2025 Official Community Plan

The Village of Fraser Lake is updating its Official Community Plan (OCP) and Zoning Bylaw! 

The Official Community Plan is important as it communicates values and sets a vision that will guide decision making about housing, transportation, parks, heritage, environmental protection, economic development, social wellbeing and more. The existing OCP was updated in 2019  and now we are reviewing it and enhancing it to reflect our community’s current and future needs. We are also refreshing the current OCP to adhere to the provincial government requires to ensure that all OCP’s include enough land designated for housing over the next 20 years.    

While it may seem removed from our everyday lives, zoning is everywhere – from parks and playgrounds to the housing we live in and the industrial/commercial lands along the highway corridor. The Zoning Bylaw implements the Village’s land use planning vision expressed in the OCP and supports community sustainability and resiliency goals. The Zoning Bylaw regulates how land, buildings and other structures may be used. It regulates things like building height, density, site coverage and parking requirements. 

Community Engagement:

We are going to work together with the community, key interest groups and organizations throughout the OCP update process in order to ensure that the policies and objectives of the Official Community Plan align with the community’s desires, priorities and vision for the future.

You can share your thoughts on the 2025 Official Community Plan by completing this survey in-person or online.

Photo Sharing 

We would like to invite the community to share photos and digital art that they have created that showcases the community of Fraser Lake for inclusion into the final OCP document!  Please feel free to email photos and digital art to the Planning Team with a description of the photo and your name/company name. Any photos that are used in the OCP through this exercise will be given the appropriate photo credit. 

Most Recent Version

To see the most current draft of the 2025 Official Community Plan, click here.

1. What is an Official Community Plan?

   An Official Community Plan (OCP) is the highest level policy document for a municipality – it informs and guides how the community grows for the next 10 to 20 years. The Official Community Plan is a bylaw adopted by Council that sets out the vision, objectives and policies that will guide the future growth and development of Fraser Lake. It integrates policies on land use, economic development, environmental stewardship, municipal services and infrastructure, transportation, protective services, community facilities and services to set a clear path for elected officials and staff to follow. It is like a roadmap for the Village into the future! 

2. How do the OCP and Zoning Bylaw work together?

   The OCP provides the overall vision and high level policy direction for Fraser Lake, including goals for land use, housing, transportation and other aspects of sustainable growth and development. The Zoning Bylaw takes those policies and puts them into specific regulations that control how land can be used and developed to ensure that the community’s goals for growth and development are achieved. For example, the OCP might identify a goal of promoting different types of housing while the Zoning Bylaw would specify details like allowing secondary suites or carriage housing in certain zones to help achieve the goal of more housing diversity. 

3. What does an Official Community Plan look like?

   Fraser Lake’s Official Community Plan was previously updated in 2019, and it is split up into a few sections that deal with things such as:

• The community’s vision, goals and key directions
• Current and future land uses such as residential, commercial, industrial
• Future roads, water and sewer 
• Future parks and trails
• Creating a resilient community that is economically diverse
• Ways to be environmentally sustainable
• Improving the ways that we move around
• Building an inclusive community and dealing with social issues

One of the main parts of the Official Community Plan is the Land Use Map. This identifies what land uses we want to see and where they should be in the next 20 years. Usually, things stay the same in established neighbourhoods, but sometimes we may want to change an area over time from one land use to another, such as  industrial to commercial for example. Changes like that can be challenging but also exciting for a community and these types of changes have to be made carefully, in collaboration with community members with an overall bigger picture in mind. 

4. Why do we need an Official Community Plan?

   The Official Community Plan acts as this living document that provides a roadmap to guide the Village on how to evaluate and approve future development. It will provide a clear direction for how Fraser Lake should grow in the coming years so that growth is well planned and supports the community’s vision for the future. 

5. What makes an Official Community Plan great?

   A great Official Community Plan introduces a land use and community development framework for Fraser Lake that works towards enriching the lives of current and future residents. It will establish clear objectives and policies for the Village that will guide the fabric of our community into the future. Although most of the required content of the Official Community Plan is informed by legislation, its success can only be measured by how much the community is behind it. This is a document built for the community by the community and a great Official Community Plan is one that reflects the values and voices of our community members.

6. Who creates the Official Community Plan?

   Our community does! Every person is asked to provide input: Village Council, Village Staff, Indigenous neighbours, community groups, residents, stakeholders, government agencies, children, seniors, etc. Council will adopt an Official Community Plan that they believe best represents the interests and objectives of Fraser Lake as a whole. 

6. I’m so confused about this process, why does it have to be so complicated?! 

7. It’s OK! There are a lot of strict Provincial laws about what an Official Community Plan must have in it and what it needs to do. Leave the legal language and all of the acronyms to us. What we want to know from the average person are your general thoughts on big picture questions like this:

• What will you be doing and what will be important to you in 20  years?
• What will you need from the Village in order to succeed as the future you?
• What are your favorite things in Fraser Lake and what would make them even better?
• What are your least favorite things in Fraser Lake and what would make them better?
• In 20 years will you live in the same house, or will you need to be in a different type of house? Are there enough of those houses around now? Will there be enough in 2050?
• What should future residential development look like in general? Are you OK with the look of the current neighbourhoods in town now?
• What economic programs might help reduce the impacts of the cyclical nature of our resource economy? 
• What should future industrial development around town look like and where should it go?

8. How can you get involved?

   There are a number of ways to get involved! Complete the online community survey available on this webpage between June 23^rd and July 11^th.