Our islands. Our decisions.
People who live here deserve a real say. Put planning in the hands of elected local government we can hold to account.
A petition to the Province of British Columbia
Abolish the Islands Trust.
Our islands are places to live. The people who live here should shape their future.
End the Islands Trust. Put local planning in the hands of elected local government.
The exact petition
We, the undersigned, call on the Province of British Columbia to abolish the Islands Trust and return land-use planning authority to accountable, elected local government.
87 verified signatures.
Sign the petition · Why abolish the Trust?
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Latest from Islands Trust
Checked
Ferry funding: the federal response
In an October 27 letter to the Trust, the federal Transport Minister describes the existing coastal ferry subsidy agreement. The letter puts the 2026–27 grant to British Columbia at approximately $38.6 million and says the Province determines which ferry services receive assistance. It directs questions about fares and service costs to the Province. This is a response about existing arrangements, rather than an announcement of a new local ferry service or fare reduction.
Federal Transport Minister’s response, October 27, pages 1–2
The people who keep our islands working
A job has a price.
So does the trip.
Pick a job. See its pay in four places. Then see what firms charge to make an island visit. We want more homes for workers and room for local firms.
Explore pay and work costs516jobs to explore
4broad pay benchmarks
- Choose a job
- Compare its pay
- Check the trip costs
Default pay uses September 2026 dollars. Original pay is one click away. Each region and source is named.
Find the rules. Follow the record.
Find the rules for your home. Read the source. See what changed. Public land records should be easy for everyone to use.
Our islands. Our future. Our say.
Protect the islands. Let people live.
Nature and homes belong in the same future. We demand strong safeguards and a fair chance to build a life here.
A town is your choice.
End the Trust without forcing every island to become a town. Put planning with a municipality where residents choose one, or with the regional district.
The case for abolishing the Islands Trust.
The record behind our demand: who decides, how the system works and what must change.
Also in this list: No Tariffs, a national Wake Up Canada campaign.
- Fair enforcement. Decisions we can see.
- Let islanders live here.
- Our money. Show results.
- Our kids deserve a future here.
- Our islands. Our decisions.
- One fair standard for everyone.
- Growing older should not mean leaving.
- Let farmers farm.
- Why does a land-use authority reach across so much of the Salish Sea?
- No Tariffs
Our islands. Our decisions.
We believe the Islands Trust is not democratic enough. Each local trust committee has two elected local trustees and a third voting member appointed from the Executive Committee. The two locals can outvote the third when both take part and agree.
But local bylaws still need approval through the Trust's Executive Committee or Trust Council. Trust Council sets the shared budget, policy, procedures and staffing. Your local vote is real. It does not control the whole system.
Protect the islands. Let people live.
Ending the Trust must not leave a gap in protection. We want BC to keep existing plans and bylaws in force until the next elected body changes them through a public process.
That protection would need to be written into the new law. Signing this petition does not change any law today.
A town is your choice.
We want planning to go to a municipality where residents choose one, or to the regional district where they do not.
The town petitions ask for a study of a different choice. You can sign this petition on its own.
Will this lower taxes or solve housing?
Costs and housing depend on many choices. This petition changes who makes planning decisions. The full plan must state its costs and effects.
Who gets to live on the islands?
Families belong here. Make room for grandparents, parents and kids to live close together. Follow the rules, records and census sources in the full housing case.
What did the Trust's own review find?
Read what the reviewers said, what has changed and what is still waiting.
Case files from across the islands
Trust-wide
Thirteen Islands, Eight Definitions of "Affordable"
The reviewed Policy Statement refers expressly to affordable food and housing. Records from 2015 and 2021 document efforts to define affordability. Reviewed local housing agreements use different income tests and rent formulas; their purposes and funding conditions matter when comparing them.
Trust-wide
Keep the ALR. Change Who Answers Locally.
Across twelve measured local trust areas, the ALR covers 1.0% to 46.7% of surveyed parcel land in our dataset. Provincial farmland protection survives abolition. The question is whether local zoning should remain with a special-purpose Trust or return to a municipality or regional district.
Trust-wide
Same Question, Shifting Standards
On the same legal question — whether pre-existing buildings are "legal non-conforming" — the Islands Trust has applied different evidentiary language on different islands and in different years, with no published standard. The concept appears in 597 documents across the archive, and cases from seven local trust areas show how differently it is handled.
Trust-wide
A Short History of the Islands Trust — Unaccountable by Design
Created in 1974 to curb Gulf Islands overdevelopment, the Islands Trust was built with a provincially-appointed majority and has accreted power ever since — including 24 years before it was even required to meet in public.
Gabriola Island case file
Too Slow to Help, Too Permissive to Protect: The Case on Gabriola
Gabriola Island has spent nearly three decades governed by a community plan the Islands Trust itself says has not been updated since 1997, while the Trust's own research documented a deepening housing crisis and its bylaw staff estimated hundreds of unlawful dwellings it lacks the capacity to address. Housing advocates and conservationists disagree about almost everything except this: the process is not delivering.
Salt Spring Island case file
Salt Spring Island: 11,635 people, no council, and a quarter of the Trust's money
Salt Spring is the largest unincorporated community in British Columbia — bigger than 107 of BC's 161 municipalities. It has voted down incorporation twice. The Province's own analysis shows why the second vote mattered to every other island in the Trust.
