Salt Spring Island Local Trust Committee regular meeting, June 18, 2024

[0:00:00] Trustee Luckham (probable): Jack Falk, Southpender, Grant Scott, Hornby, and Janine Dodds will be joining us.

[0:00:09] Trustee Luckham (probable): And that's it for council.

[0:00:13] Trustee Luckham (probable): So I'm just going to introduce our staff very quickly.

[0:00:17] Trustee Luckham (probable): And I see Daphne is looking after our technology today.

[0:00:22] Trustee Luckham (probable): Thank you.

[0:00:23] Trustee Luckham (probable): here, Director of Land Use Planning is Stéphane Simac, Director Claire Frazier, Trust Area

[0:00:31] Trustee Luckham (probable): Services, Julia Lombs, Director of Administrative Services, and Alexandra Trippanidis, looking

[0:00:41] Trustee Luckham (probable): after our technology and minutes and sound to some extent, hopefully, thank you, Russ

[0:00:46] Trustee Luckham (probable): and uh oh in the corner here is uh joe elliott our senior indigenous uh relations uh um

[0:00:59] Trustee Luckham (probable): liaison and um and then sitting next to me here is our legislative services manager

[0:01:04] Trustee Luckham (probable): uh david marler and he sits with us in the new rapid of managing our meetings kind of like our

[0:01:11] Trustee Luckham (probable): to the curtain and uh the agenda being important so thank you everybody for being here today um i

[0:01:20] Trustee Luckham (probable): want to call the meeting to order at this uh juncture and uh i'm now going to turn uh the

[0:01:26] Trustee Luckham (probable): microphone over to uh uh joe elliott uh to assist us with the land acknowledgement

[0:02:13] Voice 43: Thank you.

[0:02:25] Voice 43: I'd like to introduce myself.

[0:02:26] Voice 43: My English name is Joe Elliott.

[0:02:29] Voice 43: I'm the Mission Advisor for Highland Trust.

[0:02:37] Voice 43: And my home office now is from St. Abel, Waco.

[0:02:42] Voice 43: And I'll explain a little bit about my name

[0:02:44] Voice 43: as I move forward.

[0:02:46] Voice 43: But I think it's important that we acknowledge

[0:02:49] Voice 43: that we're gathered here on the personal territory

[0:02:52] Voice 43: of the Coast Salish and Sarasota people.

[0:02:55] Voice 43: To acknowledge St. Abel as the mainest,

[0:03:02] Voice 43: Malakit, the Laiaksin, the Halal, Tsawwit, Tsarlik, Tzaytl, Haqqachin, Samu'a,

[0:03:21] Voice 43: Huwassin, Tsabassin, and the Cowichan people. The traditional territory of all those

[0:03:29] Voice 43: names that I listed in all those nations, and maybe many more. And this place was

[0:03:36] Voice 43: a gathering place for all of our nations, but also a village for some of the

[0:03:40] Voice 43: wholesalers and central people. And that gathering place was a

[0:03:45] Voice 43: coming to a place and a welcoming to the unity in a

[0:03:49] Voice 43: face of collaboration as I'm processing today for a meeting.

[0:03:53] Voice 43: I believe that we do the land acknowledgement to acknowledge

[0:03:56] Voice 43: the work that's being done that needs to be done to protect and

[0:03:59] Voice 43: preserve the environment. And we're working towards that,

[0:04:03] Voice 43: working in collaboration to make that happen. And it's looking

[0:04:09] Voice 43: at building partnership and relationships with the First

[0:04:15] Voice 43: nation people who once massaged these lands even though i am first nations i continue to do the

[0:04:23] Voice 43: land acknowledgement to remind myself we're a voice for the trees we're a voice for the water

[0:04:30] Voice 43: we're a voice for the land the tumult we're a voice for all life the verbs because we're all

[0:04:37] Voice 43: connected we're all interconnected i believe these are the words from our ancestors who have

[0:04:44] Voice 43: be gone before us. And I do land acknowledge and remind myself I'm a voice for our ancestors.

