I find it most amusing how lately the City is trying to create the illusion that Kelowna is on the path towards sustainability by using that word to describe just about all of its activities. The latest example of this is the departmental reorganization at City Hall whereby three divisions will be created with two, Community Sustainability and Corporate Sustainability, bearing that term.
My amusement turned to a guffaw upon learning that the City Planning Department will be part of the Community Sustainability Division. That department is presently undertaking a review of the Official Community Plan, wherein the public deception continues in regards to the population projections that are being used to calculate our growth between now and 2030. The assumption in the OCP is that the city’s population will grow at an average annual rate of 1.57% over that period. That certainly sounds sustainable if it were true, but it’s not. The truth is that for the past three years Kelowna’s population has grown by at least 3% per year with BC Statistics estimating that the city grew by 4.2% in 2007. If that rate of growth continues, our population will be closer to 250,000 by 2030 than to the 160,000 that is being projected in the OCP. So how do our planners figure that our growth will magically slow to a modest 1.57%? The same way that the city administration is making Kelowna sustainable – by just saying it will.
The master propagandist Joseph Goebbels said that “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Such is the case with the lie of Kelowna’s sustainability — a lie that sharply contrasts with the reality of increasing traffic congestion, a high crime rate, a critical shortage of affordable housing, and diminishing community character and social capital. The City can try to dress up Kelowna’s uncontrolled growth in the finest garment of sustainability, but I think the public is smart enough to see that the emperor has no clothes.
Tags: Kelowna, sustainability
