The Salt Spring Local Trust Committee will soon be amending our Official Community Plan (OCP). Because our OCP must be consistent with the Trust Policy Statement, a Trust-wide document, it is significant that it, too, is being amended. We fear that anticipated changes in the Trust Policy Statement will permit changes to OUR OCP that would otherwise be impossible to implement, changes that go against the intent of the original mandate.
In preparation for amending the Trust Policy Statement, Trust Council has, behind closed doors, crafted a specious new interpretation of the Trust Mandate/Object that is far from benign. As of this writing, the interpretation, which has alarming implications, has not been officially released, but is now on the Trust website.
The original Trust Object clearly states:
“The object of the trust is to preserve and protect the trust area and its unique amenities and environment for the benefit of the residents of the trust area and of British Columbia generally, in cooperation with municipalities, regional districts, improvement districts, First Nations, other persons and organizations and the government of British Columbia.”
The new interpretation turns on the phrase unique amenities. An amenity, which is defined as a pleasant (or pleasing) feature, is usually made more specific by a modifier. Thus, there are civic amenities, domestic amenities, recreational amenities, and in the case of the Trust document, unique amenities, specified in a context that also includes the environment. Civic and domestic amenities — housing, access ramps, air conditioning, etc., are obviously not unique, but the new interpretation ignores this, ushering in through the back door a plethora of generic “amenities” that were explicitly excluded from the original Trust document by the use of the word unique. Below is the critical portion of the Islands Trust reinterpretation of “amenities”:
“Trust Council’s view is that unique amenities are broad-ranging and may include issues such as, but not limited to, housing, livelihoods, infrastructure and tourism. However, land use planning in the Trust Area must always include a focus on preserving and protecting the environment and communities of both local trust areas and the Trust Area generally, and in a manner consistent with Reconciliation.”
We believe that the Trust object is first and foremost to protect the natural environment and that the unique amenities of the islands refer to the pleasing and singular features that the natural environment provides within the Gulf Islands.
If these considerations do not have priority, and if land use planning decisions fail to be informed at all times by the preserve and protect mandate, we become no different than any municipality. Housing, livelihoods, infrastructure, tourism are, of course, important features of community life BUT they are not unique. The original language of the Trust document took great care to place the natural environment front and centre of land use planning This was done with all party deliberation and intent to provide an administrative tool sanctioned to prevent overdevelopment.
Concerns with this interpretation — and the secret, and arguably illegal, process by which it was adopted — are explained well in this article, published recently in the Times Colonist, written by Elissa Poole, a candidate we endorsed for Trustee in the last election.
For information on how this affects Bylaw 530.
Positively Forward will continue to alert you as to how you can participate in the public process of amending our Salt Spring OCP and thus help protect the priorities of the original Trust Policy Statement.
Looking further ahead, these issues point to how important it is to elect trustees who believe in supporting the Trust Object as it was intended. Help us reach a wider audience in the next election by encouraging your friends to join this list. Feel free to tell us how we are doing, and to pass this email along to others.