North Pender Island Local Trust Committee special meeting, June 24, 2023

[0:00:00] Voice 10: Great, thank you.

[0:00:00] Trustee Maude: Thank you very much.

[0:00:02] Trustee Maude: Good afternoon, everybody.

[0:00:03] Trustee Maude: Thank you for joining us for this special meeting

[0:00:07] Trustee Maude: of the Tender Island Local Trust Committee.

[0:00:10] Trustee Maude: I want to begin by acknowledging

[0:00:12] Trustee Maude: that we're fortunate to be gathering today

[0:00:14] Trustee Maude: locations across the Christian Territory

[0:00:15] Trustee Maude: of the Coast Salish People.

[0:00:16] Trustee Maude: I'm David Maud, elected to Maine Island

[0:00:18] Trustee Maude: and chair of the North Tender Island Local Trust Committee.

[0:00:22] Trustee Maude: I'm joined today by North Tender Island trustees,

[0:00:25] Trustee Maude: Aaron Campbell and Deb Morrison.

[0:00:27] Trustee Maude: and together we make a quote with the 10 year on world trust committee this feeding is being

[0:00:31] Trustee Maude: live streamed it's also being recorded and will be available soon in the ounce bus website

[0:00:37] Trustee Maude: um we have some staff members um joining us today we have planner brad smith

[0:00:42] Trustee Maude: um and we have our minute taker um captain pope from up north um i believe emily frank is

[0:00:52] Trustee Maude: is hosting us and we have a very short agenda for us so uh this discussion is surrounding groundwater

[0:00:58] Trustee Maude: and forestry and housing us access in a force building so the court order is we need to improve

[0:01:06] Trustee Maude: the agenda it's certainly pretty comfortable with that all right my consent and i guess we'll

[0:01:13] Trustee Maude: trustees want to sort of start things off with the discussion on groundwater and forestry

[0:01:21] Voice 3: so

[0:01:22] Trustee Morrison (probable): i think um some of the questions that community members have had is about um

[0:01:27] Trustee Morrison (probable): what are the things that we might want to do with some of the watershed mapping that's been done

[0:01:33] Trustee Morrison (probable): to the groundwater mapping um you know do we want to what do we want to do with that what do we

[0:01:39] Trustee Morrison (probable): understand about it what do we want to um take a next step and what are the concerns that people

[0:01:44] Trustee Morrison (probable): people have related to groundwater um conservation in the west area so I think that would be it would

[0:01:52] Trustee Morrison (probable): be great to just hear what people are thinking around that um the maps are all available on the

[0:01:57] Trustee Morrison (probable): Islands Trust site if you go into the I want to and then Max go to Northender they're all available

[0:02:03] Trustee Morrison (probable): now on there um we got them up in the fall last year um so really would love to hear what people

[0:02:09] Trustee Morrison (probable): are thinking on that um and i know that many people have also been talking about um different

[0:02:14] Trustee Morrison (probable): connections around recharge areas and i know the staff have talked about that so is there

[0:02:19] Trustee Morrison (probable): like what are we thinking about conservation or preservation of those recharge areas

[0:02:25] Trustee Morrison (probable): just a general open conversation to begin with and then maybe dive in other things you want to have

[0:02:31] Voice 3: no that's i mean the purpose of these was to try to have have a conversation with folks on the

[0:02:37] Voice 3: island and give room for sort of feedback and and a chance to hear about concerns so

[0:02:44] Voice 3: if there's any way that we can alleviate concerns be able to do that but then also take in that

[0:02:51] Voice 3: information from the island who kind of made me the ad or um there is there has been extensive

[0:02:59] Voice 3: work uh the ltc in the last term uh in the groundwater implementation project has done

[0:03:07] Voice 3: a significant amount of work that information was presented at the previous meeting and we had

[0:03:12] Voice 3: excellent attendance for that the current status of that work is the staff did present

[0:03:21] Voice 3: the local committee with options those options included potentially exploring the development

[0:03:29] Voice 3: of the ground board protection development permit area boundaries and established polygons on a map

[0:03:37] Voice 3: that would then establish conditions and criteria for proposed developments in these areas.

[0:03:45] Voice 3: So that is one area that we could continue to pursue.

[0:03:51] Voice 3: Obviously, there's other

[0:03:54] Voice 7: priorities for them also to consider.

[0:03:59] Voice 3: Feedback that you could provide them today would be helpful.

[0:04:03] Voice 3: This agenda topic is intended to be both groundwater and forestry.

[0:04:09] Voice 3: be appropriate to separate them also it'd be appropriate to combine those two things so

[0:04:16] Voice 3: uh i'm not sure if the trustees want to share their views on that forestry topic as well now

[0:04:21] Voice 3: or just speak to the valor piece but uh that is the intended scope of this first session

[0:04:28] Voice 3: in today the second half after the break we'll be around affordable housing housing accessibility

[0:04:35] Voice 3: So that's what I would say.

[0:04:38] Voice 3: Chair, thank you.

[0:04:39] Voice 3: Thank you.

[0:04:39] Voice 3: So,

[0:04:40] Trustee Maude: trustees, do you have a play for you in one of the separate two topics or just combined?

[0:04:43] Trustee Maude: I

[0:04:44] Trustee Morrison (probable): think it's worthwhile just to hear them combined.

[0:04:46] Trustee Morrison (probable): Because part of the thing that I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but part of our thinking was not so much to say, like, we think this or we think that.

[0:04:54] Trustee Morrison (probable): Because, frankly, that's not our role necessarily as trustees in this moment.

[0:04:57] Trustee Morrison (probable): Our role is to understand what you're thinking and why.

[0:05:00] Trustee Morrison (probable): So not just what you're thinking, but why.

[0:05:04] Trustee Morrison (probable): and how that might connect to some of the housing conversations that we're opening up so water

[0:05:10] Trustee Morrison (probable): conservation how it might be connected to housing any of the forestry concerns how might that be

[0:05:16] Trustee Morrison (probable): connected to housing um so really so i think it's better to deal with the water and forestry in

[0:05:21] Trustee Morrison (probable): combination right now um just to hear what people are thinking um and i guess the one other um

[0:05:29] Trustee Morrison (probable): thing that i've heard in community and i've seen it online a little bit

[0:05:32] Trustee Morrison (probable): it and is um you know conversations around fire smart too like how this connects with fire and

[0:05:40] Trustee Morrison (probable): wildfire risk so i think that's also it'd be good to just hear people's holistic thoughts

[0:05:45] Trustee Morrison (probable): on that challenge because frankly none of

[0:05:48] Trustee Morrison (probable): these things is separate so we have to think about how

[0:05:50] Trustee Morrison (probable): to manage them together so be good to know what people are thinking great all right so

[0:05:56] Trustee Maude: i think everybody's been here no support at all you just raise your hand that way you called

[0:06:02] Trustee Maude: just give your your name so the meditator has something and away we go

[0:06:06] Trustee Morrison (probable): oh

[0:06:07] Voice 3: sorry i would just uh on the forestry side uh there's obviously site-specific

[0:06:15] Voice 3: concern related that has created a lot of community angst and tension in the last

[0:06:23] Voice 3: several months but there's also the broader consideration of

[0:06:30] Voice 3: taking on a project and really I think that's what the scope of today's work is to explore what

[0:06:35] Voice 3: the community is thinking around what your priorities are for projects you could explore

[0:06:40] Voice 3: a project that would look at an expansion of development permit areas for forestry

[0:06:44] Voice 3: for example you could look at using all the coastal Douglas fir toolkit that has been

[0:06:52] Voice 3: uh developed uh by the trust and applying that to establishing a broader suite of development

[0:07:01] Voice 3: permit areas that look to protect that particular habitat values development permit areas and also

[0:07:10] Voice 3: include exemptions so if you were going to turn your mind to any kind of development permit area

[0:07:15] Voice 3: work you could also turn your mind to what is your reasoning exceptions also applied both on ground

[0:07:22] Voice 3: water and uh most of them was for going primitive for example just wanted to capture that as well

[0:07:32] Voice 3: thank you so joe can your note taker hear us yes okay so um i have a question sort of about

[0:07:43] Voice 3: about the groundwater issue.

[0:07:44] Voice 3: I've read a brilliant show.

[0:07:47] Voice 14: Oh,

[0:07:48] Voice 3: Peter Carr.

[0:07:50] Voice 3: So I've read the groundwater study

[0:07:53] Voice 3: and it's very scholarly and it's got a lot of data in there.

[0:07:57] Voice 3: And I think you can make projections on there,

[0:08:01] Voice 3: but it's not hard data that we need to decide on byline.

[0:08:08] Voice 3: As you know, the policy, the trust policy states that the island should be self-sufficient

[0:08:16] Voice 3: in regard to their supply of fresh water.

[0:08:19] Voice 3: And the policy statement actually reads, local trust committees shall, in their official

[0:08:25] Voice 3: community plans and regulatory bylaws, address measures that ensure neither the density nor

[0:08:31] Voice 3: the intensity of land use is increased in areas which are known to have a problem, the

[0:08:37] Voice 3: the quality or quantity of the supply of fresh water.

[0:08:41] Voice 3: So my question relates to how the trust is assessing that,

[0:08:45] Voice 3: what data to use to determine where there is a problem.

[0:08:50] Voice 3: And I know that there's been increasing amount

[0:08:52] Voice 3: of fresh water that's been trucked onto the island.

[0:08:57] Voice 3: And that seems to me like there's a problem.

[0:09:02] Voice 3: If you have to truck water onto the island,

[0:09:04] Voice 3: that must be where that water is going,

[0:09:07] Voice 3: point, there must be a problem, which is what the directive says you should act upon.

[0:09:14] Voice 3: And so the question is really, do you have access to those data? And if not, how do you

[0:09:21] Voice 3: get access to them? I know somebody in Gabriola got access to the data through the suppliers

[0:09:29] Voice 3: of that water, and it was quite a staggering number that was struck on there. And I wonder

[0:09:36] Voice 3: if you guys have similar data um because i think that would be hard data on which the base so

[0:09:42] Voice 3: well you know local areas where where uh permits would uh be put in place and of course the other

[0:09:51] Voice 3: data if it was available would be on salt water uh intrusion into well so is there a way of you

[0:10:00] Voice 3: you guys getting that data, because that is really our data to make some decisions.

[0:10:07] Voice 3: So really, it's a question about, have you got access to those data, which I think would

[0:10:12] Voice 3: be very powerful in the communities byline.

[0:10:17] Voice 3: I don't think that we do have specific access to that data at this time.

[0:10:24] Voice 3: One of the things that I know that we have chatted about in in as this study has started to roll out the groundwater work that's been done is, is what really happening on the island and the fact that in the study there's two basically two monitors

[0:10:43] Voice 3: as well as on opposite ends of pender and we had wondered at one at one point that you know

[0:10:50] Voice 3: if you could put together some sort of like a community plan or initiative to to figure out

[0:10:58] Voice 3: how to fund monitoring wells on our island to to to see what the actual um data is you know i know

[0:11:08] Voice 3: I know my my brother has had to truck water onto the island for poor planning on their

[0:11:14] Voice 3: on their part and I know that it does happen on a regular basis whether a company would

[0:11:20] Voice 3: give us that data. I don't know if there's any any reason. I think they do spreading

[0:11:27] Voice 3: the information but it may be because a lot of the water came from a government agent.

[0:11:34] Voice 3: Yeah, I think it can become a delicate, freedom of information can become a delicate thing pretty quickly for people, depending on who the freedom of information is being pulled on and what that data is used for.

[0:11:55] Voice 3: in if it became sort of a negative uh ability to shame people kind of a thing for their water use

[0:12:04] Voice 3: i don't know that that's something that would be positive for us to go down rather than just

[0:12:11] Voice 3: collecting data on a broad scale privacy issues something but yeah you know what happens on your

[0:12:19] Voice 3: land is not only your land yeah so over trip if you're if you're requiring uh water to be

[0:12:27] Voice 3: trucked in that means you're well it's a drive means the activity that supporting it is dried

[0:12:33] Voice 3: up and that's going to happen so or you or you've decided not to drill along or which is very very

[0:12:41] Voice 3: much the case and in the situation that i'm thinking of but it's just

[0:12:45] Voice 3: different to plan

[0:12:46] Voice 3: understand what i think is chocolate i wasn't chopping necessarily but okay i would say that

[0:12:53] Voice 3: data around like collecting that information will be really difficult and even if you have

[0:12:59] Voice 3: any information actually ascertaining is it because the well is empty or is it because

[0:13:05] Voice 3: we're choosing something because we're using that water so i think from that perspective it would

[0:13:10] Voice 3: be difficult uh with respect to the your customer ounce problem on the website under the r12 maps

[0:13:19] Voice 3: there is a saltwater intrusion map which is based on all of this work that has been done by uh

[0:13:27] Voice 3: mr senior freshwater specialist shola who is on staff in conjunction with a lot of seasoned

[0:13:37] Voice 3: and experts in the consulting realm who are hired to you know collect and analyze all of this data

[0:13:47] Voice 3: so there is extensive information that has been developed not only for tender but as a regional

[0:13:55] Voice 3: project uh this work is trying to capture a broad area of the trust and not only that but trying to

[0:14:03] Voice 3: come up with some consistency across the trustee respect to this data how it's managed and delivered

[0:14:10] Voice 3: we're just getting to the stage now where mapping is now the technical work to get it into our maps

[0:14:19] Voice 3: and our systems when our our filters when we're looking at a reason it's just will be really

[0:14:30] Voice 3: useful for staff in particular when doing that initial scoping of a preliminary report kind of

[0:14:38] Voice 3: to have a better understanding of what those groundwater conditions are and really doing

[0:14:45] Voice 3: everything you know the trends and that being looked at or is it like will the data continue

[0:14:51] Voice 3: to be collected over time uh i think that's a great question i think uh you know there is work

[0:14:59] Voice 3: around you know installing data loggers and improving you know

[0:15:03] Voice 3: community well monitoring

[0:15:05] Voice 3: networks and all of those things that's data that's collected in real time because you're

[0:15:09] Voice 3: actually on the tractor down here uh some of this other stuff

[0:15:12] Voice 7: you'll probably have to

[0:15:18] Voice 7: particular with the climate is

[0:15:22] Voice 3: changing so rapidly that i think my professional opinion

[0:15:27] Voice 3: in any ways is that all these models we've used over the last 50 or 100 years to base all of this

[0:15:33] Voice 3: stuff on potentially we might just need to throw that out and base everything we based on

[0:15:41] Voice 3: despite the 10-year trends you look at one in 200 floods in your own world now they're happening

[0:15:48] Voice 3: one in 10 years but at some point we're going to have to reconcile that or not

[0:15:56] Voice 3: down lots of nothing the

[0:15:58] Trustee Morrison (probable): other thing i would add to this is that um you know if

[0:16:01] Trustee Morrison (probable): you were talking

[0:16:02] Trustee Morrison (probable): right now about groundwater or you know trucking the fresh water for drinking but one of the things

[0:16:07] Trustee Morrison (probable): i think we have to think about as a system of water on the island is also how are we storing

[0:16:12] Trustee Morrison (probable): water for fire suppression

[0:16:13] Voice 4: um

[0:16:14] Trustee Morrison (probable): because it seems to me that if we are our wells are taxed in summer

[0:16:18] Trustee Morrison (probable): then we we need to think about where our ponds are located where our cisterns are located as a

[0:16:25] Trustee Morrison (probable): network for not for drinking but for suppression um and it's something that we talked about with

[0:16:31] Trustee Morrison (probable): the old fire chief but we haven't had a this term a meeting with them about because it seems like

[0:16:37] Trustee Morrison (probable): it's a really critical element of our water system overall um and we can't be pumping in a

[0:16:43] Trustee Morrison (probable): summer to fight fire that's just not a realistic thing in terms of the flow rate and the pressure

[0:16:47] Trustee Morrison (probable): It needs to be pond water or big cistern water that's properly fitted for fire suppression work.

[0:16:56] Voice 3: I do know under the current they have an initiative to identify places to draw from the entire way across the island because it actually works into

[0:17:10] Voice 3: to um the calculation for response time and ability to provide service and i don't believe

[0:17:20] Voice 3: that any of them are well they're all surface ponds or uh cisterns yeah but

[0:17:30] Trustee Morrison (probable): one of the things

[0:17:31] Trustee Morrison (probable): that we could do as a community is we could require like in bigger areas where there aren't

[0:17:36] Trustee Morrison (probable): like where there isn't a node that that is needed but like when you build you actually have to put

[0:17:40] Trustee Morrison (probable): it in our special system

[0:17:41] Voice 10: or

[0:17:42] Trustee Morrison (probable): we as a community can go after that money in grants to actually put that

[0:17:46] Trustee Morrison (probable): in as a community that's probably a better

[0:17:49] Voice 10: way to do it um

[0:17:52] Voice 5: i'm just going to add about saltwater

[0:17:54] Voice 5: intrusion um there are maps um that um climber uh show about put together that are on the website

[0:18:04] Voice 5: site um there's two of them i don't understand why those two but it is i understood that those

[0:18:09] Voice 5: were based directly on the provincial study and i'm pretty sure that maine used the provincial

[0:18:15] Voice 5: site and they've gone ahead with all their groundwater stuff and they're well into housing

[0:18:20] Voice 5: so um i mean anything close to the edge if you look at those maps any it's orange but

[0:18:29] Voice 5: all around the hedges so um so so saltwater intrusion is fundamentally important and um

[0:18:38] Voice 5: that's why the province went and did that big stuff um the the information is there i think as

[0:18:44] Voice 5: um trustee campbell said we need more monitoring and that is in every study the province or anybody

[0:18:51] Voice 5: does they say we need more monitoring um that will help and give us more information to add to that

[0:18:56] Voice 5: have to get more information on saltwater intrusion one

[0:19:00] Trustee Morrison (probable): of one of the things that we

[0:19:01] Trustee Morrison (probable): proposed for that because we you know there's certain uh density let's call it of bureaucracy

[0:19:11] Trustee Morrison (probable): so one of the things um but one of the things that we could do as a local trust committee is

[0:19:19] Trustee Morrison (probable): we could use our local trust lot money and there was some conversation about this last trust council

[0:19:24] Trustee Morrison (probable): i think but

[0:19:25] Voice 4: we could use

[0:19:25] Trustee Morrison (probable): our local trust monies to actually purchase well monitors and get them

[0:19:29] Trustee Morrison (probable): amount into the community and

[0:19:30] Trustee Morrison (probable): i actually think that could be a really easy like low-hanging fruit

[0:19:33] Trustee Morrison (probable): thing for us to do to improve the actual data capture for wells well

[0:19:38] Voice 5: i mean yes but i mean

[0:19:41] Voice 5: anybody who pays to islands trust taxes would want you to save that money and go get the province to

[0:19:47] Voice 5: yeah for sure they will be

[0:19:48] Voice 5: funding us for sure the province is dying to get us to get to register

[0:19:53] Voice 5: our wells and get monitoring and they had prob we got the watershed study but

[0:19:58] Voice 3: fun but they don't

[0:19:59] Voice 3: actually uh monitor them if you register them i don't think yeah you have a monitoring thing but

[0:20:08] Voice 5: you register them but you have to have the monitoring thing right it's

[0:20:13] Trustee Morrison (probable): like a wi-fi thing

[0:20:14] Trustee Morrison (probable): yeah

[0:20:14] Voice 5: connected to i know i

[0:20:16] Voice 3: i didn't understand that when i went to the one the one meeting but

[0:20:19] Voice 3: but that was more directed towards how we were using our water being on agricultural land

[0:20:26] Voice 3: and what type of well you had on your property.

[0:20:30] Voice 3: But my understanding of how they were doing it there was you as the resident

[0:20:35] Voice 3: were doing sort of a very basic kind of flow rate of your well

[0:20:43] Voice 3: and trying to figure out what your, you were figuring out what your recharge was

[0:20:47] Voice 3: and you were putting that data in and they were taking what your data was but there was no way to

[0:20:53] Voice 3: ongoing monitor what it was i could i could be i could have misunderstood how they were doing that

[0:20:59] Voice 3: but i didn't believe that they provided any kind of a device to continually monitor well yeah i

[0:21:07] Voice 3: remember

[0:21:07] Voice 5: the 2020 that that workshop with the province and we're both there right i understood

[0:21:14] Voice 5: that they were desperate to get people to register and monitor yeah

[0:21:19] Trustee Morrison (probable): so that was the one for what

[0:21:20] Trustee Morrison (probable): you're talking about the commercial well thing but there is also i know new programs coming out

[0:21:25] Trustee Morrison (probable): like you're saying with the watershed

[0:21:26] Voice 5: civil society

[0:21:27] Trustee Morrison (probable): like like a independent household

[0:21:32] Trustee Morrison (probable): monitoring like well monitoring that have like a chip in them basically like they're like a smart

[0:21:37] Trustee Morrison (probable): um electronic thing for your house you know when you electricity it's like that it's a smart meter

[0:21:43] Trustee Morrison (probable): thank you that's what i'm trying to say so it's like a smart meter on your well so and they're

[0:21:47] Trustee Morrison (probable): for um personal household wells and so and that isn't that is a goal because of climate change

[0:21:55] Trustee Morrison (probable): because of all these changes people are trying to get enough data in the sort of citizen science

[0:21:59] Trustee Morrison (probable): mode but to feed directly into the system so we don't have to like worry about the following

[0:22:03] Trustee Morrison (probable): so those are programs that are out there the question is how can we attach them quickly

[0:22:10] Voice 4: do you have a question

[0:22:12] Trustee Maude: no I'm missing people so

[0:22:16] Trustee Maude: it's

[0:22:17] Voice 9: somewhat rhetorical but we'll have other comments later but just to Peter's

[0:22:21] Voice 9: um reference to the policy statement and the shall uh command around that we shall use

[0:22:29] Voice 9: our the water we have and not bring in water um I'm interested to know uh obviously we're

[0:22:37] Voice 9: we're in contravention of that so what happens to that do we not give a hoot we ignore that

[0:22:43] Voice 9: does that suggest that islands trust is looking at density issues when they're when that was

[0:22:49] Voice 9: written like i would like us to think you know perhaps not today but keep that in the back of

[0:22:55] Voice 9: our minds what does that mean in terms of the ability to decide in the future

[0:23:01] Voice 9: um rules around thou shalt not truck water in methods for xyz like do you have exemptions

[0:23:09] Voice 9: for that because if if i'm going to talk about water uh groundwater recharge capture conservation

[0:23:20] Voice 9: i think we have to be really clear on which you know the box we're in because if there are if we

[0:23:27] Voice 9: are going to be told we can't bring water in then we'll we'll have to say well do we need an

[0:23:32] Voice 9: amendment and for what reason so you know that again can be somewhat divisive when people bring

[0:23:38] Voice 9: their personal interests um to your comment dev about bringing water into drink there are lots

[0:23:45] Voice 9: of people who bring in water for showers because they rent their

[0:23:48] Voice 9: places out and the folks from the

[0:23:49] Voice 9: city come and there's six people and they all want a 20-minute shower and you know that that is

[0:23:54] Voice 9: happening now so um the other thing is about people coming along and building multiple buildings

[0:24:02] Voice 9: on their property that islands trust says they can do and then using a lot of water and it may

