Comox Valley 2026 Municipal Election series, Post 2 of 10

Not long ago I was walking a client through an ordinary Courtenay lot, one older house, a deep backyard, a couple of fruit trees, when they asked what they could actually do with it. A few years ago the answer was simple: not much. It was zoned for a single home.

This spring the answer became up to four homes, permitted outright, with no rezoning or public hearing needed.

The same lot on the same street, but the rules governing it had changed. Courtenay council adopted the new zoning, but the decision to allow that density had already been made by the province.

That probably won’t headline many candidate forums this fall, but it shapes what any of them can actually deliver. When a candidate promises to protect a neighbourhood, speed up building, or slow it down, the first question is whether that call still belongs to council at all. Before the arguments about height, growth and neighbourhood character, there’s a prior one: who actually gets to make these decisions anymore, the council you elect or the government in Victoria?

For the past few years, local councils have been absorbing housing decisions made for them. Some see that as overdue provincial action on a shortage councils weren’t solving fast enough. Others see Victoria taking decisions away from the people elected to make them. The election question is what candidates think council can still control, and what they’ll do with that authority.

What the province actually did

In late 2023, the province passed Bill 44, the Housing Statutes (Residential Development) Amendment Act. It changed several things that matter here.

First, it requires municipalities to permit Small-Scale Multi-Unit Housing (SSMUH) on land that used to allow only a single house or duplex. Depending on lot size, servicing and the community, that can mean three or four units where one was previously the rule. Secondary suites and garden suites are allowed much more broadly. I’ve already written an explainer on what the new SSMUH zoning means on a typical Comox Valley lot, so I won’t repeat the mechanics here.

Second, a lot of this new density is now permitted outright. If a project meets the standards already written into the zoning bylaw, it doesn’t need a rezoning, so there’s no rezoning application for council to vote on and no public hearing for neighbours to attend. That was deliberate. The province saw rezoning hearings and other local approvals as barriers to building housing quickly. It moved decisions that used to happen around a council table into provincial law and zoning bylaws.

Third, Victoria put municipalities on a schedule. Local governments had deadlines to rewrite zoning bylaws and update their Official Community Plans (OCPs), including housing needs assessments, to account for substantially more growth.

Courtenay created a new R-SSMUH zone that now applies to roughly 5,648 properties. Comox adopted its own small-scale multi-family zoning in June 2024 and rezoned most of its residential lots.

Cumberland is the interesting exception. With its population still below 5,000 at the relevant census, the Village wasn’t initially caught by the three- and four-unit requirement. But it’s growing quickly and expects to cross that threshold, so rather than wait, it moved ahead. Its new 2026 zoning bylaw allows up to four units in much of the R-1 Infill Residential zone and up to three in R-2 areas where infrastructure limits density. Courtenay and Comox were responding to a provincial requirement; Cumberland chose to move the same way before it had to, which is itself a local decision about local control.

Then came the target

Rezoning was the first layer. The province has also started telling some municipalities how many homes it expects them to produce.

On August 18, 2025, the province issued Courtenay a Housing Target Order under the Housing Supply Act, requiring 1,334 net new housing units between September 1, 2025 and August 31, 2030. The province uses its own methodology, and says that number represents 75 per cent of its calculated minimum five-year housing need for the city. It’s separate from Courtenay’s own Housing Needs Report, which estimated demand at 2,472 units by 2026. The order sets milestones along the way, and the city now reports its progress at regular intervals.

Victoria can set a target for new homes. It doesn’t lay the sewer pipe, widen the road or process the building permit, and provincial funding doesn’t necessarily cover the infrastructure bill that comes with growth. Courtenay didn’t refuse the target; it asked the province to match its expectations with the funding and infrastructure needed to reach them.

What council still controls

Bill 44 didn’t eliminate municipal government from housing. It narrowed the range of decisions councils can make in some areas while leaving them considerable authority in others.

Councils still decide infrastructure, municipal budgets, Development Cost Charges, many development permits, roads, parks, servicing priorities, and how staff and resources are allocated. Official Community Plans still shape where growth goes and what communities are supposed to look like as they grow, even though those plans now operate inside a much tighter provincial framework.

