The following forms part of a Galiano resident’s letter to Islands Trust trustees and staff and sent to the Driftwood for publication.

By AKASHA FOREST

On the subject of “unique amenities,” I suggest the Trust has wrongly included development in its working definition of unique amenities. 

Please list my opposition to the 2023 working definition:  will “include, but not be limited to, housing livelihoods, infrastructure, and tourism.” I base my opposition on an excellent Trust discussion paper, cited below, that includes the history of First Nations’ curating of the Trust’s unique amenities.

Simply put, development activities are not unique amenities. Every community across the country has economic, development, tourism and housing infrastructure amenities and/or needs for them. Each Trust island has land use bylaws that provide opportunities for meeting islanders’ needs for housing and economic activity, which can be updated without the need to erase the meaning of unique amenities.

The Islands Trust Discussion Paper – The Islands Trust Object, Past, Present and Future – from March 2021 clearly delineates the unique amenities of the Trust Area. The last sentence: “Residential, commercial or tourism development appropriate to the services and lifestyle of the islands can, in this way, be steered to the most suitable areas” in fact advises ‘steering’ development to areas that will not damage the unique amenities.

The unique amenities of the Trust Area are its natural environment, curated since time immemorial by First Nations. 

The 2021 discussion paper further illustrates how far afield the Trust has deviated from its primary task.

“At the time of the formation of the Islands Trust in 1974, the government of the day recognized the importance of the unique ‘amenities’ of the lands and waters. There was understanding that the environment of the area was fragile and could be greatly impacted by development and resource extraction or overuse. However, it was not acknowledged or understood that this unique environment was the result of thousands of years of active cultivation and stewardship by Indigenous peoples.”

Throughout its 47 years of preserving and protecting the Trust Area, the Islands Trust has consistently failed to recognize or acknowledge resource gathering areas, spiritual places, medicinal plant areas and culturally significant species. The Islands Trust has managed the Islands Trust Area with a disconnected, single-species view of the ecological landscape versus a relational, interconnected acknowledgement of what truly makes the Islands Trust Area unique. Indigenous ways of knowing are not only important to reconciliation efforts but also to the effective stewardship of these lands and waters.

In 1992, the Islands Trust encapsulated the views of the public in a summary report on the Islands Trust public forums called These Islands of Ours . . . Framing Our Common Future. At the public forums, people listed “history and archaeological heritage” and “archaeological record” as key attributes they valued about the Trust Area.

At a time of rapid climate change, in a time of recognition that reconciliation requires stewardship and restitution of First Nations’ largely unceded lands, and in a time of development pressures that have existed in the Trust Area since before the formation of the Islands Trust in 1974, the Trust must find leadership to enact its mandate of “preserve and protect.”

The road to hell is almost certainly paved with “best practices.” 

We might pick on BC Ferries for rolling out a “what we heard” document mentioning the Vesuvius homeporting issue months after a decision had already been made, but the islander’s eternal torment — of being defined by the interpretations of others, rather than by our own authentic selves — comes indeed from all sides.

As we watched the rocky “harmonization” of public notice policies among our delightfully varied Islands Trust area communities, it struck us: in many of our important moments, we are beginning to substitute completion of a standardized process for understanding or support of an issue.

It is to our collective detriment. The idea that Trust-wide “best practices” could be happily dragged from one island to the next was a manifestation of perhaps the purest optimism — and should charitably be praised for its attempt at frugality. 

But it reflects a wider tendency toward substituting standards for legitimacy, and it demeans the individuality of each island. 

Keeping islanders informed is so vitally important that our legislation prescribes very specific means by which it should be done.

And we can agree that times change, and processes should meaningfully change with them, but under the mantle of modernization and austerity, that sliver of public engagement is being — explicitly — whittled down to the minimum needed to survive a lawsuit.  

The use of standardized community engagement as reputation management could perhaps be expected in BC Ferries’ case — the power dynamic between a handful of islanders and the vast province-wide system is apparent to anyone who can count — but it is far more disappointing to see our Islands Trust reduce policy to risk management.

Being able to say there has been “a thing” has become more important than what that thing is meant to accomplish; a public notice process crafted to frugally meet legal minimums is as saddening as “best practice” engagement set too late in a timeline for islanders’ input to be meaningfully incorporated — and as doomed as a presumption that one island’s needs could be met in precisely the same manner as every other’s.  

Like any process, there is likely a way to improve public notice policy. But we doubt it will be found within a framework of legal minimums, austerity or homogenization.