Hornby Island case file
Five Years, $16,700, and an Unfinished Plan
Hornby Island's Local Trust Committee chartered a comprehensive OCP/LUB review to fix housing and short-term-rental rules, set a $16,700 two-year budget and a spring 2024 adoption target — then documented, in its own staff reports, a failed first engagement, a nearly exhausted budget, and a project still unfinished in 2026. Meanwhile, a rezoning file sat deferred for roughly three years awaiting the same unresolved planning question, and the affordable housing that did arrive on Hornby was financed and delivered by agencies outside the Trust.
Galiano Island case file
Thirty Years in Court, Seven Years to Yes
Galiano Island's experience under the Islands Trust is not a story of an agency losing in court — it is a story of process: a forest-zoning rule litigated across three decades, a community-backed affordable housing project that took seven years from first application to title transfer, and an enforcement system of three staff for an entire archipelago. The record suggests a governance layer that is slow and litigation-prone even when it ultimately wins.
North Pender Island case file
"Polite Behavior Is Certainly Not Doing It": The Case on North Pender
North Pender Island shows what the Islands Trust model looks like in slow motion: a housing problem the Trust itself says has run "for more than a decade" before a dedicated response began, a complaint-driven enforcement system carrying a multi-year backlog, and broad land-use power that stops exactly where residents' most urgent needs begin. All of it is funded by an existing Local Trust Area tax-base requisition rising 8.1 per cent, not a uniform household increase — one that even North Pender's own trustee suggested voting down to force the province to listen.
South Pender Island case file
The Trustee Who Said No
South Pender’s elected trustee opposed the 2022 draft budget; Trust Council chose a revised budget. The record also documents office closures and a later policy-statement consultation. These are arguments about shared decision-making, not proof that a local vote has no effect.
Mayne Island case file
974 Followers and a Closed Door
Between 2022 and 2025 the Islands Trust closed Mayne Island's walk-in office and ended print newspaper public notices, leaving islanders to track development decisions through a website and a Facebook page the local paper noted had 974 followers. Mayne's own elected trustee had already told Trust Council that "people are not happy with the Islands Trust" — an unease with a paper trail on the island going back to at least 2011.
Saturna Island case file
Feeding the Komodo Dragon: The Case on Saturna
Saturna Island pays a share of the Islands Trust budget more than double its population share into an institution whose costs have outrun inflation for decades, whose local committee is chaired by a trustee another island elected, and whose enforcement regime drew formal recommendations from BC's Ombudsperson. Drawn entirely from the Trust's own pages, local press, and Saturna residents' documented record, this is the case against the institution — not against the elected islanders inside it.
Lasqueti Island case file
A Reverse Dunkirk in Scottie Bay
The Islands Trust spent five years and a lawsuit trying to remove a private dock in Scottie Bay, defeating a second rezoning attempt in May 2025 — two months before a floatplane crash closed Lasqueti's only ferry dock and that same private dock became how marooned islanders got home. Paired with an enforcement system whose only escalation is court and land-use rules that leave guest cabins empty amid a housing shortage, the saga shows a process that is slow, discretionary, and disconnected from the island's ferry-dependent reality.
Thetis Island case file
Thetis: Conflicting Tenure and Zoning Decisions
The Province issued a Preedy Harbour aquaculture tenure after the local committee rejected rezoning. The local zoning requirement remained: the Trust notified the operator and began enforcement. This is a coordination failure, not proof that the Province cancelled the zoning.
Gambier Island case file
All Veto, No Toolbox: Gambier's Duplicate Government
Gambier Island, a Howe Sound community of roughly 150 year-round residents with no central road network, carries a full second layer of government — two elected trustees, Islands Trust planning staff, an Advisory Planning Commission, and provision for a Board of Variance — that holds veto power over land use but could only write letters when the island needed a dock repaired or internet delivered. Its flagship "targeted" bylaw review has run since September 2022 and was still in public consultation in mid-2026, with no adopted bylaw and a survey deadline of August 31, 2026.
Bowen Island case file
Bowen Island: 27 years as BC's only island municipality
Bowen incorporated in 1999 and stayed in the Trust. This project did not locate a comprehensive published post-incorporation evaluation in the repositories searched. Its tax-rate comparison is evidence about rates, not proof of a stable household burden.
Denman case file
Enforcement Outcomes Need a Clearer Public Record
This project has not located a consolidated public ledger of enforcement penalties. That is a limited search finding, not proof that court proceedings or every individual outcome are secret.
All evidence · Search public records · View public signatures
Before you sign
What happens after I sign?
We email you a link. Open it and confirm on the page to make your signature count. You can use your private link to change your details or withdraw.
Who is behind this?
Tony Aly runs this private campaign. It is one campaign of Wake Up Canada (wakeupcanada.ca), which he also owns and pays for. It is not a government project or an official voice for an island. Read the ownership and personal-interest disclosure.
After the election: check your island
November 1 check: confirmed local trustee results, Bowen’s pending municipal appointments, new Executive approvals and South Pender’s adopted notification bylaw. The local updates link to the official records.
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