[0:24:10] Voice 9: be in some areas for instance where i live where we have a good supply of water there used to be a

[0:24:18] Voice 9: brick factory they need water so we happen to not struggle the way some people down at the end of

[0:24:24] Voice 9: borrowed, struggled with water. And as someone alluded to, if someone's overusing, is that

[0:24:33] Voice 9: relying on someone's ability to use, it all goes back to aquifers. So then what authority

[0:24:40] Voice 9: do violence trusts have, I guess, as I'm getting to start dictating or creating rules for the

[0:24:46] Voice 9: benefit of everyone? So that's a bigger question, but I'd like it, I want to register it, not that

[0:24:54] Voice 9: have any answers to it but it just i wasn't i didn't recall that language that he recited and

[0:25:00] Voice 9: i think it's very interesting and valuable and it makes me think about it a little bit differently

[0:25:05] Voice 9: the issue yeah

[0:25:07] Voice 3: if you read further on that it says related to density so it influences

[0:25:13] Voice 3: what is

[0:25:14] Voice 3: permissible for medical density it's

[0:25:17] Trustee Morrison (probable): an interesting question here though because we're not

[0:25:18] Trustee Morrison (probable): not um fully built out like some of some other islands are closer to what's considered build

[0:25:24] Trustee Morrison (probable): out but as we think about housing we also have to think

[0:25:27] Voice 9: about no we're getting ready for the

[0:25:29] Voice 9: bigger discussion all of these things are gonna we want to be here we need a hover over our head

[0:25:35] Voice 9: what's it going to look like you know we need some water we need protection but

[0:25:39] Trustee Morrison (probable): i think the

[0:25:40] Trustee Morrison (probable): the question that

[0:25:42] Trustee Morrison (probable): i think is like i would say community-wide right now is um you know

[0:25:48] Trustee Morrison (probable): what do we actually know about our water right and and so there are some things that we can

[0:25:55] Trustee Morrison (probable): hypothesize about about our water just because of logic you know so much rain comes in so much

[0:26:00] Trustee Morrison (probable): water is in the ground you know like we can get some estimates and that's what modeling does for

[0:26:04] Trustee Morrison (probable): us right but um we're the better estimates we get with more monitors on wells with that's all

[0:26:11] Trustee Morrison (probable): going to make it better right so we're going to get better data the the challenge i think we have

[0:26:16] Trustee Morrison (probable): right now and we have had for a long time and we say it's a global problem it's not just our problem

[0:26:22] Trustee Morrison (probable): but is like we have to do what we can with the best available information we have right now and

[0:26:29] Trustee Morrison (probable): the best available knowledge we have about how the system works and how it's changing

[0:26:33] Trustee Morrison (probable): and it may not be perfect so then it comes into this other conversation that's going on at the

[0:26:39] Trustee Morrison (probable): trust house i would say about like okay well do we become more precautionary or do we like

[0:26:47] Trustee Morrison (probable): not make any decision until we know for sure that there is data you know one way or the other and

[0:26:54] Trustee Morrison (probable): the reality is that any decision we make either to do something or to not do something is a decision

[0:26:59] Voice 4: right

[0:27:00] Trustee Morrison (probable): and so we have to think carefully about those decisions because it's really hard to

[0:27:04] Trustee Morrison (probable): take density back once it's all out

[0:27:06] Trustee Morrison (probable): there we all know that right so that's that's a challenge

[0:27:09] Trustee Morrison (probable): sorry okay

[0:27:10] Trustee Maude: yeah just before the planning are all right i'm going to take the answer

[0:27:16] Trustee Maude: this

[0:27:16] Voice 6: is for everybody it says local trust committees and island municipalities shall

[0:27:40] Voice 6: ensure neither the density nor intensity of land use is increased in areas which are known to have

[0:27:46] Voice 6: a problem with the quality or quantity supply of fresh water water quality is maintained and

[0:27:52] Voice 6: existing anticipated and seasonal demands for water are considered and allowed for so that's it

[0:27:59] Voice 6: so i just

[0:28:01] Voice 5: want to triangulate a little bit here so i'm i feel like you were talking about a freedom

[0:28:08] Voice 5: information act peter with respect to going to the water companies and get that information where i

[0:28:14] Voice 5: felt like aaron you were saying to people's individual households you'd have to know who

[0:28:20] Voice 5: was getting the water trucked in and i just want to make sure we're talking about the same thing

[0:28:26] Voice 5: and this is why so i hate to dig the knife into the back again but on garden pond when it was

[0:28:33] Voice 5: was drained we all put monitors on our wells when it was happening and every 10 seconds that thing

[0:28:40] Voice 5: pings my well and you know if i'm going to my well house i can look at the how low the water is

[0:28:47] Voice 5: and then i can upload it with my computer the thing we really regretted that was what we didn't

[0:28:54] Voice 5: have data from pre yeah so that we could look at what our levels were two years before and compare

[0:29:01] Voice 5: what was happening as the pond was being drained and as what is happening now so i think the

[0:29:07] Voice 5: freedom of information that you were talking about is if you can go to those companies and say okay

[0:29:11] Voice 5: we're getting like one uh i've heard through the grapevine we're getting one truck per day

[0:29:18] Voice 5: trucked into this island regardless of where it's going and then next year if it's a two a day or

[0:29:25] Voice 5: you know you can really see the change and i just think it's important that uh at least you have

[0:29:32] Voice 5: that data and i don't care you know it doesn't matter where it's going as far as i'm i would

[0:29:36] Trustee Maude: caution the one thing with with the data as they gave you a little bit less unique because

[0:29:42] Trustee Maude: as far as i understood all the water was coming from the mission of the student animal

[0:29:45] Trustee Maude: so it was a freedom of information request with a government body versus a private company

[0:29:50] Trustee Maude: and then they

[0:29:51] Trustee Maude: were quite detailed but there's like a man we have a lot of water dropped in

[0:29:56] Trustee Maude: and the two primary reasons is we have

[0:30:00] Trustee Maude: a couple of wealthy people who bring in water for the gardens so they have massive cisterns

[0:30:05] Trustee Maude: so it's nothing to do with the domestic uses basically to keep the gardens for the

[0:30:09] Trustee Maude: and the other one is the water districts we have two water districts last year that have

[0:30:14] Trustee Maude: massive water leaks and so they had to bring in loss and loss and loss of water to supplement

[0:30:21] Trustee Maude: because they couldn't find the leak so it becomes like who are they if that if anybody

[0:30:27] able to down that road you'd have to have a really really smart person looking at each individual

[0:30:33] load where it went why it

[0:30:35] Trustee Maude: went and all that but i think it would be hard to get to the private

[0:30:38] Trustee Maude: companies

[0:30:39] Voice 3: and don't get me wrong i'm not against trying to get that data at all i'm just very

[0:30:45] Voice 3: cautious of how we use sure stuff like that that we get and i think that to to what you were saying

[0:30:51] Voice 3: about with garden pond like us having access to actual hard factual data of what is going on

[0:31:00] Voice 3: with the water on our island to start with is we we don't even have that to understand why people

[0:31:07] Voice 3: are bringing the water in like why and and i guess to david's point that it just because it's being

[0:31:16] Voice 3: trapped in doesn't mean that it's an over usage of our low our local water we need to know what

[0:31:24] Voice 3: is happening with our local water um to start with and then take that data if we can get it

[0:31:31] Voice 3: and and use it in a sort of a responsible manner whatever it is to to be able to set

[0:31:39] Voice 3: some sort of a baseline for where we are to move forward because we don't have like you said you

[0:31:45] Voice 3: said regarding quantum we don't have that pre data available to us really and

[0:31:50] Trustee Morrison (probable): i think one more

[0:31:54] Voice 3: yeah so

[0:31:55] Voice 3: if you're trucking in then we're not self-sufficient here we're specifically using

[0:32:00] Voice 5: there's an interpretation of that that is our interpretation of that that is

[0:32:05] Voice 5: there's various interpretations of that clause so

[0:32:09] Trustee Morrison (probable): i'm just going to add another thought here

[0:32:10] Trustee Morrison (probable): in terms of the saltwater component because you know the trucking of water in the summer

[0:32:16] Trustee Morrison (probable): related to the saltwater component or not so or like even show us to

[0:32:23] Trustee Morrison (probable): drill well or not there are

[0:32:24] Voice 1: some areas

[0:32:25] Trustee Morrison (probable): on our island where there's some serious saltwater intrusion risk and so you know

[0:32:31] Trustee Morrison (probable): part of our need I think too is how do we actually think as a community in those areas like pull

[0:32:38] Trustee Morrison (probable): together all the landowners in those areas and actually think coherently about like okay maybe

[0:32:44] Trustee Morrison (probable): everyone in this area has to have additional resources around um cisterns for storage in the

[0:32:51] Trustee Morrison (probable): summer and we winter pump right so because winter pumping out from a well is much safer than um

[0:32:57] Trustee Morrison (probable): summer pumping a well that has saltwater intrusion potential right so then then you so you don't even

[0:33:03] Trustee Morrison (probable): have to go into all the other things that you could be doing around you know rainwater capture

[0:33:08] Trustee Morrison (probable): you could just winter pump up because we generally have enough capacity in the winter we get a lot

[0:33:13] Trustee Morrison (probable): and that's one of the things I was really happy about with the study is it actually gave us some

[0:33:16] Trustee Morrison (probable): understanding of how when we get our rain when we

[0:33:19] Trustee Morrison (probable): get our water and so we have that capacity here

[0:33:23] Trustee Morrison (probable): to do that um so it changes what our decisions could be as a community because we don't have to

[0:33:28] Trustee Morrison (probable): sort of force everyone in this region to do rain you know rainwater catchment we could just educate

[0:33:33] Trustee Morrison (probable): take them on can you winter pump instead and have cistern so those are some of the solutions that

[0:33:39] Trustee Morrison (probable): we could go for if we're going to do that from a community perspective i do think it's worth it for

[0:33:44] Trustee Morrison (probable): us as an ltc to try out to kind of coordinate some of those grant programs and like go after

[0:33:49] Trustee Morrison (probable): them holistically so that whole communities can do that together because it is a like commons

[0:33:55] Trustee Morrison (probable): problem the water is owned collectively yeah i just

[0:33:59] Voice 5: wanted to respond to the comment about

[0:34:01] Voice 5: the trucking water in and you know my concern is not that whether it comes in or not my concern is

[0:34:11] Voice 5: that when Nanaimo says to Gabriola sorry no more you're not taking any more water because we need

[0:34:18] Voice 5: it yeah what

[0:34:19] Voice 5: are we going to do then yeah

[0:34:20] Voice 4: when

[0:34:22] Voice 5: they say no no more water is going to be truck

[0:34:24] Voice 5: to Pender or Maine or wherever the heck you are what are

[0:34:28] Trustee Morrison (probable): we going to do and so from my perspective

[0:34:30] Trustee Morrison (probable): one of the things that we need to know about that water that's coming in is i don't know that i it

[0:34:36] Trustee Morrison (probable): would be good to know how much it is and generally what use it's going toward like if it's you know

[0:34:40] Trustee Morrison (probable): somebody's gardens or whatever because then their garden just dies like but it's not a community

[0:34:45] Voice 4: like

[0:34:45] Trustee Morrison (probable): if it's a watering issue for somebody's garden well then their garden just dies and

[0:34:49] Trustee Morrison (probable): it's like not a broad community issue necessarily right but um you know it's not wonderful but it's

[0:34:55] Trustee Morrison (probable): you know but part of i think what so it would be good to know whatever we could get on that i think

[0:35:02] Trustee Morrison (probable): what there are other ways we can get at that data i am not actually for freedom of information

[0:35:07] Trustee Morrison (probable): request if it's a private company i just don't think that's helpful but i i think one of the

[0:35:11] Trustee Morrison (probable): things we could do is we could just figure out who's doing that in the community and just ask

[0:35:15] Trustee Morrison (probable): them like and you know like we're a community we can just ask and so like just ask people what

[0:35:22] Trustee Morrison (probable): their challenges are with their water because we are trying to actually help solve those water

[0:35:26] Trustee Morrison (probable): problems and it's expensive for them to bring in water by traffic so they're not going to want to

[0:35:30] Trustee Morrison (probable): do it so like let's just ask them and then try and figure out what we can do differently so yes

[0:35:37] Trustee Maude: gentlemen back here next um

[0:35:38] Voice 3: nick collins um i have benefit of having a bit of experience elsewhere in

[0:35:45] Voice 3: the capital region. I'm involved as a volunteer in a monitoring plan for Elk Beaver Lake and the

[0:35:53] Voice 3: oxygenation that's going in there so I have some idea of lakes and surface water and evaporation.

[0:36:00] Voice 3: I'm also chairing a meeting in about later this week where I've got three CRD people,

[0:36:09] Voice 3: people three provincial people two consultants and two or three environmental groups in an hour

[0:36:17] Voice 3: hour and a half online and there's teams meeting so one of the important things is

[0:36:24] Voice 3: is to design a monitoring plan and put a cost on it and then if you if you know what the cost is

[0:36:30] Voice 3: then you can shop it around to get some money to support it wherever that's going to come from

[0:36:36] Voice 3: So, you know, the old expression, follow the water, follow the money.

[0:36:41] Voice 3: So I think you really have to get a handle on what does it really cost to implement a monitoring plan that makes sense for this particular island.

[0:36:53] Voice 3: The other thing that strikes me is here and elsewhere, people are taking a whole watershed approach.

[0:37:02] Voice 3: We're taking very comprehensive view of water.

[0:37:05] Voice 3: So if you're going to get into monitoring, you know, you've got a fellow on Magic Lake

[0:37:11] Voice 3: who's got all the precipitation data.

[0:37:14] Voice 3: You've got all the

[0:37:16] Voice 3: Magic Lake data from people who, you know, they monitor my water there.

[0:37:25] Voice 3: So we've got those statistics, but if somebody really looked at the existing sources of information

[0:37:32] Voice 3: information, including the actual work that children have done, and really stepped back

[0:37:38] Voice 3: a bit and said, well, what's the next logical step? We're going to do monitoring. It's going

[0:37:43] Voice 3: to cost money. And what was that? And what's the best technology that you can use to actually

[0:37:50] Voice 3: collect that data that's not terribly labor-intensive or intrusive or whatever? So really, if you

[0:37:57] Voice 3: you um figure out the monitoring of actual priority then the other thing that strikes me

[0:38:05] Voice 3: because i deal with water as a volunteer every day is the provincial responsibility and i found

[0:38:12] Voice 3: the provincial people uh whether they're fish people in fish and wildlife or whether they're

[0:38:19] Voice 3: water quality people um they've got limited resources they will come to me so they will

[0:38:25] Voice 4: tell

[0:38:25] Voice 3: you what's involved in this stuff. We've got a marvellous hydrologist, John Jeffery,

[0:38:31] Voice 3: in Victoria, based in Victoria, who's helping out installing equipment, giving workshops on

[0:38:38] Voice 3: the hydrology. He reports to Neil Golda, who's the guy in the NILO. So I think if you take a

[0:38:48] Voice 3: a really comprehensive approach look at the priorities really your role and i'm in a you

[0:38:55] Voice 3: know i've followed the trust 50 years now mostly um really until somebody wants to build something

[0:39:02] Voice 3: you really don't have much say i mean you can have all the wording you want in a in an ocp to

[0:39:08] Voice 3: provide guidance but if you look over at salt spring what they're doing there they're pushing

[0:39:13] Voice 3: on storage from what comes down on people's roofs and gutters and they started that in Magic Lake.

[0:39:20] Voice 3: There's a

[0:39:20] Voice 3: lot of things that could be done but they're not necessarily high cost but in terms of

[0:39:26] Voice 3: land use planning and decision making until somebody wants to build something or expand

[0:39:31] Voice 3: something I don't all you can do is to facilitate a community process and I applaud you for actually

[0:39:40] Voice 3: taking a bit of opinions on developing more and more regulations and actually looking at what's

[0:39:45] Voice 3: important to make a thriving community that values water and values nature and values

[0:39:53] Voice 3: other people's rights and responsibilities yeah

[0:39:58] Trustee Morrison (probable): like hey on that one like in terms of seriously

[0:40:01] Trustee Morrison (probable): about and i think you're pretty unified on that issue like let's make sure that the levels of

[0:40:07] Trustee Morrison (probable): government that are responsible to do those things are doing those things and that we're coordinating

[0:40:12] Trustee Morrison (probable): with them because that

[0:40:13] Trustee Morrison (probable): is a function of the trust is to try and coordinate with those other levels

[0:40:16] Voice 3: of government and the money that's being put into the stewardship groups with support from the

[0:40:23] Voice 3: province technical support yeah

[0:40:25] Voice 3: that's the whole direction and we've been reasonably involved with

[0:40:29] Voice 3: bc wildlife and others on this board shared security funding so um it's not necessarily

[0:40:35] Voice 3: there's a shortage of money out there for this stuff it's just really intelligently using the

[0:40:41] Voice 3: best experts to actually work on what's important yeah and

[0:40:46] Trustee Maude: i believe one of the one things that has

[0:40:48] Trustee Maude: not been mentioned though is the province decades ago established monitoring wells in all the islands

[0:40:54] Trustee Maude: i think every island's got at least two so there is a long long data stream there for some specific

[0:41:01] Trustee Maude: specific points which really helps the foundation the

[0:41:04] Trustee Morrison (probable): challenge I think that we found is when we

[0:41:07] Trustee Morrison (probable): looked at the um groundwater sort of structure because these islands are very linear you know

[0:41:13] Trustee Morrison (probable): geologically that wherever the Wells went and they tell one story but not all story is a cross

[0:41:19] Trustee Morrison (probable): down so it's a little tricky and

[0:41:21] Trustee Maude: so it's massively tricky like I think we have a resort which they

[0:41:29] Trustee Maude: have they're close of course to the water

[0:41:30] Voice 8: they

[0:41:31] Trustee Maude: have a breakdown the the improvement district has

[0:41:34] Trustee Maude: a well 500 feet inland from from the resort they have they they have to abandon about the solar

[0:41:40] Trustee Maude: intrusion so they just just a few hundred feet can make all the difference in the world so basic

[0:41:46] Voice 3: question how many water districts do we have and is there a paper sharing to the central place

[0:41:54] Voice 3: right now, how many water districts do we have for them?

[0:41:58] Voice 3: Okay, so are we getting the data from them and coordinating it

[0:42:02] Voice 3: or analyze it in some kind of way?

[0:42:05] Yeah.

[0:42:07] Voice 7: Mr.

[0:42:11] Voice 3: Sketch, you were next.

[0:42:13] Voice 3: That's good.

[0:42:15] Voice 12: The trust council was addressed by delegations from both Gabrielle

[0:42:21] Voice 12: and

[0:42:22] Voice 7: Galeano Islands, thank you,

[0:42:29] Voice 12: and people and myself on Pender

[0:42:32] Voice 12: all asked the people who truck in water

[0:42:36] Voice 12: and in one case applied under FOI

[0:42:40] Voice 12: to get the data which they took to Trust Council.

[0:42:43] Voice 12: And Trust Council, to be fair, was very responsive.

[0:42:46] Voice 12: There were more questions to that delegation

[0:42:48] Voice 12: than most delegations,

[0:42:50] Voice 12: and people were genuinely concerned

[0:42:52] Voice 12: concerned that overall the overall picture was an influx on several islands uh very substantial two

[0:43:00] Voice 12: summers ago of fresh water and that should give notice to decision makers uh that dense develop

[0:43:11] Voice 12: areas of dense development on the islands should get a second look before continuing with the

[0:43:18] Voice 12: density of development or proposed development or the potential for development uh and on north

[0:43:24] Voice 12: pender i asked uh one of the drivers from the company that brings water to pender and he said

[0:43:32] Voice 12: two summers ago uh he was delivering a thousand gallons per day eleven hundred gallons per day

[0:43:39] Voice 12: five days a week through the summer that dry summer uh to a tourist commercial zone and it

[0:43:46] Voice 12: It doesn't matter which one, but there is an area of really very high density in the summer at the very time when water use is a problem.

[0:44:00] Voice 12: And if I had to be dispassionate, I would say that when the Local Trust Committee has examined the potential for downzoning,

[0:44:13] Voice 12: a decades-old density for C2 zones, tourist commercial zones.

[0:44:19] Voice 12: They didn't tackle the problem from areas of freshwater vulnerability,

[0:44:27] Voice 12: of trucking in, of higher density than is realistic.

[0:44:33] Voice 12: And that overview could come from Shulba Data, the project,

[0:44:39] Voice 12: And in December 2021, there was a staff report with an image which looked at threshold recharge and demand and gave two maps.

[0:44:57] Voice 12: And Dan Morrison, you were in office and you maybe remember that map.

[0:45:01] Voice 12: But I don't remember any consequence at that meeting of the staff report finding and that picture.

[0:45:08] Voice 12: And it showed in dry seasons, as we are experiencing, a red line across Pender from the Otter Bay area to Browning Harbor of being, and the text that went with it, an acknowledgment to 1985.

[0:45:27] Voice 12: So it's been a longstanding issue of an area that is vulnerable to overgrowing freshwater in dry seasons.

[0:45:34] Voice 12: Now, the consequence of that, which the planner offered to the local trust committee, as far

[0:45:42] Voice 12: as I could understand, was zero.

[0:45:44] Voice 12: There wasn't any response.

[0:45:48] Voice 12: And there are several, more than one C2 zone or potential C2 zone in that red band.

[0:45:56] Voice 12: And not a word of comment on that map correlating with proposed density.

[0:46:02] Voice 12: And that's really what we need.

