By LAURA PATRICK

After nearly eight years in public office as one of your two Salt Spring Island local trustees, I have decided that I will not be seeking a third term in the upcoming local elections this fall.

When I first stepped forward in 2018, I did so with a clear goal: to support the Islands Trust in better protecting the environment while also supporting a healthy, resilient community. Almost a decade had passed since a woman had held the position of local trustee on Salt Spring Island, and many community members were actively looking for a new approach. I threw my hat in the ring determined to help move the island forward.

Over two terms, I focused on the priorities that I heard about most from the community: improving housing outcomes, strengthening environmental stewardship and modernizing our slow and confusing governance. I worked to build stronger relationships between the Islands Trust and the Capital Regional District, local commissions, water districts and housing providers. Among my early achievements, I sponsored the successful request to declare a Housing Equity and Workforce Shortage Crisis across the Gulf Islands and helped advance practical updates to the Islands Trust Housing Toolkit. I also brought my professional background in environmental impact assessment into the role, supporting work on forest ecosystem health, wildfire risk reduction and freshwater sustainability and the completion of the Salt Spring Island Watershed Protection Plan 2023-2032. I supported our Climate Change Emergency and Reconciliation declarations and contributed to local climate action planning.

While I accomplished a great deal, much of my agenda was either blocked or lost within the complexities of our local governance system. I leave with the sense that there is still significant work ahead.

With a limited mandate to make change and with few resources, a key lesson that I take away from my time in office is that strong regional collaboration is critical to achieving tangible results. During my first term, working alongside our respected former MLA Adam Olsen, we were able to build productive relationships with provincial decision-makers, improve access to cabinet ministers and advance complex issues affecting Salt Spring Island. That collaboration made a real difference.

More recently, collaboration has become more challenging. The working relationship with MLA Rob Botterell, who expressed strong feelings about an environment-only mandate for the Trust, has not provided the same opportunity to advance shared priorities, and I believe our community cohesion and momentum for solutions has suffered as a result.

Despite these challenges, I continued to push for governance improvements. I supported a provincial review of the Islands Trust Act and was honoured to be elected chair of the entire Islands Trust Council by my peers.

Locally, I focused on practical, community-based planning for an uncertain future. I initiated the Ganges Village Planning process, launched a Housing Action Program, worked to strengthen relationships with farmers, food producers, small businesses and community organizations, especially during the pandemic, and championed an update of our official community plan and land use bylaws grounded in equitable public engagement and meaningful relationships with First Nations.

One of the most important lessons of public service for me has been the responsibility to approach reconciliation from my heart as a principled commitment to truth, respect and relationship. I have reflected deeply on the reality that Indigenous title in British Columbia was never extinguished and believe leadership requires us to move forward with integrity, even when conversations are difficult. I remain proud to have consistently supported reconciliation efforts grounded in facts, humility and a commitment to building a more respectful and just future together.

While some progress has been made, I believe the Islands Trust is still far from achieving its potential. In my view it could become one of the best coastal planning authorities in the world, being truly innovative in protecting the environment and these unique and diverse island communities, but only if it is willing to evolve. That means modernizing policies, improving governance and continuing to drive even stronger environmental protection and ensure that the people who live and work here, who are in an increasingly precarious situations, can thrive.

What is stopping the Islands Trust from reaching its potential?

From what I see, the problem is structural. The Islands Trust operates within provincial legislation that constrains its authority and limits its ability to adapt. The framework was built decades ago and has not kept pace with evolving understandings of reconciliation, Indigenous Rights, environmental stewardship, climate resiliency and regional governance. Efforts to build meaningful government-to-government relationships with First Nations are further complicated by a provincial structure that has not consistently provided the support, legislative tools or the political will necessary to do this work properly.

If we are serious about reconciliation, environmental protection, maintaining an economically diverse community and strengthening good governance, then we must be willing to confront the systemic barriers that stand in the way. That requires more than incremental adjustments; it requires examining the governance structures, decision-making processes, and inter-jurisdictional relationships that shape how authority is exercised and how outcomes are achieved.

The reality is this: we cannot meaningfully redesign governance relationships or modernize our policy framework while operating within legislation that already predetermines our authority, our structure and our relationship to First Nations. We are being asked to reform a system from within a framework that was never designed to accommodate the kind of transformation that is now needed.

Aggravating these structural challenges is the way we, as islanders, often engage with one another on difficult issues. Too often, public dialogue breaks into sides defined by extreme language, personal attacks and winners and losers, often split across generations. Like many other communities, I observed significant imbalances between those voices that are most heard in traditional public processes on Salt Spring Island versus those people most affected by decisions and thereby excluded from meaningful participation. While disagreement is healthy in a democracy, the hostility, misinformation and personal attacks directed at those willing to step into public service come at a real cost and discourage many thoughtful people from participating at all.

