The Islands Trust nearly always wins in court.

Can the Islands Trust zone the ocean? Yes.

A local government in British Columbia may zone the foreshore and the waters over it, and the two leading authorities for it are both Islands Trust cases upheld on appeal.

“As a general principle, that question must be answered in the affirmative. There is no doubt that the district has the power to pass zoning bylaws that regulate the use of the foreshore and foreshore waters as well as the land”.

Laxton & Company v. West Vancouver (District), 2010 BCSC 1297 at para 25 — quoted with approval by the Court of Appeal in Fonseca v. Gabriola Island Local Trust Committee, 2021 BCCA 27 at para 62. Nobody campaigning on this should argue these bylaws are ultra vires.

What none of the decisions in this review addresses

In every judgment we read, the fight was about whether a bylaw reached one particular thing — a floating office, a shed, a seawall, a dwelling, a well. Not one cites B.C. Reg. 119/90; not one refers to Schedule A of the Islands Trust Regulation. None of the decisions in this review addresses the outer boundary. In North Pender Island Trust Committee v. Hunt, 2008 BCSC 391, where a zone line did have to be located, it was proved by filing the zoning maps in evidence — and the judge found “an irregularity in the various zoning maps” (para 22), which he attributed to “a failure to reconcile the overall coastline of the island with the particular surveys of waterfront lots” (para 25).

These decisions do not approve the outer boundary.

