Strong resistance is growing to a seemingly innocuous NDP private-member’s bill that critics from across the political spectrum charge will dramatically undermine the power that B.C. mayors and councillors have to protect citizens from ill-suited buildings.

Questions are arising why such a radical piece of legislation, Bill M216, wasn’t introduced by the minister of housing. Instead, it was brought in as a private member’s bill last month by a neophyte Vancouver Island MLA.

Bill M216, blandly titled the Professional Reliance Act, is scheduled to go to second reading on Monday.

“At its heart, this bill is about using every tool we have to make housing more attainable,” says the bill’s sponsor, backbench NDP MLA George Anderson (Nanaimo-Lantzville), a lawyer first elected last year, who w

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