[0:46:03] Voice 12: that what are the most vulnerable areas broad brush on north pender and we have a map until

[0:46:10] Voice 12: new data compounds that and can we start with that and then examine those and not ascribe

[0:46:19] Voice 12: unreasonable densities housing or tourist commercial or anything else

[0:46:23] Voice 12: in those areas

[0:46:25] Voice 12: or at least give scrutiny to the to the density that's that's to be allowed

[0:46:31] Voice 12: um that overview really is important and uh some of the data that that uh these people that address

[0:46:39] Voice 12: trust council was indeed obtained under FOI from the companies they could also could soundly

[0:46:45] Voice 12: the very terminal and ask the truck driver and get a pretty good idea unfortunately there are several

[0:46:51] Voice 12: truck drivers so you've got to ask them all but you can get a good picture um fairly quickly and

[0:46:56] Voice 12: worth it going yeah the odd individual house the odd garden the odd whatever but when you hear that

[0:47:02] Voice 12: they're 25 days a week to a tourist commercial town for the summer then you think the density

[0:47:08] Voice 12: is probably too high there

[0:47:09] Voice 7: thank you next well

[0:47:16] Voice 13: it's really good that we're taking a holistic

[0:47:18] Voice 13: approach to this it has to be that we have to look at the water we have to look at the trees

[0:47:24] Voice 13: we have to look at the carrying capacity for density but when it comes to water everybody

[0:47:30] Voice 13: on pender knows we get a ton of water in the winter and we get none in the summer and we have

[0:47:37] Voice 13: to adjust our patterns and we've started to do that but it's really important to recognize that

[0:47:43] Voice 13: we get a lot of water in the winter that just doesn't stay on the island it just runs off

[0:47:50] Voice 13: sometimes to catastrophic effect so when we're looking at that picture and that's something that

[0:47:57] Voice 13: the groundwater study really pointed out there's ways of handling it but we really do have to look

[0:48:06] Voice 13: at carrying capacity when we're talking about housing and density so it's it's great we're

[0:48:14] Voice 13: taking this holistic approach but it's really hard to sort of hone in on where we should be focusing

[0:48:20] Voice 13: but one of the important things is we've got water coming in we can keep some of it the more we do to

[0:48:29] Voice 13: do that the better well

[0:48:31] Trustee Morrison (probable): one of the reasons i think originally like thinking back to the water study

[0:48:35] Trustee Morrison (probable): and why we instigated the way we did was not necessarily to create bylaws now i know

[0:48:40] Trustee Morrison (probable): it was actually a little bit outside earlier that when we get individual applications we can think

[0:48:47] Trustee Morrison (probable): about them in the context of larger water issues um and because we didn't really have anything

[0:48:53] Trustee Morrison (probable): that could speak to like when we were looking at an individual application before we didn't have

[0:49:00] Trustee Morrison (probable): really any sort of basis to evaluate that with respect to water groundwater um and you know

[0:49:07] Trustee Morrison (probable): know water proof of water is really around a pump test well if that's done in november versus if

[0:49:12] Trustee Morrison (probable): that's done in july that's a radically different thing right and so the water study gives us another

[0:49:17] Trustee Morrison (probable): layer of data to think about that and to understand what could be specifically asked for if there is a

[0:49:23] Trustee Morrison (probable): density change requested in that space and so and frankly i think that's going to make more

[0:49:30] Trustee Morrison (probable): than people realize so like there's a lot of properties that are um coming you know related

[0:49:36] Trustee Morrison (probable): to an aging population big properties that are starting to turn over and could be subdivided

[0:49:41] Trustee Morrison (probable): because they could be subdivided down to 10 acres and even at that level the question is okay well

[0:49:47] Trustee Morrison (probable): what kind of pressure does that increased density put because that increased density is already

[0:49:51] Trustee Morrison (probable): there it's kind of like a hidden level of density that's in the island it's not yet subdivided but

[0:49:56] Trustee Morrison (probable): the potential is there given our current bylaws and so you know what does that mean for us as we

[0:50:02] Trustee Morrison (probable): ask for you know the provincial approving officer to consider the water sort of history around that

[0:50:08] Trustee Morrison (probable): but

[0:50:09] Voice 13: we know that our population has already increased 20 percent in the last five years

[0:50:14] Voice 13: so we're seeing steady growth well

[0:50:17] Trustee Morrison (probable): yeah and that's not actually even accounting for people who

[0:50:21] Trustee Morrison (probable): already own buildings here and are

[0:50:23] Trustee Morrison (probable): now occupying them year-round which is a slightly different

[0:50:26] Trustee Morrison (probable): statistic than how many people are coming to the island in terms of buying new properties or

[0:50:31] Trustee Morrison (probable): building new properties um because there's quite an extensive amount of summer homes on the property

[0:50:36] Trustee Morrison (probable): that during covid in particular became fully occupied um

[0:50:42] Voice 7: can

[0:50:45] Voice 5: we have i'm going to jump to

[0:50:46] Voice 5: the end and then i'll tell the story after can we have a citizen working group on water groundwater

[0:50:54] Voice 5: availability so now to now the story part if you want to talk about housing you have to talk about

[0:51:01] Voice 5: a lot of i commend uh specialist show does detailed work and all we've got all the information

[0:51:08] Voice 5: we need however it's not really turned into something we can use so uh i started talking to

[0:51:15] Voice 5: various people around the island water knowledgeable people and they say oh you know you

[0:51:21] Voice 5: should speak to this person or that person and say we know all this on the island if you

[0:51:26] Voice 5: you there's people on the island i've got some names and if you don't do it i'll do it but uh

[0:51:33] Voice 5: you know i'll get the group together and we'll sort of figure figure things out and try to build

[0:51:37] Voice 5: some consensus but i think it's a great opportunity for the ltc to do it i also commend the ltc for

[0:51:43] Voice 5: not putting a dpa blanketing recharge areas because i don't think that's helping very much

[0:51:49] Voice 5: for us to conceptualize how the water works on the island so what we did at our very first meeting

[0:51:56] Voice 5: was well we just got those maps out uh that william has done of discharging or recharge you

[0:52:04] Voice 5: know where the rain comes in on the top sits there percolates down so almost everything up high is a

[0:52:10] Voice 5: recharge area and then down below there's some lime green areas because i'm a visual person on

[0:52:15] Voice 5: on the maps that's where the water pops out and that is supposed to be the place where you've got

[0:52:20] Voice 5: good water and that is supposed to be the place where you would if you were talking about how

[0:52:26] Voice 5: you wanted to get to that that's where you look um but then uh you know we got into island

[0:52:33] Voice 5: narratives like one was carl's property where he's in a lime green area you know you guys know where

[0:52:38] Voice 5: carl's property is um he's in a lime green area he tried for 20 yeah he tried for 20 years no

[0:52:45] Voice 5: No, he tried for a long time to find water.

[0:52:48] Voice 5: Oops, his property doesn't have it.

[0:52:50] Voice 5: So even though he's lying green on the maps.

[0:52:54] Voice 5: So could we, I think we have the knowledge on the island.

[0:52:58] Voice 5: And I think we can, I think people need to understand the broader narrative and story that is just simple.

[0:53:06] Voice 5: It's, you know, we recharge up high.

[0:53:09] Voice 5: It pops out in certain areas.

[0:53:11] Voice 5: Somebody's got an artesian well.

[0:53:13] Voice 5: Well, you know, then we can start moving

[0:53:16] Voice 5: to the housing discussion after that.

[0:53:19] Voice 5: And I think we do have a lot of good information.

[0:53:24] Voice 7: So the concept would be,

[0:53:26] Voice 7: is this basically an advisory commission?

[0:53:29] Trustee Maude: So I think that's good food for the farm,

[0:53:32] Trustee Maude: but I think we'll take it.

[0:53:35] Voice 3: Andy Novak.

[0:53:37] Voice 3: We're talking a lot about water usage

[0:53:39] Voice 3: and water availability,

[0:53:41] Voice 3: but I don't hear much about water protection per se.

[0:53:45] Voice 3: So I need to beg to differ with my neighbor here about the DPA approach.

[0:53:51] Voice 3: I think it's well worth looking into because we live on an island, we work on an island, we play here, and we play in our watershed.

[0:54:04] Voice 3: No matter where we are, you go, and this has been said in other meetings before, you go to Victoria, you're not allowed

[0:54:12] Voice 3: to set foot in your watershed.

[0:54:14] Voice 3: It's so protected.

[0:54:15] Voice 3: So I think we do need to look at protecting our water, and that is maybe through the DPAs, maybe there are other tools, I don't know.

[0:54:27] Voice 3: But to me, water protection is paramount.

[0:54:35] Voice 3: Monitoring water storage in the wintertime, well, frankly, I feel that's my personal responsibility.

[0:54:42] Voice 3: I don't think, generally speaking, that it's necessarily

[0:54:48] Voice 7: the responsibility of the community.

[0:54:53] Voice 7: It can be done.

[0:54:57] Voice 7: It's not difficult, whether you're

[0:54:59] Voice 3: putting a plastic cistern in, you know, I don't want

[0:55:04] Voice 3: to be judging people, but I think most people could afford to spend a couple of thousand

[0:55:09] Voice 3: dollars on a cistern and collect rainwater.

[0:55:12] Voice 3: water same with fire protection it cost me a hundred dollars to put a hose and a sprinkler

[0:55:20] Voice 3: on my roof which gives me as long as I have power instant fire protection it within five minutes I

[0:55:28] Voice 3: have a bubble of humidity around my house which will do a lot to protecting my house

[0:55:36] Voice 3: so I think you know certain projects are worthwhile doing on a community basis but we should not

[0:55:44] Voice 3: um neglect to um recognize where we have individual responsibilities thank

[0:55:53] Voice 7: you thank you

[0:55:56] Trustee Morrison (probable): absolutely i

[0:55:57] Trustee Morrison (probable): mean what in terms of the water quality because i know that we have um there

[0:56:02] Trustee Morrison (probable): are several areas on the island that are problematic for water quality issues right now

[0:56:07] Trustee Morrison (probable): um and we've been fighting different bio enforcement issues for the last five years

[0:56:13] Trustee Morrison (probable): around some of those issues um so and and there's a history i don't know how many people how many

[0:56:20] Trustee Morrison (probable): people

[0:56:20] Voice 9: know or not about this

[0:56:22] Trustee Morrison (probable): but there's a history on the island of like digging holes in

[0:56:25] Trustee Morrison (probable): the forest and throwing all sorts of crap and then covering them over so some of those have

[0:56:30] Trustee Morrison (probable): been dug out um over the last couple years and others are that are potentially hazardous

[0:56:37] Trustee Morrison (probable): hazardous debris or vehicles or things like that that haven't necessarily been properly drained

[0:56:43] Trustee Morrison (probable): are being removed so that seems to me from what I can see in our existing bylaws already to be

[0:56:50] Trustee Morrison (probable): required for us to protect like we have bylaws that are we are instigating to protect those

[0:56:55] Trustee Morrison (probable): things right now they have not historically been well enforced so I was surprised when I started

[0:57:03] Trustee Morrison (probable): in the trust five years ago that we hadn't enforced on derelict vehicles knowing that

[0:57:08] Trustee Morrison (probable): derelict some of the derelict vehicles were accumulating different types of toxins and

[0:57:12] Trustee Morrison (probable): they were just running into our groundwater and so um so and that's just one of the things that

[0:57:18] Trustee Morrison (probable): doesn't include like boats with toxic paint on the side that are sitting out on places that are

[0:57:23] Trustee Morrison (probable): also shedding into the ground so um and neither one of those two things was actually the worst

[0:57:28] Trustee Morrison (probable): case scenario in the south so far um so i guess i would really i think it might be really helpful

[0:57:37] Trustee Morrison (probable): to have a look and maybe it is part of the community conversation around water like in

[0:57:42] Trustee Morrison (probable): terms of advisory to look exactly at like what have been the historical problems around water

[0:57:48] Trustee Morrison (probable): quality on the other night because i think there are two pieces one is about water independence

[0:57:53] Trustee Morrison (probable): and quantity and making sure that we have that you know that kind of systemic look at our water

[0:57:58] Trustee Morrison (probable): sources and one is like preserving the water quality and making sure that we have that type

[0:58:04] Trustee Morrison (probable): of monitoring going on because that's a different type of monitoring and uh you know doing tests in

[0:58:10] Trustee Morrison (probable): different locations where we know the water is coming out of on a regular basis that is there's

[0:58:14] Trustee Morrison (probable): a provincial authority and responsibility for that but we also are like bylaw enforcing on the

[0:58:19] Trustee Morrison (probable): things that are contributing into the problem because that's a land use problem so it's kind

[0:58:24] Trustee Morrison (probable): of tied up so i think it might be something that we actually pursue with the problems as well um

[0:58:31] Trustee Morrison (probable): in collaboration for them to do some of the monitoring and testing across the island to

[0:58:35] Trustee Morrison (probable): see where clearly where those problems are so that we can ensure that our what we are enforcing on

[0:58:41] Trustee Morrison (probable): i'm kind of getting back to this broad enforcement question that we've been having like what we're

[0:58:45] Trustee Morrison (probable): enforcing on is actually addressing that problem because i'm not as solid about the link between

[0:58:50] Trustee Morrison (probable): those two things we know some things are influenced in the water quality but it'd be nice to know

[0:58:55] Trustee Morrison (probable): exactly what it is so that we can make sure that we're protecting against those things

[0:58:59] Trustee Morrison (probable): so

[0:58:59] Voice 5: other thoughts on that from anyone yourself well

[0:59:03] Voice 3: i think that's definitely a very valuable

[0:59:07] Voice 3: um thing that can be done on a community-wide basis rather than on an individual individual basis

[0:59:13] Voice 3: um and you know if you talk as mary bear says you just need to talk to people on the island

[0:59:20] Voice 3: and then we can probably narrow it down pretty quickly

[0:59:22] Voice 3: where we would suspect that there's issues

[0:59:26] Voice 3: with water quality, you know,

[0:59:28] Voice 3: probably half the people in this room

[0:59:29] Voice 3: will know where to look first.

[0:59:31] Voice 4: Yeah.

[0:59:33] Voice 3: So, yeah.

[0:59:36] Voice 3: And, you know, thankfully the culture has changed

[0:59:41] Voice 3: over the last 30 years or so, you know,

[0:59:45] Voice 3: I mean, I do remember those holes in the back 40

[0:59:51] Voice 3: you know, and people would openly admit to having them at the time.

[0:59:55] Voice 10: And

[0:59:55] Voice 3: I think the culture has changed enough since then.

[1:00:00] Voice 3: that hopefully

[1:00:00] Voice 12: that's not too common a practice anymore um but as you say you know who knows

[1:00:06] Voice 12: what's still in there and i i mean i

[1:00:11] Voice 3: could tell a few stories but maybe i shouldn't in public but

[1:00:14] Voice 3: but

[1:00:15] Trustee Morrison (probable): it might be something to try and coordinate because i i know yeah i have heard inklings of

[1:00:21] Trustee Morrison (probable): various things too and it i know when i was in the yukon territory years and years ago

[1:00:25] Trustee Morrison (probable): So they had, there was a history in that region of dumping PCBs and oil metal drums into lakes.

[1:00:34] Trustee Morrison (probable): And so, but there was an entire project to go and identify where those were and remove them and try and repair the damage that had been done.

[1:00:45] Trustee Morrison (probable): And it kind of feels like we're in a place where because of the stress on our water systems, we might be getting to that, like, let's just figure that out and repair that.

[1:00:56] Voice 3: thank you yeah so to prepare against um to maybe switch over to trees or forests

[1:01:05] Voice 3: which uh preserve watershed um so that question the was mentioned by mr smith that maybe a gpa's

[1:01:13] Voice 3: larger enlarged gpas for for protecting of uh forests would be possible but i know that

[1:01:23] Voice 3: on some islands like for instance galliano they have had for some years now a uh a blanket dpa

[1:01:31] Voice 3: of firing only a certain amount of freezing cup per year to compete and but i as i understand

[1:01:39] Voice 3: that it has not been enforced and so my question is that when the trust council asked the province

[1:01:48] Voice 3: for additional powers related to trigger.

[1:01:52] Voice 3: Was that something that would have given the trust

[1:01:56] Voice 3: and therefore the local trustees more power to enforce DPAs or not?

[1:02:04] Voice 3: I mean, because I think one of the reasons that the council

[1:02:08] Voice 3: pretended on this was they say, oh, well,

[1:02:12] Voice 3: the local trusts already have the power under DPAs.

[1:02:17] Voice 3: to prevent the treatment you know to prevent tree cutting um so are those things really i'm confused

[1:02:24] Voice 3: about if the enforcement problem one is the capacity or money or is it not enough power and

[1:02:32] Voice 3: did the did the question to the province address that enforcement issue

[1:02:39] Voice 3: um so with respect to uh the broader authorities of uh provincial legislation

[1:02:50] Voice 3: and so regional districts the islands trust and municipalities are

[1:02:55] Voice 3: enabled to establish development permit areas through the local government act

[1:03:01] Voice 3: it's very important in the local government act the development permit area uh language makes a

[1:03:09] Voice 3: very uh dpas can't just be a broad blanket coverage let's protect our forests they need

[1:03:16] Voice 3: to be very for a very specific ecosystem value for a species or a particular ecosystem type

[1:03:27] Voice 3: So here on the island you have, for example, your Raptor Nesting Place with a very, very specific habitat value of woodland forest, which is a very specific forest type.

[1:03:43] Voice 3: where the request to trust council was the provincial legislation also provides further

[1:03:51] Voice 3: powers to local to municipalities in particular through the community charter

[1:03:56] Voice 3: there's a list of spheres of power that municipal municipalities have broader control over

[1:04:04] Voice 3: tree protection like individual tree protection uh one other one that's

[1:04:11] Voice 3: is animal management

[1:04:18] Voice 3: so uh the request came through trust council to for the provincial government to consider

[1:04:26] Voice 3: the broadening of those powers to allow those more uh i'm not sure more effective those broader

[1:04:34] Voice 3: of powers are actually protected to also be allowed by regional districts and the violence

[1:04:38] Voice 3: trust the reality is is that uh regional districts have been asking for that broadening of powers for

[1:04:47] Voice 3: a long time and it really just does hit a wall at the provincial end so i think that answers that

[1:04:54] Voice 3: part of the question because it would require us to actually broaden powers beyond the environmental

[1:05:01] Voice 3: with dph that's right so

[1:05:03] Voice 3: right now the regional so right now those powers exist through the through

[1:05:08] Voice 3: the local government act those powers don't exist through the community charter they only

[1:05:12] Voice 3: exist for municipalities islands trust i think could potentially try to argue that they're unique

[1:05:18] Voice 3: uh and that those powers should be uh granted but my many many years in the provincial government

[1:05:26] Voice 3: of the provincial government lens is I think very, very,

[1:05:31] Voice 3: because I think once they open up those powers,

[1:05:33] Voice 3: then where does that?

[1:05:35] Voice 3: Well, we

[1:05:35] Voice 3: don't know because the trust council

[1:05:38] Voice 3: received it as a question.

[1:05:39] Voice 1: Well, I

[1:05:39] Voice 3: think the trust council has tried to go down

[1:05:42] Voice 3: that road before with the broadening of those powers

[1:05:45] Voice 3: and it just hit the wall.

[1:05:46] Voice 3: And so has UBCM, the collective group of regional districts

[1:05:53] Voice 3: have sought through many resolutions to enable broader powers

[1:05:59] Voice 3: without animal management or noise and a whole bunch of powers.

[1:06:04] Voice 3: So I agree with you that a broadening of those powers

[1:06:09] Voice 3: would be a good thing, but the enforcement of your own

[1:06:19] Voice 3: development permit areas, I mean, there's only so much

[1:06:24] Voice 3: proactive enforcement you can do if someone just acts upon their language without going through

[1:06:32] Voice 3: those problems enforcement attempts to be as effective as possible they do require you know

[1:06:39] Voice 3: retroactive development permanent areas but obviously that doesn't address the values

[1:06:47] Voice 3: yeah

[1:06:48] Trustee Morrison (probable): i'm going to

[1:06:49] Trustee Morrison (probable): add a couple things to that so just on the enforcement issue

[1:06:52] Trustee Morrison (probable): issue. We are going, and correct me if I'm wrong, like even one of the trustees, but we have asked

[1:07:00] Trustee Morrison (probable): the province to have a little bit of bylaw enforcement overall to give a better kind of

[1:07:06] Trustee Morrison (probable): understanding of the implementation of our current bylaw enforcement powers and like the way that

[1:07:10] Trustee Morrison (probable): bylaw enforcement is structured in the trust because there has been a number of different

[1:07:14] Trustee Morrison (probable): directions stated too much, not enough,

[1:07:16] Trustee Morrison (probable): like ineffective kinds of issues around enforcement.

[1:07:19] Trustee Morrison (probable): so that's being looked at um the move to rescind the request to the province was basically from

[1:07:29] Trustee Morrison (probable): my perspective it was um it sounded like people wanted it rescinded because they didn't think it

[1:07:34] Trustee Morrison (probable): was going to be effective i don't necessarily think that's the right strategy and like

[1:07:40] Trustee Morrison (probable): communicating that in my arguments at trust council um i think that there are a number of

[1:07:48] Trustee Morrison (probable): different ways to go at the problem we're facing which and I think we have to be clear about what's

[1:07:53] Trustee Morrison (probable): the problem we're facing right so one of the things that I personally am concerned about

[1:07:58] Trustee Morrison (probable): with different types of larger scale tree cutting on the island and I feel the need to say this

[1:08:06] Trustee Morrison (probable): because I've been misquoted multiple times I am not against cutting a tree I am against

[1:08:11] Trustee Morrison (probable): against cutting lots of trees um and so i think one of the things that we need to think about

[1:08:18] Trustee Morrison (probable): is like why are we not happy about large-scale tree cutting on the island and so from my

[1:08:26] Trustee Morrison (probable): perspective it's because it dries things out it makes it more likely you know we already know

[1:08:32] Trustee Morrison (probable): from lots of studies all over the place that like when you remove canopy things get hotter right

[1:08:38] Trustee Morrison (probable): that's understandable. I actually literally just had a conversation with the Portland Arboretum

[1:08:42] Trustee Morrison (probable): about this because they have western red cedar that's thriving in their arboretum and it's dying

[1:08:47] Trustee Morrison (probable): everywhere else in Portland because it's cooler in the arboretum because there's more chemistry

[1:08:51] Trustee Morrison (probable): and they've done a bunch of different studies to show them. Anyway so for me like that's part of

[1:08:59] Trustee Morrison (probable): the issue around tree hunting. We have to think about that across the entire landscape because

[1:09:04] Trustee Morrison (probable): magic lake really caused challenges for us as an island right because the properties were all

[1:09:10] Trustee Morrison (probable): divided into small little things

[1:09:11] Voice 13: and then people have

[1:09:12] Trustee Morrison (probable): realistic issues about trees falling on their

[1:09:14] Trustee Morrison (probable): house or you know like danger trees or if you heal the house and you disrupt the roots and the tree

[1:09:20] Trustee Morrison (probable): dies so there's all sorts of problems in magic lake that are unique to that region but as we

[1:09:25] Trustee Morrison (probable): look at the rest of the island we can think a little bit more carefully about it and we can do

[1:09:29] Trustee Morrison (probable): other things magically right like you can replant trees in different ways that provide lower canopy

[1:09:35] Trustee Morrison (probable): not so risky so there's a bunch of stuff that we could do as a community that we're stuck in this

[1:09:40] Trustee Morrison (probable): really stupid binary of trees no trees that we've got to get out

[1:09:44] Trustee Morrison (probable): of like and really start to think

[1:09:46] Trustee Morrison (probable): more holistically about what we want to do um i also agree with many of the things that i think

[1:09:52] Trustee Morrison (probable): many of you are worried about about biodiversity and maintaining our existing like contiguous

[1:09:57] Trustee Morrison (probable): U.S. forest in a way that protects our biodiversity on the side. Those are unique amenities to this

[1:10:01] Trustee Morrison (probable): area that we should be careful about. And then maybe one last thing. So basically the giant

[1:10:07] Trustee Morrison (probable): puzzle of the trust is if we actually had effective enforcement, like fully on our fronts

[1:10:12] Trustee Morrison (probable): and DPAs were not all retroactive, we could fine people if they do, you know,

[1:10:17] Trustee Morrison (probable): really naughty things

[1:10:18] Trustee Morrison (probable): with DPAs, then maybe they wouldn't do those things, right? And there are a bunch of DPAs

[1:10:24] Trustee Morrison (probable): related to water related to climate change that we could actually highlight in new and interesting

[1:10:31] Trustee Morrison (probable): ways if that's something we wanted to go for but we'd have to think about that and I actually

[1:10:37] Trustee Morrison (probable): believe it or not agree with Mary Beth on this that I think if a community organization think

[1:10:42] Trustee Morrison (probable): it like a community council thinking about water like that includes diverse people across the island

[1:10:47] Trustee Morrison (probable): that really thinks about that in multiple contexts not just as a simple like human

[1:10:53] Trustee Morrison (probable): provisional water because one thing we have not talked about here is not just the human

[1:10:57] Trustee Morrison (probable): provisional water but the provisional water for the ecosystem like making sure that we're getting

[1:11:02] Trustee Morrison (probable): enough water into the ecosystem so our trees aren't dying right um so i think there's um that

[1:11:08] Trustee Morrison (probable): would be really good to understand how to support all of that and there are dpas that we can

[1:11:14] Trustee Morrison (probable): specifically go after that are climate action dpas that allow us to be a little bit more flexible and

[1:11:19] Trustee Morrison (probable): and adjusting i am not willing personally to go after a dpa until i know they're getting enforced

[1:11:26] Trustee Morrison (probable): because i'm not going to waste my time doing something that i don't think is forced

[1:11:30] Trustee Morrison (probable): so

[1:11:30] Voice 3: the change to make them enforce it

[1:11:32] Trustee Morrison (probable): we're working on that so part of that is the the

[1:11:35] Trustee Morrison (probable): push with the trust level about having a violent enforcement fully looked at um and

[1:11:41] Voice 9: so the at the

[1:11:42] Trustee Morrison (probable): trust level we've asked for violent enforcement to be more comprehensively looked at um and by

[1:11:48] Trustee Morrison (probable): by the province and having the province

[1:11:49] Trustee Morrison (probable): come and look at the Island's Trust

[1:11:51] Trustee Morrison (probable): by law enforcement system

[1:11:52] Trustee Morrison (probable): and say what's working, what's not.

