I read with interest Rob Shaw’s recent article on the B.C. government’s plans to rein in municipal dysfunction (Pique, June 20). While the piece does a commendable job of highlighting the current chaos in some local councils and the province’s proposed solutions, it misses a crucial part of the story: how we arrived at this point in the first place.
The dysfunction we’re now witnessing in municipalities across B.C. (and indeed, Canada) didn’t emerge in a vacuum. It is, in large part, the legacy of decisions made in the 1990s, when the federal government offloaded responsibility for social and affordable housing to provinces—and, by extension, to municipalities. This dramatic shift left local governments holding the bag, often without the fiscal tools or resources to address growing housing needs. The result has been decades of underinvestment, patchwork policies, and mounting pressure on municipal councils ill-equipped to solve problems that are national in scope.
The article rightly points out the symptoms—infighting, staff turnover, and public frustration—but fails to connect them to the root causes. When municipalities are tasked with solving enormous challenges like housing affordability, homelessness, and infrastructure renewal, but lack the funding and authority to do so, dysfunction is almost inevitable. The province’s proposed fixes may help, but without a frank discussion of how and why responsibility was downloaded onto local governments, we risk treating the symptoms while ignoring the disease.
If we want to restore trust and effectiveness to local government, we need to talk honestly about the history of housing policy in Canada and the need for renewed federal leadership—not just new rules for councils.