[0:04:52] Voice 43: I'm a voice for the children that are not here today. I'm a voice for my grandchildren. Just

[0:05:02] Voice 43: acknowledge that everything's connected, everything's related, and we're all connected

[0:05:06] Voice 43: to the environment. Why is it important to the land acknowledgement? It's important to acknowledge

[0:05:14] Voice 43: acknowledge the place that indigenous people, First Nations people, in their place in this

[0:05:22] Voice 43: space, in this tumult of land that we're on. But it's also to acknowledge the historical

[0:05:29] Voice 43: wrongs and the current challenges that our First Nations people still face. But most

[0:05:36] Voice 43: important, it's also to build and foster and build relationships. When we do land acknowledgement,

[0:05:49] Voice 43: that it's not a lot of the land acknowledgement following the PRC report some of our institutions

[0:05:56] Voice 43: have done it prior to that it's become more prevalent after the PRC report and so it's to

[0:06:03] Voice 43: give respect to our first nation people and to build a relationship but you can see the transition

[0:06:10] Voice 43: that has occurred the transition from the head to the heart when we did when our people did work

[0:06:17] Voice 43: in the longhouse when my grandmother who's not with us today when she did work in the longhouse

[0:06:23] Voice 43: she didn't bring paper with her. She remembered the process, the names of people that she called

[0:06:30] Voice 43: for to support the work, and sometimes it could be 80 to 100 people, 100 names, and there's a

[0:06:38] Voice 43: process that was established. So she remembered that up here, from here. Today we're using paper,

[0:06:46] Voice 43: and when you look at the transition from performance of land acknowledgement to a

[0:06:51] Voice 43: place from the head to the heart you'll see a transition occur because you're bringing yourself

[0:06:57] Voice 43: to that place you're bringing yourself to that traditional acknowledgement in regards to building

[0:07:01] Voice 43: a relationship with all people and it will foster a deeper relationship not only between people

[0:07:10] Voice 43: but between us and the environment i like to bring my grandchildren into it because

[0:07:21] Voice 43: because they are my foundation.

[0:07:23] Voice 43: They are my reminder why we do the work that we did.

[0:07:29] Voice 43: When my oldest granddaughter was two and two

[0:07:32] Voice 43: to maybe two and a half years old,

[0:07:35] Voice 43: my wife was telling a story about the whale.

[0:07:39] Voice 43: At times we make up stories,

[0:07:41] Voice 43: elaborate on some of our personal stories,

[0:07:44] Voice 43: and she'd share the story about the whale

[0:07:46] Voice 43: and how it lives with the environment

[0:07:47] Voice 43: and how they live together.

[0:07:50] Voice 43: And my two and a half year old granddaughter

[0:07:52] Voice 43: stopped there in the middle of the story

[0:07:54] Voice 43: And she burned out some words, a few words, a sentence.

[0:07:59] Voice 43: Grandma, I saw whale in its natural habitat.

[0:08:05] Voice 43: You can see that she had to focus to get that sentence out at two and a half years old.

[0:08:11] Voice 43: My other granddaughter, they're both really connected to animals and to bees.

[0:08:20] Voice 43: Last year, she's two years old, and she saw a bumblebee.

[0:08:24] Voice 43: So she wanted to pet it.

[0:08:25] Voice 34: so

[0:08:27] Voice 43: she got bit and so I asked her a few days later how come you were petting the bumblebee

[0:08:33] Voice 43: because it's so beautiful papa so

[0:08:36] Voice 44: I

[0:08:40] Voice 43: shared those stories because it brings us to the connection to

[0:08:44] Voice 43: the importance of maintaining our connection to the ball lake I think it was last week I just

[0:08:51] Voice 43: said you know there we got we got some chickens so we're touching some bugs and some worms and

[0:08:57] Voice 43: fed the chickens a couple days later i said well let's go get the bees and we'll feed it to the

[0:09:03] Voice 43: chickens and both of them said no papa we need those we need the bees and so they have a good

[0:09:10] Voice 43: understanding the importance of bees in all life when i when i moved to senegal maybe 30 years ago

[0:09:23] Voice 43: i was uh even though i carry a formal canadian staff that's from senegal i was my under the

[0:09:33] Voice 43: Indian Act on television. And so I lived in my wife's traditional territory. I was going hunting,

[0:09:41] Voice 43: I was going fishing, and I felt out of place. So I went to Violet's grandfather and asked him for,

[0:09:48] Voice 43: I didn't ask for permission, but I said, I'm feeling like I'm out of place, like I'm not

[0:09:53] Voice 43: going through the proper process. So he brought me to talk to chief and counsel. And so they gave me

[0:10:00] Voice 43: a letter giving me permission to fish and hunt within their traditional territory for for for

[0:10:06] Voice 43: my family and so i felt that was good practice and that's what the plan calls about is building