[1:11:54] Trustee Morrison (probable): I'm expecting high things

[1:11:56] Trustee Morrison (probable): of the government's committee

[1:11:57] Trustee Morrison (probable): about like what can be shifted

[1:11:59] Trustee Morrison (probable): or changed in there

[1:12:00] Trustee Morrison (probable): that might influence that as well.

[1:12:03] Trustee Morrison (probable): So I guess that's my challenge.

[1:12:07] Trustee Morrison (probable): So, and in the short term,

[1:12:08] Trustee Morrison (probable): then I actually think that there is,

[1:12:11] Trustee Morrison (probable): if the province has the power to cut trees

[1:12:14] Trustee Morrison (probable): and they didn't give it to the regional district,

[1:12:16] Trustee Morrison (probable): string and they didn't give it to the Adams trust and they didn't give it to any city nearby that

[1:12:20] Trustee Morrison (probable): could potentially influence us then the province still has it okay so from my perspective the the

[1:12:29] Trustee Morrison (probable): enforcement of tree cutting that's problematic resides with the province and we have to go we

[1:12:35] Trustee Morrison (probable): have to have the province deal with that and if it's not the province the province needs to clearly

[1:12:39] Trustee Morrison (probable): tell us who has it is it the regional district then I don't know well you can you cut trees

[1:12:44] Trustee Morrison (probable): so you know I just

[1:12:46] Voice 3: acknowledge

[1:12:47] Trustee Morrison (probable): Paul Bren's here he's wandered

[1:12:48] Trustee Morrison (probable): in an hour ago

[1:12:50] Trustee Morrison (probable): so just that he's here too I don't

[1:12:52] Trustee Morrison (probable): have to report it

[1:12:54] Voice 3: it's late

[1:12:55] Trustee Morrison (probable): it's okay

[1:12:56] Trustee Morrison (probable): I

[1:12:57] Voice 3: was jumping up here

[1:12:58] Voice 3: I

[1:12:58] Trustee Morrison (probable): don't actually want to

[1:13:00] Trustee Morrison (probable): ask for a few minutes

[1:13:02] Trustee Morrison (probable): break I do want to continue this

[1:13:04] Trustee Morrison (probable): conversation but I need a few minute break because I

[1:13:06] Trustee Morrison (probable): drank like two gallons of water

[1:13:08] Trustee Morrison (probable): well

[1:13:09] Trustee Maude: do

[1:13:10] Trustee Maude: we feel this this portion of the

[1:13:12] Trustee Maude: conversation is coming to a conclusion okay so we'll

[1:13:14] Trustee Maude: take a break. I

[1:13:15] Trustee Morrison (probable): think there's a couple other people that want to

[1:13:17] Voice 5: talk about for us. Yeah,

[1:13:19] Trustee Maude: we haven't really. So let's take a five minute break. And then we'll come back.

[1:21:06] Voice 12: I'd like to speak to the saltwater intrusion issue that came up earlier, and that one would

[1:21:14] Voice 12: have thought on islands where there is physics that suggests the saltwater would very much

[1:21:19] Voice 12: like to get under each island, and as groundwater is drawn down excessively in some areas, some

[1:21:26] Voice 12: communication with the ocean, there is danger of irreversible saltwater intrusion, and yet

[1:21:34] Voice 12: in the 30 years of the Trust Policy Statement,

[1:21:37] Voice 12: the Trust Policy Statement is silent on that topic.

[1:21:41] Voice 12: And I think it was mentioned earlier

[1:21:44] Voice 12: that the mapping that's available online

[1:21:46] Voice 12: shows an orange or a potential danger zone

[1:21:50] Voice 12: in the perimeter of each island.

[1:21:53] Voice 12: But on North Tender, we have examples of well inland,

[1:21:56] Voice 12: not far from Gregory's property, of saltwater intrusion.

[1:22:01] Voice 12: and what was the the answer of the well under well bracket which had consequences that's legal

[1:22:09] Voice 12: and now i've read the saltwater freshwater studies consultant's been hired and they can

[1:22:17] Voice 12: put another four units on this property or whatever it is but the um the policy which guides

[1:22:27] Voice 12: LCC decision makers, really isn't there, and particularly in regards to saltwater intrusion.

[1:22:35] Voice 12: So the A means of assessing the vulnerable region for saltwater intrusion would be to

[1:22:45] Voice 12: look at the static level of wells all around the edge of the island and correlate that.

[1:22:52] Voice 12: By correlate, I mean put a graph of the ocean level and a graph of the individual well level,

[1:23:04] Voice 12: hour by hour, side by side. And if there is a high degree of correspondence,

[1:23:12] Voice 12: that there is probably a greater risk of communication between the ocean and the well.

[1:23:19] Voice 12: well. And if it's drawn down too much, there is a risk that the salt water will intrude

[1:23:25] Voice 12: and keep going. And that could delineate the edge, the inner edge of that orange zone if

[1:23:34] Voice 12: the will was there on an island to do that mapping. And then at least flag a perimeter

[1:23:42] Voice 12: of the island where unfortunately highest property taxes and greatest development potential

[1:23:47] Voice 12: potential interest lies, as flags that for lower density.

[1:23:52] Voice 12: And I say that because unique in municipalities

[1:23:57] Voice 12: or provincial governance,

[1:24:00] Voice 12: the Islands Trust Act requires that decision makers

[1:24:06] Voice 12: carry out all of the trust object.

[1:24:08] Voice 12: One of those terms is cooperation with other,

[1:24:13] Voice 12: with the BC government.

[1:24:15] Voice 12: and uh the the the the the phrase that everyone knows about is they're protecting one of those

[1:24:21] Voice 12: things unarguably in its regular resource and that's a statutory requirement on all the decisions

[1:24:29] Voice 12: which this table makes and the advice given to this table i don't hear that in decision-making

[1:24:37] Voice 12: process and it's unique the other jurisdictions these provincial jurisdictions v-hall whatever

[1:24:43] Voice 12: whatever, are not bound by that instruction.

[1:24:46] Voice 12: The island structure is.

[1:24:48] Voice 12: And so at the zoning time, I submit this table

[1:24:52] Voice 12: should be really very, very careful to guard against situations

[1:24:58] Voice 12: which could involve saltwater intrusion

[1:25:01] Voice 12: and high-density development on coasts of the ocean.

[1:25:05] Voice 12: Friday's one of them.

[1:25:06] Voice 12: Just a tick in the box.

[1:25:08] Voice 12: Let's look very carefully at that before we offer

[1:25:11] Voice 12: high-density zoning in that area.

[1:25:13] Voice 12: particularly if it's an increase.

[1:25:16] Voice 12: And these are sort of basics.

[1:25:20] Voice 12: I did, in fact, in a draft trust policy statement,

[1:25:25] Voice 12: submitted it to trust counsel

[1:25:27] Voice 12: and had the rules, the guidelines checked

[1:25:33] Voice 12: by Don Harrison, a local hydrogeologist.

[1:25:37] Voice 12: And his comment was, yes, these are sound.

[1:25:40] Voice 12: It's a sensible means of checking for potential for saltwater intruders.

[1:25:48] Voice 12: Put a perimeter around each island, and this is how to guide the edge of that, but it will be political hell.

[1:25:56] Voice 12: And we're caught between the political hell that faces you people, the endless phone calls and my property rights,

[1:26:06] Voice 12: and section four of the islands trust act and that needs addressing that needs careful thinking about

[1:26:13] Voice 12: thank you thank you so

[1:26:16] Trustee Morrison (probable): as we think about density and this is why i actually really wanted to make

[1:26:22] Trustee Morrison (probable): sure that we have forestry water and housing kind of conversation together so as we start to move

[1:26:27] Trustee Morrison (probable): into housing um the question of density always comes up and i've heard a lot about carrying

[1:26:33] Trustee Morrison (probable): capacity and, you know, how we think about that and how we understand that. We need to understand

[1:26:39] Trustee Morrison (probable): that I can increase carrying capacity in an area immensely if I say that you have, you cannot draw

[1:26:46] Trustee Morrison (probable): groundwater, you can only do like atmospheric collection of water and storage. You can

[1:26:52] Trustee Morrison (probable): actually, from a water sustainability perspective, you could increase density substantially in these

[1:26:59] Trustee Morrison (probable): of that does not address issues of forestry and biodiversity right so like we have to be really

[1:27:08] Trustee Morrison (probable): careful about how we talk about density here because when we say we can't increase density

[1:27:14] Trustee Morrison (probable): because of groundwater well i can give you a whole bunch of scientific technical solutions that you

[1:27:18] Trustee Morrison (probable): can increase density like without and not touch groundwater okay so we have to be a little bit

[1:27:23] Trustee Morrison (probable): careful about what it is we want and what our official community plan is saying about our

[1:27:27] Trustee Morrison (probable): landscape and the density currently across the landscape because there's lots

[1:27:30] Trustee Morrison (probable): of people that

[1:27:31] Trustee Morrison (probable): will be able to counter argue so we have to hold these collection of values which are you know

[1:27:39] Trustee Morrison (probable): biodiverse rich in landscape of forests water sustainability independence quality water

[1:27:48] Trustee Morrison (probable): housing you know the ability to live here and work here and have you know a diverse socioeconomic

[1:27:53] Trustee Morrison (probable): economic population on these islands um and so like we're trying to balance all of those things

[1:27:59] Trustee Morrison (probable): inside the mandate of preserve and protect these islands okay so um just to be a little bit careful

[1:28:06] Trustee Morrison (probable): as we talk about density because i worry that people who are really like and i think generally

[1:28:11] Trustee Morrison (probable): as a community we're inherently love this place so we are generally on the value that we value

[1:28:17] Trustee Morrison (probable): this place okay but when we start making arguments that could potentially just get us into like oh

[1:28:24] Trustee Morrison (probable): but it's you say this but i believe that it's because we're talking about um water in a way

[1:28:30] Trustee Morrison (probable): that's only about groundwater not about

[1:28:32] Trustee Morrison (probable): atmospheric water sure sir pardon you can just call it fresh

[1:28:36] Trustee Morrison (probable): water yes so that's that's right and that's one of the reasons that i think it's going to be

[1:28:41] Trustee Morrison (probable): wording yeah that's one of the reasons that it's going to be helpful the groundwater study was

[1:28:45] Trustee Morrison (probable): was intentionally done as a groundwater study for a reason we wanted to understand what the

[1:28:50] Trustee Morrison (probable): sort of capacity of different areas of the island potentially are it's not uh like 100 we can field

[1:28:56] Trustee Morrison (probable): check it in different ways and like you know check it with our own community knowledge but

[1:29:00] Trustee Morrison (probable): it's a starting point to have an actual set of database that we can like add um it was never

[1:29:06] Trustee Morrison (probable): meant to be everything and all about water fresh water on the island so um just to be a little bit

[1:29:11] Trustee Morrison (probable): careful as we're talking yeah

[1:29:14] Trustee Maude: i think you had your hand up and over to marybeth

[1:29:20] Trustee Maude: um

[1:29:20] Voice 9: just in the lead-in to our discussion on housing on the issue of forestry management

[1:29:25] Voice 9: i like to talk about forest management not trees um i need to understand in it so i'm asking you

[1:29:33] Voice 9: to direct me to a resource do not educate me today on how i understand how i learn um

[1:29:41] Voice 9: who owns Pender and what tracts of land are secure from human ownership that could lead to development that some of us may

[1:29:53] Voice 9: or may not support.

[1:29:55] Voice 9: I did really like to understand what the exposure is to.

[1:30:00] Voice 9: development side of the issues for forest management and you know i know that there's

[1:30:05] Voice 9: been very strong feelings on both sides about cutting down trees but that that's one thing

[1:30:10] Voice 9: that would help me understand what what is the risk that we can work on to abate so that

[1:30:17] Voice 9: that goes away because then you can always put rules in and whether they're dpas or some other

[1:30:23] Voice 9: their tool if we know that for example there are x number of lots that could be sold that are

[1:30:32] Voice 9: undeveloped and we talk about this when we're

[1:30:35] Voice 9: dealing with the bylaw of religions then we we

[1:30:38] Voice 9: can contain okay when we're talking about this much land and in these areas because overall when

[1:30:44] Voice 9: i looked at maps of pender whether i'm in the sky or on the water or biking down the road you know

[1:30:50] Voice 9: know there there's a lot of forest there's a lot of forest that is not development but i don't have

[1:30:55] Voice 9: a sense so as a penderate i would like to be directed to a resource that could tell me

[1:30:59] Voice 9: what is the the forest that we don't have to worry about in terms of humans doing stupid things

[1:31:06] Voice 9: or things that aren't consistent with water management and housing and all of the issues

[1:31:13] Voice 9: that we're talking about that will help me then inform my input on housing and where it should be

[1:31:20] Voice 9: and what kind of housing it should be that's

[1:31:22] Trustee Morrison (probable): a great idea

[1:31:23] Voice 3: i was curious about that this morning

[1:31:24] Voice 3: to see and also historically what because there was a big change when everything became national

[1:31:32] Voice 3: park right like that area all of a sudden becomes protected um and yeah knowing where are the pieces

[1:31:42] Voice 3: that potentially could still be negatively affected and where we know that we're good

[1:31:48] Voice 3: I'm not sure

[1:31:49] Trustee Maude: if Tyler Smith is new to the island, but I recall a year or so ago seeing that the Pender had quite a bit of build-up potential.

[1:32:01] Trustee Maude: I think there was more build-up potential on Pender than any other island.

[1:32:06] Trustee Maude: There was quite a bit of what you see as being trees that are actual residential lots capable of being developed.

[1:32:13] Trustee Maude: I see Director Brent has his hand up.

[1:32:15] Trustee Maude: So I know

[1:32:16] Voice 3: that the Islands Trust has produced statistics as to how much of each island is considered protected and what they deem as protected is not in the hands of private people.

[1:32:30] Voice 3: The first thing I find offensive is there's a lot of people on these islands who care deeply for these islands.

[1:32:37] Voice 3: But that's where you'll get this. The data is available with the Islands Trust.

[1:32:42] Voice 3: And so because they calculated what it is. I don't know if there's corresponding maps, but it wouldn't surprise me that there were.

[1:32:50] Voice 3: That's the only way you could you can do it. But it'd be parkland, covenanted land and the like.

[1:32:55] Voice 3: and it's probably not much

[1:32:57] Voice 9: well to your point uh brent about people who care deeply and one of them

[1:33:03] Voice 9: is then to start understanding what is left and what are large tracts of land that um are owned

[1:33:10] Voice 9: by people who demonstrated care and concern and often they're people who've given covenants on

[1:33:14] Voice 9: the land or maybe potential uh audiences for giving covenants on the land and so educating

[1:33:21] Voice 9: people about it that's that's what i'm interested that's my end result is to say well what is there

[1:33:26] Voice 9: if we know what's protected then what's not protected and what are the locks and how big

[1:33:30] Voice 9: are they and who currently owns them and have we talked to them like it's all about having

[1:33:35] Voice 9: discussions and collaboration and education and so kind of then starting to take more um

[1:33:41] Voice 9: not control but have a better appreciation of what we've got and what where should we

[1:33:48] Voice 9: show more concern and

[1:33:50] Trustee Morrison (probable): to your point karen i think lisa's your person you guys don't know each other

[1:33:53] Trustee Morrison (probable): already but in terms of like the covenant move of like trying to identify people that are doing

[1:34:00] Trustee Morrison (probable): really great work already and then

[1:34:02] Trustee Morrison (probable): have preservation of their land but what happens when those properties

[1:34:05] Trustee Morrison (probable): turn over so like having covenant supply to them before they turn over but the problem with that

[1:34:10] Trustee Morrison (probable): and and i think it's a problem we can solve actually as a community is like that can be a

[1:34:16] Trustee Morrison (probable): very costly process so how do we help people through that process if that's a community desire

[1:34:20] Trustee Morrison (probable): to have those things more protected um i have had a look at those maps really extensively and we can

[1:34:26] Trustee Morrison (probable): have a chat about that on the side but given our current bylaws the the zoning related to dpas which

[1:34:32] Trustee Morrison (probable): we can argue like if we're actually affected or not as protection and then um the the existing

[1:34:40] Trustee Morrison (probable): landscape of what's forested or not um i'm concerned i'm concerned about it because there

[1:34:45] Trustee Morrison (probable): is actually what i consider a risk profile of forestry and it's not necessarily i agree with

[1:34:50] Trustee Morrison (probable): paul there's a lot of people who are protecting their properties really well

[1:34:53] Voice 4: it's

[1:34:54] Trustee Morrison (probable): not about them

[1:34:54] Trustee Morrison (probable): it's about the longer term landscape and what happens when those properties shift value which

[1:35:00] Trustee Morrison (probable): is what we've had happen in a number of cases but

[1:35:02] Voice 9: knowing what we've got to deal with the potential

[1:35:04] Voice 9: is i think then we can start focusing on what tools policies for sure attitudes whatever thank

[1:35:11] Voice 9: Thank you.

[1:35:12] Voice 9: So you had...

[1:35:15] Voice 2: So a common retort when tree cutting is mentioned is they'll grow back

[1:35:22] Voice 2: or vegetation is removed, it'll grow back.

[1:35:26] Voice 2: That's fine.

[1:35:27] Voice 2: Eventually, it probably will grow back if there's not a house blocking it,

[1:35:32] Voice 2: a pavement.

[1:35:34] Voice 2: I would like you to record that erosion happens when the canopy is removed.

[1:35:40] Voice 2: And nobody will ever reverse the erosion. If you walk along Schooner Way, particularly downstream of where the recent timber cutting happened, and look at any place where the stream widens and there's a constriction in the flow, at that point the water slows down.

[1:36:02] Voice 2: And when the water slows down, the sediment will precipitate.

[1:36:06] Voice 2: So in other words, if you just walk along there and look at the entrances to culverts,

[1:36:12] Voice 2: for example, you'll see grass growing and in many places you'll see the sediment has

[1:36:18] Voice 2: precipitated around the grass.

[1:36:20] Voice 2: So you know, okay, likely that's recent sedimentation rather than something that happened a thousand

[1:36:31] Voice 2: years ago so my concern is we cut away canopy um the people who are naive say oh no problem it'll

[1:36:42] Voice 2: grow back meanwhile erosion happens some of the topsoil is gone more cedar trees die eventually

[1:36:50] Voice 2: it's dry enough that fir trees are dying i don't i don't need to convince people that cedars are

[1:36:55] Voice 2: grind because you can see it. They die from the top down. The firs, eventually they'll die.

[1:37:02] Voice 2: When we lose enough topsoil, all we'll have left is low-growing shrubbery on certain areas where

[1:37:10] Voice 2: there's a little bit of topsoil. And Pender Island will become like Alcatraz. If you want to see it,

[1:37:21] Voice 2: Look in Wikipedia, there are pictures.

[1:37:24] Voice 8: I

[1:37:24] Voice 2: mean, it belongs to the National Park Service now.

[1:37:27] Voice 2: You can go and visit it.

[1:37:32] Voice 2: I guess, as Deb says, this is all a community decision.

[1:37:38] Voice 2: We have to think about what we really want.

[1:37:40] Voice 2: Well, I would rather keep the vegetation than almost sparing the rock.

[1:37:47] Voice 7: That's enough.

[1:37:53] Voice 7: Okay.

[1:37:54] Voice 7: Opposite to that.

[1:37:56] Voice 5: You know, I've been listening to the stories, you know, since I came to the island eight years ago, and I, like many, I was afraid every time I heard the chainsaw go and any tree that came down, because apparently the forest was at risk, and the forest was dying around us.

[1:38:18] Voice 5: and then i've been on a steep learning curve uh working with uh you know david dunnison and

[1:38:24] Voice 5: others on trust level issues and specifically the coastal douglas fir and that narrative is

[1:38:31] Voice 5: not correct as it turns out so there there's so much good information on this island

[1:38:37] Voice 5: about the state of our forest we have the cabin consulting um uh study uh we have

[1:38:47] Voice 5: 71% contiguous forest cover. That is solid forest. That doesn't include magic lake. It's

[1:38:54] Voice 5: none of that kind of stuff. This is solid forest, 70%. That is much more than it was 30 years ago.

[1:39:02] Voice 5: Maine's got it. Could we look at some of this data and can we make our own facts and narrative?

[1:39:11] Voice 5: instead that narrative about all the forest dying that's actually comes from a Vancouver Island

[1:39:20] Voice 5: organization and it is because of urbanization in southern Vancouver Island that's where that

[1:39:25] Voice 5: narrative comes from it does not apply to tender island how

[1:39:29] Voice 2: do you explain the cedar trees that is

[1:39:32] Voice 5: climate change things are dry longer drier summers and the cedars are are moving to wetter areas

[1:39:38] Voice 5: what's david dunninson's qualifications he graduated in forestry and he

[1:39:44] Voice 5: is correct

[1:39:46] Voice 5: but what does that doesn't say anything biology okay

[1:39:52] Voice 4: so

[1:39:53] Voice 5: could we and i think everyone will agree that with fire risk forestry management

[1:40:00] Voice 5: is part of that you know what is it about our force that we could be doing better to

[1:40:04] Voice 5: to make them healthy.

[1:40:05] Voice 5: We have a lot of forests on the island.

[1:40:08] Voice 5: Thank you.

[1:40:09] Voice 10: Just a

[1:40:09] Trustee Maude: question you had.

[1:40:11] Voice 10: Nope, I didn't want to make sure we're all

[1:40:12] Voice 10: respecting people of our conversation.

[1:40:14] Trustee Maude: So basically the conversations come this way,

[1:40:16] Trustee Maude: not that way.

[1:40:17] Trustee Maude: Yeah.