And councils still decide how they respond politically to Victoria and Ottawa. They can embrace the provincial direction and look for ways to make new housing easier to build. They can comply with what’s required while using the authority they retain to move more cautiously. They can lobby the province for money, exemptions or policy changes. They can pursue funding programs that require further reforms, or decide the conditions attached go further than they’re prepared to go. Cumberland moving ahead of its population trigger is one version of that choice; a council that does the bare minimum required is another.

Candidates should be able to tell voters which approach they’d take.

The money lever

If mandates are how Victoria requires change, funding is how both Victoria and Ottawa encourage it, usually with conditions attached. It also brings a third government into a story that started as province versus local.

Ottawa’s Housing Accelerator Fund, a federal program run by CMHC, tied federal money to municipal commitments to change planning rules, speed approvals and increase supply. The money doesn’t simply arrive when a foundation goes in. A local government signs an agreement with targets and policy commitments, then reports its progress each year, with the funding tied to those commitments.

That money has already landed here. In February 2024 the Town of Comox signed an agreement worth about $5.2 million, one of the largest grants in its history, committing to a target of 801 permitted units by the end of 2026 along with reforms to its development approvals, parking rules and zoning. Courtenay endorsed its own action plan in August 2023, with seven proposed initiatives ranging from an affordable housing reserve fund to an accessory-dwelling-unit strategy, and came back with a second-round application in September 2024. Cumberland applied too, though I haven’t found evidence it ultimately received an agreement. Each of those was a local choice about what a council would commit to in order to unlock federal money.

The province is putting money in too. Its one-time Growing Communities Fund, part of $1 billion shared across B.C. in 2023, sent about $7.6 million to Courtenay and several million more to Comox, Cumberland and the Comox Valley Regional District for the growth-driven infrastructure this all depends on. More recently, Courtenay, Comox and Cumberland each received $200,000 through the Local Government Development Approvals Program to help speed up approvals.

So the next council isn’t making housing decisions in a vacuum. Victoria can require some changes outright, and both Ottawa and Victoria can tie funding to others. For a small municipality staring at expensive sewer, water and transportation upgrades, a decision about housing policy can also become a decision about whether to accept the funding attached to it.

Even so, the next council faces decisions the province hasn’t made for it. How far ahead of growth should Courtenay build water and sewer capacity? How much of that cost should fall on existing taxpayers, and how much on new development through Development Cost Charges and other fees? How aggressively should the city pursue provincial and federal funding? And when that money comes with conditions, how much local planning control should council be prepared to trade for it?

Those decisions eventually show up on a property-tax bill, in development costs, and in how quickly housing actually gets built.

Is any of this new?

The override itself isn’t new. Municipalities are creatures of the province, holding only the authority Victoria delegates to them, and the province has reached into local land use before. The Agricultural Land Reserve did it in 1973, when the province froze farmland across B.C. and took those decisions away from local councils, over loud objections at the time.

What’s changed is the direction. In the past, the province used that authority to limit development. This time, it’s using the same authority to require more of it. The other change is the money attached to housing reform, which is why housing policy and the municipal budget have become harder to pull apart.

Listen closely to the promises

Candidates will knock on doors this fall promising to protect neighbourhood character, speed up housing, rein in development, or build more of it. Before you decide whether you agree, ask whether they actually have the authority to do what they’re promising.

A candidate promising to restore public hearings where provincial law now prohibits them has a problem. So does one promising thousands of new homes without explaining the infrastructure to service them.

Candidates need to show they understand which powers remain municipal. So when one comes to your door this fall, ask some version of this:

The province has already changed some of the zoning rules and set housing targets. What housing decisions does council still control, and what will you do with them?

From there, the follow-ups almost ask themselves. If they want more housing, how will they get it built? If they want slower growth, which municipal powers would they use? If they think the province has gone too far, what would they ask Victoria to change? If they back the targets, how would they pay for the infrastructure to meet them? When funding comes with conditions, how far would they change local policy to get it? And when neighbours object to a project that no longer needs a rezoning or hearing, what role should council play?

Those answers tell you more than whether someone says they’re “for housing.” A candidate doesn’t need to agree with Bill 44, or support every project, to have a good answer. But they should understand where their authority starts and stops, and where senior-government funding complicates that line.

This fall, candidates won’t just be campaigning on what they want to do. They’ll be campaigning inside rules someone else has already written.

Next in the series: How Big, How Tall, How Fast? The density fight behind the Comox and Courtenay Official Community Plans.