developed by city staff<\/a> but has proven politically contentious.\u00a0<\/p>\nCouncil has been deadlocked in a 3-3 vote split for months, as the mayor owns property in the area and recused himself from voting.<\/p>\n
The province said the change will “allow more homes to be built, while creating more opportunities for nearby shops, community spaces and improved sidewalks, with public infrastructure already included in the Ambleside Plan.”<\/p>\n
The province said the city has failed in meeting a set target of 220 net new housing units, delivering only 58, and missed a Dec. 31, 2025, deadline to complete three provincial housing directives.<\/p>\n
One of those directives was approving the Ambleside Plan. <\/p>\n
The other two are to increase density in the Park Royal-Taylor Way area and to provide for increased density in the single- and two-family areas next to Ambleside and Dundarave.<\/p>\n
The province said it issued the order for Ambleside, and not the other two directives, because the neighbourhood plan was already complete, public engagement had taken place, and technical studies were also finished.<\/p>\n
“The plan was ready to move forward despite previously being withdrawn by council from its October 2025 meeting agenda, with no further direction to implement it,” said the province’s news release on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The province repeatedly said it would override the city if it did not pass the directives by the deadline.<\/p>\n
Now West Vancouver is also required to do enhanced reporting for the other two directives, which are still in the drafting stage.<\/p>\n
“We can certainly work with the minister on these issues,” Sager said. “You know, is anyone happy that the minister had to use an order-in-council on the local area plan? Probably not.”<\/p>\n
WATCH | West Vancouver rejects province’s rezoning deadline in November:![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1775695454_205_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
West Vancouver rejects B.C.’s deadline to rezone neighbourhoods for more housing<\/p>\n
The B.C. government has threatened to take over West Vancouver’s housing policy if they don’t approve more density by the end of the year \u2014 and as Justin McElroy explains, the mayor seems ready to call the province’s bluff. <\/p>\n
He added he’s pleased that the housing ministry will work with the district on the other two directives, as he said the community will never accept upzoning the area by Dundarave.<\/p>\n
He agreed that councillors were generally not opposed to additional density in the Ambleside area, but they disagreed about specifics.<\/p>\n
Sager said the province will have to stand by its decisions if there are residents unhappy with the order to override the municipality.<\/p>\n
“I think that’s an issue that the provincial government in the next provincial election will have to deal with, whether that’s an appropriate use of their power or not.”<\/p>\n
WATCH | West Vancouver, Oak Bay pushes back against housing directives:![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1775695455_464_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
West Vancouver, Oak Bay say province\u2019s housing directives are unprecedented intrusion<\/p>\n
West Vancouver is pushing back against the province\u2019s housing directives. After failing to meet housing targets last year, the municipality has been ordered to make zoning changes and expand density plans by the end of this year. As Shaurya Kshatri reports, the district\u2019s mayor says the government\u2019s approach has been intrusive, rather than collaborative.<\/p>\n
At an unrelated news conference on Wednesday, B.C. Premier David Eby said West Vancouver was not being treated differently than other municipalities, and argued the province’s housing targets were resulting in declining rents.<\/p>\n
“As we were clear from the very beginning, this was not optional work,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The vast majority of municipalities across the province engaged in this work in good faith because they understood the importance of this issue for British Columbians.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[49,48,55],"class_list":["post-591385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Text](\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/a\/assets\/texttospeech.svg\")
<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1775695454_349_default.jpg\")
West Vancouver Mayor Mark Sager said he was unsurprised by the province’s move. (Martin Diotte\/CBC)<\/p>\n