North Cowichan senior staff predict serious consequences if council amends the Official Community Plan and expands the Urban Containment Boundary north of Herd Road in the Bell McKinnon Road area.

Engineering director Clay Reitsma told council’s Committee of the Whole meeting last week that proceeding with the UCB expansion would create an “administrative nightmare.”

A staff report says the current UCB is already large, with enough capacity for 35,641 additional people.

“If 100% of growth occurred in the UCB, with none in the rural areas, it would still take 72 years to use up the capacity in the UCB areas.”

Said Reistma: “Why you’d want to extend outside that boundary I don’t understand.”

The public hearing is set for Wednesday at 7 pm.

The staff report warns that expanding the UCB will “potentially be costly to taxpayers and compound the difficulties inherent in infrastructure planning.”

It also “prioritizes speculative private land investments over the interests of the broader community.”


The report says that expanding the UCB “will potentially be costly to taxpayers” and cites lack of capacity in sewer and water infrastructure as well as delays in processing those developments south of Herd Road that are already in the works.



Mayor Rob Douglas has said he's heard from several developers with active applications south of Herd Road who are deeply concerned that adding undeveloped land to the UCB will destabilize the viability of their proposed developments. (The Citizen: https://cowichanvalleycitizen.com/2025/10/31/north-cowichan-votes-again-to-amend-ocp-to-allow-development-north-of-herd-road/)

A larger UCB leads to more scattered and financially inefficient growth, the report says. It could also cost taxpayers an additional $150,000 plus staff time to complete the extra work.

Chief Administrative Officer Ted Swabey told council that expanding the UCB in the absence of infrastructure is “like buying a car that doesn’t have an engine.

“They can’t develop. Yet it’s going to throw a whole kink in how we review where the servicing priorities are.”


Bruce Findlay, Tek Manhas, Mike Caljouw and Becky Hogg support the expansion.

Douglas and councillors Christopher Justice and Chris Istace are opposed. Istace earlier sided with the four councillors, but says he changed his mind based on new information from staff.



During discussion on the report last week, Justice said he cannot understand “why the four councillors at this table who are pushing this expansion are so determined to move ahead with something that is clearly harmful to our community.”