Questions of how qathet Regional District will deal with cannabis legalization when it has no teeth in its bylaws to govern growing has reinforced the notion that the area remains the wild west.
At a regional district planning department meeting on July 17, a re-designation of a property on Padgett Road was proposed, which required an amendment to the regional district Electoral Area B Official Community Plan (OCP) from low-density residential to commercial.
The applicant’s purpose is to build a cannabis grow-op on the property, according to regional district manager of planning services Laura Roddan.
The committee did not approve the proposal, with regional district directors Patrick Brabazon (Electoral Area A) and Colin Palmer (Electoral AreaC) voting against and Sandy McCormick (Electoral AreaE) and Al Rebane (Electoral AreaB) casting their votes in favour. A tie defeats the recommendation from proceeding further.
The issue for the regional district is that it has no power to enforce any rules.
“Until we get some enforcement this kind of thing will go on,” said Brabazon.
But until there are rules, there is nothing to enforce, and whatever bylaws exist do not govern cannabis growing.
“They were adopted when cannabis production was illegal so that's really the issue,” said Roddan. “There's nothing in our bylaws that either allows for cannabis production or prohibits cannabis production, so we don't have any policies to guide those decisions at this point.”
Roddan said the applicant is still building commercial storage units in addition to the commercial cannabis production facility and has Health Canada approval. In addition, she said the applicant had met all of the criteria for new commercial development proposals.
Vancouver Coastal Health confirmed satisfaction with water and septic servicing for the subject property, which is located in close proximity to other commercial businesses. BC Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure confirmed satisfaction with proposed road access.
As for the regional district’s disapproval, Brabazon said the report did not meet the designation of commercial use in Electoral Area B’s OCP. He said he found it incredibly frustrating that the district has failed to come up with a zoning bylaw to regulate land use, a building bylaw to regulate construction and a licensing authority to regulate business.
“Someday we’re going to wake up and do something but right now, in all my time here, we’ve refused to go down that route,” said Brabazon.
The applicant originally asked for the re-designation to build storage units. Then, midway through the process, “he bluntly told us he wants to establish an industrial grow-op for marijuana,” said Brabazon.
During the public hearing on the matter, seven people spoke out of a total population of approximately 1,000 residents. Four speakers specifically addressed the re-designation and three had concerns with the proposed commercial use being a cannabis grow-op and the negative impact of the smell.
“If our OCP is to mean anything then the words have to mean what they say,” said Brabazon. We have to stand by that and the fact that, yes, we could turn down the re-designation and he could go in there and put in a pig farm, and we can’t do anything about it.”
