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The Journey is Chronicled in Six Parts

CHRONICLE OF GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE INNOVATION IN METRO VANCOUVER – PART D – FOR THE PERIOD 2006-2011: When CAO Johnny Carline restructured the Metro Vancouver Regional District, he eliminated the boundaries between planning and implementation. Driven by broader values, this made the connection between the planning function of local government and water resource management.


Two unifying threads weave through Part D. Thread One was that the provincial government provided green infrastructure leadership during this period, with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs mantra being: Today’s expectations are tomorrow’s standards. Thread Two was the regulatory requirement that Metro Vancouver municipalities develop integrated plans pursuant to the rainwater (aka “streams and trees”) component of the region’s Integrated Liquid Waste and Resource Management Plan. This provided a reason for convening for action!

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CHRONICLE OF GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE INNOVATION IN METRO VANCOUVER – PART C – FOR THE PERIOD 1997-2005: “There was tension between stakeholders. Yet the productiveness of those dialogues inspired a lot of professionals, myself included, to dig deeper and find solutions and learn. You felt like you were part of a movement,” stated Susan Haid, career environmental and urban planner with regional and local governments in Metro Vancouver


Susan Haid played a leadership role in trailblazing an ecosystem-based approach to community planning in BC. This approach flowed from passage of the Fish Protection Act 1997. “With an ecosystem-based approach to planning, you can look back and you can look forward. The principles of diversity, interconnectivity, and redundancy within a systems approach are very robust and stand the test of time,” stated Susan Haid. In the 2000s, leaders ventured into uncharted territory. Great changes took place. These were possible because individuals took personal risks to innovate.

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CHRONICLE OF GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE INNOVATION IN METRO VANCOUVER – PART B:“Despite the population density that we have had to accommodate, and the ongoing growth due to the demand for housing, we have to set land aside for community livability,” stated Rémi Dubé, former Director of the City of Surrey’s Building Division


The intergenerational nature of drainage experience and evolution in Surrey is unique in the Metro Vancouver region. The city had a 25-yr head start on other BC municipalities. And there has been staff continuity over a 50-yr period. By 2009, Surrey had evolved from pilot projects to setting watershed-based objectives and targets. “The Biodiversity Development Cost Charge Bylaw for acquiring and enhancing land in stream corridors has been in place since 2019. Surrey is the only municipality that has one. The work to create the DCC was initiated many years before,” stated Rémi Dubé.

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CHRONICLE OF GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE INNOVATION IN METRO VANCOUVER – PART A: “Each time we face an environmental challenge, we are once again looking at how we do business. A changing context causes us to ask important questions about how we might do things better,” stated Dale Wall, retired Deputy Minister of Municipal Affairs


“In the 1990s, very careful work by the likes of Parliamentary Secretary Joan Sawicki and Erik Karlsen created the foundation by which we could move forward with development of regional growth strategies and then implementation. It required huge amounts of work by people like Darlene Marzari when she was Minister of Municipal Affairs to build a consensus among local elected officials in terms of what a regional growth strategy might look like. That work changed, in many ways, the context. We had people in local government who were keen on doing this,” stated Dale Wall.

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