The following was adapted for print from a presentation given March 11 as part of the Trust Council quarterly meeting in Nanaimo. 

By ERIC MARCH 

When I first decided to get involved with local politics it was to run as a candidate in the May 2023 Local Community Commission election on Salt Spring Island. At that time I received the sage advice that “guys like us are the wrong age and wrong class to be getting involved in Salt Spring politics; the CRD and the Islands Trust only exist for wealthy retirees.”

While this person’s statement has stuck with me, it is not a unique sentiment. I have heard similar refrains from many, many working-class folks. Just in preparing for this presentation I heard from several people how talking to the Islands Trust is too difficult, a waste of time, and pointless. And who can blame people for feeling this way? 

First of all, almost all public engagement for the Islands Trust happens during the work day. It cost me $54 in lost wages to speak at a recent meeting of my Local Trust Committee and today my partner and I have had to give up $496 in combined wages in order to be here. Can you imagine charging someone a $50 fee to speak at a town hall or a $500 delegation fee? As if the cost wasn’t enough, since my partner and I both work, we are required to make difficult sacrifices to attend these meetings. We both have important tasks we should be doing today that we are not not able to do. Worse, not only are we workers but we are employees, so we need to justify our missed work to our employers. This time and wage cost doesn’t even include the time necessary for writing applications, outlines and the presentations themselves. 

The very nature of Islands Trust public engagement is exclusionary and therefore lacks a diversity of opinions. How can you expect to hear from the general public when some members of the public need to face egregious costs and make sacrifices to attend? 

Nowhere is this lack of diversity of opinions more clear than in the public engagement around the Trust Policy Statement. Since the statement of Sept. 26, 2023 where the Trust Council announced that they believed that unique amenities were “broad-ranging and may include issues such as, but not limited to, housing, livelihoods, infrastructure and tourism,” a handful of voices have been frequent attendees at Trust Council meetings to speak out against protection of housing and livelihoods. Meanwhile, the folks who need their housing and livelihoods protected are unable to attend due to the difficulties in attending these meetings. 

So let’s talk about the Trust Policy Statement. That statement from Sept. 26, 2023 was amazing. Finally, we heard a statement from the Islands Trust that recognized not only working-class livelihoods but the need to house them and build infrastructure to support them! A statement from the Islands Trust that recognized that the Trust Area, its unique amenities and its environment are three pieces of a whole! Unfortunately, such a statement cannot go unanswered, and so the same small number of voices have been showing up at Trust Council meetings to let us all know that no, the environment must come first, and adding any mention of protecting the workers of the Trust Area weakens environmental protections. 

When the Islands Trust was created in 1974, the largest threat to the Gulf Islands was, by far, overdevelopment. The Islands Trust stopped that, undoubtedly a good thing. However, in 2025, overdevelopment has to compete with climate change, drought and gentrification for the greatest threat to the Trust Area. Unfortunately, while I and many others see gentrification as the current greatest threat to the Trust Area, there are those that consistently weaponize the fear of overdevelopment against any attempt to build any sort of densification. Due to the unforgiving laws of supply and demand, the limited housing in the Gulf Islands has quickly spiralled out of the reach of even the hardest-working and hardest-saving workers. How can the Islands Trust claim to be protecting the Trust Area when working-class islanders, the folks who built these islands and provide the services needed to make them functioning communities, are struggling with unaffordable, unsustainable, unsuitable housing? 

The Islands Trust must make greater efforts to support all members of the Trust Area. The Trust Council and the Local Trust Committees must ensure delegations and town halls are accessible to all members of the public, and commit to reaching out to the public if they are not able to make sufficient strides in accessibility. More importantly, the Trust Council must recognize that the Trust Policy Statement must include protections for rural workers, rural livelihoods and housing. If the Islands Trust excludes protections for rural workers then the Islands Trust is simply facilitating the extirpation of the Gulf Islands worker in favour of gentrification. 

It is time for a balanced Trust Policy Statement that balances environmental protection with protections of housing and livelihoods for working-class residents of the Gulf Islands. 

By NANCY WIGEN 

In this time when our security and future are threatened, I heard someone say, “I’ve always voted Green, but now we need someone tough to protect us.”

