Salt Spring LTC sued for ‘unreasonable delay’

One of the property owners seeking permit approval for an erosion mitigation project above a popular Salt Spring Island beach claims island officials are taking too long to decide one way or another — and has asked a judge to step in. 

Baker Road homeowner Ethan Wilding has petitioned B.C.’s Supreme Court, asking that body to compel Salt Spring’s Local Trust Committee (LTC) to issue a decision on a development permit application related to a shoreline project there. Wilding is among several adjacent property owners above Baker Beach who have been developing a “nature-based” climate adaptation plan, according to submitted documents, using an erosion mitigation design similar to the Stewardship Centre for B.C.’s pilot “Green Shores” program.  

That standard is encouraged by Salt Spring’s official community plan, minimizing hard armour concrete seawalls in favour of non-uniform rock clusters, vegetation enhancement and “beach nourishment.”   

But the “nourishment” –– sand and gravel placed at the toe of an eroding slope –– worried many islanders, who feared for wildlife at the beach and reached out to the LTC last year, even as the project’s application with the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship to modify a 560-metre strip of provincial Crown land fronting the parcels became public. 

While also mostly on Crown land, the Baker Beach proposal lies within the Trust’s marine shoreline development permit area (DPA), meaning any construction taking place there requires the LTC’s approval. In public meetings, planning staff have said the application had been considered largely routine; the authority for marine shoreline DPA permit issuances generally had been delegated to staff through a 2022 bylaw passed by the current LTC, in what a contemporary staff report characterized as efforts to “improve process efficiency, reduce the size of LTC agendas and provide greater certainty to the applicants.” 

But reading the lawsuit filed April 4, it seems at least one of the project’s proponents would beg to disagree.  

Lawyers for the petitioner argue that the 16 months which have passed since the application was submitted exceeds the “reasonable time” within which statutory bodies are expected to act — and suggests that the LTC has “impliedly refused to make a decision on the application by virtue of its unreasonable delay.” 

“The project’s viability is threatened by the Trust Committee’s delay in making a decision,” reads the filing. “The Baker Road property is at risk from suffering further erosion and will suffer real and irreparable damage if work on the project does not commence soon.” 

Now, a full month since Wilding’s April 4 filing, B.C.’s courthouse services still show no response from the Islands Trust. LTC chair Tim Peterson said he had reached out to staff but no comment was provided before press time. 

Update: Lawyers for the LTC filed a response after press time Wednesday, May 7, briefly disputing the petitioner’s facts and arguments, noting the LTC was served April 17 and advising the court it would shortly file an “amended, substantive response” with supporting materials.

Notably, the petitioner’s lawsuit emphasizes there is no pressure intended on which way the LTC should decide, rather simply that trustees need to make a decision. 

“The project has also required approval from provincial and federal authorities,” according to the filing. “These requisite processes have either already been finalized and approved or are imminently ongoing.” 

Those “imminently ongoing” processes include a review of the proposal by Fisheries and Oceans Canada, who provided guidance last summer through an official Letter of Advice; and the provincial Crown land tenure application itself, which at press time remains under review after a three-month period of public comment.  

The lawsuit contends a “full and complete” application was submitted in late December 2023, with Islands Trust staff and a file number not assigned to it until July 2024. According to court documents, the LTC began requesting additional information from the engineering and construction management firm Wilding retained for the project in October, and staff conducted a site visit to the property in January 2025.

That month, according to the lawsuit, “due to concerns about a delay in receiving a decision,” Wilding hired counsel to correspond with the LTC. 

“The provincial and federal authorities have thus far cooperated timely,” read the lawsuit. “The petitioner needs this court’s assistance in forcing the Trust Committee only to do its job.”