Urban Chickens: Toward greater sustainability

Time for Saanich chickens?

By Bill Cleverley, Times Colonist October 22, 2009

It's time for chickens to come home to roost in Saanich, says a councillor in the municipality.

Coun. Dean Murdock wants Saanich residents to be allowed to keep chickens on urban residential lots. Current municipal regulations allow residents to keep poultry only on lots larger than 12,000 square feet.

Lots of that size are not common in urban Saanich, Murdock said, which means there are few legal urban chickens. "This is a move that would put us a little bit closer to greater sustainability. It also offers benefits of food security and local food production, and those are major objectives for Saanich council and this is something that would allow us to achieve that."

Saanich council has received a fair bit of correspondence from residents interested in seeing the change, said Murdock, the municipality's peninsula agricultural commission liaison.

The move would also bring the municipality in line with neighbours such as Victoria, Esquimalt and Oak Bay.

Next week, Murdock plans to ask for council's support to direct staff to look at options for allowing chickens to be kept on smaller properties, and to consider feedback from residents, the agricultural commission, the planning, transportation and economic advisory committee and community associations about the idea. Murdock notes that any changes to the bylaw would require public consultation.