[0:10:13] Voice 43: that relationship and then 25 years forward our vision in this new name of river and a good friend

[0:10:23] Voice 43: who's a guardian and we played lacrosse we played hockey together we knew each other really well

[0:10:29] Voice 43: he sneaks up behind me hey joe you can't be fishing i said what what do you mean i can't

[0:10:35] Voice 43: be fishing he said i have to stop you then they exchanged words and i swore at him and

[0:10:43] Voice 43: so we continued talking i said my quote looks now it's the waffle with the originations of the name

[0:10:49] Voice 43: on it and i'm fishing for my family he said but unfortunately joe because chief england has

[0:10:55] Voice 43: directed us that you can't fish we're gonna ask us to leave and because he's a good friend i said

[0:11:01] Voice 43: well you know i'm not taking my fish and i walked up to the shore pulled my rod in my thing that

[0:11:07] Voice 43: put the fish in the trunk i wasn't going to let him have my fish but in story short two weeks

[0:11:14] Voice 43: later i said no i have this letter i couldn't find the letter but i have this permission

[0:11:20] Voice 43: and i lived on the on the shore in the waterfront the estuary dumps the name of number one so i'm

[0:11:27] Voice 43: fishing the fish are coming in so i'm pulling in about four or five fish and then uh the chief

[0:11:34] Voice 43: comes out he's looking at me so I thought he was going to stop me then he started guiding me where

[0:11:39] Voice 43: the fish are because he could see them coming in he said that's where the fish is and so the story

[0:11:45] Voice 43: is that he knew that I received this letter permission from some of the older chiefs and

[0:11:50] Voice 43: the leaders at that time and so basically that was him giving me permission to fish in the

[0:11:56] Voice 43: personal territory and I talk and I share this because it's my foremost math walkable

[0:12:05] Voice 43: We talked about displacement. Our First Nation people lived on these lands. We gathered on these

[0:12:13] Voice 43: lands. We had meetings. Some of our people had traditional villages. Their main home was on

[0:12:20] Voice 43: on the lands that we are on today. My homo is now is Tawakal. His son moved to Sene-Neymo

[0:12:33] Voice 43: to work in the mining or in the mill. And so when I looked at my name, my name was being

[0:12:42] Voice 43: transition to my father we thought it came from the naval that when i looked in further it comes from

[0:12:49] Voice 43: the land that we're sitting on today and so we look at our place and if you look at how our

[0:12:56] Voice 43: people have been displaced when there's intermarriages the first nations woman lost

[0:13:03] Voice 43: their status and sometimes as transition so in 1867 when they need that came to place

[0:13:12] Voice 43: A few years later, First Nations women who married non-Native men lost their status.

[0:13:22] Voice 43: And then some of the older children, the male children of the slaini, the grandmother or

[0:13:28] Voice 43: the mother, negotiated some of those lands, and those lands were displaced from our homes

[0:13:36] Voice 43: of our people.

[0:13:38] Voice 43: So I share that displacement because the displacement also prior to contact, I shouldn't have

[0:13:46] Voice 43: had gone to the Chief of Council to ask for permission

[0:13:48] Voice 43: to fish in the Sinaloa River.

[0:13:51] Voice 43: But things have changed.

[0:13:54] Voice 43: Cowichan was one of the first people

[0:13:55] Voice 43: to close the rivers to other members.

[0:13:59] Voice 43: And if we look at our current relationship,

[0:14:02] Voice 43: we, Liyaktsin had a village in our traditional territory.

[0:14:07] Voice 43: So Liyaktsin just recently received some land

[0:14:10] Voice 43: in Cowichan Tribe's traditional territory.

[0:14:13] Voice 43: The natural Liyaktsin received some land back

[0:14:16] Voice 43: in their traditional territory because when we say we're relying on the post-sales people we all

[0:14:23] Voice 43: work together in a complex system we have beaches out here that we shared we had rivers that we

[0:14:31] Voice 43: shared we had camel places that we shared but sometimes those places were managed by a certain

[0:14:36] Voice 43: family so with that i acknowledge and i invite you to come into this traditional territory a place

[0:14:48] Voice 43: to have this conversation so we can continue to work together and sometimes hard conversations

[0:14:54] Voice 43: are really important so the work that you're doing for the islands preserve the tech and

[0:15:00] Voice 43: develop relationship is important so i thank you for that so

[0:15:12] Trustee Luckham (probable): thank you joe for your work and for

[0:15:16] Trustee Luckham (probable): those good words to start off our meeting um a little bit of a diversion from the agenda is um

[0:15:23] Trustee Luckham (probable): We have been joined by Cowichan elder Dan O'Donnell, a guest of Ben Mabry, I believe.

