Urban chickens provide food security

Advocates for food security want urban hen bylaw in Saanich

Keith Vass, Saanich News October 23, 2009

Flightless birds could be set to take off in Saanich.

In a notice of motion brought before council Monday night, Coun. Dean Murdock signalled he wants to ask planning staff to come with options to amend Saanich’s animal control bylaw to allow chickens to be kept on lots smaller than 12,000 square feet.

“It’s another step toward sustainability,” he said. “Having hens in an urban setting provides a form of food security, of local food production.”

While cities of all sizes, from Esquimalt to Vancouver, have been moving to legalize urban poultry flocks, Saanich’s rules have remained the most restrictive in the capital region.

The current animal control bylaw stipulates a minimum lot size of 12,000 square feet for the keeping of poultry birds.

The City of Victoria, by comparison, has no minimum lot size or maximum flock size. The only restrictions say the birds have to be hens and “for personal use.”

Esquimalt passed a bylaw last year allowing homeowners to keep up to four hens on any single-family residential lot.

Oak Bay has a variety of rules, but even the smallest residential lots are allowed a maximum of five birds – except in the tony Uplands neighbourhood, where the birds are verboten.

“What I’m asking now is for council to say ‘Yes, this is the direction in which we want to head, let’s get staff to suggest options in order to allow chickens on property under 12,000 square feet’ or ‘No, we’re not going to support that,’” said Murdock.

While the idea has already been reviewed by the Planning, Transportation and Economic Advisory Committee, the Peninsula Agricultural Commission and the Saanich Community Association Network, Murdock said broader public consultation is still needed.

Andy Nezil is one Saanich resident urging council to move ahead. Nezil’s family kept four hens at their Falmouth Road home for eight years until bylaw officers told them earlier this year they had to go.

“The law is like a holdback to suburbia culture in the ’60s or something. I’m sure it’s going to be changed. I’d be baffled if it’s not, but it does seem to be taking its time,” said Nezil.

His birds are staying with a friend in Fernwood for now, but Nezil hopes to see the bylaw changed by the time his daughter, who kept the birds as pets, returns from her first year of university in the spring.