Every case we found

• MacMillan Bloedel Ltd. v. Galiano Island Trust Committee, 103 D.L.R. (4th) 651, 1993 CanLII 1645 (B.C.S.C.) — Trust lost. (we have not read this judgment; known to us through 2023 BCSC 1334 and 2025 BCCA 15)
  The trial judge declared the bylaws void for illegality. He found that the trustees' stated motives were not their real ones — that they acted to prevent or delay subdivision and sale, and intended in the long run to obtain what would in effect be park land. That finding of fact was never disturbed. What changed on appeal was its legal consequence.
• MacMillan Bloedel Ltd. v. The Galiano Island Trust Committee, 126 D.L.R. (4th) 449, 1995 CanLII 4585 (B.C.C.A.), leave to appeal to S.C.C. refused, [1995] S.C.C.A. No. 439 — Trust won. (we have not read this judgment; known to us through 2023 BCSC 1334 at paras 60–62 and 2025 BCCA 15 at paras 1, 12)
  The foundational case. The Court of Appeal allowed the Committee's appeal and dismissed MacMillan Bloedel's action, restoring bylaws that prohibited any dwelling on the affected forest lots. The Supreme Court of Canada refused leave. Thirty years on it is still the starting point: the 2025 Court of Appeal opens its reasons by noting that a challenge to the same restrictions in a predecessor bylaw had already been dismissed by that court.
• Denman Island Local Trust Committee v. 4064 Investments Ltd., 2001 BCCA 736 — Split. [judgment]
  The chambers judge had declared five bylaws invalid. The Court of Appeal split the result: it dismissed the Trust's appeal as it concerned Bylaw 113, the forest cover bylaw, which stayed invalid; and it set aside the declaration invalidating Bylaws 110, 111, 112 and 114, remitting their validity to the Supreme Court for fresh determination. Saunders J.A. held that provisions dependent on Bylaw 113 could be severed, and that Bylaws 111 and 112 had independent substance which might fall within the erosion and riparian powers in the Local Government Act — questions nobody had argued fully, or at all. Rowles J.A. would have allowed the appeal outright. This is the case Bylaw 111 survived, and Bylaw 111 is the one every later Denman case turns on.
• Denman Island Local Trust Committee v. Ellis, 2005 BCSC 1238 — Trust won. [judgment]
  The Trust sued under s. 28 of the Islands Trust Act and s. 281 of the Local Government Act. Groberman J. granted a declaration that the defendant Ellis unlawfully contravened s. 920(1)(d) of the Local Government Act by altering land within the Komas Bluff permit area without a permit, and a permanent injunction against further cutting or alteration within fifty metres of the top edge of the bluff or on its face. He also held this an appropriate case for a mandatory injunction requiring rehabilitation to restore slope stability, with terms to be settled later. He declined to extend the injunction beyond the one defendant, finding no evidence that anyone else had persistently violated the permit area.
• Salt Spring Island Local Trust Committee v. B & B Ganges Marina Ltd., 2007 BCSC 892, aff’d 2008 BCCA 544 — Trust won · foreshore or water. [judgment]
  The Local Trust Committee enforced its Land Use Bylaw against a structure floating on provincially leased water. The Attorney General of British Columbia took part. The marina owners conceded that the bylaw's pith and substance was property and civil rights under s. 92(13), so the only constitutional question was whether the federal power over navigation and shipping under s. 91(10) made it inapplicable. It did not. The court held the bylaw applied and that the structure breached its size and height limits.
• Denman Island Local Trust Committee v. Ellis, 2007 BCCA 536 — Trust won. [judgment]
  Appeal dismissed. The argument was that restricting tree removal protects the bluff from development rather than development from the bluff, and so falls outside s. 919.1(1)(b) of the Local Government Act. The Court held the question was not whether cutting trees is itself "development", but whether restricting it serves the purpose of protecting development — and that "development" includes future development. On that reading Bylaw No. 111 plainly served the statutory purpose. The trial judge had also been entitled to proceed summarily and to order remediation.
• North Pender Island Trust Committee v. Hunt, 2008 BCSC 391, aff’d 2009 BCCA 164 — Trust won · foreshore or water. [judgment]
  The closest any court has come to the question this campaign asks. Under a heading “Jurisdiction over the Foreshore”, the court had to decide where the zoning boundary ran relative to a building sitting half in and half out of the sea, and held that the high water mark was the mutual boundary between the commercial zone and the water zone. Getting there meant reading the zoning maps — which were filed in evidence, examined, and found to be wrong.
• North Pender Island Trust Committee v. Hunt, 2009 BCCA 164 — Trust won · foreshore or water. [judgment]
  The Court of Appeal upheld the trial decision. Together with Ganges Marina it is one of the two Islands Trust authorities later cited for the proposition that a local government may zone the foreshore and the waters over it.
• Stoneman v. Denman Island Local Trust Committee, 2013 BCSC 218 — Trust won. [judgment]
  The Trust sought a declaration of unlawful development and an injunction. The respondents challenged Bylaw 111's validity on several grounds and sought mandamus directing approval of their development. Curtis J. held the validity argument barred by res judicata — the same bylaw's validity had already been decided in proceedings to which they had been party — and found the mandamus request without merit.
• Stoneman v. Denman Island Local Trust Committee, 2013 BCCA 517 — Trust won. [judgment]
  Appeal dismissed. Both cause of action estoppel and issue estoppel applied, barring every submission raised in the earlier proceeding or that should have been raised there — even those the courts never ultimately dealt with. Arguments not caught by res judicata failed on their merits, and there was no application to which mandamus could attach. The practical effect is that a bylaw's validity, once litigated by a party, is settled against that party for good.
• Denman Island Local Trust Committee v. Ellis, 2015 BCCA 401 — Trust won. [judgment]
  Application dismissed. Costs awarded against a defendant in the enforcement litigation were enforced against the land itself, by order for sale under the Court Order Enforcement Act. The applicant argued the proceedings were statutorily stayed by the federal Farm Debt Mediation Act; Garson J.A. held it did not apply, the argument had not been made below, insolvent-farmer status had not been established and no proceedings under that Act had been started. No irreparable harm was shown and the balance of convenience favoured enforcement. It is included because it records where enforcement can end up: not with a fine, but with an order for sale of the land.
• Fonseca v. Gabriola Island Trust Committee, 2018 BCSC 1684 — Split · foreshore or water. [judgment]
  The one real defeat. The deck, fences and gates had to go — but the judge held the bylaw inapplicable to the seawall, because building it was an exercise of the landowner's common law riparian right to protect property from erosion, and such a right can only be taken away by clear legislative intent. The Trust called the reasoning narrow and said publicly that it struck at the heart of its mandate. It lasted twenty-seven months.
• Fonseca v. Gabriola Island Local Trust Committee, 2021 BCCA 27 — Trust won · foreshore or water. [judgment]
  Unanimous. Appeal allowed, cross appeal dismissed: the bylaw applies to the seawall after all. The common law right to defend your land against the sea survives — but it is a right good against your neighbours, not a shield against zoning. This is the case to read before claiming the Trust has overreached on the water.
• Galiano Forest Lot Owners Association v. Galiano Island Local Trust Committee, 2023 BCSC 1334 — Trust won. [judgment]
  Petition dismissed. Thirty years after MacMillan Bloedel, the same land, the same prohibition, the same result. The judgment is also the best available account of the 1995 reasoning, which it quotes at length.
• Galiano Forest Lot Owners Association v. Galiano Island Local Trust Committee, 2025 BCCA 15 — Trust won. [judgment]
  Appeal dismissed. Land on Galiano zoned in 1992 so that no one may live on it is still zoned that way in 2025, and two rounds of provincial forestry legislation in between did not change it.
• Judicial review of two Gabriola Island bylaw violation notices (style of cause not established), Not located — see weRead — Trust won. (we have not read this judgment)
  Known only from the Islands Trust's own news release of 25 May 2026, which reports that the petitions were dismissed in their entirety with costs, that the adjudicators' decisions were found reasonable, that an abuse of process argument failed, and that the bylaw-notice adjudication process does not engage s. 11(b) or (d) of the Charter. Every one of those propositions is the Trust's characterisation of its own case and none of it has been checked against the judgment.
• Silva Bay Resort & Marina Ltd. v. Gabriola Island Local Trust Committee, 2026 BCSC 990 — Trust won. [judgment]
  The most recent decision, and a measure of what enforcement now costs both sides. The trial ran across three separate sittings between April 2025 and October 2025 — sixteen days in all, with three counsel a side — and judgment came in May 2026 over a well. The plaintiffs conceded the use breached the bylaw and argued only that it pre-dated it. The court held they had not proved that, and that even if they had, the use had long since been discontinued.