availability so they have time for analysis and reflection back to Council."
This isn’t the only time City Council has hidden major changes by rushing them through when voters’ attention was elsewhere. It gutted the city’s view cones on July 10, 2024, during the summer holiday period. It approved multiplexes – which then-OneCity Councillor Christine Boyle called “the biggest land change in decades” on Sept. 14, 2023, just as most people were returning to school and work.
It’s a long-established pattern by councils trying to slip through controversial approvals with the least public attention. The previous council approved the Broadway Plan in June of 2022 and the Vancouver Plan in July of 2022, just when residents were heading off for summer holidays.
However, there are signs of public backlash over the latest version of the Broadway Plan. Petitions opposing it now have thousands of signatures, a Pause the Plan rally on Nov. 23 drew an estimated 500 people, and more than 150 attended a Dec. 8 information webinar about the Plan’s impacts. Filmmaker David Fine is creating a documentary about the effects of the Plan on ordinary Vancouverites; a trailer shown at the webinar drew wows from the crowd.
It’s time for Vancouver City Council to start listening to citizens instead of hiding their future from them.