Regional Growth Strategy - Get Involved

The Comox Valley Chamber of Commerce is concerned about the approaches presented in “Understanding our Choices” – the background document of the Comox Valley Regional Growth Strategy (RGS).

The RGS Plan puts the future of the Comox Valley’s natural environment and quality of life at risk.

The policies that make sense for large, already built up urban areas should not be imposed on our community. Smart growth principles, which the Chambers largely endorse, should be customized for the Comox Valley. Fundamentally, we live in a collective of small communities defined by the rural spaces between built up areas, (similar to many European regions).  This characteristic of the Comox Valley defines our community and is a highly desirable feature to be maintained.

Similarly, Valley residents recognize and deeply value the natural beauty of our green spaces.  These spaces include, but are much more than parks and natural features within the municipalities. The valuable green spaces are both grand in scale and as small as a minor creek.  These features of our community are important for their aesthetics and the recreational opportunities that they provide.  They are also of vital importance to the proper functioning of our ecosystem.  These spaces include the estuary, large watersheds and other waterways, forests and mountains: a rich and extraordinarily diverse series of local ecosystems and wildlife corridors.  These features are the Comox Valley’s priority.  Their protection fundamentally impacts the kind of RGS required for the Comox Valley.  Additionally, the Chambers observe that many of the theories of land use planning, as defined in the “Understanding Our Choices”, are detached from the urban/rural interface that defines the richness of our community.

The Chambers strongly reject the application of “big city” containment boundaries on future growth.  The Chambers want to see very little emphasis in the RGS on where growth takes place. Rather the Chambers submit that the RGS should define areas of no development, followed by sensitive lands that require special development restrictions. We urge policy makers to emphasize progressive, green performance-based criteria by which all development proposals will be considered.  These criteria must have as their first priority, the long term interests of our environment in mind.

The Chambers have consulted extensively with the local development community which embraces a preservationist RGS, not one that arbitrarily determines today where development should take place 20 years from now.  The whole of the Comox Valley community will judge the success of the RGS by how well it protects what we value.  By contrast, the RGS will be a failure if it attempts to dictate settlement patterns that are not distinctly based on the preservation and protection of our diverse ecosystems.

Many opportunities exist for reclamation of land that has suffered environmental degradation, if entrepreneurs are allowed to bring their creative energy to bear.  The development community seeks clear, demanding performance-based development criteria that are applied consistently throughout the Comox Valley. Location and scale of the projects ought to be entirely flexible if the criteria are well developed.  Moreover, the Comox Valley is certain to lose high quality projects and billions of investment dollars if the RGS is merely an unimaginative establishment of boundaries.

Green and innovative land use ought to be the Valley’s signature and strong identity. The RGS needs to bring this to fruition.

To view our ads in the Friday (Nov 20) publications of the Comox Valley Echo and the Comox Valley Record click here.

It’s your community, get involved.

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The following reports were submitted to the media and the Comox Valley Regional District. The purpose of the reports were to provide a business perspective to the issues surrounding the development of a Regional Growth Strategy for the Comox Valley Regional District.

Submitted: June 1, 2009

Submitted: September 15, 2009

Submitted: December 15, 2009

The Comox Valley Chamber of Commerce invites your comments.  Please email us at advocacy@comoxvalleychamber.com