[0:15:31] Trustee Luckham (probable): And I'd like to give Dan an opportunity, Cowichan member, an opportunity to revet Council at this time.

[0:15:38] Voice 44: Thank you.

[0:15:40] Voice 44: Hello, Council. I'm Dan O'Donnell, a great-great-grandson of Waukega,

[0:16:02] Voice 44: who was originally from Silver Spring at Cowichan.

[0:16:06] Voice 44: and I'm an intelligent member.

[0:16:08] Voice 44: I do not speak for intelligent governance.

[0:16:12] Voice 44: I speak as a member or in my,

[0:16:19] Voice 44: myself being as my family being in our traditional territory

[0:16:23] Voice 44: where we have the luxury of being able to say

[0:16:25] Voice 44: that our family has never not been on something like this

[0:16:30] Voice 44: for how many years that has done.

[0:16:34] Voice 44: We, as a group, we were able to stay on Salt Spring Island through my great-great-grandmother

[0:16:47] Voice 44: marrying an Irish immigrant, and through that we lost our culture, we lost a lot of our

[0:16:57] Voice 44: culture.

[0:16:58] Voice 44: What we did retain was that we were still connected to the lands here, we hunted, we

[0:17:07] Voice 44: fished, we worked here, we shared the resources that we had with our cousins and relatives

[0:17:17] Voice 44: from Cowichan, and we're trying to, as now, as a group, to re-bridge those gaps that we

[0:17:29] Voice 44: to help hunting and gathering on these properties.

[0:17:37] Voice 44: But what we face as a group now that I had the luxury

[0:17:43] Voice 44: of growing up basically on the south end of South America,

[0:17:48] Voice 44: where we could go, we have mountains,

[0:17:51] Voice 44: where if you have two cranes or a sheep,

[0:17:55] Voice 44: We hunted, we heard about probably all those in our little island, but since, uh, tribal

[0:18:02] Voice 44: ownership and, uh, sadly enough, um, some of the conservancy lands that, um, the Wilkesburg

[0:18:13] Voice 44: got out and the access was blocked. So

[0:18:16] Voice 44: we hear from, from our, a lot of, a lot of any other kids and that, uh, there's nowhere for

[0:18:24] Voice 44: them to go.

[0:18:25] Voice 44: And they don't know where to go. They don't know. And we as a group have been initiating hunting over these things.

[0:18:38] Voice 44: But I'm just wondering for the council, the press council, what can we do to make access to First Nations

[0:18:48] Voice 44: so we can traditionally use this land as we did traditionally before for areas that whether they're

[0:18:59] Voice 44: out in the harbors, the plant beds, the wheel grass, any of that stuff like that.

[0:19:10] Voice 44: If we talk of the crosswalks of reconciliation, what is taking place to be able to protect these

[0:19:21] Voice 44: during this and to make sure that we can continue to do what we're doing thank you

[0:19:28] Voice 44: and

[0:19:35] Trustee Luckham (probable): thank you for joining us today and thank you for your uh kind words um so that

[0:19:44] Trustee Luckham (probable): one more actual thing prior to approval of our agenda is i just want to recognize that

[0:19:50] Trustee Luckham (probable): friday this friday is national aboriginal people's day and there's lots of opportunities across the

[0:19:58] Trustee Luckham (probable): countries but particularly in our immediate area to uh participate in celebration and recognition

[0:20:05] Trustee Luckham (probable): of the aboriginal peoples and i encourage you all to take that opportunity or at least spend

[0:20:10] Trustee Luckham (probable): some time to reflect on the history of this place so with that said um i'm going to now move to

[0:20:18] Trustee Luckham (probable): review of our agenda and approval of the agenda and um certainly many of you have submitted items

[0:20:26] Trustee Luckham (probable): and new business items that are on our agenda.

[0:20:29] Trustee Luckham (probable): I just want to advise and ask for your permission

[0:20:32] Trustee Luckham (probable): of one thing, and then I'll ask you for other additional

[0:20:37] Trustee Luckham (probable): items that you might want to consider.

