By RONALD WRIGHT
Fifty years ago, B.C. took a bold step to save our islands from “exploitation by real-estate developers and speculators,” passing the Islands Trust Act, with its famous mandate “to preserve and protect” the Trust Area. Most islanders know this is what keeps our natural beauty and rural character largely unspoiled. Yet few know that our legal protections are now being dismantled by trustees sworn to uphold them.
The immediate threat is a revised Trust Policy Statement (TPS), which could become law within months. Our TPS sets the bar that official community plans (OCPs) and major bylaws must meet. The existing one has stood for decades. So might this new one — but only if the B.C. government approves it.
We’re being told that consultation with public and First Nations was done during “Phase 1” in 2019, and now it’s time to finish the job. There was indeed broad outreach back then. More than 1,600 people gave input at open houses, information booths, on ferries and online. The public’s top priorities were 1) connection to nature, and 2) strengthening the Trust’s protections. A new TPS based on that input was ready for first reading in July 2021. But just days before Trust Council met to debate it, Salt Spring trustees Laura Patrick and Peter Grove derailed the whole process.
Fast forward to today, when we face a vastly different draft TPS that ignores what most islanders asked for in 2019 (with little outreach since). This new TPS favours development over ecological protection, camouflaged by greenwash and lip-service to Indigenous concerns. Environmental impacts of development need only be “considered.” It promotes urban density schemes that would allow many units on lots currently zoned for one. Trustees are directed to preserve “ecosystem integrity” in a patchwork of areas, not the Trust islands as a whole. The top housing directive is for “attainable” housing, a term undefined and unregulated.
A vocal minority — mainly speculators, logging firms, and developers — have long opposed the Trust. In 1982 it was nearly abolished. Then came referendums on municipal incorporation, none of which passed except the first (Bowen, 1999). After the latest failed decisively in 2017, foes of the Trust sought office, running on property rights and housing platforms. Recent events reveal that such trustees now have the upper hand.
The core Trust Act mandate is “to preserve and protect the Trust Area and its unique amenities and environment.” In September 2023 a secret number of trustees met behind closed doors to find a way around it. Council then announced that “unique amenities are broad-ranging and may include issues such as, but not limited to, housing, livelihoods, infrastructure and tourism.”
The proposed TPS relies on this blatant misreading, as do simultaneous reviews of Salt Spring’s OCP and six others. Rewriting OCPs while the TPS is itself being rewritten is an abuse of process and an irresponsible handling of public funds. Hence trustees’ haste to push it all through before this fall’s elections.
Anyone with concerns will have a last chance to be heard at Harbour House on Tuesday, Jan. 13 at 6:30 p.m. Please come to this — and write to the minister who has the final say: HMA.Minister@gov.bc.ca.
The writer is a longtime Salt Springer and author of 10 books, including A Short History of Progress, his CBC Massey Lectures.