[1:40:18] Voice 14: Yeah, just, I'm sure you've heard of the name

[1:40:22] Voice 14: Klein's book, This Changes Everything.

[1:40:25] Voice 14: Once you have a climate crisis, just we have now,

[1:40:29] Voice 14: what has happened in the past, in the very past,

[1:40:31] Voice 14: that is no forecast for the future we don't know exactly what tipping is we're going to reach

[1:40:41] Voice 14: yeah so again

[1:40:42] Trustee Maude: conversation to us

[1:40:44] Voice 14: but what long-term effects will be uh we don't know cumulative effects uh i was saying with with

[1:40:54] Voice 14: With clear-cutting, we get runoff, it heats up, we lose topsoil, we get streams.

[1:41:02] Voice 14: Some things cannot be fixed.

[1:41:05] Voice 14: And this could get worse as time goes on, as the climate warms, as the ocean warms.

[1:41:11] Voice 14: So looking and saying, this is what we've got now, doesn't say anything about what we're going to be facing in the future.

[1:41:19] Voice 14: and

[1:41:20] Trustee Morrison (probable): i think one of the things i want to caution us all about is science and scientific sort of

[1:41:27] Trustee Morrison (probable): understanding of our islands is never going to be on a single person okay any way you slice it

[1:41:34] Trustee Morrison (probable): okay any study so science is a collective effort involving many different people who like weigh

[1:41:41] Trustee Morrison (probable): into it so if you're going to like pull scientific information as the singular sort of like argument

[1:41:46] Trustee Morrison (probable): government be everyone be cautious about doing that as a collective and one of the things I think

[1:41:52] Trustee Morrison (probable): we badly need here which is frankly somewhat outside the current trust mandate is we need the

[1:41:59] Trustee Morrison (probable): ministry of forest to come and actually like work with us collaboratively around that part inside

[1:42:05] Trustee Morrison (probable): the mandate but like how do we do that and I think that is a bit of a question Paul like

[1:42:11] Trustee Morrison (probable): Like, what is the move that we could do with the CRD in these southern islands collectively?

[1:42:16] Trustee Morrison (probable): Because it's not an island-by-island problem, particularly with Saturna, Maine, the two

[1:42:21] Trustee Morrison (probable): penders, because we are drying faster than the other islands in the bottom part of Galliano.

[1:42:26] Trustee Morrison (probable): And, like, is there something that we can instigate, like, on a multi-island level that

[1:42:32] Trustee Morrison (probable): is with the province and the CRD to actually understand our forests and forest health more

[1:42:38] Trustee Morrison (probable): more holistically because we keep into these like one lot at a time challenges and that's

[1:42:45] Trustee Morrison (probable): not the solution and it's it's really wound up in fire management issue too

[1:42:50] Trustee Morrison (probable): i

[1:42:51] Voice 3: think it's going to be a lot more powerful if the trust and the crd ask forests forest

[1:42:57] Voice 3: natural resources um together for an assessment of our our forest health yeah we've got a fine

[1:43:06] Voice 3: spot to assess the impacts of clear cutting and climate change.

[1:43:11] Voice 3: We have over a hundred acres of clear cut on Saturna, which nobody really talks about.

[1:43:16] Voice 3: But it was

[1:43:17] Voice 3: clear cut in 2015. It has not been rehabilitated.

[1:43:21] Voice 3: It's not growing back particularly quickly, but there is some growth.

[1:43:24] Voice 3: It hasn't even been cleaned or burned.

[1:43:30] Voice 3: That's one area we can look at. It's 30 or 40 times the size of any

[1:43:36] Voice 3: recent clear cut on Pender Island.

[1:43:38] Voice 3: I've worked there before and I think we're

[1:43:40] Voice 3: now about 50% far.

[1:43:42] Voice 8: We've

[1:43:43] Voice 3: added another 250 acres

[1:43:44] Voice 3: of park in the last

[1:43:46] Voice 3: two years and we're

[1:43:48] Voice 3: set to add maybe anywhere from

[1:43:50] Voice 3: another 35 to 100

[1:43:52] Voice 3: in the next 18 months.

[1:43:54] Trustee Morrison (probable): What would we need to do to

[1:43:56] Trustee Morrison (probable): instigate something like that? Is that just a

[1:43:58] Trustee Morrison (probable): motion from us as an LTC to say

[1:44:00] Trustee Morrison (probable): hey other LTCs, can we get together with

[1:44:02] Trustee Morrison (probable): the CRD?

[1:44:03] Voice 3: I think it would be

[1:44:04] Voice 3: yeah a motion or just just a conversation right amongst for starters the southern gulf islands

[1:44:11] Voice 3: and i think there'd be uh interest certainly amongst gary hallman and myself to see if we can

[1:44:20] Voice 3: get um glenn rowe to come in and and uh do an assessment of the force or provide us with their

[1:44:26] Voice 3: assessment so would that be a topic for the southern gulf islands group with animals yeah

[1:44:32] Voice 3: yeah would

[1:44:33] Trustee Maude: that be the doesn't need

[1:44:34] Voice 3: to be formal we just need to get together

[1:44:37] Voice 3: send out some emails that we've done in the past right yeah see how do people feel about this and

[1:44:42] Voice 3: then if

[1:44:42] Voice 3: necessary i'll make a motion at electoral areas committee and it's going to be to make a

[1:44:48] Voice 3: motion at trust council nobody's going to trust too much overness no

[1:44:53] Trustee Maude: just one one thing just

[1:44:55] Trustee Maude: as a casual reminder is we'd like to conclude at four o'clock um and we're approaching three

[1:45:01] Trustee Maude: o'clock we do another talk on the agenda so i think we should try and wrap up this part maybe

[1:45:09] Trustee Morrison (probable): if there's anybody we have not heard from on forestry that would be one way to do it it's like

[1:45:14] Trustee Morrison (probable): is there anybody we've yet to hear from who wants to say something about forestry maybe take like

[1:45:21] Trustee Morrison (probable): five ten more minutes so

[1:45:22] Trustee Maude: three so we'll go to like three o'clock on this topic and then we'll

[1:45:26] Trustee Maude: roll over to the house okay um Ms. Cronk I

[1:45:30] Voice 5: want to apologize for any of that I didn't mean to

[1:45:32] Voice 5: fight them so hard I just have the ravens and eagles in my my heart I think that it's lovely

[1:45:42] Voice 5: to do land management but um I think it's very unfair that if I live in somewhere like Seasalt

[1:45:51] Voice 5: or my understanding is Santa area that you know if I own a well and my neighbor starts to cut down

[1:45:58] Voice 5: trees that there's there's ramifications for that it's it's not the same here so you know

[1:46:04] Voice 5: it's wonderful that these areas are wanting to be protected but if you don't live near one of those

[1:46:08] Voice 5: areas then your um well is compromised when lots of trees start to be down so i just feel like as

[1:46:17] Voice 5: a pender right person or a person who lives on southern gulf islands it's just not fair that

[1:46:22] Voice 5: person who lives in a municipality has these protections but we don't it's so unequal really

[1:46:31] Voice 5: that if the tree is i don't know how large in these areas it just can't be cut down because

[1:46:38] Voice 5: it's too important for all that we're trying to protect and climate change and all that

[1:46:45] Voice 5: thank

[1:46:45] Voice 12: you mr sketch uh michael sketch norris pender uh regarding the trust council request

[1:46:52] Voice 12: for the province regarding powers to regulate tree cutting what what the island stuff's asked

[1:47:01] Voice 12: for as i understand it is the same power as given a municipality to address tree cutting

[1:47:08] Voice 12: and my own opinion different perhaps from one of the trustees uh is that that it wasn't going

[1:47:14] Voice 12: to happen being a rural area um and it doesn't really address the particular problem which you

[1:47:21] Voice 12: yourself uh mentioned what we're worried about is large-scale clearing and the trust council request

[1:47:29] Voice 12: of the province could be with some clever uh writing be recrafted to to target large scale

[1:47:37] Voice 12: Now, given 25% lot coverage for a house, then you've got to be quite careful about on a lot, the percentage of the lot that could be cleared in one go.

[1:47:46] Voice 12: It requires some very careful thinking, but on Trust Council, you've got some very clever people.

[1:47:52] Voice 12: And if that was recrafted, I think the province would buy it, but not asking for, in effect, a duplicate of municipal power in a rural area.

[1:48:03] Voice 12: uh i i that that is a a way of moving forward and it should be at the down at the trust area level

[1:48:12] Voice 12: not necessarily not just the global level thank you thank you anybody else

[1:48:18] Voice 3: so

[1:48:21] Trustee Maude: i think we'll draw

[1:48:22] Trustee Maude: conclusions of this party discussion i really appreciate this valuable input now um planet

[1:48:30] benefits put forward a motion um to sort of explore the concept of putting together

[1:48:37] a water advisory commission

[1:48:39] Trustee Maude: if somebody wants to read

[1:48:41] Voice 3: that out we called a committee

[1:48:44] Voice 3: that the north

[1:48:47] Trustee Morrison (probable): pender island sorry north pender island yeah so

[1:48:51] Voice 10: that the north pender island

[1:48:52] Trustee Morrison (probable): ltc requests that staff provide a staff memo on the july 28 2023 ltc meeting agenda

[1:49:00] Trustee Morrison (probable): with information regarding the establishment of a north and around the water advisory committee

[1:49:04] Trustee Morrison (probable): i just

[1:49:06] Voice 10: wanted to ensure that catherine you did receive

[1:49:08] Trustee Maude: that was

[1:49:09] Voice 10: there an amended one yeah

[1:49:10] Trustee Maude: yes

[1:49:13] Voice 1: i have that um in the original motion that was written down i have um with options regarding

[1:49:20] Voice 1: establishment yes thank

[1:49:22] Voice 10: you okay

[1:49:23] Trustee Maude: okay

[1:49:24] Voice 1: okay

[1:49:25] Trustee Maude: so that that is the version that we're going

[1:49:27] Trustee Maude: Yes,

[1:49:27] Trustee Morrison (probable): with the options. Thank you.

[1:49:29] Trustee Maude: Okay, thank you very much.

[1:49:31] Trustee Maude: Seconder, Jessica, for the discussion.

[1:49:35] Trustee Morrison (probable): So just the conversation that we had during the break,

[1:49:38] Trustee Morrison (probable): or that I had with Brad.

[1:49:42] Trustee Morrison (probable): Brad, thank you.

[1:49:43] Trustee Morrison (probable): That guy.

[1:49:44] Voice 4: That guy.

[1:49:47] Trustee Morrison (probable): Anyway, was that we should include both of the sort of general questions

[1:49:51] Trustee Morrison (probable): that we've heard here.

[1:49:52] Trustee Morrison (probable): One is around sort of water independence,

[1:49:55] Trustee Morrison (probable): and sustainability kind of related issues.

[1:49:56] Trustee Morrison (probable): and the others around water quality issues.

[1:49:59] Trustee Morrison (probable): So that there's two types of questions

[1:50:01] Trustee Morrison (probable): that we should potentially put to that.

[1:50:03] Trustee Maude: Excellent, thank you.

[1:50:05] Trustee Maude: All the questions, David, that carries, thank you.

[1:50:09] Trustee Maude: All right, so our next point of discussion is how

[1:50:12] Trustee Morrison (probable): do we pass-

[1:50:13] Trustee Morrison (probable): Can I also just say that if we can just record

[1:50:15] Trustee Morrison (probable): in the minutes that I'll send a note around to Paul

[1:50:19] Trustee Morrison (probable): and the other trustees in the Southern Gulf Islands

[1:50:21] Trustee Morrison (probable): related to some kind of forestry review and conversation.

[1:50:27] Trustee Morrison (probable): off on that thank

[1:50:28] Trustee Maude: you okay so our next topic is housing access and affordability so trustees

[1:50:35] Trustee Maude: sort of launch it off or anything

[1:50:37] Voice 3: yeah i think it's a big big topic for for our island and

[1:50:42] Voice 3: considering what we've just been talking about about forestry and water water sustainability

[1:50:49] Voice 3: ability um to find out from people in the community what folks think about about build out

[1:50:58] Voice 3: about where we can put housing what kind of housing they'd like to see what is reasonable

[1:51:05] Voice 3: for pender island 15 story 200 unit you know apartment building that has a minimal

[1:51:12] Voice 3: actual footprint to it for what it provides or tiny houses you know there's there's so much

[1:51:23] Voice 3: available and I think that there's so much that people don't want to see on Pender but if we could

[1:51:31] Voice 3: start to come up with solutions for what we would like to see in our community and how we provide

[1:51:36] Voice 3: uh affordable housing solutions for people to you know keep the infrastructure around staff

[1:51:45] Voice 3: um and do it in a reasonable responsible way so that's what we would very much like to hear

[1:51:58] Voice 7: just more something to add to that all right so

[1:52:01] Trustee Maude: open up the floor anybody sir in the back

[1:52:05] Voice 15: yeah hi it's rob fenton i'm paul's alternate and uh so i've been doing a fair bit of work

[1:52:13] Voice 15: on housing because my own personal professional background and so i'd like to make i've handed

[1:52:19] Voice 15: my comments out for you but i'd like to uh let yourselves and uh know a few things the um

[1:52:28] Voice 15: The Southern Gulf Islands Community Economic Sustainability Commission,

[1:52:34] Voice 15: there are multiple, but anyway, follow the CESC.

[1:52:39] Voice 15: Over the last few years has done a number of studies in regard to housing.

[1:52:44] Voice 15: They've done a needs assessment.

[1:52:47] Voice 15: They've done a market analysis.

[1:52:50] Voice 15: They've done a feasibility analysis with pro formas to figure out what's the cost to build things.

[1:52:58] Voice 15: compared to target ranks.

[1:53:01] Voice 15: So there's a bunch of that kind of work has been done.

[1:53:07] Voice 15: Paul's lucky there's very good staff with the CRD,

[1:53:12] Voice 15: who's Justine Stark is doing a lot of this.

[1:53:17] Voice 15: She worked previously with the trust.

[1:53:19] Voice 15: So there's that overlap.

[1:53:21] Voice 15: And she's also working with the trustee at Maine,

[1:53:26] Voice 15: who's developing a lot more programs and stuff further than Vendor.

[1:53:35] Voice 15: Also what's happened is there's been a Southern Gulf Islands housing strategy that was approved

[1:53:46] Voice 15: last May by the CRD board.

[1:53:48] Voice 15: So there's that sort of background push from the CRD that a lot of that, shall we say, bureaucratic work is in place.

[1:53:59] Voice 15: Some of it just helps to figure things out.

[1:54:03] Voice 15: I think probably, as you know, Paul has made it a priority to deal with housing.

[1:54:10] Voice 15: housing we were he and i were both at the right conference about a month ago which the rural

[1:54:18] Voice 15: islands uh i never remember economic

[1:54:21] Voice 5: partnership

[1:54:22] Voice 15: economic partnership yeah anyway and so it had a

[1:54:26] Voice 15: whole variety of issues but it all came down to housing you know if you're trying to get more

[1:54:32] Voice 15: health care uh you gotta house them if you're trying to do arts and culture you need new people

[1:54:38] Voice 15: you got to house them. It all came down to housing with just all aspects and then just

[1:54:43] Voice 15: housing generally. It really is bubbled up to the top. So in the Southern Gulf Islands and

[1:54:53] Voice 15: North Pender particularly, there's particular housing needs, just each island's a little bit

[1:54:59] Voice 15: different. And so Paul has realized from his long trust background you have to work with the truck.

[1:55:07] Voice 15: you know zoning is looked after it's it's a no-brainer that way um part of the problem is

[1:55:15] Voice 15: funding um in order to do lower market funding or development you need government subsidies the

[1:55:24] Voice 15: numbers just don't work and on pender lately because of construction costs they've really

[1:55:31] Voice 15: gone wonky um but government funding for housing we've had plum tree about 20 years ago 25 years

[1:55:42] Voice 15: there's been virtually nothing else and um paul and i have this discussion of whether any more

[1:55:49] Voice 15: funding is going to come and he's hopeful and i think it's it's it's rather uncertain but i'm

[1:55:56] Voice 15: I'm hoping that he's right and there will be some funding.

[1:56:01] Voice 15: But if you accept that's the reality, in order to come up with some solutions,

[1:56:11] Voice 15: the zoning and the financing are going to have to be creative.

[1:56:16] Voice 15: The numbers otherwise just don't work.

[1:56:19] Voice 15: So if you're going to have workforce housing,

[1:56:23] Voice 15: housing, you've got to look at things totally differently, because where's the money? The

[1:56:30] Voice 15: numbers are just too far apart. So I'll throw out, and these are more my suggestions that

[1:56:40] Voice 15: I'm throwing out to Paul and hopefully to others, what possibly can be done. Now, I was going to

[1:56:47] Voice 15: mention this earlier, but I'm a member of the Conservancy and was on the board

[1:56:52] Voice 15: uh previously and was involved in the latest purchase which was 45 acres and at the board

[1:57:02] Voice 15: meeting when we were uncertain how things were going because we had to raise two million dollars

[1:57:07] Voice 15: i was asked what's plan b and off the top of my head i said well the only thing i can think of

[1:57:15] Voice 15: you know because i have a bit of development background in profit and non-profit

[1:57:19] Voice 15: it is with that property there was already three or four number lots with wells i said you could

[1:57:28] Voice 15: hive off uh some lots um and sell them to make the shortfall difference so you know it was two

[1:57:37] Voice 15: million bucks if you raise a million you could probably do three lots at about an acre each

[1:57:45] Voice 15: so you lose three but you get 42 right so from my practical point of view that's that's a way

[1:57:54] Voice 15: to look at this and a couple of other pieces of property that i've discussed with paul and i'm

[1:58:00] Voice 15: hopeful we can shortly um go ahead and see if an offer can be put and um it also would be using that

[1:58:12] Voice 15: plus um hiving on through many property for affordable housing so there's a couple of odds

[1:58:21] Voice 15: that i've looked at and i've talked to aaron and the chair of the conservancy what about the idea

[1:58:30] Voice 15: that this big piece of property a third perhaps is ecologically very sensitive why don't you guys

[1:58:41] Voice 15: raise the money for that say a half um and there's some lots there where they can be subdivided you

[1:58:51] Voice 15: know subject to all the trust approval to make up the difference so you would again have three or

[1:58:58] Voice 15: four acres used for this private housing the rest there would be round numbers third available for

[1:59:07] Voice 15: or the preserved ecological part,

[1:59:10] Voice 15: which would be subdivided.

[1:59:12] Voice 15: And the balance piece of property could be 20, 30 acres,

[1:59:16] Voice 15: depending on how things work for affordable housing.

[1:59:21] Voice 15: So then you're starting off with in effect the land free.

[1:59:26] Voice 15: Okay.

[1:59:27] Voice 15: Now you have to get the trust to agree in advance

[1:59:31] Voice 15: to do that kind of thing.

[1:59:33] Voice 15: The Conservancy would have to agree,

[1:59:36] Voice 15: yes, this is worthwhile.

[1:59:37] Voice 15: while yes we are willing to fundraise yes we think we can so it's like everything else it's not

[1:59:45] Voice 15: guaranteed but anyway there's there's a proposal to try and get at least the land free so then

[1:59:53] Voice 15: So then you've got to look at what kind of housing you're going to put on it.

[2:00:00] Voice 15: much. So you get into the whole area of how much water is there, right? You would only look at the

[2:00:06] Voice 15: property at a conference in Salt Spring by a guy called Baird, who's a water expert. He's the type

[2:00:15] Voice 15: of person to come in, look at the well sites around, what kind of flow rate, you know, the

[2:00:22] Voice 15: soil stuff and he could probably give you fairly good idea of what the likely water would be and

[2:00:31] Voice 15: then and then you know you'd still have to do testing but you would look at a piece that okay

[2:00:37] Voice 15: it has the water then you have to look at the trust but obviously you have to look at it say

[2:00:42] Voice 15: okay how do we feel about this does it fit into your other mandates but if if that's the case

[2:00:48] Voice 15: then you you'd have water you also need the dirt for your septic because you you don't if it's all

[2:00:56] Voice 15: rock i just had my lot and hooked up and it was all rock cost small fortune um so if it if it's

[2:01:07] Voice 15: like that then your ability to have much septic is down so there's all these natural limitations

[2:01:15] Voice 15: But, you know, I talked to a couple of local trades guys who know things, and a couple

[2:01:21] Voice 15: of lots, they said, as far as they're concerned, there's water and there's not dirt.

[2:01:25] Voice 15: So those things, you know, have to be tested, but you could at least go forward with them.

[2:01:32] Voice 15: So the idea is then sit down with the Conservancy, you know, you'd want to sit down probably

[2:01:40] Voice 15: probably was plumtree because you want a non-profit society to own the land because my view is the only

[2:01:46] Voice 15: way you're going to have affordable housing long term is have it owned by a non-profit society

[2:01:53] Voice 15: their mandate is keep costs down all these other programs we talk about what's going to be for 5

[2:02:00] Voice 15: or 10 or 15 years and there'll be some kind of reduction it's better than nothing but let's not

[2:02:07] Voice 15: confuse long term the only way to get affordable working people's housing down is to have a

[2:02:14] Voice 15: substantial amount um that's owned by non-profit organizations you know the lower mainland and

[2:02:23] Voice 15: the rest of the province they're all over the place and so there's lots of knowledge and skill

[2:02:28] Voice 15: old way to do that um but they're also uh we're using the phrase modular housing which is more

[2:02:39] Voice 15: available housing has to be the actual one you've got the property you don't even put the services

[2:02:45] Voice 15: in got to build something so it has to be affordable it has to be available has to be

[2:02:53] Voice 15: acceptable and it all likely that it's going to have to be alternate okay so if you're going to

[2:02:59] Voice 15: do this that's my whole approach to you let's throw the normal things out because nothing's

[2:03:09] Voice 15: happened there's a couple of groups in some of the other islands that are working really hard

[2:03:13] Voice 15: 10 20 years i mean it's it's so difficult and so what i'm saying is let's work together let's find

[2:03:22] Voice 15: some alternate solutions um let's use like you know conservancy here aaron's left absolutely

[2:03:31] Voice 15: brilliant and amazing what they pulled off now whether they can do it again fairly soon or not

[2:03:37] Voice 15: i don't know but it's you know to answer your question about forestry that's a way to do it

[2:03:44] Voice 15: right you identify uh areas that you would like to say there's you know there's some large parcels

[2:03:52] Voice 15: and the trust then have to say okay conservancy says yeah let's get this one it's number not

[2:04:00] Voice 15: number one priority the number one available priority let's try and raise the money to do it

[2:04:06] Voice 15: put some residential on the property that's a fallback position you know if it's x million

[2:04:12] Voice 15: dollars um you want to in advance have a fallback position that you can carve come out you also need

[2:04:21] Voice 15: The lawyer in me says, you go to the close, the trust will rezone after you got ownership.

[2:04:29] Voice 15: You haven't pre-sold those lots.

[2:04:33] Voice 15: So your problem is you may be short a million bucks on the close, the vendor, well they're

[2:04:40] Voice 15: normal vendors, they want to be paid.

