What planning costs, per resident

The finding that surprised us

These islands are already outside their regional district's planning service. Every regional district budget we opened carves the Islands Trust areas out of the land use planning function it taxes for. The qathet Regional District says it in a sentence:

“The Planning Service is funded by taxpayers within Electoral Areas A, B, C, and D. The City of Powell River and Tla’amin Nation each have their own planning service. Electoral Area E (Lasqueti Island) receives its planning service from the Islands Trust.”

The others say it in their participant tables.

Sources: qathet Regional District, 2026-2030 Financial Plan, Bylaw No. 608, pp. 13, 14 and 84; Cowichan Valley Regional District, 2026 Annual Budget, Bylaw No. 4712, function 325; Comox Valley Regional District, Service Purpose, Establishment Bylaw and Five Year Requisition, p. 66; Regional District of Nanaimo, 2026-2030 Financial Plan, service 22 participants table and pp. 261-264; Sunshine Coast Regional District, Financial Plan 2026-2030 (Adopted), Area F Islands Taxation Summary.

That matters twice. It means no regional district is currently sending these islands a planning bill, so any figure below is a unit cost from the nearest comparable service rather than a quote. And it fixes the arithmetic: a regional district's planning budget is raised from the areas that take part in the service, so dividing it by the district's whole population understates what the service costs the people who actually get it.

What the letter said, and what checking it did

The letter divided the qathet Regional District's planning figure by the district's whole population and got about $20 per person, against about $387 for the Islands Trust: a gap of roughly nineteen times. Two of those three numbers hold up. The third does not.

• His Islands Trust figures are exact. $11,198,731 and $11,770,659 are the Trust's own bottom lines for 2025/26 and 2026/27.
• His qathet dollar figures are exact, and we can now cite the document he could only attribute to a staff member: $423,278 in 2025 and $421,695 in 2026 are the requisition line in the qathet Regional District's adopted financial plan. They are what the participating areas were TAXED. The service plans to SPEND $532,974.
• His denominator is the one that does not hold. 21,496 is the qathet region including the City of Powell River and the Tla'amin Nation, which run their own planning, and Lasqueti, which is in the Trust. The people who pay for and receive that service are Electoral Areas A to D: 6,237 residents. That is $68 per person on the requisition, or $85 on what the service costs, not $20.

The comparison, corrected

Six regional district planning services, each priced over the people who actually fund and receive it rather than over the whole district.

