General

🐿️ One of the most significant local discussions this spring centred on the Quadra-McKenzie Plan in Saanich. The Songhees Nation highlighted the importance of viewing growth through the lens of ecosystem health and cultural landscapes, emphasizing that Garry oak ecosystems are part of a living cultural landscape rather than simply vacant land awaiting development. The discussion has helped broaden public understanding of the relationship between Indigenous stewardship and biodiversity.

The Quadra McKenzie Plan (QMP) in Saanich is scheduled for a public hearing on Tuesday, June 16, 2026. The plan proposes significant growth over the next 20 years, concentrating housing and mixed-use development along the Quadra-McKenzie corridor and key transit routes. Its ambitious growth targets are largely driven by provincial housing mandates, illustrating how provincial requirements (Bill 44) are shaping the process more than local area planning.

A significant issue attached to the public hearing agenda is a letter from the Songhees Nation, which formally requests that Saanich postpone adoption of the plan until meaningful consultation can occur regarding Garry oak ecosystems, qʷɫaʔəl (camas) food systems, cumulative development impacts, and long-term stewardship planning.

The May 22 letter states:

“The Quadra McKenzie Plan fails to adequately recognize lək̓ʷəŋən Aboriginal Rights and does not provide meaningful protection for the qʷɫaʔəl food system from ongoing development pressures. The proposed land use framework continues patterns of fragmentation and loss affecting a critically endangered ecosystem that is integral to Songhees Nation’s constitutionally protected rights and cultural practices.”

The Songhees Nation specifically asks Council to:

1. Postpone adoption of the Quadra McKenzie Plan pending meaningful consultation with
Songhees Nation regarding Garry Oak ecosystem analysis, cumulative impacts, and longterm
stewardship planning;

2. Include clear Garry Oak and qʷɫaʔəl food system stewardship goals within the QMP,
supported by measurable targets and accountability mechanisms recognizing these
ecosystems as integral to Songhees Nation’s Indigenous rights and cultural continuity; and

3. Develop and implement a responsive management framework outlining mitigation,
restoration, and stewardship measures where ecosystem thresholds or stewardship goals
are not met due to development pressures.

The Songhees position goes beyond individual tree protection. It argues that Garry oak ecosystems and camas food systems should be recognized as interconnected cultural landscapes and living food systems rather than collections of isolated trees, and that this extends to the entire ecosystem that supports plants, pollinators, birds, animals, insects, and the cultural practices connected to them.

Their letter describes these systems as being tied to Aboriginal rights, stewardship responsibilities, food sovereignty, medicines, teachings, and the intergenerational transmission of knowledge. They are “not simply ecological features” but living cultural artifacts.

Saanich staff responded that the QMP is a high-level planning document and that issues such as cumulative effects assessment, ecosystem thresholds, restoration priorities, and long-term stewardship are better addressed through future implementation plans and related municipal initiatives.

The staff memo repeatedly suggests that these concerns can be addressed later through:

• Biodiversity Conservation Strategy implementation
• Urban Forest Strategy implementation
• Agriculture and Food Security Plan updates
• Future monitoring and reporting
• Future stewardship initiatives

rather than through amendments to the QMP itself.

Saanich staff are aware that Bill 44 significantly limits municipal authority to protect trees and environmental features that fall within a permitted building envelope on private property. 

The problem is that up to 75% of the urban forest exists on private property, where redevelopment is occurring. As redevelopment intensifies, existing soil volumes, mature trees, and ecological functions are removed, while reduced setbacks leave increasingly limited opportunities for meaningful replacement planting. You’ve seen the results already – nothing but a larger building, more concrete features, and some smaller, non-native trees and grasses that can’t support nesting birds, or much else.

Saanich staff responded by discussing future reviews of development tools, integration of ecological objectives into parks and public spaces, monitoring programs, tree retention and planting on public lands, and outreach and educational support for stewardship on private lands.

Yet this raises an obvious question: who actually requires the outreach and education?

Most residents (minus the urbanists) already understand that mature trees, healthy soils, and connected ecosystems provide benefits for biodiversity, climate resilience, cooling, stormwater management, and quality of life. The larger challenge is that municipalities are being required to implement provincial housing legislation that unlocks private land for redevelopment while simultaneously reducing their ability to protect environmental features within development sites.

Bill 44 effectively prioritizes housing development within permitted building envelopes, limiting municipal authority to retain trees, soils, and ecological functions on many private properties. Since up to 75% of the urban forest exists on private land, it is these redevelopment decisions—not public park management—that will largely determine the future of urban biodiversity and canopy cover.

The Songhees Nation is asking Saanich to pause and first determine ecosystem thresholds, cumulative impacts, stewardship goals, and consultation frameworks before approving a growth plan that will guide development for decades.