[2:04:41] Voice 15: and so my suggestion is you use uh prhc principal rental housing corporation to come up with the

[2:04:52] Voice 15: shortfall money okay till there's close and then the lots are sold they're paid back with with

[2:04:59] Voice 15: interest they they do this kind of stuff you know in vancouver it's huge huge so it would be again

[2:05:07] Voice 15: Again, yourself, Paul, working with the province,

[2:05:11] Voice 15: say, look, we want to, you know, let us do this.

[2:05:15] Voice 15: Yes, you're taking a bit of risk on the close.

[2:05:18] Voice 15: The trust said it's going to rezone it.

[2:05:20] Voice 15: It's unlikely they're going to change their mind.

[2:05:24] Voice 15: And, you know, you can't sell them in this market.

[2:05:27] Voice 15: Well, yeah, it could happen, but not likely.

[2:05:31] Voice 15: So what I'm saying, there's a lot of solutions to these problems.

[2:05:35] Voice 15: there's um ability at the water conference we're at over in salt spring you know you can use some

[2:05:42] Voice 15: rainwater there's there's a whole bunch of different rules on it um it's difficult and

[2:05:49] Voice 15: complex but you need those provincial authorities to work with like the trust crd all working

[2:05:58] Voice 15: together we don't need oh we can't do this it's easy for people to come up and say no we can't do

[2:06:05] Voice 15: this right no turn it around how are we going to do this yes there's problems yes whoever it is

[2:06:14] Voice 15: whatever uh organization you're working with you know to deal with it i mean different things like

[2:06:21] Voice 15: the residential tenancy act which protects tenants which is great but when you go to deal with a bad

[2:06:28] Voice 15: at Apple, you know, they need to accept that and

[2:06:32] Voice 8: try and find,

[2:06:34] Voice 15: okay, sorry,

[2:06:40] Voice 15: throw all that out, hopefully get some feedback and other responses here.

[2:06:46] Voice 3: I'd like to give just a little bit of background, because I think Rob is passionate and for good

[2:06:51] Voice 3: reasons, so we do have a crisis on these islands in respect of a lack of housing. We're losing

[2:06:58] Voice 3: people on the lower quartile of the economy, we're losing a lot of young people, we're

[2:07:03] Voice 3: losing a lot of items. And we're creating a lot of stress, we're creating a lot of health

[2:07:10] Voice 3: problems, we're creating a lot of mental problems. There are costs to those, real big costs,

[2:07:16] Voice 3: super good costs to the individual, cost to our community, cost to everybody is tax. And

[2:07:22] Voice 3: And we're seeing suicides and bad stuff happen,

[2:07:26] Voice 3: and it's almost a direct result of being unhoused on our islands.

[2:07:31] Voice 3: So it's horrible.

[2:07:32] Voice 3: And so, yeah, everybody's scrambling around, doing stuff,

[2:07:35] Voice 3: and the province is throwing money like crazy,

[2:07:38] Voice 3: and we're not getting any on the islands.

[2:07:41] Voice 3: We don't hit the triggers.

[2:07:43] Voice 3: We're low density.

[2:07:44] Voice 3: We don't have 50-unit apartment buildings that have infrastructure like sewer

[2:07:49] Voice 3: and water transit and all the other things that tick boxes and also lower the cost of housing so

[2:07:58] Voice 3: we're if you excuse the expression screwed here

[2:08:01] Voice 4: and

[2:08:02] Voice 3: so we're moving towards rural programs

[2:08:05] Voice 3: but we're running out of time as far as i am concerned on these islands and i don't think

[2:08:12] Voice 3: all of us me included are totally connected to it because i think probably most of the people

[2:08:18] Voice 3: in this room own their own home and aren't suffering you know uniquely from this and but

[2:08:23] Voice 3: to be exposed to it constantly is important the quick back getting as bad as it's not saying

[2:08:33] Trustee Morrison (probable): province gives

[2:08:36] Voice 3: a billion dollars to advance affordable housing announced in february

[2:08:39] Voice 3: wow a billion dollars i'm going we're going to get some money in the southern gulf islands

[2:08:44] Voice 3: and so CRD gets 100 million. Holy shoot, we're definitely going to get some money.

[2:08:51] Voice 3: $88.5 million goes to the municipalities. $11.5 million goes to the region,

[2:09:00] Voice 3: and the province says not to be delivered to the electoral area using the formula that came

[2:09:07] Voice 3: up with 11.5 million. We're going, what the hell? It's to be used for regional priorities.

[2:09:14] Voice 3: this could be determined by the 24 directors on the board of which i want

[2:09:20] Voice 10: gary

[2:09:21] Voice 3: holman on salt

[2:09:22] Voice 3: spring is one and i'll wickham and wanda fuker with massive amount of land you know up to port

[2:09:28] Voice 3: renfrew is one and the rest are all santa with 110 000 people victoria with 95 000 people

[2:09:35] Voice 3: langford with 60 000 people they're all pretty you know compressed together and they all have

[2:09:42] Voice 3: those low unit costs they all have the infrastructure they all have the ability to zone

[2:09:46] Voice 3: high stuff but how much money do you think we're going to get pretty much not very much so i'm

[2:09:53] Voice 3: getting desperate because i care for these islands i care for the community i care for the forest i

[2:09:59] Voice 3: care for all of them right but we need to have where most of us are maybe not in our teens here

[2:10:06] Voice 3: um we have that we have a responsibility to to turn over these islands to a younger generation

[2:10:15] Voice 3: in in a good way and you know okay hence we're doing whatever we can do to think about how are

[2:10:23] Voice 3: we going to fix this how are we going to fix it quickly what can we do with tiny hall we are

[2:10:27] Voice 3: trying uh at the crd rob and i to get a temporary use permit for people to live in trailers after

[2:10:35] Voice 3: they've been assessed for electrical and plumbing right anything to allow people to stay on these

[2:10:42] Voice 3: islands until such time as senior government the feds and the province come and build a whole

[2:10:48] Voice 3: bunch of housing it's going to be 500 500 to 550 to 600 000 per unit for affordable housing on

[2:10:57] Voice 3: these islands right now if we ever get one built there's a 20 unit one that's ready to rock and

[2:11:03] Voice 3: roll over on galviano 10 units that needs a little bit more work on maine and six six or seven more

[2:11:11] Voice 3: units on pender that's

[2:11:13] Voice 4: nothing you

[2:11:15] Voice 3: know the demand is probably between the the islands probably

[2:11:19] Voice 3: around 200 realistically for accessible or affordable housing some of them and the ones

[2:11:25] Voice 3: for vendors don't really address any sort of workplace type housing so can I ask a couple

[2:11:36] Trustee Morrison (probable): questions because like

[2:11:37] Trustee Morrison (probable): having you here I think is there's a there's a few questions that I have

[2:11:40] Trustee Morrison (probable): because every time we have the housing conversation it's one of the big things I hear is built right

[2:11:47] Trustee Morrison (probable): like this exact conversation and it's helpful to understand and I am with you I was at the

[2:11:53] Trustee Morrison (probable): housing summit i went to the housing summit this spring for the province the conversation around

[2:11:58] Trustee Morrison (probable): rural housing was essentially non-existent and i put off into a side room and it was all about

[2:12:03] Trustee Morrison (probable): urban housing so it's been it was very frustrating about like how to understand what can be done and

[2:12:11] Trustee Morrison (probable): what all needs to be done in rural communities so i guess one of the questions that i have is

[2:12:18] Trustee Morrison (probable): and it's an honest question like is building the right move like is there a different thing that

[2:12:25] Trustee Morrison (probable): we could do community-wide and i don't know that it's specifically an island's trust issue it's

[2:12:30] Trustee Morrison (probable): maybe like a crd and province issue but like could we apply the empty house tax here could

[2:12:36] Trustee Morrison (probable): we apply the the those things to actually pull stock out in ways that are appropriate to the

[2:12:42] Trustee Morrison (probable): islands because i

[2:12:42] Trustee Morrison (probable): understand some of the pushback on that i'm not an idiot when it comes to the

[2:12:46] Trustee Morrison (probable): the empty house tax here and so but um like it would be really interesting to understand what

[2:12:53] Trustee Morrison (probable): our overall housing stock is now how much of it is occupied and how we help to understand

[2:13:00] Trustee Morrison (probable): what is the process to like maximize the occupation of our existing house stock

[2:13:06] Trustee Morrison (probable): given the challenges we face in building new housing stock i also would love to think more

[2:13:12] Trustee Morrison (probable): more deeply around the tiny house issue because that seems a really appropriate strategy in the

[2:13:18] Trustee Morrison (probable): islands in terms of like meeting the mandate

[2:13:22] Trustee Morrison (probable): of the trust of like light touch on the landscape

[2:13:24] Trustee Morrison (probable): and the like housing need in terms of cost efficiencies there's some it's

[2:13:30] Trustee Morrison (probable): not i'm not

[2:13:30] Trustee Morrison (probable): sure it's fully cost efficient but like there's some interesting things around that so i guess

[2:13:35] Trustee Morrison (probable): i would like to have that conversation too and not only the

[2:13:38] Trustee Morrison (probable): conversation about a don't get

[2:13:40] Voice 5: because i know it's not that

[2:13:42] Trustee Morrison (probable): it's not that i don't think that that's also an important

[2:13:44] Trustee Morrison (probable): conversation i just would like us to consider the entire situation instead of just one strategy

[2:13:50] Trustee Morrison (probable): anyway so other

[2:13:51] Voice 3: thoughts and we are okay so we're looking at you know how effective we'll be i don't

[2:13:56] Voice 3: know what province has got a secondary suite program they're going to fund up to forty thousand

[2:14:00] Voice 3: dollars for three thousand secondary suites across the province i don't think they'll see one

[2:14:04] Voice 3: because crd is looking at modeling the same thing so funding to to allow people to put in or help

[2:14:13] Voice 3: people put in secondary suites right again that's going to be dependent upon water and it's going to

[2:14:18] Voice 3: have the pain in the neck uh well zoning if it's there

[2:14:22] Voice 5: or not i know you've got it

[2:14:24] Voice 3: but then we've

[2:14:24] Voice 3: got you know the building code and all those things but it's one stream that we're doing

[2:14:30] Voice 3: Narissa Chadwick, one of the Honest Trust Planners, is working with Justine of the CRD

[2:14:38] Voice 3: over on Main Island on this flex housing thing.

[2:14:42] Voice 3: They're looking at putting in a joint submission for the CMHC Accelerator Fund because I don't

[2:14:49] Voice 3: think the Trust qualifies on its own.

[2:14:51] Voice 3: The CRD doesn't qualify on its own, but together they qualify.

[2:14:55] Voice 3: So there is stuff that is happening.

[2:14:57] Voice 3: i am going after uh provincial funding in whatever way i can and we'll see if i'm successful

[2:15:05] Voice 3: so like

[2:15:06] Trustee Morrison (probable): could we help with the building code problem like for instance i know the building

[2:15:09] Trustee Morrison (probable): code problem has been an issue related to tiny homes um and so like and i guess like so there's

[2:15:16] Trustee Morrison (probable): one question about like what is our full extensive housing problem and how does that fit with like

[2:15:23] Trustee Morrison (probable): we actually have to ask ourselves the question of like we can't endlessly build houses in the

[2:15:27] Trustee Morrison (probable): trust area that's not appropriate to mandate right so we can't do that we have to have some kind of

[2:15:33] Trustee Morrison (probable): cap on how much housing is here and what it looks like so it'd be nice to understand that as a

[2:15:38] Trustee Morrison (probable): community what is that right in our bill that's

[2:15:41] Voice 3: back to your build-up yeah i

[2:15:42] Voice 3: know what the

[2:15:43] Voice 3: build-out is on my island because we assessed it yeah i'm sure right maybe that's one of our

[2:15:48] Voice 3: a couple of days and the build out here is probably pretty significant but

[2:15:56] Voice 5: build out is

[2:15:57] Voice 5: one type of house it's not what we want yeah it has unrelated and and i think sorry jared that's

[2:16:03] Voice 5: okay um the meeting that you had with adam olson it was very clear in that meeting that people

[2:16:09] Voice 5: wanted to legalize or make use of secondary suites that are already there they all know about

[2:16:15] Voice 5: everybody on the island you know and this is another real grassroots thing i think people

[2:16:20] Voice 5: on the island can solve this problem for housing um they know who they are they know who's got the

[2:16:24] Voice 5: suites so legalize as much as possible um and and encourage a lot of people that already have houses

[2:16:32] Voice 5: to take part in the secondary suite program we're talking about the bottom i thought it was the

[2:16:37] Voice 5: bottom third missing middle anyway no it's not the missing middle bottom quartile okay it's it's the

[2:16:43] Voice 5: the most affordable housing we don't need any more single family houses we're covered with them so

[2:16:49] Voice 5: that's the most important first thing is is that of that type of housing not forgetting about the

[2:16:56] Voice 5: stuff that rob has talked about but we can the this southern gulf island strategy says 16 units

[2:17:03] Voice 5: per year for all the southern gulf islands we only have to deliver six of those units or eight

[2:17:09] Voice 5: dosing that's on fender north fender per year that's our target it's not that bad it's not

[2:17:15] Voice 5: impossible um so

[2:17:18] Trustee Morrison (probable): how like what does that look and maybe i'll just start i'm just like i would

[2:17:22] Trustee Morrison (probable): love to start like that is a low-hanging fruit issue and so like how do we actually get that

[2:17:26] Trustee Morrison (probable): in play with the cr because it's like the legalization of those suites is actually not

[2:17:30] Trustee Morrison (probable): something we can do like but how do we encourage like it's how can we support the crd and the

[2:17:35] Trustee Morrison (probable): promise to do that like that would be one of my questions sorry i know david i don't i just thought

[2:17:40] Voice 10: since the puncture has been mentioned just i'm a director of the function

[2:17:45] Voice 10: we have zoning for eight more units um and our operating agreement with dc housing

[2:17:56] Voice 10: expires in 2028 our existing units have to be with the contracts

[2:18:04] Voice 5: um

[2:18:05] Voice 10: but the eight minutes that we propose will not have anything to do with bc housing so we

[2:18:09] Voice 10: drop seniors from our name so we are trying to get funding for uh no aging stretching

[2:18:17] Voice 10: group so that's great and uh

[2:18:20] Voice 13: we do have the water it's uh we've done it we've we've done

[2:18:24] Voice 13: done professionally. And we

[2:18:28] Voice 10: took care of that. We are looking

[2:18:30] Voice 10: for the funding and the type of housing, whether it should be

[2:18:34] Voice 10: manufactured homes, not modular manufactured homes. We are

[2:18:45] Voice 10: fine. And it's been here since 1987.

[2:18:54] Voice 10: I've

[2:18:54] Voice 3: been led to believe, though, that when your contract ends in 2028, so is some of

[2:19:01] Voice 3: the financial support.

[2:19:02] Voice 10: All financial support.

[2:19:04] Voice 3: Right.

[2:19:04] Voice 3: So in order to survive, it

[2:19:06] Voice 10: would

[2:19:09] Voice 3: be almost market-based rent.

[2:19:11] Voice 10: It's market rent now.

[2:19:12] Voice 10: Any new J&C must be market rent.

[2:19:17] Voice 10: Affordable market rent.

[2:19:19] Voice 10: 20% under the actual

[2:19:22] Voice 13: mark of rent, but we are still a non-profit, so we have one suite currently

[2:19:29] Voice 13: that is

[2:19:30] Voice 10: about to be audited, and it has to be mark of rent, that is conditionally extended,

[2:19:35] Voice 10: that we see housing for the Sunday, because we actually expired in February of this year,

[2:19:41] Voice 10: so they gave us a five-year extension on those conditions, but I was talking about that,

[2:19:45] Voice 10: We still have some issues that we are hoping to find a way to find on

[2:19:53] Voice 3: the

[2:19:55] Voice 10: property that we have.

[2:19:56] Voice 3: And we're aware. I'm aware of that.

[2:19:59] Voice 3: Yeah. So but you think about it. Affordable housing. How many how much affordable housing does FEDRA have?

[2:20:06] Voice 10: We build out on 314.

[2:20:08] Voice 10: But

[2:20:09] Voice 3: right now it's six

[2:20:10] Voice 10: or

[2:20:12] Voice 3: close to it's probably 3000 people here.

[2:20:15] Trustee Morrison (probable): And then just to be clear, that's affordable housing as per like DC housing, affordable

[2:20:19] Trustee Morrison (probable): housing.

[2:20:20] Trustee Morrison (probable): That doesn't count the like umpteen bazillion people living in illegal housing that are

[2:20:26] Trustee Morrison (probable): actually affordable because they're in like, I have one and I will like, you know, it's

[2:20:31] Trustee Morrison (probable): one of those things that's just, I'm like, I am not seeing this, but like a really great

[2:20:37] Trustee Morrison (probable): intergenerational living situation where somebody had converted a garage, somebody young is

[2:20:42] Trustee Morrison (probable): living in the garage and it's like a whole unit and they are supporting an elderly woman living

[2:20:47] Trustee Morrison (probable): in the house right and in that situation like that is actually a really good arrangement that

[2:20:53] Trustee Morrison (probable): we should foster and legalize those are the types of things that and granted i'm not a fan of them

[2:20:58] Trustee Morrison (probable): if they're not safe so like trying to figure out how to get them to safety standard and legalized

[2:21:03] Trustee Morrison (probable): that could up the number of actual affordable housing not in that legal way but actually

[2:21:09] Trustee Morrison (probable): practical we

[2:21:10] Voice 3: are in alignment absolutely that's the view of the entire trust committee certainly

[2:21:14] Voice 3: the view of me the view of rob it's got to be safe so yeah we

[2:21:20] Voice 3: kind of provide some options

[2:21:21] Voice 3: for people which would mean it just might be somebody goes an electrician goes out and a

[2:21:27] Voice 3: plumber goes out and a contractor goes out does a quick assessment just says bang bang bang bang

[2:21:34] Voice 3: and that takes care of the legal thing here's 100 bucks for temporary use permit you've got

[2:21:39] Voice 3: how

[2:21:39] Trustee Morrison (probable): so what do you know so we would do a temporary use permit around that to allow

[2:21:45] Trustee Morrison (probable): well no we already have we

[2:21:48] Voice 10: don't have the crd so we're going to

[2:21:50] Trustee Morrison (probable): raise okay oh

[2:21:51] Voice 5: with that second

[2:21:52] Voice 5: i'm sorry would that secondary suite provincial funding be able to be dead jiggled to help us

[2:21:58] Voice 5: I

[2:21:58] Voice 3: would say absolutely not

[2:22:00] Voice 5: it

[2:22:00] Voice 3: is going to be

[2:22:02] Voice 3: tied up and it's got to be a legal suite

[2:22:04] Voice 3: it's got to meet the new

[2:22:05] Voice 3: step code 3 that came in

[2:22:09] Trustee Morrison (probable): so what we should do

[2:22:10] Trustee Morrison (probable): then is we should collectively

[2:22:12] Trustee Morrison (probable): try to put our like our voice

[2:22:14] Trustee Morrison (probable): behind that like to try

[2:22:16] Trustee Morrison (probable): and like you know write

[2:22:18] Trustee Morrison (probable): a formal letter to help you

[2:22:20] Trustee Morrison (probable): do what you need to do and if you need us

[2:22:22] Trustee Morrison (probable): to like show up on that and be like hey

[2:22:24] Trustee Morrison (probable): it's

[2:22:25] Voice 3: to advocate to the province

[2:22:26] Voice 3: to

[2:22:26] Trustee Morrison (probable): allow that

[2:22:28] Voice 3: type of, one last thing is trailers aren't legal to sleep in according to the BC building

[2:22:35] Voice 3: code on a year-round basis, but a lot of people live in trailers, and some trailers aren't

[2:22:40] Voice 3: bad, and I've seen trailers hooked to septic and with electrical, and they're just absolutely

[2:22:46] Voice 3: fine, but apparently not allowed, so we enforce sometimes against trailers. Sorry,

[2:22:54] Voice 3: you can use it perfectly fine but if you have a building permit if you intend to

[2:23:01] Voice 3: build a building right have that piece of paper all of a sudden that trailer is fine to live in

[2:23:08] Voice 3: or in other regional districts two years so we can make it safe just with a piece of paper

[2:23:15] Voice 3: despite the fact they say well we can't do it because it's unsafe yeah

[2:23:19] Trustee Morrison (probable): but to be fair paul

[2:23:20] Trustee Morrison (probable): that's about temporariness i realize yeah but

[2:23:22] Voice 3: here we have a situation that is absolutely

[2:23:27] Voice 3: grievous and

[2:23:28] Trustee Morrison (probable): so

[2:23:29] Voice 3: it might be it and

[2:23:30] Trustee Morrison (probable): we do actually have a stay here on enforcing on trailers right

[2:23:34] Trustee Morrison (probable): now so that we could be able to allow for some flexibility until we deal with our housing you're

[2:23:40] Voice 3: the trust yeah and so we get the same thing on saturn on maine yeah on salt spring i believe

[2:23:46] Voice 3: but we have to get alignment across the region and then across the province

[2:23:52] Voice 3: just to be cautious

[2:23:57] Voice 3: i've also seen trailers with fireplaces installed

[2:24:00] all

[2:24:00] Voice 3: right and so there really is two sides to that yeah hence

[2:24:06] Voice 3: the contractor

[2:24:22] Voice 3: that's why so many municipalities regional districts restrict the use of trailers because

[2:24:30] Voice 3: there is a genuine liability and i'm

[2:24:34] Trustee Morrison (probable): with the general liability and safety concern i actually

[2:24:36] Trustee Morrison (probable): have also seen a boat that was lived in like as a sort of temporary vehicle so like we have all

[2:24:42] Trustee Morrison (probable): sorts of things and i think what you're saying is like having a process to go through where we

[2:24:47] Trustee Morrison (probable): would safety inspect and short-term permit those through the crd would be that move yeah and and

[2:24:53] Trustee Morrison (probable): i'm for that if we can ensure safety i don't want people i don't want to create so i grew up in

[2:24:58] Trustee Morrison (probable): poverty and in certain chunk of my youth and i do not want to create unsafe housing that's like

[2:25:05] Trustee Morrison (probable): what two-tiered system of housing those that are poor live in unsafe housing and those that are

[2:25:09] Trustee Morrison (probable): rich can live in

[2:25:10] Voice 3: yes we have unsafe housing

[2:25:11] Trustee Morrison (probable): i know that i know that i know that and that's what we're

[2:25:15] Trustee Morrison (probable): trying to resolve but i just don't want to institutionalize it so i want to try and find

[2:25:19] Trustee Morrison (probable): a good safe way around it

[2:25:20] Voice 3: less unsafe yes

[2:25:22] Trustee Morrison (probable): yes i

[2:25:23] Voice 3: just i was curious as to why we can just have

[2:25:28] Voice 3: a regional exemption for some of this kind of stuff i know i'm with bc building code

[2:25:34] Voice 3: working in the okanagan there was stuff that just didn't make sense in the bc building coast

[2:25:41] Voice 3: there were regional exemptions so why wouldn't we why can't the crd have a region a regional

[2:25:50] Voice 3: exemption for the southern gulf islands for allowing tiny houses or we're trying but so

[2:25:58] Voice 3: far the province has said no it's what don't you understand no yeah so we need to push it back a

[2:26:08] Voice 3: tiny amount particularly so you're

[2:26:10] Voice 15: kind of caught in breath still yeah i i just wanted to comment

[2:26:15] Voice 15: um about the utilizing the existing housing for to deal with the problem because i've thought about

[2:26:23] Voice 15: that quite a bit because it's an obvious thing why build more it's it's very expensive um

[2:26:30] Voice 15: environmentally it's you know it's bad and all the rest of it we've got all sorts of empty stock on

[2:26:37] Voice 15: on the uh on the island or we have a lot of underutilized stock so there's a couple things

[2:26:45] Voice 15: Using the underutilized stock, someone's living in a big house, and carving part of that off, and maybe there's an exchange of work around this for reduction in rent, intuitively makes sense.

