Victoria OCP Public Hearing Announcement – Sept 11, 6:30 pm. How to Participate.
Update: The Rockland Neighbourhood Association presented at the public hearing for the Official Community Plan Update on September 11, 2025. The hearing took place over the course of four hearing dates, with Mayor and Councillors voting 5 to 3 to approve the new blueprint for the City and its 12 neighbourhoods.
Rockland Neighbourhood presentation text:
Times Colonist, Victoria signs off on controversial new Official Community Plan
September 11, 2025 https://pub-victoria.escribemeetings.com/Meeting.aspx?Id=72025c5f-79f4-4abb-8767-77d1996f4eef&Agenda=Merged&lang=English&Item=8&Tab=attachments
September 15, 2025 https://pub-victoria.escribemeetings.com/Meeting.aspx?Id=ce822df7-5738-4396-89f4-a0ae3b3e72a5&Agenda=Agenda&lang=English
September 18, 2025 https://pub-victoria.escribemeetings.com/Meeting.aspx?Id=d6cd6468-defb-4ed2-a820-7320b9064c6c&Agenda=Agenda&lang=English
October 02, 2025 https://pub-victoria.escribemeetings.com/Meeting.aspx?Id=647da957-ed16-4fdf-9358-cb2643df8eed&Agenda=Agenda&lang=English
The Official Community Plan (OCP) for Victoria has been updated to meet the needs of our growing population and address the housing and climate crises.
What’s Happening
On October 2, 2025 Council adopted a new Official Community Plan: Victoria 2050(External link) after a two year planning process, including a public hearing.
The updated OCP charts a course for Victoria to address current and emerging challenges while honouring and enhancing the city’s unique and historic character. The plan sets the vision and framework to balance growth with preservation and guide the City’s work, decisions and actions over the next three decades.
The changes are part of a citywide process intended to support housing solutions, climate action and complete communities that will shape Victoria through to 2050.
Thank you to everyone who participated in the engagement process. Your feedback shaped how Victoria will grow and change into the future.
To learn more about the OCP update process you can review the core materials Council considered and view past OCP Council sessions.
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Dear Neighbours,
We are forwarding to you the following information to advise you of the public hearing scheduled by the City of Victoria for September 11, 2025 on the Official Community Plan Update, starting at 6:30 pm at Victoria City Hall (1 Centennial Square).
This is a big deal! The changes proposed in the new OCP could have a profound impact on Rockland and on Victoria as a whole. We want to get as many people as possible to participate, and you have four options for doing so, ranked from most to least impactful.
1) Speak in person. Maximum speaking time of five minutes. No registration required, staff will collect names in the order that people arrive at city hall. Meeting will take place in Council Chambers at Victoria City Hall, 1 Centennial Square. Come join us!
Showing up a bit early could save you a lot of time if you don’t want to stick around for the entire thing!
2) Speak over the phone. Registration opens August 29th, email publichearings@victoria.ca with your name and phone number. Maximum speaking time of five minutes.
3) Submit a pre-recorded video (max length 5 minutes). Email your submission to publichearings@victoria.ca. Submissions must be received by 2PM on Tuesday, September 9th.
4) Submit a written comment to publichearings@victoria.ca. Submissions must be received by 2PM on Thursday, September 11th.
In preparation, we encourage you to see the links and information below.
Regards,
Rockland Neighbourhood Association and Land Use Committee
What’s Happening https://engage.victoria.ca/ocp
This July, Council provided direction to move forward with next steps to update the Official Community Plan (OCP), a long-term planning document that sets out the vision and framework for the City’s development from now to 2050. The City has prepared bylaws for final review this summer and scheduled a public hearing on Thursday, September 11, 2025, 6:30pm for you to have a final say on the OCP update.
The proposed changes are part of a citywide process that may affect all properties and neighbourhoods in Victoria.
Upcoming Public Hearing – Have Your Say
The public hearing on September 11 is your final opportunity to have your voice heard on the proposed OCP update and related zoning modernization.
About the OCP Public Hearing (link to technical docs)
The public hearing will consider replacing Victoria’s current OCP with Victoria 2050 and related bylaw updates that will modernize the City’s zoning.
Once the meeting starts, the live webcast will be available at the following link: https://www.victoria.ca/city-government/mayor-council/council-committee-meetings
What’s at Stake:
Provincial legislation calls for “small-scale multi-family housing of 3 to 4 units” on single-family and duplex lots, depending on size of property in residential areas.
The OCP increases density city-side from units to storeys, including Rockland:
- 4-storeys (light yellow)
- 6-storeys (dark yellow),
- Community villages up to 12 storeys (purple)
- Town Centres up to 18 storeys on Oak Bay Avenue (blue)
- Local villages 4-storeys (red).
