Two land-use authorities, one island: the ALR and the Islands Trust

Nearly half of Denman Island — 46.7% — sits inside the Agricultural Land Reserve, the highest share of any island in the Trust Area. Inside the reserve an islander answers to two separate land-use authorities, created by two statutes, with two different purposes. One is told to encourage farming. The other is told to preserve and protect the environment. Nobody is told what to do when those collide.

46.7% of Denman Island is inside the Agricultural Land Reserve.^[1] That is the highest share of any island in the Islands Trust Area — half again as much as Hornby, three times Salt Spring, and forty-six times Gambier. Inside that boundary, a landowner is answerable to two separate land-use authorities at once. The Islands Trust regulates what you may build and where. The Agricultural Land Commission regulates whether the land may be used for anything other than farming, and whether it may be subdivided at all. Neither can give you permission on behalf of the other. This is not a complaint about either body being unreasonable. It is about what happens when two statutes with different purposes are laid over the same soil, and nobody is told what to do when they point in opposite directions. ## How much land, island by island Measured by intersecting the Province's own ALR boundary with the parcel fabric of each island, and clipping — so a parcel that lies partly inside the reserve counts only for the part inside it.^[1] | Island | Land | In the ALR | Share | |---|---:|---:|---:| | Denman | 49.53 km² | 23.14 km² | 46.7% | | Hornby | 28.12 km² | 8.74 km² | 31.1% | | Gabriola | 61.04 km² | 11.32 km² | 18.6% | | South Pender | 8.48 km² | 1.56 km² | 18.4% | | North Pender | 44.35 km² | 7.47 km² | 16.8% | | Salt Spring | 183.25 km² | 29.01 km² | 15.8% | | Mayne | 21.86 km² | 3.15 km² | 14.4% | | Lasqueti | 71.50 km² | 6.80 km² | 9.5% | | Saturna | 43.41 km² | 3.95 km² | 9.1% | | Galiano | 60.31 km² | 3.80 km² | 6.3% | | Thetis | 46.15 km² | 1.13 km² | 2.4% | | Gambier | 54.12 km² | 0.55 km² | 1.0% | For comparison, outside the Trust Area: Texada 25.4%, Quadra 14.0%, Cortes 10.8%.^[1] So this is not an even burden. On Denman and Hornby the reserve is a defining fact of the island. On Gambier and Thetis it is a rounding error. The Trust applies one policy framework across all of them. ## The two mandates, side by side The Agricultural Land Commission's purposes, in the words of its own Act:^[2] > "preserve the agricultural land reserve; encourage farming of land within the agricultural land reserve in collaboration with other communities of interest; encourage local governments, first nations, the government and its agents to enable and accommodate farm use" The object of the Islands Trust, in the words of its Act:^[3] > "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" Read them together and the tension is not subtle. One body is instructed to *encourage* an activity and to press local governments to *enable and accommodate* it. The other is instructed to *preserve and protect* — a mandate whose plain reading resists change of any kind. Farming is not a low-impact use. It means clearing, drainage, roads, fencing, outbuildings, barns, water extraction, and machinery. The Commission exists to make that easier. The Trust exists to preserve amenities and environment. Both are acting entirely within their mandates when they reach opposite conclusions about the same field. ## Which one wins The Act answers this, and the answer is one-directional:^[2] > "A local government bylaw or a first nation government law that is inconsistent with this Act, the regulations or an order of the commission has, to the extent of the inconsistency, no force or effect." And, in case that left room: > "a local government bylaw or first nation government law is deemed to be inconsistent with this Act if it allows a use of land in the agricultural land reserve that is not permitted under this Act" So where they conflict, the Commission's Act prevails over the local bylaw. The Islands Trust's own Act already subordinates a local trust committee to the Executive Committee and, for community plans, to the Minister.^[3] Add the Commission and a local trust committee's bylaw is answerable in three directions. Note carefully what that does *not* say. The Commission's Act voids a local bylaw that permits more than the Act allows. It does not stop a local government from being more restrictive. So the practical arithmetic for a landowner inside the reserve is that both bodies must say yes, and either can say no. ## What that means if you actually own land here A landowner on nearly half of Denman is inside a system that works like this: - To use the land for anything other than farming, you need the Commission. The Act: "A person must not use agricultural land for a non-farm use unless permitted under section 25 or 45 or the regulations."^[2] - To subdivide, you need the Commission. "A person must not subdivide agricultural land unless permitted under section 25 or 45 or the regulations."^[2] - And an application affecting the land can require your local government's authorization by resolution before it even reaches the Commission.^[2] The local trust committee is a gate on the way to the second gate. - Then you still need the zoning. The Trust's bylaw governs what may be built, at what density, with what setbacks. - Then subdivision approval itself is the Province's, through the approving officer under the *Land Title Act* — not the local trust committee's at all. - And the building permit is the regional district's, because building inspection is not in the Trust's statutory grant. Five bodies, on one parcel, for one decision. None of them is doing anything improper. Each is doing exactly the job its statute gives it. ## The part that is genuinely hard to defend The Commission is a provincial body with a specialised mandate, applied consistently across British Columbia, and farmland protection is not controversial. If the argument for a separate island land-use authority is that the islands need protection a general-purpose local government would not provide, then the ALR is the counter-example sitting on 46.7% of Denman: a provincial body already protecting island land from conversion, without a fourth order of government, and doing it on the mainland and Vancouver Island too. The Trust's defenders would answer that farmland protection and ecological protection are different things, and they are right. But it is a real question how much of the "the islands would be subdivided without the Trust" argument survives on land where subdivision is *already* barred by a separate statute that the Trust did not write and cannot override. ## What this article does not claim There is no register of cases where the two bodies actually reached opposing conclusions on the same parcel. The Commission publishes its decisions; the Trust publishes no decisions register at all, which is a finding of its own. So the conflict described here is structural — it follows from reading the two statutes — and this article does not assert a count of times it has bitten a specific islander, because that count is not publicly obtainable. The percentages above are our own measurement, and the method is published so anyone can re-run it. The statutory quotations are from the Acts themselves, linked below.