[2:27:04] Voice 15: it's bloody lawyers like me get involved and then say yeah but you've got the residential tenancy

[2:27:12] Voice 15: act so you've got to be really particular how you it's not that you can't do it but it's a

[2:27:18] Voice 15: sophisticated thing just uh for the agreement you need to carve out what part of the house

[2:27:25] Voice 15: is for the tenants okay so all of a sudden you know is there only one kitchen do they have access

[2:27:34] Voice 15: the kitchen because as things go south

[2:27:37] Voice 4: um

[2:27:38] Voice 15: but there's an illegal way to get them out

[2:27:40] Voice 15: it's no fun and whoever's supporting this is going to wear that a bit so it's not that you

[2:27:48] Voice 15: can't do it but you want to think through it very carefully right if you want someone to reduce the

[2:27:56] Voice 15: rent to do the work then they don't do all the work and you know back there's all these things

[2:28:02] Voice 15: that just complicate it the right people right circumstances yeah it can work but it's kind of

[2:28:10] Voice 15: a sophisticated thing the part of the way i see to do it is that if if you're going to do it

[2:28:18] Voice 15: you need to get the the province involved with an existing non-profit to backstop that non-profit

[2:28:29] Voice 15: it so you can say to uh the person who's running out if they trash the place we'll make 100 because

[2:28:38] Voice 15: we've got provincial money and you do an actuarial kind of study of how how much you have to factor

[2:28:46] Voice 15: in on that you know x percent are going to go back it's going to be this amount you have to

[2:28:52] Voice 15: have a fund for this it has to come from somewhere but all of a sudden then you could have a fair bit

[2:28:58] Voice 15: of housing using existing stock but don't confuse that with oh it's simple you know it's it's

[2:29:06] Voice 15: something that i think can be done as long as it's done carefully you need the provincial support for

[2:29:12] Voice 15: the for the money on that sort of thing because i thought of renting my place that i hadn't sold

[2:29:17] Voice 15: tender and when my partner and i broke up i went through this paint discussion like myself

[2:29:24] Voice 15: this i don't know how to you get the back tenant they're going to trash it and i want to sell it

[2:29:29] Voice 15: so anyway i just want to comment on that that i thought a fair bit about that there are some

[2:29:34] Voice 15: ways to do it but be careful with it

[2:29:37] Trustee Morrison (probable): yeah and just to be clear um i thought about that too like what

[2:29:41] Trustee Morrison (probable): would be a housing society that could manage that and take that risk from individuals because that

[2:29:46] Trustee Morrison (probable): is the risk that is the problem the counter problem and i'm my suggestion on that and again

[2:29:52] Trustee Morrison (probable): I think this is a bit of a community conversation to try and figure out

[2:29:56] Trustee Morrison (probable): what's the right thing. What's the data that we have on that. But

[2:30:00] Trustee Morrison (probable): my i'm more toward the secondary suite idea so there's independence of the housing

[2:30:05] Trustee Morrison (probable): um because i think that's also problematic on

[2:30:07] Voice 10: lots of times

[2:30:10] Voice 10: so

[2:30:10] Trustee Maude: yeah we've got a cluster of people here so gentlemen on the back and then we have the three

[2:30:14] Trustee Maude: so

[2:30:15] Voice 3: i was here at a meeting with adam olson and we have a nice circle downstairs and we were looking

[2:30:28] Voice 3: for an exam the examiner that was ready to go and bluntly three calls came up so i'm asking

[2:30:34] Voice 3: through the battle is there anything further that the trust or the crd could do to facilitate

[2:30:43] Voice 3: it actually happening as

[2:30:46] Trustee Morrison (probable): far as i understand with the trust and correct me if i'm wrong you probably

[2:30:48] Trustee Morrison (probable): know more than

[2:30:49] Voice 10: i do one thing has been brought up is our zone was granted to society in 1987.

[2:30:54] Voice 10: seven so it's 14 minutes as long as the buildings are new lights building uh it has been mentioned

[2:31:05] Voice 10: that it would be more cost effective if we could um build those extra units other than

[2:31:12] Voice 10: one footprint maybe you know and not only not a 50 story or i mean 50 unit

[2:31:21] Voice 10: it tends but if we forget zoning other than the existing duplex which is a bigger footprint

[2:31:27] Voice 10: and it uses up more land it takes more trees down but we would have the cost to be going

[2:31:34] Voice 10: and

[2:31:34] Trustee Morrison (probable): so one of the things to do on that situation so there's a community benefit clause

[2:31:41] Trustee Morrison (probable): in our application procedures like around how you apply for different permits if there's a

[2:31:46] Trustee Morrison (probable): community benefit which obviously this falls into it was from country court um so it's something

[2:31:51] Trustee Morrison (probable): where like the country court board and the trustees should sit down and talk and through

[2:31:57] Trustee Morrison (probable): like not

[2:31:58] Trustee Morrison (probable): go through the entire application process first but actually sit down and like

[2:32:02] Trustee Morrison (probable): have that conversation because uh it could be a lot simpler actually um because that's you know

[2:32:09] Trustee Morrison (probable): there's just ways to have that to sit down and stab to sit down with trustees and have that

[2:32:14] Trustee Morrison (probable): conversation generally speaking on affordable housing issues those are that's the way with

[2:32:19] Trustee Morrison (probable): the way anybody who's proposed things like we are land use planners you have to come to us with a

[2:32:23] Trustee Morrison (probable): plan right like and then like share with us what you're thinking about as we sort of like consider

[2:32:29] Trustee Morrison (probable): what this is across the island this this process now is to try and consider the bigger picture of

[2:32:34] Trustee Morrison (probable): new things country courts and existing things so it's like a one-on-one conversation about that

[2:32:38] Voice 3: i just think it's something that with everybody working together it could happen sooner rather

[2:32:45] Voice 3: than later sure and it's been in the works for quite a while yeah so i think like also there's

[2:32:52] Voice 3: a degree of urgency here yeah so and there's a priority list for the local trust committee

[2:32:58] Voice 3: like maybe put plum tree court or something yeah

[2:33:03] Trustee Morrison (probable): but plum tree court is not a project because

[2:33:05] Trustee Morrison (probable): because Plum Tree Court is just an application.

[2:33:07] Trustee Morrison (probable): It's a totally different situation

[2:33:08] Trustee Morrison (probable): than all of the housing conversation.

[2:33:09] Trustee Morrison (probable): We have projects and we have applications.

[2:33:11] Trustee Morrison (probable): And because Plum Tree Court is an existing zoned entity,

[2:33:18] Trustee Morrison (probable): it's an application question.

[2:33:20] Trustee Morrison (probable): We have some legal obligations

[2:33:22] Trustee Morrison (probable): related to saying if there's a shift in zoning,

[2:33:25] Trustee Morrison (probable): like if there's so many days

[2:33:26] Trustee Morrison (probable): that we have to like advertise the shift in zoning.

[2:33:28] Trustee Morrison (probable): So there are just some legal obligations

[2:33:30] Trustee Morrison (probable): that we are out of our hands.

[2:33:32] Trustee Morrison (probable): They're part of our legislation.

[2:33:33] Trustee Morrison (probable): So we would have to go through that timeline. But like the best thing to do on that one-on-one thing is just to have a conversation with the applicant.

[2:33:41] Trustee Morrison (probable): We do it all the time with different applicants who are asking us for different things.

[2:33:45] Trustee Morrison (probable): I

[2:33:45] Voice 3: just thought that you wouldn't have to deal with it as an application.

[2:33:51] Voice 3: You could deal with it through your housing project as a by-law amendment.

[2:33:56] Trustee Morrison (probable): I don't think that's the fastest route, necessarily, because it depends.

[2:34:01] Trustee Morrison (probable): We'd have to think about that, just because we could waive the fees for that process, because it's...

[2:34:09] Trustee Morrison (probable): Yes, there is a process, it can be done.

[2:34:17] Trustee Morrison (probable): But it's more of a timeliness issue, because if the housing conversation takes a longer time,

[2:34:22] Trustee Morrison (probable): and we get that wrapped up in it, it could take longer for that.

[2:34:25] Trustee Morrison (probable): I was

[2:34:26] Trustee Morrison (probable): just making

[2:34:27] Voice 3: the point that if something is a priority and the applicant's ready to go...

[2:34:32] Voice 3: yeah that's a zoning change that could be initiated within a few months

[2:34:36] Voice 3: easily okay

[2:34:38] Trustee Maude: so we have the three in front here and then it's just getting shows

[2:34:43] Voice 9: two points first of all just encouraging the discussion to remember we need both short-term

[2:34:49] Voice 9: and long-term planning so rob's talking about it's definitely long-term planning

[2:34:54] Voice 9: some form of continued waiver for non-traditional housing is a short-term solution and secondly the

[2:35:04] Voice 9: point about safety there are there are homes that are completely unsafe with human habitation

[2:35:11] Voice 9: so I'm loathe to pick on trailers or other vehicles you know all due respect to Brad's

[2:35:20] Voice 9: example um we got those kind of problems at home so i would hope that yes safety is first and

[2:35:26] Voice 9: foremost of importance and we would set something up so whatever is happening needs approval

[2:35:32] Voice 9: appropriately whether it's a three-man team of plumber electrician water or another feature or

[2:35:40] Voice 9: something else it should be there for anything but i don't understand why we can't have short-term

[2:35:46] Voice 9: permissions uh temporary use permits and and the participants know you okay you're going to have

[2:35:52] Voice 9: this for three years you're going to comply with these three rules you don't comply you're out and

[2:35:57] Voice 9: a review in three years because we're working on a longer term plan so

[2:36:02] Trustee Morrison (probable): there's two different

[2:36:02] Trustee Morrison (probable): kinds of temporary use permits there's islands trust ones and there's crd potentially like so

[2:36:08] Trustee Morrison (probable): and the islands trust already has a number of certain things in place that the crd could

[2:36:14] Trustee Morrison (probable): to capitalize on with building permit temporary use permit type things so because we can't legalize

[2:36:21] Trustee Morrison (probable): a secondary suite in an existing house that's outside our jurisdiction is the crd so but we

[2:36:27] Trustee Morrison (probable): would do certain kinds of things related to trailers we could say like on this area of land

[2:36:31] Trustee Morrison (probable): we give temporary use permit to use trailers so that's something we could do they would have to

[2:36:36] Trustee Morrison (probable): then also from how i would think about it argue with me a few things different but would have to

[2:36:41] Trustee Morrison (probable): give a temporary use permit safety permission on that trailer to make it work so yeah yeah yeah

[2:36:47] Voice 9: i'm not trying to detail i've been saying for sure we need to move forward with the short-term

[2:36:51] Voice 9: solution while we're also thinking of long-term and whatever that means with safety first and

[2:36:57] Voice 9: foremost we got to get to the fungus i'm another voice saying it's a priority to be creative in

[2:37:04] Voice 9: and what we're going to say is okay.

[2:37:06] Voice 9: Yeah.

[2:37:09] Voice 13: Joyce there, just again about housing.

[2:37:12] Voice 13: When I moved here 12 years ago,

[2:37:15] Voice 13: I rented a place for a month.

[2:37:17] Voice 13: I wasn't allowed to rent a place for less than that.

[2:37:21] Voice 13: And I realized that you've got cuts for Airbnbs,

[2:37:27] Voice 13: but there's a ton of illegal Airbnbs on the island.

[2:37:31] Voice 13: there is no short long-term rentals that because people are renting it out in the summer and i

[2:37:39] Voice 13: i know there's enforcement issues but that's a real issue that has depleted the housing stock

[2:37:45] Voice 13: or the rental stock that needs to be addressed as part of this issue you know so what are you

[2:37:54] Voice 13: doing about enforcement of people that don't have tufts who are doing airbnb and

[2:37:59] Trustee Morrison (probable): also two

[2:38:01] Trustee Morrison (probable): two types of airbnbs on the island which is confusing folks so um there are airbnbs where

[2:38:06] Trustee Morrison (probable): you don't reside on the property and there are airbnbs where you do if you reside on the property

[2:38:11] Trustee Morrison (probable): you are legally allowed to do it as a home-based business you don't have to apply for a tup

[2:38:14] Trustee Morrison (probable): so if you don't reside on the property um then you have to ask for tup to because that becomes a

[2:38:22] Trustee Morrison (probable): full-on housing like a house from like term stock we only i want to say

[2:38:27] Trustee Morrison (probable): 10 or 12 of those which have very many legal permits and this this staff is actually enforcing

[2:38:34] Trustee Morrison (probable): on as much as they can to try and capture the ones that we know that we know of right so through

[2:38:40] Trustee Morrison (probable): different systems um so because we have the registration system for um those 10 or 12 we

[2:38:47] Trustee Morrison (probable): can see which ones are appearing on services and capture them it is a part of the larger enforcement

[2:38:54] Trustee Morrison (probable): been puzzled what's going on i know both of these folks want to say something around that but they

[2:38:59] Trustee Morrison (probable): don't know who's talking about it well

[2:39:02] Trustee Maude: it looks like i guess because we're trying to cycle through

[2:39:05] Trustee Maude: so yeah

[2:39:06] Trustee Morrison (probable): i think i think brad wants to say something i

[2:39:08] Voice 3: just wanted to just to collect

[2:39:11] Voice 3: the point around safety and the driver's liability and uh derelict home at least there are

[2:39:18] Voice 3: requirements and regulations and building inspection and building code requirements

[2:39:25] Voice 3: that are expected to be followed whereas that infrastructure just doesn't exist for trailers

[2:39:30] Voice 3: so i think that's where crd building inspection hits the wall in that they don't have the robust

[2:39:36] Voice 3: set of underlying information to then say okay you're safe you're or you're not safe in your

[2:39:43] Voice 3: trailer and not liability question that game so i think that is

[2:39:46] Voice 3: the you

[2:39:47] Voice 4: know what we have

[2:39:48] Voice 3: yeah we put a notice on that i do it every month yeah okay

[2:39:54] Voice 3: and what it means is you got a notice

[2:39:56] Voice 3: on title it's going to cost you 500 bucks to to get rid of it what it is is to get in a jail free

[2:40:02] Voice 3: car yeah you just keep going with your derelict house but

[2:40:05] Voice 7: at least the line is covered we've

[2:40:07] Voice 3: technically no risk box yeah it's

[2:40:09] Voice 3: a joke yeah

[2:40:10] Voice 5: so

[2:40:11] Voice 3: um

[2:40:12] Voice 5: jumping to the end again can we have a housing

[2:40:15] Voice 5: project for north and then uh the backstory on that would be um uh you know denman i you know

[2:40:21] Voice 5: we're we're just at the beginning of housing north pender has not embraced the concept

[2:40:27] Voice 5: previously unlike maine and um lasalt springs a bigger story but um recently you know narisa's

[2:40:34] Voice 5: work on denman you know it it it was similar to us because it had to start with the questions of

[2:40:41] Voice 5: where housing right and and the other housing projects didn't have to do that and then what

[2:40:48] Voice 5: housing so we we really quantified really well what housing we're looking for because crd has

[2:40:54] Voice 5: really done a good job of documenting that and they've updated the assessment but of course it's

[2:41:00] Voice 5: a community guide all of this is a community dialogue as well which which i would really

[2:41:04] Voice 5: encourage the trust and learn how to do um and i'm sure there's facilitators on the island that

[2:41:10] Voice 5: can help with that um you know just citizens with skills um so um so start with the basic questions

[2:41:19] Voice 5: and then build on this water group the water group is basically preparing for more of the

[2:41:25] Voice 5: And I just would reiterate the opening comment of Director Branton.

[2:41:32] Voice 5: It's a crisis and there's lots of fallout from it.

[2:41:36] Voice 5: And I think we need to address it.

[2:41:38] Voice 5: It's not humane.

[2:41:40] Voice 5: You know, we're busy trying to save the environment and forgetting about the people.

[2:41:44] Voice 5: Thank you.

[2:41:45] Trustee Maude: Could someone explain why cities have

[2:41:49] Voice 3: an empty house tax and we don't?

[2:41:53] Voice 3: We're not a city.

[2:41:57] Voice 4: I'll

[2:41:57] Voice 3: start off as a speculation tax I'll recall and so there was a fear that there's a lot of

[2:42:04] Voice 3: foreign speculation and so when the assessment was it was originally we were captured as

[2:42:12] Voice 3: when you looked at the actual data that was

[2:42:18] Voice 3: that was applied in 2012 and at the time it was

[2:42:23] Voice 3: applied our housing stock had not even recovered from the 2008 our house prices were still

[2:42:31] Voice 3: we've had we had had house prices that were depressed there were no speculators here

[2:42:37] Voice 3: it was

[2:42:38] Voice 3: absolutely inappropriate but at the rural islands economic partnership

[2:42:44] Voice 3: one of the proposed motions which they've listed is uh the rollout of an empty tax

[2:42:53] Voice 3: tax on the southern gulf islands with direct delivery to affordable housing the other one

[2:42:59] Voice 3: which i like more honestly is property transfer tax we all pay a property transfer tax when we

[2:43:07] Voice 3: sell our homes generally speaking if you have a home you're and you go to sell it now it's like

[2:43:13] Voice 3: winning the lottery there's been huge increases so part of that property transfer tax should go

[2:43:19] Voice 3: go back directly into the community for affordable housing not into general revenues because the

[2:43:27] Voice 3: property transfer tax is the single biggest source of revenue in british columbia after

[2:43:36] Voice 3: so we're bigger than oil bigger than four it's bigger than liquor tobacco

[2:43:44] Voice 9: and cannabis combined

[2:43:45] Voice 9: buying and add the foreign buyers tax that's on that's an added part of the 20 percent of the

[2:43:52] Voice 9: land care and state tax right and we

[2:43:54] Voice 9: have that yeah we

[2:43:55] Voice 9: have that but that part of the funding

[2:43:57] Voice 9: i'm suggesting could come back to the

[2:44:00] Trustee Maude: general revenue for

[2:44:03] Voice 9: affordable housing yeah

[2:44:12] Voice 12: um the uh southern gulf island housing strategy report um was submitted by a former standard

[2:44:20] Voice 12: planner and salt spring resident justine stark to the crd board a year or so ago and i'd like to um

[2:44:29] Voice 12: contrast a note about smart growth on page seven on that report with a 2010 initiative

[2:44:37] Voice 12: which is only accepted on on north pender of all the trust area or in effect smart growth in a

[2:44:45] Voice 12: complete connected and there were three words community and that's one of the goals of our ocp

[2:44:54] Voice 12: uh it is smart growth and the idea is to concentrate development and then have green

[2:44:59] Voice 12: space in between um the the west coast environmental law uh deliberated on that

[2:45:06] Voice 12: point and and uh came up with this with the recommendation that that that model was

[2:45:12] Voice 12: entirely inappropriate to the trust area islands and following that i have a note from smart about

[2:45:19] Voice 12: about smart growth and Justine comments

[2:45:22] Voice 12: on sustainable urban planning principles

[2:45:25] Voice 12: focus on creating complete communities, et cetera, et cetera,

[2:45:29] Voice 12: based on transit and all these other services

[2:45:32] Voice 12: being available.

[2:45:34] Voice 12: However, in the second paragraph, she says,

[2:45:37] Voice 12: concentrating density in one area of the island

[2:45:40] Voice 12: can have negative opinions,

[2:45:43] Voice 12: impacts on that local groundwater region.

[2:45:45] Voice 12: Distributing density across the island

[2:45:47] Voice 12: is more sustainable for the freshwater carrying capacity of the island.

[2:45:53] Voice 12: An example would be Magic Lake Estates. There are I think 20% of those lots unsold or something

[2:46:01] Voice 12: of order and if affordable housing was distributed around Magic Lake perhaps it would be a better

[2:46:09] Voice 12: model with water and sewer available than finding some new area as was behind the driftwoods

[2:46:17] Voice 12: or even on ALR land, the other side of the river.

[2:46:20] Voice 12: That might be a much better model.

[2:46:23] Voice 12: Thank you.

[2:46:23] Voice 12: Thank you.

[2:46:24] Voice 12: Yes, you're here.

[2:46:26] Voice 10: I have a question.

[2:46:29] Voice 10: The main is looking at it, but we did it a few terms ago

[2:46:32] Voice 10: on Chastity Barber and Company Mappling,

[2:46:35] Voice 10: and they legalized secondary suites.

[2:46:38] Voice 10: And so that was huge at the time.

[2:46:40] Voice 10: It was very encouraging.

[2:46:42] Voice 10: And it specifically said, on it,

[2:46:44] Voice 10: that they cannot be rented out short-term.

[2:46:48] Voice 10: What I've heard, unfortunately, since,

[2:46:52] Voice 10: is that homeowners are moving into the secondary suites

[2:46:56] Voice 10: and renting out a portion of the house short-term.

[2:46:59] Voice 10: So bylaws cannot enforce against those FDRs

[2:47:03] Voice 10: because they're not legal.

[2:47:05] Voice 10: But it is not the intent of our bylaws.

[2:47:08] Voice 10: Perhaps we could change or find an existing bylaw

[2:47:13] Voice 10: already there and went through it two times ago it's one of the major things that at the time

[2:47:19] Voice 10: would be like this is the great adventure for the island setting their seat but that's not the way

[2:47:25] Voice 10: they're getting food from them that's not the way that you want to do life and it would in one

[2:47:31] Voice 10: area be it's very obvious homeowners are living you know in their secondary suits and renting

[2:47:37] Voice 10: and it's as we are so we can somehow can you ask for the days to the

[2:47:44] Voice 5: 30-day minimum

[2:47:45] Voice 4: is

[2:47:46] Voice 10: that what that could be yeah well it's already there specifically you cannot ask

[2:47:55] Voice 10: so and we're not but they're renting a

[2:47:59] Voice 10: house yeah it's a

[2:48:00] Voice 10: small way so you just have to

[2:48:02] Voice 10: and

[2:48:02] Voice 4: then they bought it so

[2:48:03] Voice 10: it's like it's like yeah i switched yeah was

[2:48:15] Voice 3: there a really really

[2:48:17] Voice 3: low uptake so

[2:48:19] Trustee Morrison (probable): well yes and no we don't know because well no we do know for for how many

[2:48:25] Trustee Morrison (probable): have been asked for directly the crd has that information oh yeah and um so but there's a whole

[2:48:32] Trustee Morrison (probable): ton of people who have done it not very legally oh

[2:48:35] Voice 3: for sure but as far as like as far as the option

[2:48:39] Voice 3: being put out there my understanding of it was that it was like people didn't actively capitalize

[2:48:48] Voice 3: on that option legally yes

[2:48:51] Trustee Morrison (probable): that's accurate right and

[2:48:53] Voice 10: then it also goes back to this point

[2:48:56] Voice 10: that um not everybody wants to be a landlord that's right

[2:49:00] Voice 10: someone being a purpose-built

[2:49:03] Voice 10: rental house yeah where so we have security for tenants

[2:49:08] Voice 10: not everybody wants to be a lot it might rather do it for a couple of weeks

[2:49:13] Voice 10: makes money.

