By PETER AUSTIN

I am encouraged to see that despite the anticipated challenges, Australia has gone ahead with addressing problems associated with one troubling aspect of our online lives: social media.

The social media ban they initiated may be difficult for some young people, who have suggested social connection is an important consideration and a benefit of social media. I do not see the benefit justifying the cost. One aspect we have become accustomed to if not addicted to is fast access that is broad-sweeping and provides an efficient task-completion experience, and we now often rely on that efficiency to get through busy days. With virtually every aspect of our lives connected to our devices we may be overlooking the treasure we are providing those who analyze data and set algorithms. It will be interesting to watch and see if social media companies are as addicted to the data at stake as their targets, and how they react.

I wonder if a second internet with no money or data collection for profit might be a starting point. We can put education, health care, news, governance and other aspects of life we wish to leave off of our smartphones on the present internet, and it would be more suitable for younger Canadians. Let us mandate a “dumb phone” be manufactured that is better than a flip phone, one that isn’t engineered to redirect you back to a smartphone because texting is not part of a flip phone’s design. A phone with less focus on data collection and not connected to accounts that sell data, one that is safer for developing minds and stubborn old ones too. Some payphones would help. Where did they all go?

The ability to study children’s mental health as they navigate the ban may reveal some things that adults fear may affect them too and may lead to a relaxation of the ban. The examination of a major change of use with addictive social media applications is an opportunity to look at the overall role of how our online lives impact real-world lives and challenges . . . for all ages!

If your roommate acted like a cell phone, constantly making recommendations, updating you and keeping track of everything you did and sharing it while making noise and requiring energy constantly, you would not want to live with them, so why do you? Is it convenience or dependence?

Spend some time with our youth and offer them some information human to human. Show them how to find information in other ways. Have talking circles to share experiences that are tech-free. Use airplane mode, leave your phones in another room and try to find some aspects of your life that can be shifted from devices.

“Throw another smartphone on the barbie, mate” might be a good symbol for change! Disclaimer, cooking smartphones is dangerous, as is cooking our brains with algorithms!

The writer is a Salt Spring resident.

When local MLA Rob Botterell spoke to an ASK Salt Spring crowd in early October he hinted at major progress on the health care file.

He said, “We are on the brink of . . . making a very significant change in how primary care is delivered on this island in a way that you will be thrilled about.” It turns out the community should be quite thrilled.

Evidence to support his prediction has been gradually released. The ASK meeting heard about one physician and his family moving to Salt Spring from England to take over a retiring physician’s panel and hopefully expand his patient roster. Information about the Island Community Clinic Society was also shared at that meeting and then elaborated on in a formal press release on Oct. 24. The Lady Minto Hospital Foundation stated then that more than half a million dollars had already been raised for a $3.5-million project to expand the Salt Spring Island Health Centre on Kings Lane to accommodate more family physicians and other health care practitioners. Islands Trust rezoning approval has since been granted. People can donate to the non-profit entity at islandcommunityclinicsociety.com.

Then just last week the Primary Care Network (PCN) of the South Island Division of Family Practice gave an even more thrilling update. Another physician has been recruited, one more is scheduled to arrive next September and “several” more have apparently expressed an interest in practising here. Funding has already been committed by the province through its Primary Care Strategy and growing support of the community health centre (CHC) model. The latest primary care and CHC report, produced by the province and the BC Green Caucus, was released Dec. 19.

Unfortunately, the good news from the PCN was balanced last week by a missive from the Greenwoods Residents Family Council, who advised that Greenwoods Eldercare Society has had a $400,000 budget cut due to the government eliminating funding of overtime and hiring of agency personnel. A fundraising campaign is now underway, with people urged to donate before the Dec. 31 deadline for charitable donations to receive income tax receipts.

Both the success reported by the PCN and the Greenwoods funding challenge show how much hard work is required to effect real change. We are grateful to everyone willing and able to play a role.

By JENNIFER MARGISON

At the Dec. 2 quarterly Trust Council meeting, our organization — Friends of the Gulf Islands — presented the urgent need for Growth Limits Assessments across the Islands Trust Area.

The region experienced an extraordinary 27 per cent population increase between 2016 and 2021, intensifying environmental pressures at a time when the Trust still lacks a comprehensive build-out analysis to determine how much development the islands can realistically sustain.

We also addressed the inclusion of floor area ratio (FAR) in the draft Trust Policy Statement (TPS), the document that guides all local official community plans (OCPs) and bylaws. The draft TPS has received first reading, and the public may comment until Feb. 6, 2026.

FAR regulates total floor area rather than the number of dwellings. For example, with a 5,000-square-foot limit, a landowner might be able to build one 5,000-square-foot home or several smaller homes totalling 5,000 square feet. The draft TPS glossary explicitly defines density as including FAR, and several directives reference FAR-based tools such as “clustered housing.”

A trustee questioned our statement that FAR appears in the draft TPS, and other members of the public who spoke had similar concerns dismissed. Under this framework, adding more dwellings where previously only one was permitted would not constitute an increase in density — meaning long-standing density limits in OCPs and bylaws would no longer apply.

This represents a major shift away from the traditional density model based on the number of dwellings per lot. Such a change could substantially increase development potential, despite the absence of a Trust-wide analysis evaluating the islands’ capacity to accommodate more people and activity. Such density changes would likely increase land values, just as they have in urban areas.

Meanwhile, Salt Spring and Gabriola are already undergoing OCP reviews in which schemes to increase density are being promoted by some trustees through planning documents like “Re-imagining Growth on Gabriola,” well in advance of any approval of the draft TPS. This has understandably created concern in those communities.

Our delegation urged the Trust to begin with the basics: determine how much growth is already embedded in existing zoning before contemplating density tools that could increase development even further.

The Islands Trust’s legislated mandate is to preserve and protect. That cannot be achieved without clarity, transparency and an honest conversation about what is in the draft TPS — and what its implications truly are.

The writer is president of the Friends of the Gulf Islands Society.

When Salt Spring’s Broadwell Road washed out during the first big rain of the year, forcing its closure at Duck Creek, it was an inconvenience, if arguably a significant one for many.

When Channel Ridge Drive looked like it too might be lost to an overbanked stream, the dozens of homeowners temporarily stranded up the hill — undoubtedly following along with news of the horrible floods returning to parts of the Fraser Valley — might be excused for a moment or two of climate panic. 

It’s one thing to see shifting weather patterns on paper, but quite another to live through them. Recent years have borne out climate models from the Capital Regional District that forecast more rain, falling in fewer, more extreme weather events. The similarly predicted impact of successive dry springs on tree mortality was seen across the islands only Monday, with short bursts of wind leaving trees and branches across wires and roadways — and sending emergency responders scrambling to allocate their limited resources.

While our islands were spared the kind of damage seen in the Lower Mainland, infrastructure problems either resulting from or revealed by 2021’s atmospheric river event have led to several projects on Salt Spring and the Southern Gulf Islands, from a seemingly constant stream of relatively modest improvements on smaller island roads to more substantial upgrades like the Isabella Point Road rebuild in 2022-23 and the new bridge now being constructed over Cusheon Creek.

The substantial infrastructure resilience work we’ve seen in the last few years on our islands feels unprecedented, and nothing like the shovelful-of-cold-patch, easy-on-the-budget solutions we’d grown accustomed to expect. The shift is necessary, and welcome. 

On Channel Ridge — and in other island neighbourhoods that depend on aging culverts and old ditches to keep them connected to emergency services in a crisis — fretful islanders should again be excused, this time from wondering if the work will be done before they are truly stranded.