Victoria City Council Decisions
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In October 2025, Victoria Council adopted a new Official Community Plan: were residents given adequate opportunity to take part?
Estimated time: 5 minutes (5 questions)
In October 2025, Council adopted Victoria 2050, the City’s new Official Community Plan.
An Official Community Plan, or OCP, guides how a city grows over the long term. It establishes what may be built, where development may occur, and the general height and density permitted. Victoria 2050 replaced the plan adopted in 2012 and will guide development decisions for decades. Among other changes, it permits four-storey housing throughout residential neighbourhoods and buildings of up to six storeys in designated priority growth areas.
This survey asks about the process used to adopt the plan, not whether the plan itself should have been approved.
The previous Victoria Council approved a phased planning process in 2021, under which neighbourhood plans would be updated individually before the citywide OCP was completed.
In May 2023, Council considered whether to continue that approach or move instead to an accelerated, citywide OCP update. The discussion centered on the benefits of completing one consistent plan for the entire city more quickly, weighed against the loss of the more detailed neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood process.
Council voted 7 to 2 to proceed with the accelerated approach, with a target of completing the OCP by mid-2025. The decision also redirected $500,000 that had been intended for the Victoria Housing Reserve, which helps non-market housing projects proceed, to fund the OCP work instead.
Councillors Chris Coleman and Marg Gardiner voted against the accelerated approach. Councillor Stephen Hammond supported it at that stage, although he later voted against the final plan.
Later in 2023, the Province imposed a deadline on municipalities to update their OCPs and zoning bylaws by the end of 2025.
The same provincial legislation also changed the role of public hearings. Municipalities may no longer hold a public hearing for a housing rezoning that is consistent with their OCP. Instead, the Province’s approach is that public participation should occur primarily during the OCP development.
This made the Victoria 2050 process particularly important. For future housing rezonings that comply with the plan, public hearings will not be held when individual projects are considered.
The City conducted public engagement prior to the OCP’s completion, including open houses, pop-up events, community meetings, a public survey, email submissions and in-person discussions. The City reported thousands of in-person interactions and hundreds of emails. Approximately 1,450 people completed the survey, which represents a relatively small share of Victoria’s population, although other forms of engagement reached additional residents.
The completed plan then went to a statutory public hearing held over four evenings: September 11, September 15, September 18 and October 2, 2025.
Residents expressed a range of views. Some urged Council to adopt the plan, while others asked Council to pause, amend or reject it. The hearing record included 31 recorded audio and video submissions and 550 questions submitted to City staff.
Supporters of the process argued that the City had conducted several years of engagement and had received sufficient public input to proceed.
Critics argued that engagement had occurred while the plan was still being developed and that residents had not been allowed a separate consultation period after the completed draft was released. They maintained that this was especially important because public hearings would no longer be held for many future housing rezonings that complied with the plan. Many speakers asked Council to pause and revise the plan before voting.
On October 2, 2025, the same evening the statutory public hearing concluded, Council gave Victoria 2050 third reading and adopted it by a vote of 5 to 3.
Councillor Matt Dell was absent.
Vote record will be shown after survey completion.
Primary sources: OCP 10-Year Update Approach and Timeline staff reports, April and May 2023 • Committee of the Whole and Council Minutes, May 11, 2023 • Special Council Minutes and meeting video, October 2, 2025 • Council Minutes, September 11, 2025 • Special Council Minutes, September 15, 2025 • Meeting video, September 18, 2025 • Province of BC, local government planning and land use guidance
This survey is a summary only. We encourage you to follow the links provided in the survey for a more comprehensive understanding of the issue and any voting history.
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