The Islands Trust is poised to hand over most of its public notice distribution to U.S.-owned Facebook next year, as leadership closed out 2025 by quietly forwarding a new staff recommendation: that the 26-member Islands Trust Council abandon publishing public notices in local newspapers.
Advanced by the Executive Committee Wednesday, Dec. 17, the recommendation also includes the unusual suggestion that Trust Council enact the new bylaw through three readings completed outside of a regular public meeting, utilizing that body’s “resolutions without meetings” protocol.
The latest proposal is built upon a similar “model” public notice bylaw that has guided Local Trust Committees (LTCs) toward eschewing local newspapers for their notifications, proposed by staff and adopted by Trust Council last year. Most LTCs have since adopted some version of that model bylaw, although a few have modified the language to incorporate parallel use of local publications to post their notices — including Salt Spring Island in August and, as of its Dec. 16 meeting, Denman Island.
If the bylaw is approved, Trust Council’s own “alternate public notice policy” will affect information typically posted for Islands Trust elections, according to Legislative and Information Services director David Marlor, who prepared the recommendation.
Currently, when public notices are required by the Islands Trust Act and Local Government Act, the default notification laid out by the Community Charter is simple: publication in two editions of a newspaper, once each week for two consecutive weeks.
But a provision also allows local governments to adopt their own alternative schemes, requiring trustees to consider — and affirm in the bylaw — that their publication choice is “reliable, suitable and accessible,” three terms given specific meaning in the Public Notice Regulation.
Means of publication are “reliable” if they provide factual information and publish at least once a month; they are “suitable” if they display information legibly, by the required date and allow a person to consult the notice more than once during the notice period; and they are “accessible” if they are “directed or made available to a diverse audience or readership” and “are easily found.”
The new alternate public notice bylaw would necessarily record that trustees agree that the Islands Trust’s Facebook page, along with its own website, fulfill those principles as the only two required means of publication.
Marlor told trustees on Dec. 17 that examples of the kinds of notifications the policy could affect included future amendments to meeting procedures bylaws or “advertising for your Policy Statement.”
“And the other one is the election coming up,” said Marlor. “Any statutory requirements for the election would follow [the new] bylaw; otherwise, we’d have to publish it as per the standard, which is the local newspapers.”
Staff had identified “about eight” individual newspapers it believed Trust Council needed to use whenever there was a legislative requirement to provide notice.
“Logistically, it creates a lot of work as well as a lot of cost,” said Marlor. “The Times Colonist, the Driftwood and several others are fairly expensive to advertise in.”
The use of “resolution without meeting” procedures to pass bylaws involves vote collection via email, and is common for matters considered urgent. Changes to the Community Charter that allow local governments to consider alternative publishing for public notices were enacted in February 2022.
Trust Council’s own policies note that resolutions without meeting are for decisions “not requiring discussion or debate” and that “issues which may be considered controversial, sensitive, complex or otherwise benefitting from discussion and debate” should be voted on at a regular meeting.
Marlor told trustees that as a “simple administrative bylaw” Trust Council could give three readings and then adopt the policy by resolution without meeting following the in-person three-day meeting in March.
Trust Council’s procurement policy specifies goods and services should be acquired at “the best value including consideration of environment and local economy,” as well as favouring “Canadian content wherever possible, practical and economical.”
Facebook is owned by Meta Platforms Inc., an American company deeply invested in resource-intensive generative artificial intelligence (AI), headquartered in California.
Apart from public notices, Trust Council’s past work to promote transparency has included largely successful efforts to livestream its quarterly public meetings and make recordings available online, an undertaking that began shortly after the onset of the pandemic in 2020. Senior staff this year have reminded trustees there is no legislative requirement they stream public meetings at all. During the December Trust Council meeting, Gambier Island Trust Area trustee Joe Bernardo suggested the body consider “whether or not the whole livestreaming and recording business is worth it.”
The Executive Committee Wednesday forwarded the recommendation and public notice bylaw to Trust Council through general consent, indicating no member present objected to the proposal.