- A summary of the zoning modernization changes is available on the City website at https://engage.victoria.ca/ocp.
Includes:
- Reduced setbacks, generally at 4m (front), 1.5m (sides), and 6-8m (backyard).
- Reduced Open Lot Space from 45% to 30%
- Landscape area at 6% of Lot Area
- Block perimeter housing city-wide
What Makes Rockland Unique?
About Rockland
- Rockland is the home for 66% tenants. Vulnerable seniors, and low-income households, are concentrated along the transit corridors and Priority Growth residential zones (Fort Street and Oak Bay Avenue, blue and dark yellow areas). Over 75 percent of residents live in multi-unit buildings.
- Rockland has a long history of converting historic homes into multi-plexes, subdivided into apartments that are environmentally sensitive to increasing density while preserving the neighbourhood’s large tree canopy for urban forest animals.
Affordability and Tenancy Policy Recommendations
- Upzoning can result in demovictions. We support the Victoria Tenants Union request to consider a right of first refusal that guarantees displaced tenants an opportunity to return to a unit in the new building with the same number of bedrooms, at their original rent (with standard rent increases), and compensation throughout the displacement period. Unlike Burnaby, Victoria’s current tenant protections, in comparison offer much less compensation.
About Rockland
- Rockland is notable for a concentration of converted historic homes that have been subdivided into apartments and multiplexes for tenancy with heritage architecture, natural areas and landscapes that have aesthetic, historic, and cultural importance. These heritage multiplexes stand alongside BC tourism attractions such as Government House, The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Langham Court Theatre, and Craigdarroch Castle and are a draw for tourism businesses that provide walking tours, running tours, cycling tours, and bus tours and who rely on this public amenity throughout the year.
Heritage Conservation Areas (HCAs) Policy Recommendations:
- Heritage conserving infill as a use is permitted across most of the City, but would only be relevant where a building has heritage value and is considered appropriate for designation. HCAs are limited to the defined areas as shown in the OCP map of HCAs, so only a small portion of Rockland would be covered by HCA requirements. We ask City staff to review the significance of Rockland’s converted historic homes, landscapes, and urban forest to provide a report on coverage by HCA requirements
About Rockland and City-wide
- 75% of the urban forest, which is the Garry oak ecosystem (GOE), exists on private property and is of significant cultural heritage to the Lekwungen people.
- Rockland is epicenter of the urban forest in the City of Victoria: home to many indigenous species that rely on the GOE, for example, Great Horned owl and Cooper’s hawk.
- There has been no mapping and analysis of the overall GOE or individual Garry oak trees on private property City-wide in over 20 years.
- The new land use class scheme was determined without a City-wide biodiversity assessment on private property, presenting an obstacle to stewardship and conservation.
- The tree canopy targets for Priority Growth residential zones (dark yellow) are only 25%, compared to 50% for Residential Infill zones (light yellow). This represents an inequity, for example, greater flood and associated property damage risk and an increased risk of heat-related illness for residents in the Priority Growth residential zone.
- Section 488(1) of the Local Government Act: Form & Character Development Permit Areas (DPAs) for all new housing: Include requirements for a) protecting the natural environment, its ecosystem and biological diversity. However, the General Urban Design guidelines were crafted by the construction industry in the absence of an Indigenous land manager, or licensed ecologists, biologists or foresters.
- Tree Protection Bylaw (21-035) has not been updated since Bill 44, and the Draft OCP, and cannot provide physical protection for existing trees when trees are located within a proposed building envelope.
Urban Forest Policy Recommendations
- To measure progress toward canopy targets, publicize LiDAR vegetation change detection metrics for Zoning Modernization Areas, neighbourhoods, and City-wide, each 4-year period that LiDAR vegetation surveys are updated. Adopt a City-wide Garry oak species detection as part of ongoing urban forest remote sensing updates.
- To ensure that Tree Reserve Funds collected from developments are applied where they are most needed, create an Urban Forest Technical Advisory group with representation from community enviro, non-profit orgs, ecologists, biologists, and urban forestry experts including representatives specialized in urban arboriculture and Garry oak ecosystems. The group will analyze government and third-party data, for example, urban forest remote and report their recommendations to Parks Urban Forestry.
- Large tree species, climate adaptation and public health; a 6 m backyard setback provides limited opportunity to retain existing off property trees near the property line, as well as on property trees outside of the building envelope, and substantially limits soil volume and above ground growing space for large at maturity replacement trees, and makes the “Minimum Required Trees Per Lot” excessively difficult to achieve when spacing requirements in the Tree Protection Bylaw (21-035) are applied, therefore, increase all setbacks by a minimum of 2m for Landscape area/Plantable space (i.e., soil area for planting a large species of tree) in the Priority Growth and Residential Infill Zoning Areas.