Some days it seems the Islands Trust’s confederation of communities is more loosely laced than others.
Despite all of us being surrounded by shoreline, there are times we watch our trustees truly stretch to leverage the commonalities among our islands as they work to advance our common interests. And even on those infrequent issues where we might all agree on the scope of a problem, how can a solution for Denman Island ever possibly work on Bowen? Or Gabriola’s on Galiano? Salt Spring’s on South Pender? How can 26 members of the Islands Trust Council agree on anything, if on something as simple as a budget, even the eight trustees voting against it didn’t agree on their reasons for doing so?
Yet at the end of the day — or rather, at the end of three at a quarterly meeting — decisions are made and work done. In addition to passing the budget last week, the Trust’s unsung accomplishments include advancing a draft of its remarkable multi-year Indigenous Relations Action Plan, and a final — and also remarkablely, unanimous — approval of a new bylaw compliance and enforcement policy, complete with a user-friendly plain-language guide for islanders. That long-awaited product will be rolling out in the next few months, the fruit of trustees’ sincere efforts to improve what was an arguably broken system.
On the wider stage, they agreed to sign on to a joint call for the province to recommit to meaningful implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; on a much smaller one, they agreed to cover a few thousands dollars in application fees for Salt Spring’s Farmland Trust, to permit distribution of compost produced at the Burgoyne Valley Community Farm site. The work of the Islands Trust is indeed varied.
During this last meeting, one trustee took insightful exception to the characterization of the Islands Trust as merely a land use authority keen to “preserve and protect.” While it is indeed that, they noted the often-recited mandate continues with “in cooperation.”
We agree that despite all attention given to the former, it’s the latter that may turn out to be the hardest work.