[0:20:39] Trustee Luckham (probable): But at the end of our meeting on Thursday,

[0:20:43] Trustee Luckham (probable): it has become apparent of the two things.

[0:20:45] Trustee Luckham (probable): Committee as a whole is topmost on our minds.

[0:20:48] Trustee Luckham (probable): And there's a meeting that is tentatively scheduled

[0:20:51] Trustee Luckham (probable): for July 8th in the morning.

[0:20:54] Trustee Luckham (probable): It's the time the time that has been selected for that and so I want to add an item at

[0:20:59] Trustee Luckham (probable): 220.1 that will be a formal motion to adopt that as a meeting time and date and then secondly

[0:21:08] Trustee Luckham (probable): there's been a lot of consideration and you saw the

[0:21:13] Trustee Luckham (probable): request for expressions of interest to chair the community of the whole meeting next and of course the logistics of that are

[0:21:20] Trustee Luckham (probable): something that personally i want to have run smoothly and efficiently and it strikes me that

[0:21:27] Trustee Luckham (probable): whomever the person is that is chosen by you to uh chair the committee the whole next should have the

[0:21:34] Trustee Luckham (probable): opportunity to be able to be available on the on that date and have the opportunity to prepare

[0:21:39] Trustee Luckham (probable): for that meeting and so we've had four expressions of interest on uh those who would like to chair

[0:21:46] Trustee Luckham (probable): chair of the next committee of a whole. And that is going to be, that list is Tim Peterson,

[0:21:53] Trustee Luckham (probable): David Maud, Toby Elliott, and Joe Bernardo. And so what I'm proposing, and seeking your

[0:22:00] Trustee Luckham (probable): endorsement to add it to the agenda, is that we indeed have a little election. After we've

[0:22:07] Trustee Luckham (probable): confirmed the date, we have an election, and that those individuals that have expressed an interest

[0:22:12] Trustee Luckham (probable): could be nominated from the floor and then if there's more than one person we would just conduct

[0:22:18] Trustee Luckham (probable): a a secret vote thing where we'd hand around a piece of paper people would fill out a name

[0:22:23] Trustee Luckham (probable): and we would pick an adjudicator and have the in-staff person to to count the votes and then

[0:22:29] Trustee Luckham (probable): that would be determined at the end of this meeting who would chair the next vote in the hall

[0:22:34] Trustee Luckham (probable): and that would give that individual the opportunity to engage the staff and prepare for that

[0:22:40] Trustee Luckham (probable): So I want to ask you, does that seem reasonable and fair, and can I add that to the agenda?

[0:22:47] Trustee Luckham (probable): So on the item that I've just mentioned, I've seen a few nods around the room, so maybe

[0:22:52] Trustee Luckham (probable): if there are any concerns about that, and I see there's a hand up on the screen that

[0:22:57] Trustee Luckham (probable): I'd like to go to.

[0:23:00] Trustee Luckham (probable): So Mayrudy Boland, over to you on the topic of voting for the Committee of the Whole Chair.

[0:23:07] Trustee Luckham (probable): um

[0:23:08] Voice 23: hello um i don't think it's necessary to vote

[0:23:11] Voice 23: well i'm unmuted no can't hear you

[0:23:18] Voice 23: but she's can the other people who are on zoom hear me i

[0:23:28] Voice 10: can hear you i can hear you fine

[0:23:30] Voice 10: yeah

[0:23:31] Voice 23: so there's something wrong at the at your end um something wrong here

[0:23:46] Voice 38: trustee boland uh they've said a note that they're working on it

[0:23:52] Voice 23: pardon

[0:23:52] Voice 38: they're working on the audio issue right now okay

[0:23:58] Voice 23: well can you communicate what i have to

[0:24:00] Voice 23: say or is there they

[0:24:02] Voice 38: can't hear me

[0:24:03] Voice 23: okay sure okay well i hope they can hear me by the time it comes

[0:24:11] Voice 23: the trust grant table yeah okay i'll just wait if we can switch back to being able to hear the

[0:24:21] Voice 23: meeting i'm content to leave what i have to say until the issue of the committee of the whole

[0:24:28] Voice 23: chair arises again

[0:24:30] Voice 38: trustee boland um they are having audio issues all the way around none of

[0:24:35] Voice 38: us can hear the meeting either so the the it is

[0:24:39] Voice 38: working on it

[0:24:40] Voice 23: okay okay

[0:24:42] Voice 38: yeah

[0:24:43] Trustee Luckham (probable): uh march 20 early

[0:24:45] Trustee Luckham (probable): draft meeting minutes and the resolution without meeting report is there any need for discussion on