As I step aside, I hope those who come next continue pushing this island forward with a broader vision of what this community is becoming and who should be included in our future if we are to thrive. I hope they listen not only to the loudest voices, but also to families, young people, workers, renters, small business owners and those struggling to remain part of this community. Salt Spring needs leadership willing to build a community that is resilient, economically and socially diverse, less divisive and capable of working for everyone who calls this island home. The work matters, and the organization needs new voices ready to continue modernizing the Islands Trust and building on the progress that has been made. I am grateful for having had the opportunity to serve.

Now it is time for the next generation of leadership to carry this work forward.

By Frants Attorp

Salt Spring trustees recently announced that work on our new Official Community Plan (OCP) will continue until the Trust elections in October. This is surprising, given that the consultant hired to do the project — and now the senior planner put in charge of it — have both suddenly departed.

A major concern is that our trustees directed the McElhanney consulting firm, by contract, to use a public engagement process called “Beyond Inclusion” — a strategy that has resulted in the exclusion of unwelcome facts and voices.

Adopted by our Local Trust Committee (LTC) in 2023 at the behest of trustee Laura Patrick, Beyond Inclusion has been used to restrict information, cherry-pick input and justify holding no open public meetings on a radical remake of our OCP that could unleash runaway development for decades.

Another telling example is the fate of the 2024 Complete Communities Assessment, a detailed external study that our trustees commissioned for their Plan review at a cost of $140,000. It found that 84 per cent of survey respondents wanted “a strong emphasis on environmental considerations.” Trustees promptly withdrew it from the whole OCP process. Also excluded was Positively Forward’s petition, now with 1900 signatures, upholding our current OCP’s density limits and supporting truly affordable housing sheltered from market forces.

It seems the McElhanney consultant was never told that Salt Spring is a protected area under BC’s Islands Trust Act, with an ecological mandate to limit mass development throughout these islands. In January, I revealed that a key McElhanney report recommending major OCP changes contained errors that were in line with Salt Spring trustees’ agenda, but contrary to provincial legislation exempting the Islands Trust from Bill 44 and other housing requirements.

McElhanney submitted a revised version with corrections in February, and then final documents in March with this disclaimer: “McElhanney accepts no responsibility for any deficiency, misstatements or inaccuracy contained in this report as a result of omissions or errors in information provided by third parties or for omissions, misstatements or fraudulent acts of persons interviewed.”Is this wording standard boilerplate, or an indication of why the consultant refused to renew their contract with Salt Spring’s LTC?

At a May 14 meeting, when the citizen advisory committee asked trustees for “any and all information related to the motivation behind the decision of McElhanney not to renew their contract,” the LTC chose not to ask staff to pursue the matter with the consultant.

With Trust staff now moving the project forward, trustee Patrick encouraged them to “stand strong” and not abandon the Beyond Inclusion approach: “We can’t have engagement processes where we just engage who shows up.”

But showing up is a crucial part of how democracy works in Canada. Much will be at stake during the Trust elections this fall — above all, open government, fair process and the Islands Trust Act’s mandate to preserve and protect our islands.

You used to hear it often: “You can’t conserve your way out of a drought.”

A few farmers might still mutter it skyward with hope, but the supply-side phrase has fallen out of fashion, partly for its fatalism but just as much for its lack of imagination. Pilots understand that during a crisis, altitude equals options — and aggressive water conservation, it turns out, lowers baseline demand and buys everyone time until inevitably, it rains. 

If we are in a housing drought, provincial regulators seem to have given up hope the rain will ever return on its own, and have taken square aim at the supply side of our housing affordability crisis. This week’s story on the increased scrutiny given to short-term accommodations on Salt Spring and other Gulf Islands includes statements from the B.C. Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs that attempt to tie 5,000 fewer short-term rentals in the province to “thousands” more long-term housing options.

That’s hard arithmetic to back up, even roughly. Last year on Bowen Island we saw that of six short-term rentals that had run immediately afoul of that municipality’s principal residency requirement, just one had converted into a long-term rental. Small sample size notwithstanding, we know it’s not going to be every vacation rental operator’s choice to become a full-time landlord — and if the vanishingly small uptake of the Rural Housing Program’s offer to trade $40,000 in fix-up dollars for five years of discounted rent at existing suites was any indication, it’s going to be almost none of them on Salt Spring.

Meanwhile, local Islands Trust staff recently reported they had been able to “re-initiate” work on our LTC’s languishing Housing Action Program by re-referring Bylaw 537 — the Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) map scheme to grow the rental pool — in January at the request of Tsawout First Nation, with the goal of bringing the bylaw back to trustees this summer, and possibly as early as next week’s meeting. 

One might reasonably wonder whether more permissive regulation is sufficient to create more affordable housing stock, or whether it’s the lack of serious numbers in funding that’s the real roadblock. If there’s any hope of getting out of the housing drought, the province might have to literally make it rain.