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.

The Islands Trust was created on June 5, 1974 by the New Democratic government of Premier Dave Barrett.^[3] Its origins were genuine: through the 1960s and early 1970s, large speculative subdivisions were carving up the Gulf Islands — most notoriously Magic Lake Estates, over 1,200 city-sized lots on North Pender Island.^[4]

In 1973 an all-party provincial committee concluded the Gulf Islands "are too important to the people of Canada to be left open to exploitation by real-estate developers and speculators."^[4] The Islands Trust Act, debated in the spring of 1974,^[5] enshrined a mandate to "preserve and protect the Trust Area and its unique amenities and environment."^[1]

Built unaccountable from the start

The original governing structure tells you what the Trust was: of the five trustees on each local trust committee, two were elected by island residents and three were appointed by the Province.^[4][5] From day one, the people who lived on the islands were a built-in minority on the body that controlled their land. (General trustees became elected positions in 1978.^[2])

Fifty years of accreting power

The Trust's authority only grew:^[2] - 1977 — granted formal land-use planning authority. - 1987–1990 — gained a land-trust fund (with a trust fund board established in 1990, now the Islands Trust Conservancy) and a mandatory Policy Statement. - 1998 — only then was it legislated to hold open meetings — meaning for its first 24 years it was not required to meet in public. - 2021 — gained development-approval information bylaw authority (the power to demand information and studies from applicants) and the ability to delegate development permits to staff.

What began as a reasonable response to 1970s overdevelopment became a permanent, ever-expanding second layer of land-use government — one whose "preserve and protect" mandate, in our view, elevates a single purpose over all the competing needs of the people who actually live here.