Conflicts of interest
Salt Spring’s leading promoters of mass development certainly remind us who they are and what they stand for, shoulder-to-shoulder in last week’s Driftwood.
Trustee Laura Patrick’s Viewpoint tries to justify the “insanity” of “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result” (words she wrongly attributes to Einstein), though is otherwise vague about her latest scheme to “tweak” our official community plan (OCP).
In a longer and more revealing article, Salt Spring Solutions members claim to have tested their ideas with an online survey (sparsely responded), and in “confidential” meetings with “local housing providers” described as a dozen “landlords of legal and illegal housing.”
The team of trustee Patrick and Salt Spring Solutions is the same that brought us the Bylaw 530 fiasco. That push for mass upzoning wasted three years of our planners’ time, alienated the Tsawout First Nation (the only Indigenous group with treaty lands on Salt Spring) and would have contravened our OCP and the Islands Trust Act. Salt Spring Solutions was founded just months after the 2017 incorporation referendum, in which the losing side had been widely supported by pro-development interests opposed to the Islands Trust protections. Salt Spring Solutions often tells us it’s a “non-profit” organization. This means only that the organization itself isn’t a money-maker. It does not mean it is impartial and has nothing to gain from unleashed development. Several leading members have, or have had, business interests in real estate, property investment, construction and bulk water sales.
Do I “fear change” from Laura Patrick and her back-up band? You bet I do.
Ronald Wright,
Salt Spring
The other option
In last week’s Driftwood, trustee Laura Patrick and Salt Spring Solutions continued to depict a glowing everything-is-a-priority future while downplaying or ignoring the long-term consequences of their housing proposals and related policy changes.
Salt Spring Solutions claims their housing report was “peer reviewed,” but were those reviewing the recommendations made aware that implementation would require removal of quantified growth limits in our official community plan (OCP), thereby exposing a conservation area to open-ended growth — just like in any municipality? Did they support new bonus-density strata subdivisions, accessory dwelling units in all residential zones, and added dwellings on rural properties, mostly with no requirement of housing agreements to guarantee affordability and long-term occupancy? And did they have build-out data to determine the long-term impact on water, infrastructure, services and ecosystems?
More generally, did they endorse the shift from non-market affordable housing as emphasized in our OCP to widespread upzoning of private land, and weakening of all three pillars of the Islands Trust: the Islands Trust Act, the Trust Policy Statement and our OCP?
Project documents for the OCP update say the “process should consider opportunities to implement the recommended actions of this report.” Where does that leave non-market options?
In a November 2022 speech to the legislature, former MLA Adam Olsen stated: “Currently, the [housing] supply this Premier, his colleagues and the Minister of Housing are talking about are units fully exposed to market pressures. We need to build non-market housing units in B.C., including supportive housing, non-profit, co-op housing and housing that meets the specific needs of the communities.”
These sentiments have been echoed at public meetings by Capital Regional District director Gary Holman, who has cited existing OCP policies directing any upzoning to prioritize affordable housing, and new development to be located near existing settlements and transit lines.
The choice is not between housing and no housing, but rather, housing within the framework of the Islands Trust vs. broad densification that undermines the framework itself without achieving the desired results. It’s also a choice between two realities: the verifiable fact that legal documents protecting the environment are being severely weakened as opposed to trustee Patrick’s assertion that such amendments are “leading to a modernized and stronger Islands Trust.”
Frants Attorp,
Salt Spring