Following a process of consolidation and revision of the Local Government Act, a new and updated version of that important statute has been prepared by the Province and is now available to be viewed on the Provincial government website: http://www.cscd.gov.bc.ca/lgd/policy_research/revised_lga.htm
A Table of Concordance to find the way from the “old” statute to the “new” one is also available.
It is important to appreciate that there have been no substantive changes to the legislation. This is a reorganization to make the Act more useable, and eliminate sections that had been deleted and rationalize more recent amendments to the LGA to eliminate “decimal” sections that pop up when large chunks are added into statutes.
There is a new scheme to the Act. The former “Part 26” Planning and Land Use Management is now going to be “Part 14”, for example.
“Part 24” Regional Districts has been broken up and spread over a number of newly created parts.
Parts 3 and 4 “Electors and Elections” and “Assent Voting” remain the same.
It will take some time to adjust to the new numbering – but the reorganization does attempt to provide some rationality to the scheme of the Act and is intended to be more “user-friendly”.
The Province anticipates this will be in force by regulation by January 1, 2016.
