B.C.’s Court of Appeal has dismissed an attempt by a group of Galiano Island property owners to reverse the 2023 dismissal of their lawsuit against the island’s Local Trust Committee (LTC).
According to Justice Karen Horsman, the LTC’s position that it had the authority to pass a bylaw prohibiting construction of dwellings on properties zoned forest land was “reasonable.”
Horsman dismissed the appeal, brought by the Galiano Forest Lot Owners Association, Preston Family Forest Ltd., Olaf Knezevic, Winstanley Forest Ltd. and Boscher Construction Ltd., on Friday, Jan. 24. The group had previously argued the LTC lacked jurisdiction over parcels they owned. Galiano trustees passed a bylaw in 1992 prohibiting construction of dwellings on properties zoned forest land on that island, updating the regulation in 2000 to allow for a single small residential building.
In the interim, the provincial government had legislated several changes to its regulations — “forest land reserves” became “private managed forest lands,” for example — and there were court challenges to the regulatory authority of Galiano’s LTC by multiple landowners; in his upheld dismissal in 2023, Justice Alan M. Ross had noted similar petitions against the LTC in 1992, 1996 and 2009 were unsuccessful, despite appeals.
On Friday, Horsman wrote that neither the Forest Land Reserve Act (FLRA) nor the Private Managed Forest Land Act made the Galiano bylaw “either invalid or inapplicable” to the group’s properties.
“Subsequent legislative history should not be relied on to discern the intention of the legislature in enacting the FLRA,” wrote Horsman.
“Since the [LTC’s] decision to adopt the impugned bylaw was reasonable, it necessarily follows that their decision to apply the impugned bylaw to the appellants’ properties was also reasonable.”