Like who? Elizabeth May has been our MP for 14 years and she is the best, most hardworking, smart and effective representative we have ever had.

Elizabeth succeeds across party lines, working with respect and kindness together with other MPs who are doing good work for us. While in office she has got three private member’s bills (PMBs) passed into law on our behalf, while Pierre Poilievre, with more time in office, has not passed even one PMB.

The first PMB was to create a federal strategy to confront Lyme disease. The second prohibits keeping whales, dolphins and porpoises in captivity, and the third is a law to provide a strategy for environmental justice, which became law in June   2024.

In 2011, there was a lot of controversy about how MPs’ expenses were not made public. The big parties had all decided against revealing how they spent public dollars. It was assumed that as the only Green MP Elizabeth would not be able to make a difference, but she set up a website attached to her office and posted every expense for which she spent public dollars. Having been shamed by her good example, within a year every MP was required to submit every invoice and all their spending of tax dollars became public.

Another very important victory is the passing of Lindsey’s Law, which established a DNA data bank to register the DNA of missing persons and was initiated by previous MP Gary Lunn. Elizabeth and many others, including Indigenous leaders, got the law passed. By June 2024 the National Missing Persons Program had the DNA profiles of 2,500 missing persons, which has helped identify more than 90 people who were otherwise lost. Elizabeth has also brought millions of federal dollars for infrastructure into Saanich and the Gulf Islands. 

Also, she and past Green MLA Adam Olsen have worked hard to try to save our wild salmon from diseases from fish farms. That is still ongoing.

Any time I have raised an issue with our Green MP, or our Green MLA, I have gotten a personal reply, with information relevant to my concern, or thanking me for my advocacy, including for saving an important salmon-spawning site in the Fraser River from being turned into a gravel pit.

Elizabeth’s belief that “you can do anything you want if you don’t care who gets the credit” gets egos and partisan politics out of the way, so work gets done, but often those who don’t deserve it get the credit.  The news media tend to ignore all but the big parties so we don’t hear of what Green members do for us.

I’d like us to have proportional representation, with all MPs working together, but when Green policy is to work across party lines it comes to almost the same thing. I hope Elizabeth continues as our MP, and many more Green candidates are elected in the next election to give us a truly democratic government.

A positive, constructive, creative attitude bringing us all together in cooperation and unity makes Canada so much stronger than the division, fear and hatred sweeping the world right now. That’s why I support Elizabeth and the Green Party to lead the way.

Reading glasses have been more de rigueur than usual among island shoppers, as we peer into the fine-print origins of every purchase not wearing a prominent maple leaf.  

And as comfortable as the rest of the nation has been transitioning into a Buy Canadian mindset, it may have been even easier for islanders, long accustomed to the reality that “buying local” is the best way to mitigate the risk of a critical business not being there when it’s needed most.  

Local governments are shifting their buying habits as well, as their constituencies demand it; from Salt Spring’s fire district trustees to the Capital Regional District board, island representatives are looking at what procurement choices can be made to amplify the national effort. And as we were going to press on Monday, B.C. Premier David Eby was announcing the excommunication of all things U.S. from government-run liquor stores — concluding his statement with what has become a nationwide rallying cry of “Elbows up!” 

From fire trucks to beer, an overwhelming majority of these items will have a good “made in Canada” alternative (or, to paraphrase one staff member’s quip, “made anywhere but the U.S.”). Indeed, at the very local level, we are repeatedly delighted to discover the variety and quality of offerings available from our own islands.  

Again, as islanders know well, making buying decisions with values beyond the bottom line can be complex, time-consuming and more costly. While we should demand that discretion at a government level, it can be financially unreachable for individuals; we hope those with the privilege to do so exercise it as often as possible while withholding judgment on those who cannot.  

A protracted trade dispute across our southern border was as far beyond our imagination this time last year as paving on Ganges Hill actually happening was. But here we are, in both cases, and for now a bumpy ride is all but guaranteed.  

Things will, we hope, improve eventually. In the meantime, we say slowing down, watching for potholes (proverbial and otherwise) and exercising patience with one another will be the keys to navigating it all –– including with those trying to point a way through.