Metro Vancouver should reconsider its regional growth strategy (RGS) to address business concerns in the wake of recent dismissals and retirements from key regional planning jobs.
So say RGS critics.
“Now is the time to look at the regional growth strategy again and go back and listen to what the community was saying,” said Maureen Enser, who retires at the end of June after 30 years at the helm of the Urban Development Institute.
Business groups opposed the RGS because it saddled municipalities with a more cumbersome process for changing regional context statements and rezoning industrial land.
“We’re all saying ‘How do we make housing and business more affordable?’ Then we add more regulation and regulatory control through the RGS,” Enser said. “Let’s take a look at creating a system of approvals that’s streamlined.”
She said Metro Vancouver and its predecessor, the Greater Vancouver Regional District, had, through the decades, been very consultative with the business community when drafting regional plans.
“That didn’t happen so much this time with the RGS.”
Enser is not the only baby boomer retiring from a high profile job. Metro Vancouver’s former chief administrative officer Johnny Carline retired in February after being influential in getting 24 signatories to approve the regional plan. Since the 20 municipal councils, various regional districts and the Tsawwassen First Nation approved the RGS last fall, several high-profile planners have been dismissed in different organizations, including:
•the City of Vancouver firing director of planning Brent Toderian;
•Metro Vancouver firing its division manager for regional development, Christina DeMarco; and
•TransLink terminating its executive vice-president of policy and planning, Michael Shiffer, and its manager of transportation and land use, Greg Yeomans.
An April memo from TransLink CEO Ian Jarvis described TransLink’s cuts as being part of a significant restructuring.
But Metro Vancouver’s acting chief administrative officer Delia Laglagaron said her organization is not undergoing a full-scale restructuring that would necessitate further cuts. She stressed that now is not the time to reopen the RGS.
“It took a long time to get there,” she said. “I don’t think there will be any appetite to reopen it.”
Laglagaron declined to discuss DeMarco’s departure.
But former Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan said the dismissals will have a significant impact on regional planning. “I learned my passion for industrial lands from Christina [DeMarco],” he said. “She was one of the people who really influenced me.”
It remains unclear who will fill the vacancies. Longtime UDI senior policy adviser Jeff Fisher will be the organization’s acting executive director, but he’s not vying to be a permanent replacement. Instead, UDI’s global search for a new leader has been pared down to a short list of a few names, and an announcement is expected within the next month to disclose who will be Enser’s replacement.Metro Vancouver has yet to name a permanent replacement for Carline. And while Kent Munro is Vancouver’s acting director of planning, the city continues to have a job posting for the position on its website. •
