City of Powell River Council will consider asking the province of BC to remove part of the lands surrounding the Paper Excellence Canada mill site from the designation placed on the lands when the municipality was incorporated in 1955.
Director of planning services Thomas Knight told the city’s committee of the whole at its meeting on Tuesday, June 4, that the properties, referred to under section 21 of the Powell River Incorporation Act, encompass a large area of the city.
“The exercise here today is to really go forward with the removal of a portion of those lands that are currently in the area referenced as the section 21 lands,” said Knight.
A significant portion of the lands designated “mill site” under section 21 are no longer under mill ownership.
Knight said the matter last came to city council in 2014, when council was asking for a resolution to go forward to the province in order to remove the section 21 lands from the letters patent. He said there were three reasons why that initiative did not go forward.
He said one reason was a requirement for first nations input into the process that was not done under the original submission, which was requested. Secondly was the scheduling of the legislature to adopt it and the third feature was the retirement of the local individuals responsible.
“This is now a good news piece because our chief administrative officer (CAO) has directed planning services to look into things and carry on,” said Knight.
He then outlined section 21. He said it says nothing about zoning or restricting use of the land. What it was all about was to give the mill, when the municipality was created, carte blanche for what the mill could do with its uses and activities, according to Knight.
The section 21 lands occupy a huge area, said Knight. The intention was that these lands were going to be used for the continued operation and growth of the mill at that time.
Between 2014, when the last letter was written to the provincial government, and 2019, there are a lot of changes, where approximately half of those lands are no longer owned by what was Catalyst Paper Corporation and is now Paper Excellence Canada.
“Council recently went ahead to assume responsibility and ownership for a good portion of those lands; this is great timing on the part of the CAO to be coming forward and asking us to remove it,” said Knight. “Again, it’s not about removing it to somehow allow a whole bunch more uses, but it’s going to allow the city to administer all its bylaws through a large tract of land, whether it’s zoning, noise, traffic; that’s the main aspect here.”
Councillor George Doubt said he was glad to see the matter coming forward to council. He said it was about time to deal with section 21.
Councillor Maggie Hathaway asked if in 2014, when council had made a request to the provincial government to remove land from section 21, it received a letter back from the minister asking for more information, and if action was taken on providing more information to the minister. Knight confirmed that the city received the letter and that more information was not provided to the minister.
“There we are, back again,” said Hathaway. “I just wanted to be clear.”
Doubt said one of the important parts of the letter from the minister was that there had just been a civic election, and the provincial government was asking whether the new council was actually on board with the idea of the section 21 land removal.
“Somebody could have said yes,” said Hathaway.
The committee gave consent for the matter to go to city council for consideration.
Knight framed a lengthy recommendation for council to consider, which included the fact that a portion of land in the mill-site area as defined pursuant to section 21 is no longer under ownership of the entity known as Paper Excellence Canada, and the city owns, or otherwise has possession and control of these lands with Tla’amin Nation. The recommendation further states that the city and Tla’amin would like to see these lands developed for the economic progress of the city, region and province, and that the continuous identification of these lands as part of the mill-site area has proven to be a disincentive to attract businesses and investors to utilize these lands.
The city, if council adopts the recommendation, will request amendment to section 21 of the Powell River Incorporation Act to modify the description of the proposed boundaries of the mill-site area from the current boundaries, to a revised set of boundaries that have been drawn up for the city, so those lands no longer owned nor used by Paper Excellence Canada are excluded from the mill-site area.
