A residential community on the east coast of Vancouver Island is vowing to continue its lengthy battle for self-governance after two neighbouring municipalities declined the opportunity to incorporate the area into their boundaries.
French Creek, B.C., is a growing neighbourhood nestled between Qualicum Beach and Parksville, in the Oceanside area of the Regional District of Nanaimo, about 150 kilometres north of Victoria.
Robert Williams, vice-president of the French Creek Residents Association, says people have been fighting to have the area become its own municipality since 2018.
“We want to be able to control our area directly, rather than working through one area director who’s on a board of 19 directors,” Williams told CBC News, sitting in the driveway of the home he’s owned for 25 years.
The association’s battle highlights some of the challenges B.C.’s regional districts face in terms of self-governance and authority compared to incorporated municipalities.
The Regional District of Nanaimo includes seven electoral areas and four municipalities, which are home to more than 170,000 people, according to the 2021 census.
French Creek is part of Electoral Area G, which includes Englishman River, San Pareil, Little Qualicum, and Dashwood.
According to the 2021 census, the electoral area is home to more than 8,000 people. Williams says the majority of them — around 6,000 residents — live in French Creek.
“We’re the most urbanized rural community in Canada, we’ve been told,” he said.
Electoral areas have one elected official: a director, who represents them at the regional district.
Electoral Area G Director Lehann Wallace is one of 19 directors serving on the board, including eight councillors from the City of Nanaimo.
At the regional district’s board, the directors oversee things like zoning in the electoral areas and economic development in the district.
Road maintenance and development permits are managed by B.C.’s Ministry of Transportation and Transit, and services like garbage collection are managed by the regional district.
“We’re just totally frustrated dealing with them,” Williams said of trying to deal with both levels of government. “They won’t talk to us. They just ignore you.”
Williams says French Creek residents would have more say in local matters if they were to incorporate.
“If we were a [municipality] we would have four councillors and a mayor who are focused on French Creek only. We would have a much bigger impact on our daily lives,” he said.
Vanessa Craig, chair of the Regional District of Nanaimo, says governance in electoral areas is complicated.
“We don’t have the same level of infrastructure because the powers and the abilities of electoral areas are different from municipalities,” Craig said.
“But the density is certainly increasing in some of these areas and creating more interest in greater levels of servicing and different levels of amenities for some of the residents.”
Craig said it’s also an issue in other parts of the province, where a supposedly rural part of an electoral area, one that sits beside a municipality, is developing and growing rapidly.
Becoming a municipality in B.C. is a lengthy process that includes studies to determine potential boundaries and local interest in incorporating, and ends with a referendum.
For French Creek and Electoral Area G, the process also included a community issues assessment, which was completed in July.
On its website, the district says the assessment was to determine if residents living on the outskirts of Parksville and Qualicum Beach understand their “governance and service delivery arrangements, which include a mix of municipal, regional district, provincial, improvement district and private water services.”
“In situations like this, the Ministry recommends that a community issues assessment be undertaken before any further governance work is completed,” the website says.
The district also wanted to check if the municipalities on either side of French Creek would be interested in annexing the community.
In July, councillors for the Town of Qualicum Beach gave the idea a resounding no.
This past week, the City of Parksville voted to defer the decision until after it completes its official community plan next year. But Parksville Mayor Doug O’Brien’s thoughts on the decision were clear.
“We don’t want to go anywhere near this,” O’Brien said. “The demands for services … would put a strain on the City of Parksville.”
O’Brien cited concerns about water management and the fact that bumping Parksville’s population level up by a few thousand residents would require the city to upgrade the RCMP detachment and have its own fire department.
Williams, with the French Creek Residents Association, says those decisions are fine by him.
“The association does not want to be part of of Qualicum or Parksville,” he said.
“If it came down to that and there was no other choice, we would probably take it. Because we definitely want to stop being rural with only one person representing us.”
Now that the community issues assessment has been sent to the province, the next steps for French Creek to incorporate would likely include a boundary assessment and an incorporation study.
Pending those results, the matter could be put to a referendum.