[2:49:15] Voice 3: Airbnb also has the insurance that Rob talked to, that IPL provincial entity.

[2:49:23] Voice 3: So if you Airbnb, you end up paying a portion of the rent to Airbnb, but they also have

[2:49:28] Voice 3: an insurance program so that if somebody trashes your place, they fix it. Like, I mean,

[2:49:33] Voice 3: it should be obvious that we should be able to duplicate this and rebalance the Landlord

[2:49:39] Voice 3: tenant act a little bit yeah

[2:49:41] Voice 10: but at the very least you have you have one of the three parts of your

[2:49:45] Voice 10: housing already yeah that's

[2:49:53] Trustee Morrison (probable): the the nature of bylaws if you create them and people bind the

[2:49:56] Trustee Morrison (probable): loopholes and then you refine them they're all they're constantly iterating that way um so i

[2:50:01] Trustee Morrison (probable): have a quick question for us so my understanding was we did instigate the housing as a project

[2:50:07] Trustee Morrison (probable): Is that not accurate?

[2:50:09] Voice 3: I believe so.

[2:50:10] Voice 3: It's current.

[2:50:12] Voice 3: Just

[2:50:12] Trustee Morrison (probable): back to the earlier question.

[2:50:14] Voice 3: Housing is

[2:50:14] Trustee Morrison (probable): syndicated as a project for the LTC.

[2:50:17] Trustee Morrison (probable): So directed

[2:50:18] Voice 3: staff at your last meeting to bring that to the board for the project.

[2:50:24] Voice 3: Right.

[2:50:24] Voice 3: Okay.

[2:50:27] Voice 3: As a major project.

[2:50:29] Voice 4: Yeah.

[2:50:31] Voice 3: Robert's back on my list to talk about how it rolls out as a major project.

[2:50:39] Voice 3: point it's not really clear what funding you would be seeking at this point versus taking some time

[2:50:45] Voice 3: to do all those pieces of work around the profiling scoping the box

[2:50:53] Voice 3: yeah and

[2:50:56] Trustee Morrison (probable): a big part of that which well i guess we'll probably talk about in the joy i mean but

[2:50:59] Trustee Morrison (probable): a big part of that would be to try and get our head around that one question um to to your point

[2:51:04] Trustee Morrison (probable): like of like what what are we talking about we talk about housing across these islands and have

[2:51:09] Trustee Morrison (probable): that conversation with it um and then just um i also need to like push back a little bit because

[2:51:16] Trustee Morrison (probable): i hear a lot of this and it frankly is super insulting um so the idea of um we need to take

[2:51:24] Trustee Morrison (probable): care of people as well as the environment because we the way that the trust currently is operating

[2:51:32] Trustee Morrison (probable): with our projects and you know we've talked about that over the years and it's part of the reason

[2:51:36] Trustee Morrison (probable): we instigated the governance review and a bunch of different stuff that's going on at the trust level

[2:51:41] Trustee Morrison (probable): is because the way that we handle projects and it's you know no individual's responsibility

[2:51:47] Trustee Morrison (probable): here it's an organizational responsibility the way that we handle projects in the trust is deeply

[2:51:52] Trustee Morrison (probable): frustrating for being able to actually holistically engage with what we need as a community

[2:51:57] Trustee Morrison (probable): so we had to make a decision last term to take project one versus project two and like try to

[2:52:03] Trustee Morrison (probable): figure out what the scope of those was um so we decided as a ltc to take on the bylaw review

[2:52:10] Trustee Morrison (probable): because we wanted to instigate some of the low-hanging fruit with relationship to climate

[2:52:15] Trustee Morrison (probable): change with relationship to some of the things that were just messy in our bylaws um and take

[2:52:20] Trustee Morrison (probable): on that first that was not environment or people that was booked because we interrupted we are

[2:52:27] Trustee Morrison (probable): our system and so housing was always on the radar um and to try and think about how to do that and

[2:52:33] Trustee Morrison (probable): so i'm glad we're taking that on as an ltc this term so but um i kind of feel like i need to push

[2:52:39] Trustee Morrison (probable): back on that narrative because i had to shove down my throat several times and i um don't put

[2:52:45] Trustee Morrison (probable): the environment over people or the people over the environment i fundamentally think those two

[2:52:50] Trustee Morrison (probable): things are connected so just have to say that all right anything else that we have like um 10 minutes

[2:53:01] Voice 13: one minute one

[2:53:16] Trustee Morrison (probable): that's why we were able to actually start the housing project because we got the bylaws off

[2:53:21] Trustee Morrison (probable): our plate because we're only allowed one major project at a time which is super frustrating

[2:53:24] Trustee Morrison (probable): We missed the party.

[2:53:27] Trustee Morrison (probable): I didn't know this.

[2:53:30] Voice 4: Yeah.

[2:53:32] Voice 4: Anybody

[2:53:33] Trustee Maude: have anything else?

[2:53:34] Voice 4: Okay.

[2:53:35] Trustee Maude: Thank you very much.

[2:53:37] Trustee Maude: Literally, we made the fourth talk.

[2:53:39] Trustee Maude: Oh, that's a piece of very important.

[2:53:41] Trustee Maude: It's canceled my fourth experience, so I can't get home.

[2:53:44] Voice 3: Are you kidding?

[2:53:46] Voice 3: So, pardon me.

[2:53:47] Voice 3: Can you bring your truck?

[2:53:50] Voice 3: Do we need

[2:53:51] Trustee Morrison (probable): to, like, end the meeting officially?

[2:53:53] Trustee Morrison (probable): Oh, absolutely.

[2:53:56] Trustee Maude: Thank you all

[2:53:58] Trustee Morrison (probable): for coming, it was really fun.

[2:54:00] Trustee Maude: Thank you very much, Kathleen.

[2:54:02] Trustee Maude: Good luck with your minutes.

[2:54:04] Trustee Maude: Thank you.

North Pender Island Local Trust Committee 
Special Meeting 
June 24, 2023 ADOPTED Page 1 of 8 
 
North Pender Island Local Trust Committee 
Minutes of Special Meeting 
 
Date:  
Location:  
June 24, 2023 
Pender Island Community Hall 
4418 Bedwell Harbour Road, North Pender Island BC 
 
Members Present: David Maude, Chair 
 Deb Morrison, Local Trustee 
 Aaron Campbell, Local Trustee 
  
Staff Present: Brad Smith, Island Planner 
 Katherine Vogt, Recorder 
  
Others Present: Paul Brent, Capital Regional District (CRD) Electoral Area Director for the       
Southern Gulf Islands 
 Rob Fenton, Alternate Director for the Southern Gulf Islands 
 Approximately eleven (11) members of the public were present 
 
1. CALL TO ORDER 
Chair Maude called the Public Hearing to order at 1:06 p.m. He read a statement outlining the 
content, purpose, and process of the Public Hearing. He acknowledged that the meeting was 
held on the territory of the Coast Salish First Nations. He introduced Trustees, Staff, Recorder, 
and Meeting Host; and welcomed Members of the Public. 
2. APPROVAL OF AGENDA 
By general consent, the agenda was approved as presented. 
3. BUSINESS ITEMS 
3.1 Groundwater and Forestry Discussion 
Trustees introduced the discussion on groundwater and forestry, noting that they were 
seeking feedback from the public on the possibilities for conservation of local 
groundwater recharge areas which are outlined on watershed maps available on the 
Islands Trust website; and feedback on such forestry issues as wildfire risk and ‘Fire 
Smart’ protocols. 
Planner Smith added that a Development Permit Area (DPA) for groundwater recharge 
areas; and a Coastal Douglas Fir DPA with exemptions, were possibilities for 
consideration. 
  
A D O P T E D 

 
North Pender Island Local Trust Committee 
Special Meeting 
June 24, 2023 ADOPTED Page 2 of 8 
Members of the public asked or noted the following: 
 It is a Trust policy that islands should be self-sufficient in their water supply and that 
density should be restricted in areas of low supply. Freshwater trucking onto the 
island indicates a problem. Gabriola Island has freshwater trucking data from the 
trucking suppliers. Can Trustees access such hard data, including that of saltwater 
intrusion into wells? 
o A Trustee noted a previous well-monitoring initiative that sought funding. 
Seeking data from private companies could be a problem; and shaming 
individuals for their water usage would be ill-advised 
o Planner Smith noted that the Islands Trust Senior Freshwater Specialist 
William Shulba had mapped out regional areas of saltwater intrusion; these 
maps were now available on the Islands Trust website 
o A Trustee noted that LTC funds could be used to purchase well monitoring 
equipment 
 Ponds and cisterns for wildfire suppression are critical and could be considered for 
new developments. Grants for these could be sought 
o A Trustee responded that such water stores determined firefighting 
response times 
 The Province is desperate for people to register their wells, so they should be 
providing funding for well monitoring 
o Planner Smith clarified that provincial use of continuous Wi-Fi monitoring 
devices seems to be geared towards commercial agricultural water usage 
o  A Trustee added that residential electronic smart-meter monitoring devices 
were being promoted by some groups 
 What authority does the Islands Trust have to implement rules regarding excessive 
water usage? 
o A Trustee responded that the Islands Trust could be precautionary and pre-
emptive; or do nothing until better data was available 
 General data regarding freshwater trucking volumes could be helpful to see trends 
o The Chair clarified that a past Freedom of Information (FOI) request for 
freshwater trucking data involved water coming from the Nanaimo Regional 
District, which is a government body and not a private company  
o A Trustee added that water may be trucked for a variety of reasons and 
does not necessarily indicate excessive usage 
o A Trustee noted that certain areas of the island had serious saltwater 
intrusion; that winter water volumes were abundant; that it was preferable 
to pump water for storage in the winter; and, that grants should be sought 
for water storage 
 What about the future possibility of trucked water being denied or unavailable? 
o A Trustee responded that a FOI request for a private company would be 
unhelpful; rather, community members could be asked what their water 
problems are 
 I support the LTC pausing on more land use planning regulations because it would 
be more productive to ascertain the actual cost to design and implement a 
comprehensive water monitoring plan 
o A Trustee responded that it was a primary role of the Trust to collaborate 
with other government agencies 

 
North Pender Island Local Trust Committee 
Special Meeting 
June 24, 2023 ADOPTED Page 3 of 8 
o The Chair responded that decades ago the Province had a well monitoring 
program that could provide further water usage data 
 FOI data on trucked water for Galiano and Gabriola Islands recently presented to 
Trust Council indicates a significant influx of population density; a freshwater 
trucker for North Pender told me that two summers ago, he was trucking 1100 
gallons of water per day, 5 days a week, throughout the summer, to a commercial 
tourist zone on North Pender. The LTC has not adequately addressed this long-
standing, seasonal high-density issue 
 A lot of water in the winter just runs off 
o A Trustee acknowledged that proof of water using winter versus summer 
well water volumes is an issue; also, that a lot of large properties may be 
turned over and could be subdivided down to 10 acres, so having an extra 
layer of water information to inform future development is helpful; also, 
that many summer residences became full time residences during the 
COVID Pandemic 
 Can we have a Citizen Working Group on Groundwater Availability so that local 
knowledge about groundwater can be compiled? This would augment Specialist 
Shulba’s commendable work by highlighting areas that do not conform to the 
general maps. Also, it is commendable that the LTC has not gone ahead with a 
groundwater recharge DPA, given the many groundwater anomalies that occur on 
North Pender 
 It is worth looking into water protection of entire watersheds through a DPA 
approach or other tools. Community water protection is paramount whereas 
cisterns and fire protection sprinklers should be treated more as an individual 
responsibility rather than a community one 
 There are several areas of the island that have water quality issues due to 
irresponsible and illegal digging of garbage into dug and covered holes in the 
ground. Some of these areas have been cleaned up and there are bylaws against 
this dumping, but the bylaws have not historically been well enforced. Derelict 
vehicles and boats with toxic paint have leached toxins into groundwater 
Monitoring and testing of toxic sites should be done by the Province 
o A member of the public added that locals would have good knowledge of 
where precisely these toxic sites are. Thankfully, such dumping is not as 
common a practice as it used to be 
 A large DPA for protection of forests on another island has not been well enforced. 
Is this due to lack of money or lack of power? 
o Planner Smith responded that Regional Districts, Municipalities, and the 
Islands Trust may establish DPAs through the Local Governments Act for 
very specific values such as conservation of a species, but not for broad 
purposes. Municipalities have broader Community Charter given control 
over individual tree protection and animal management. Trust Council and 
Regional Districts requested broader powers of tree protection beyond the 
powers of the DPA such as has been given to municipalities; but the 
Province has rejected this request, perhaps because the broadening of 
powers was deemed to be too great 
o A Trustee noted that the Trust has asked the Province to comprehensively 
review bylaw enforcement. Also, the Trust rescinding their tree protection 

 
North Pender Island Local Trust Committee 
Special Meeting 
June 24, 2023 ADOPTED Page 4 of 8 
request was because it was considered an ineffective strategy. Large-scale 
tree-cutting is a problem because removal of tree canopy dries the 
landscape and threatens biodiversity. Danger trees are a problem. The 
binary of tree/no trees needs to be overcome. DPAs related to water and 
climate change are future possibilities. Preservation of water for the 
ecosystem has not been brought up. A DPA that is not enforced is not worth 
pursuing. Enforcement of problem tree cutting needs to be done by the 
Province, since they have jurisdiction over it. 
 
By general consent, the meeting was recessed at 2:19 pm and reconvened at 2:26 pm. 
 
Members of the public asked or noted the following: 
 As groundwater is drawn down too excessively, there is risk of irreversible saltwater 
intrusion; yet the Islands Trust Policy Statement is silent on this issue, despite that 
the mandate of the Trust is to preserve and protect. Saltwater intrusion is especially 
occurring on the perimeters of all Gulf Islands; but on North Pender, saltwater 
intrusion even occurs far inland. Monitoring of ocean and well levels in the 
saltwater intrusion vulnerable zones needs to happen to forestall irreversible 
freshwater losses; and high-density development near the oceanfront needs to be 
restricted, though this would be very politically unpopular 
o A Trustee noted that densities could be increased if atmospheric water was 
required; and groundwater use restricted. Forest dryness, biodiversity, and 
water quality would still be outstanding issues 
 Regarding forest management, what tracts of land are protected and not protected 
from extensive tree cutting on North Pender? Education and discussion are needed 
o The Chair noted that North Pender seems to have more development 
potential than other islands 
o Director Brent acknowledged that the Islands Trust has produced statistics 
on how much area of each island is considered protected by covenanted 
land. There may be maps associated with the statistics. Privately owned 
land is not considered protected 
o A Trustee noted that many people were protecting the trees on their 
property well; the problem is what happens when these properties are 
turned over 
 Irreversible erosion happens when tree canopy is removed. Downstream of recent 
timber cutting on North Pender reveals recent sediment deposits at culverts 
revealed by grass growing in the new sediment. Cedars drying from the top down 
are occurring due to loss of canopy and topsoil 
 Urbanization of Southern Vancouver Island has driven a narrative that the forests 
are dying; on North Pender, we have 71% solid forest which is much more than 30 
years ago. Longer, drier summers due to climate change are what is causing cedar 
die off 
 Future climate conditions are an unknown factor 
o Director Brent described the possibilities for the Trust and CRD to 
collaborate in approaching the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource 
Operations and Rural Development (FLNRORD) for discussions on regional 
forest issues 

 
North Pender Island Local Trust Committee 
Special Meeting 
June 24, 2023 ADOPTED Page 5 of 8 
 It is unfair to compromise a neighbor’s well by excessive tree cutting. 
Municipalities provide tree cutting protections; but the Trust does not 
 The Trust Council’s original request to the Province for the same power as 
municipalities to regulate tree-cutting was rejected based on urban versus rural 
considerations. Perhaps the original Trust request could be recrafted to target 
larger-scale tree cutting on private properties 
NP-2023-76 
It was MOVED and SECONDED, 
that the North Pender Island Local Trust Committee request that staff provide a 
staff memorandum on the July 28, 2023 Local Trust Committee meeting agenda 
with options regarding the establishment of a North Pender Island Water 
Advisory Committee. 
CARRIED 
A Trustee added that water independence and water quality were the two overriding 
categories of discussion to consider when posing questions to the community regarding 
water. 
 
Trustee Morrison announced that she would initiate communications with other 
Trustees in the Southern Gulf Islands for a future regional forestry review and 
conversation. 
 
3.2 Housing Access and Affordability Discussion 
 
A Trustees asked members of the public to provide feedback on what they considered 
would be appropriate affordable housing for North Pender.  
 
Alternate Director Rob Fenton noted that he had handed out his professionally 
considered comments to current meeting participants and wished to highlight the 
following: 
 The Southern Gulf Islands Community Economic Sustainability Commission (CESC) 
has completed numerous housing studies 
 A Southern Gulf Islands Housing Strategy was approved in May 2022 by the CRD 
Board. Justine Starke, CRD Manager for Southern Gulf Islands (SGI) Service Delivery, 
oversees the CRD Housing Strategy and has previously worked with the Trust 
 CRD Director Brent has made housing a priority 
 Discussion at a recent Rural islands Economic Partnership (RIEP) meeting showed 
that nearly every issue on the table is greatly affected by the housing crisis 
 Funding for lower market development requires government subsidy. No local 
affordable housing has been developed for 20 years. Government funding is 
uncertain but hopeful. Zoning and financing must be creative to accommodate the 
numbers 
 Construction costs have really risen recently 
 One housing possibility is that funding for Conservancy properties could be raised by 
selling a small portion for regular housing, holding a portion for non-profit housing, 
and leaving the rest of the property conserved. Through this approach, there would 
be no cost for the land for an affordable housing project. The Conservancy and the 

 
North Pender Island Local Trust Committee 
Special Meeting 
June 24, 2023 ADOPTED Page 6 of 8 
Trust would need to agree. A non-profit society would have to own the affordable 
housing portion of the land. Most likely the affordable housing will need to be 
alternate, perhaps modular. The Provincial Rental Housing Corporation could be 
used to provide funding shortfalls for land that the Conservancy would wish to 
acquire. Once the private lots are sold off, the Conservancy can pay back the funds 
borrowed. 
 
Director Brent noted the following:  
 The housing crisis on the island was causing the loss of many young people and 
workers; and causing stress for many. No provincial money is coming to the 
islands because it is rural low density with little infrastructure 
  The CRD is working on a Temporary Use Permit (TUP) for trailers. Currently it is 
illegal to sleep in trailers year- round according to the BC building code. 
However, if you have a building permit, it is allowable to live in a trailer for 1 to 
2 years 
 Affordable housing units on the Gulf Islands would likely cost between $550,000 
to $600,000 per unit 
o A Trustee asked if the empty house tax could be applied on North Pender; 
how occupancy of current housing stock could be increased; and how tiny 
homes could be supported 
o Director Brent responded that the Provincial Secondary Suite Program will 
fund $40,000 per suite and the CRD is looking at modeling something 
similar. Island Trust Senior Planner Narissa Chadwick is working with CRD 
Manager Justine Starke on a joint submission for funding from the Canada 
Mortgage and housing Corporation (CMHC) Accelerator Fund 
o A Trustee noted that the building code for tiny homes is a problem 
 
Members of the public noted or asked the following: 
 We don’t need any more single-family homes. Existing secondary suites should 
be legalised, and new secondary suites supported 
 A Director for the Pender Islands Housing Society (PIHS) clarified that they have 
zoning for 8 more units at Plum Tree Court; and their operating agreement and 
funding with BC Housing expires in 2028; and the proposed 8 more units will not 
be connected to BC Housing; rather, no-age-restriction funding is being sought. 
Affordable market rent, which is considered 20% below normal market rent, will 
be applied 
 A Regional exemption for the Southern Gulf Islands should be sought for some 
BC Building Code regulations, as is done in the Okanagan, especially for tiny 
homes 
o Director Brent responded that the CRD has tried for tiny homes but the 
Province has said no; and, that secondary suites are fraught with legal 
and liability issues for the landlord. The Province should backstop tenant 
risk for a housing society 
 Can the Trust or CRD further facilitate the Plum Tree Court project? 
o The PIHS Director noted that the Plumtree Court is zoned for duplex 
buildings only. The new units could be a single building 

 
North Pender Island Local Trust Committee 
Special Meeting 
June 24, 2023 ADOPTED Page 7 of 8 
o A Trustee noted the ‘Community Benefit’ clause in the Official 
Community Plan (OCP) may simplify the Plum Tree Court process 
 We need short-term permits and long-term planning and safety considerations 
for affordable housing 
o A Trustee noted that it was the CRD’s jurisdiction to legalise secondary 
suites, but the Trust could provide a TUP for a trailer while the CRD 
would provide the safety TUP for it 
 There are many illegal Airbnbs that have depleted the long term rental stock 
and are not being enforced 
o A Trustee responded that there are resident present and resident non-
present Airbnbs; the former does not need a permit; the latter must 
seek a TUP and these are being attempted to be enforced 
 Can we have a housing project for North Pender such as has been done on 
Denman, Mayne, and Salt Spring Islands to deal with this housing crisis that is 
not humane? 
 
Planner Smith noted that there were no safety regulations for trailers. 
o Director Brent responded that a $500.00 Notice on Title of a derelict 
building situation can be acquired from or required by the CRD 
 Why do cities have an empty house tax, but we don’t? 
o Director Brent responded that there was not much speculation here in 
2012 when the speculation tax was applied. The Rural Islands Economic 
Partnership has proposed an empty tax for the Southern Gulf Islands for 
direct delivery to affordable housing; the other better option is to direct 
some of the property transfer tax revenues into local communities. 
Currently, that tax is the Provincial Government’s top source of revenue 
 The Southern Gulf Island Housing Strategy Report has references to ‘smart 
growth’ and ‘complete communities’ of concentrated development with green 
spaces in between. But dispersed density is better for available water resources; 
so affordable housing might be better dispersed than concentrated. The West 
Coast Environmental Law Association has determined that the ‘smart growth’ 
model is entirely inappropriate to the Trust area  
 Homeowners are moving into their secondary suites and renting out their main 
homes on a short term basis in a legal loophole that bypasses the intent of the 
secondary suite bylaw to provide long term rentals. Many people do not want to 
be long term landlords 
o A Trustee noted that homeowners did not actively capitalize on the 
secondary suite option legally 
o Director Brent noted that Airbnb provides insurance to homeowners for 
property damage. Governments should be able to duplicate this so that 
long term landlords have greater protection 
o A Trustee noted that the manner in which projects are handled in the 
Trust can be frustrating; and it is not intended to put the environment 
ahead of people. 
  

 
North Pender Island Local Trust Committee 
Special Meeting 
June 24, 2023 ADOPTED Page 8 of 8 
 
4. ADJOURNMENT 
By general consent, the meeting was adjourned at 4:00 p.m. 
 
 
 
 
_________________________ 
David Maude, Chair 
 
 
 
Certified Correct: 
 
 
 
_________________________ 
Katherine Vogt, Recorder