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.

# Thirty Years in Court, Seven Years to Yes

The case against the Islands Trust on Galiano Island is not that it loses in court. It doesn't. The case is what the Trust's own records show about time: how long its rules stay in litigation, and how long even its most popular approvals take.

Three decades over one zone

In 1992, Galiano's Local Trust Committee prohibited dwellings on land zoned as forest; landowners challenged the rule in court that same year, again in 1996, and again in 2009, unsuccessfully each time.^[1] In 2000 the rule was reworked into Land Use Bylaw 127, which prohibits residential use in the Forest 1 zone.^[2] The latest round ended when the BC Supreme Court dismissed a landowners' challenge on August 1, 2023, awarding costs to the Trust committee,^[1] and the BC Court of Appeal upheld that decision in late January 2025 — even though the Private Managed Forest Land Act broadly allows one residential dwelling per parcel on private managed forest land.^[2] Trust Council chair Peter Luckham's response: "We are pleased when the courts have upheld our bylaws."^[1]

To be fair, this cuts both ways. The courts sided with the Trust every time, finding the bylaw lawfully enacted and within the committee's jurisdiction; the dispute stems from a genuine gap between provincial forest legislation and older local zoning, not from any documented misconduct.^[2] But a rule that generates court challenges in four separate decades is, at minimum, a rule that has never achieved settled legitimacy with the people it binds.

Seven years for twelve homes

Galiano's own planning documents designated Heritage Forest land for affordable housing in the 1995 Official Community Plan, again in a 2005 Community Forest Covenant, and again in a 2008 Forest Management Plan that identified a 17-acre Affordable Housing Zone.^[3] Yet when a non-profit began pursuing the project in 2018, the path ran: rezoning application in September 2019 for up to 12 affordable homes, first reading in March 2021, public hearing in July 2022 — with approximately 170 letters of support — and fourth and final reading in December 2022.^[3] Title to the two-hectare site did not transfer for construction of the 12 rental units until September 22, 2025.^[4]

Honesty requires apportionment here. The rezoning itself ran September 2019 to December 2022 — a span not unusual for contested rezonings with public hearings — and the further delay to the 2025 title transfer involved subdivision (completed in 2024) and financing steps handled by parties other than the Trust.^[3][4] Only part of the seven years is attributable to Trust process. But part is, and this was the easy case: land pre-designated for thirty years, with near-unanimous support.

Even that file exposed the structure's internal contradiction. A resident's published critique of the rezoning noted that "A majority of trustees approved a motion to make protection of First Nations cultural heritage a top priority, but defeated a motion to do the same for the natural environment," and objected that the housing required clear-cutting two hectares of the Heritage Forest.^[5] That is one opponent's opinion, not a Trust decision record — but it documents how the Trust's dual planning-and-conservation mandate sets two legitimate island priorities against each other on a single file.^[5]

Enforcement stretched across an archipelago

Galiano's LTC imposed a moratorium in 2019 restricting whole-home short-term rentals by non-resident operators, citing an affordable-housing review.^[6] As the Toronto Star reported in November 2021, the Trust then had 160 open short-term-rental enforcement files — over 100 on Salt Spring alone — handled by one compliance manager and two bylaw officers for the entire multi-island Trust Area, managing an average of 300 open files at any time; the Trust itself warned "the number of STVR files will increase as we continue our efforts to bring them into compliance."^[6] The moratorium had broad backing as protection for scarce long-term housing, and the Trust framed added staffing as its response^[6] — but three officers for an archipelago is the enforcement capacity behind all of these rules, as of that report.

The bill, and the mandate

For 2026/27, the Trust adopted a roughly $11.8-million budget assuming an 8.1% tax increase on the existing local trust area tax base plus 0.8% from new construction, bringing the average residential owner's Islands Trust tax to $465–470 in 2026.^[7] That is modest in absolute dollars. The deeper point is older: the Trust was enacted by provincial statute in 1974, without a local referendum, "to control unbridled development" and to preserve and protect the islands.^[8] All BC local governments derive their existence from provincial statute, and the 1974 Act answered real contemporaneous alarm about island subdivision.^[8] Galiano's trustees are elected. What islanders never voted on is the provincially fixed preserve-and-protect mandate those trustees must administer — the mandate that produced thirty years of forest litigation and a seven-year yes.^[8]

^[1]: Gulf Islands Driftwood, "Court upholds Trust forest bylaws on Galiano" ^[2]: Canadian Lawyer, "BC Court of Appeal upholds local zoning authority over forest lands" ^[3]: Gulf Islands Galisle Affordable Rental Housing Society, Project Timeline ^[4]: GALI, "Title Transfer Complete on Galiano Affordable Housing Site" ^[5]: Gulf Islands Driftwood, "Viewpoint: Trust issues illustrate conflict" (May 2021) ^[6]: Toronto Star, November 2021 (reprinted at LTVR.com), "160 open bylaw enforcement files for short term vacation rentals across Trust Area" ^[7]: Islands Trust, Budget (About Us — Accountability) ^[8]: Islands Trust, About Us