Islands Trust. Islands Trust, APPROVED Annual Budget, 2024/25, 2025/26 and 2026/27. Population. Islands Trust, 2021 Census Profiles: the twelve local trust areas, Bowen Island, and the Islands Trust Area. “The total population of Islands Trust Area was 30,510 in 2021”; the twelve local trust area profiles sum to 26,255; Bowen Island 4,255. Statistics Canada 2021 Census, 100% data. The Trust's profiles round to base 5, so they differ by a few people from Statistics Canada's unrounded counts for the same islands (Denman 1,391 rather than 1,395; Thetis 476 rather than 475). We use the Trust's own figures on this page because they reconcile exactly to its published area total. Regional districts. qathet Regional District, 2026-2030 Financial Plan, requisition comparison p. 19; service summary pp. 85-86. Planning only. This financial plan contains no building inspection, no bylaw enforcement and no GIS service at all. Served population is Electoral Areas A to D, the areas that fund it. Sunshine Coast Regional District, Financial Plan 2026-2030 (Adopted), service 504 pp. 512-513; participation p. 60; islands taxation summaries pp. 62-63; electoral area populations pp. 28-36. Planning only. GIS, building inspection and bylaw enforcement are separate services. Served population is Electoral Areas A, B, D, E and F, less the 291 people on Gambier and Keats and the 63 on the Thormanby Islands, who are in the Islands Trust Area and pay none of this service. The district's own islands taxation tables show a dash in the islands column for 504, while Area A's non-Trust islands pay it in full. Comox Valley Regional District, Financial Plan Bylaw No. 910, 2026, Schedule B, service 500 sub-services; requisition schedule p. 66. Planning only. Service 500 is an umbrella, so the GIS (501) and bylaw enforcement (502) sub-services are left out here, and building inspection is a separate service again. Served population is Electoral Area A without Denman and Hornby, plus Areas B and C. Cowichan Valley Regional District, 2026 Annual Budget, Bylaw No. 4712, function 325, participants including Code Z. Planning only. Building inspection, bylaw enforcement and emergency planning are separate services. Served population is Electoral Areas A, B, C, E, F and I, plus D, G and H less Thetis Island, which the budget excludes in those words. Regional District of Nanaimo, 2026-2030 Financial Plan, service 22 participants table p. 7; fund 0200 pp. 261-264. Planning only. Building inspection is a separate, usage-funded service. Served population is Electoral Areas A, C, E, F, G and H. Area B is Gabriola, which is in the Islands Trust Area and does not take part. Gabriola's 4,500 residents are the whole of Area B, so no other area in this service contains a Trust resident. Capital Regional District, 2026 Annual Fiscal Plan, service 1.325, p. 19; Juan de Fuca population 5,531 (2021 census). Planning only, for one rural electoral area, with 3.7 salaried positions. No building inspection, bylaw enforcement or GIS in this service. The closest like-for-like comparator we have found: a small rural BC area buying its own community plan, land use bylaw and development applications. Served population is the Juan de Fuca electoral area, the only one that funds it. The Capital Regional District runs no planning service at all for its Gulf Islands, which are Trust areas. Electoral area populations are Statistics Canada 2021 Census counts for each area as a census subdivision (Table 98-10-0002-01); island subtractions come from the 2021 Census Geographic Attribute File at block level.

The Islands Trust's planning line costs about $296 per resident of the areas it plans for. The six comparable services run from $79 to $182 per resident. So the Trust costs roughly one and a half to nearly four times what a regional district charges for the same statutory job.

And here is the pattern that cuts against a simple reading. The gap is smallest against the comparators most like the islands. Juan de Fuca serves 5,531 people and costs $180; the Sunshine Coast's rural service serves 15,467 and costs $182. The cheapest per resident are the biggest: Nanaimo spreads its planning over 38,206 people. Small populations carry fixed costs badly, and that is a real part of this gap rather than a rhetorical concession.

Why we printed the smaller number

Two denominators and two cost lines are on this page because using the flattering one would have been easy and wrong. Dividing the Trust's whole budget by everyone answers “what does this institution cost the people it governs”, and about a third of that budget is Trust Council services and the Conservancy, which holds and manages land. A regional district planning department does neither. The planning-only line over the population the Trust actually plans for is the tighter question, and it is the smaller number.

We also corrected our own first version of this page, which used a population of 25,350 from a 25 per cent sample tabulation. The Trust's own profiles use full census data and give 26,255 for the twelve local trust areas, which plus Bowen Island's 4,255 is exactly the 30,510 the Trust publishes for the whole area.

What this does not show

• It does not show waste, or that anyone did anything wrong. A cost is not a verdict.
• Small populations carry fixed costs badly, and islands are expensive to serve. Some of this gap is arithmetic that no decision could change.
• The Trust's Local Planning Services line includes bylaw enforcement; the qathet service has no bylaw enforcement at all. The functions are close, not identical, and we have not sized that difference.
• No regional district currently plans these islands, so nobody has quoted a price for taking them on.

What it does do is answer the question the budget page has been asking: what would this service cost if an ordinary local government provided it? There is now a number on the other side of that comparison, and a document behind every part of it.

What is still missing

Every island in the Trust area is now covered by one of the services above, except Lasqueti, whose district is the first row, and the Gulf Islands served by the Capital Regional District, where the CRD runs a planning service for Juan de Fuca only and none for the islands at all.

What no document gives is the number this page would most like to print: what a regional district would charge to take on an island it does not plan for today. Nobody has quoted that, because nobody has been asked. Every figure above is a unit cost from the nearest comparable service, which is the closest honest substitute.