Our concerns about Islands Trust’s new policy statement include:

  • Centralization to more regionally based land-use planning, which means a reduction in Local Trust Committee discretion, with little consideration for the uniqueness of each island.
    • The Trust structure—where each of 13 jurisdictions has two trustees—is already unfair. (It means an island with a few hundred people has the same representation as Salt Spring Island with over 10,000 people.)
  • Reducing consideration of residents, the local economy, and the community in their policies to serve the Islands.
  • Restrictions on agriculture and forestry, traditional and important livelihoods on the Islands for over 100 years.
  • Restrictions on home businesses and tourism—the lifeblood of much of the local economy.
  • A ban on desalination as a means of providing needed potable water, even though modern desalination plants can produce abundant water with solar energy and no pollution.
  • And much more:  
  • E.G. The Housing Crisis: While focusing on restricting peoples’ rights, the Trust has done little to address the housing shortage– the biggest issue on many of the islands. Over the last 20 years, the Trust has paid for over a dozen housing studies, but scarcely anything has actually happened