Saanich’s response is that the growth framework should proceed now, while those details are addressed through other policies and implementation processes later.

The unanswered question is what happens after dozens—or hundreds—of redevelopment projects.

What is the cumulative ecological loss? What ecosystem thresholds exist? At what point is ecological connectivity broken? At what point does restoration become impossible?

Songhees Nation Letter to Saanich Council Regarding QMP and Saanich Staff Response to Songhees Nation Letter on Quadra McKenzie Plan

Times Colonist, Opinion
February 3, 2026
Ryan Senechal
https://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/comment-garry-oak-ecosystem-is-under-great-threat-in-saanich-11824300

The dominant species in this area is Garry oak, and casual observations confirm that ­dozens of other species that ­co-evolved with this tree species are also present.

A commentary by a Saanich resident.

Buried on page 135 of Saanich’s Quadra-McKenzie Plan are clues of what is in store for present and future residents of Saanich.

Two words that can better connect our imaginations to this place, quicker than just about any other term in the plan, have been relegated to the ­Quadra-McKenzie Plan’s g­lossary: Garry oak.

If you’ve ever navigated the Quadra and McKenzie area, you’ll know you can wander in any direction and ­encounter truly unique ­woodlands and ­individual Garry oak trees blended into the built ­environment.

The dominant species in this area is Garry oak, and casual observations confirm that ­dozens of other species that ­co-evolved with this tree species are also present.

The critically endangered remnants of the kwetlal or Garry oak ecosystem exist in the Quadra and McKenzie area today in large part because of lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ ­stewardship.

In the 2010s, as pressure to bypass development ­practices that preserve trees and ­ecosystems intensified, Saanich residents could count on the ­consistent public support of Dean Murdock, then councillor, for the Garry oak ecosystem.

When Murdock was ­challenged in 2015 by residents pointing to flaws in Saanich’s bylaws associated with ­sensitive ecosystems, he shared, “I’m ­supportive of the intent [of the Environmental Development Permit Area].”

He provided further ­comments, noting, “It’s really designed to be a protective tool, so that in the event of a change in land use, redevelopment or rezoning, we’re protecting those areas.”

As Murdock, now the mayor, nears the end of his term, his philosophy on Garry oak ecosystems appears to have inverted.

The flawed maps implemented as the evidence-based instrument for implementing the EDPA bylaw still echo across the province today as a ­cautionary tale of environmental policy failure.

The scandal that emerged frustratingly exacerbated ­perceptions that ecosystems and urban development are ­oppositional forces.
What followed the collapse of the EDPA was five years of ­technical review panels and ­multiple environmental ­consulting contracts.

After it was proposed by Coun. Zac de Vries, council endorsed the 3-30-300 urban forestry principle, which mandates that every citizen sees at least three trees from their home, that there is 30 per cent urban forest canopy in every land-use designation area and every home is no more than 300 metres from a high-quality green space.

In 2022, there was a last-minute tree-planting election ­campaign promise by Murdock. His comments in the Times ­Colonist that November committed to planting “100,000 trees by 2032 on public lands, boulevards and private properties.”

Saanich Parks, which has no authority to plant trees on ­private land and has received no funding to support increased public tree-planting capacity, is on track to achieve this goal 30 years late.

Murdock’s progress on this particular objective is ­similarly vexing as council’s meddling with its own 3-30-300 ­commitments.

After receiving widespread praise for its early adoption of the principle, the Urban Forest Strategy will strive to achieve the 30 per cent canopy threshold in 2064, with one caveat: Saanich Core has been removed from the primary growth land use ­­designation area.

Whether 3-30-300 champion de Vries takes issue with this creative canopy-commitment workaround is ultimately moot. Saanich has no pathway to achieving canopy targets if they continue to defer funding and delay implementing the ­biodiversity and urban forest strategy recommendations.

Saanich is developing a new tree protection bylaw using urban forest canopy analysis that is nearly seven years old. This is a feature of council opting out of Urban Forest Strategy recommendations to update canopy analysis “at least every five years,” and prevents the ability for comparison with the 2019 canopy baseline.

This is important information to inform how current policies around land use development, climate change and the effectiveness of management approaches are working.

Upgraded canopy analysis would improve decision makers’ understanding of how the Quadra-McKenzie Plan is likely to alter existing canopy, and what management and policy interventions are necessary for urban forestry stewardship.

The voting majority of council, choosing to defer strategic plan recommendations, including updating the canopy analysis, and rushing to implement the Quadra McKenzie Plan, is not taking its responsibility as the steward of this critically endangered ecosystem seriously.

Accountability can be restored, but replacing the kwetlal food system/Garry oak ecosystem after it is removed, council and senior staff cannot.