Whereas significant local government development projects may require approvals from one or more provincial ministry before they can proceed; And whereas provincial approval can be granted in many different forms, including Water Sustainability Act Section 11 Change Approvals, provincial water lot leases, and approval of certain municipal bylaws; And whereas delays in receiving provincial approvals add cost and uncertainty for all involved in development projects: Therefore be it resolved that UBCM urge the provincial government to review its permitting processes that relate to local government development and infrastructure projects and investigate opportunities to streamline those processes to reduce delays, provide more certainty for communities and developers, and minimize cost overruns.
Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development The Province continues to review and adjudicate applications under the Land Act, Water Sustainability Act WSA and Riparian Areas Protection Regulation RAPR as quickly as possible. Review times for provincial regulatory approvals are contingent on a number of factors, including: - Overall volume of applications received; - Technical compliance of materials received under professional reliance models; - Interactions between provincial regulations e.g., RAPR and WSA; and, - First Nations engagement and consultation. As local governments have also noted, the increased pace, value and complexity of development projects have created significant pressures on review. As such, the province is addressing process delays through the allocation of additional resources. Additional staff resources are being hired and trained to deliver more timely decisions. The provincial Budget 2021 provided a 3.805 million permanent budget lift to increase capacity to process land and water use authorizations. The funding is intended to address the growing backlog of tenure applications, renewals and rent reviews to use provincial public land and water in three regions: West Coast, Lower Mainland, and Thompson Okanagan. The province has also implemented several iterative WSA process improvements, including a new triage process to identify high priority works and initiation of early First Nations consultation on all files with sufficient project information. The Province is taking additional steps to support timely review, including: - Development and publication of revised technical guidance to improve application quality; - Outreach to professional associations to strengthen RAPRs professional reliance model; - Ongoing internal coordination between work units to streamline process; and, - Providing centralized support for review of bylaw content implementing RAPR standards. As a result of these new resources being deployed and implementation of significant process changes in 2020 and 2021, the WSA backlog for approvals for works in and about a stream is being eliminated in the South Coast. New application review times are dependent on the quality and completeness of the applications, including any preliminary work possible with First Nations. A number of submissions continue to be put on hold at the triage or review stage due to incomplete project details; there are also instances where requested andor required information is not provided in a timely manner. The ministry has provided regular and consistent messaging to municipalities and developers stating that application processing is facilitated by ensuring applications contain all required project information and applications are submitted well in advance of proposed start dates. Ministry staff continue to foster an open and collaborative working relationship with local government staff.