The Capital Regional District (CRD) Board declared a climate emergency in 2019. The CRD Climate Action service (to which the average Salt Spring Island residential property contributes about $8 per year), inventories greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions throughout the region every two years. This data shows that per-capita GHG emissions have declined significantly over the 2007-2024 period by 30 per cent regionally and 23 per cent on Salt Spring, but decreased less in absolute terms by 11 per cent and 6.5 per cent, respectively, due largely to population growth.

Worldwide emissions are not declining significantly, if at all. Unless the largest emitting countries commit to more aggressive action, significant climate impacts, already occurring, will grow worse: greater frequency of summer droughts, winter flooding, wildfires, life-threatening heat domes and disease.

Smaller jurisdictions have an obligation to allocate resources to reduce emissions, but there are significant co-benefits, such as reducing the cost of energy and car dependency, or preserving forests that protect our drinking water. It is even more important for smaller jurisdictions to prepare for climate impacts that will be occurring regardless of our emission reductions.

Over the past two terms, the CRD and partner agencies have undertaken a number of initiatives that address climate change directly and indirectly, some of which include:

• Initiating and providing gas tax funding to support the update of the Salt Spring Climate Action Plan (CAP 2.0).

• Providing gas tax and other funding to support climate-related education and information, and energy and water saving measures such as heat pumps and water storage tanks. This includes such measures at local facilities including ArtSpring, Core Inn, Rainbow Road pool, Fulford Hall, and Croftonbrook and Salt Spring Commons housing projects. CRD also provided gas tax funding to upgrade the library geothermal system to establish it as a cooling centre

• Increasing funding for staffing and resources for the local CRD Emergency Program, which coordinates inter-agency preparedness and provides support for 65 neighbourhood “pods” on the island. The Emergency Operations Centre has been moved from a basement location to the SIMS building and discussions are underway regarding co-location at the new fire hall, which also received gas tax funding of $1 million that will help support improved wildfire protection on Salt Spring.

• Developing sea level rise and heat vulnerability mapping for the region and securing grant funding for EV charging stations throughout the CRD. This includes new chargers at several local parks, supporting one of the highest per capita EV ownership levels in B.C. The CRD also continues to electrify its regional and local vehicle fleets.

• Contributing $3.7 million for our new emergency room at Lady Minto Hospital that will provide essential medical assistance during a major event.

• Enhancing local food security by establishing a new voter-approved Foodland Access service, and providing gas tax and other grant and operational funding for the Burgoyne composter, and gas tax funding for construction of The Root.

• Creating new regional and local parks and a new voter-approved Biodiversity service with a focus on invasives management.

• Securing millions in grant and other funding in collaboration with the Ministry of Transportation and Transit (MOTT) and Island Pathways, to build miles of sidewalks and cycle lanes around Ganges and develop the Ganges Active Transportation Plan. CRD active transportation planning and advocacy resulted in MOTT repaving of Ganges Hill with wider shoulder lanes for pedestrians and cyclists and greatly improved stormwater infrastructure. Funding for the Salish Sea Regional Trail is now regional and also included in CRD capital plans.

• Maintaining and improving our local transit service (one of the most successful in rural B.C.) throughout Covid, including free fares for youth 12 and under, and securing funding for the design and construction of bus shelters.

• Reducing waste by banning construction materials and increasing methane capture at the Hartland landfill, and renewing another five years of funding for the Rainbow Road recycling facility.

Other agencies are also doing their part, including BC Hydro’s storm responses; MOTT’s Blackburn bridge construction, and other major storm repairs; the fire district’s new post-disaster fire hall; NSSWD’s new drinking water plants and securing funding to increase St. Mary Lake water storage. The unprecedented scale of public investments in infrastructure and other services on Salt Spring in recent years will pay climate resiliency dividends for years to come.

The Trust has also declared a climate emergency and can play a key role by retaining strong OCP policies supporting compact, less car-dependent settlement patterns and protection of drinking water, sensitive ecosystems and farm land. In considering rezoning proposals, the Trust can ensure that our very limited community drinking water and sewage system capacity is prioritized for affordable housing and community amenities. SSIWPA, the inter-agency organization with a mandate to promote protection and conservation of our drinking water, should be reinstated.

There is much that the CRD and other agencies can do to address climate change. The good news is that these investments not only strengthen Salt Spring’s climate resiliency, they improve our quality of life right now.