[0:24:50] Trustee Luckham (probable): those items or shall we just receive and um and uh adopt them as presented looks like that's what

[0:25:00] Trustee Luckham (probable): we're going to do so thank you very much so the one discussion can you hear us now

[0:25:04] Trustee Luckham (probable): just curious can you hear me

[0:25:09] Voice 23: yes i can okay

[0:25:12] Trustee Luckham (probable): it's working thank you

[0:25:14] Trustee Luckham (probable): and apologies for that technology glitch so um you probably have followed uh

[0:25:23] Trustee Luckham (probable): mary boland that we're now at discussion and decision items of trustee roundtable

[0:25:28] Trustee Luckham (probable): and while we have you online why don't we start with you and then we'll go to dag

[0:25:34] Trustee Luckham (probable): And I'm going to start at the right-hand side of the room and go around.

[0:25:38] Trustee Luckham (probable): So, Mary Boland, the floor is yours for your roundtable.

[0:25:46] Voice 23: Try

[0:25:46] Trustee Luckham (probable): and keep it to two minutes in order for us to get through.

[0:25:51] Trustee Luckham (probable): Thank you.

[0:25:52] Voice 23: I've written it down, so it's more or less two minutes.

[0:25:55] Voice 23: And if I lose audio, Lee Middleton will act on my behalf.

[0:26:02] Voice 23: Thanks.

[0:26:03] Voice 23: And

[0:26:04] Trustee Luckham (probable): before you go, I've asked Trustee Toby Elliott to run a timer to try and keep us on track on the two minutes so that we're fair to everybody.

[0:26:16] Trustee Luckham (probable): And she's going to look after that. So if you hear from her, time to.

[0:26:20] Trustee Luckham (probable): Yeah,

[0:26:20] Voice 23: I think if I run over a little, I think Lee will compensate.

[0:26:24] Voice 23: So I've asked him and I can go into his two minutes a little as well.

[0:26:29] Voice 23: Okay, here goes. In September 2022, Minister Cullen, as Minister for Municipal Affairs,

[0:26:39] Voice 23: asked for the thoughts of the new terms trustees on the request for a review of the trust by the

[0:26:45] Voice 23: province before he would consider any action. After two years in the position as trustee,

[0:26:52] Voice 23: here are my thoughts. The Islands Trust was needed 50 years ago and much has been achieved.

[0:26:58] Voice 23: However, in 2024, it is a structurally unsigned organisation that cannot find its way.

[0:27:07] Voice 23: The language of its founding act is ambiguous and allows endless re-questioning of its purpose by the very people who are elected to undertake it.

[0:27:18] Voice 23: How many local governments repeatedly seek legal opinions on the meaning of the mandate they have been given?

[0:27:24] Voice 23: arguably the work of the islands trust act was complete in the mid-90s when each island had an

[0:27:31] Voice 23: official community plan which could be used to manage growth now a budget of 10 million 65 staff

[0:27:38] Voice 23: and 26 trustees are required to do what is described at its core as land use management

[0:27:45] Voice 23: for a population of 30 000 because of the ambiguity of the directive and the scale and

[0:27:53] Voice 23: range of the tasks undertaken, many plans do not deliver as promised. The important requirements

[0:27:59] Voice 23: to engage respectfully and fruitfully with 27 First Nations, seven regional districts and a

[0:28:06] Voice 23: municipal district places a burden of complexity on the shoulders of the trust that we cannot

[0:28:13] Voice 23: afford. Unequal representation across the islands creates imbalance. Islands ranging from a population

[0:28:22] Voice 23: of 12,000 to 305 have two elected trustees each. In summary, we are too wounded to heal ourselves.

[0:28:33] Voice 23: We are propping up, repairing and limping on with a governance structure whose time has passed

[0:28:38] Voice 23: and that hinders us. Is that how we want to manage our islands and our communities?

[0:28:44] Voice 23: I echo the appeal to the Minister for Municipal Affairs made by the previous term's trustees

[0:28:50] Voice 23: trustees for the province to review the structure and governance of the Islands Trust.

[0:28:56] Voice 23: I hope that the governance committee

[0:28:57] Voice 23: of the Islands Trust will urgently create a new request for a review,

[0:29:02] Voice 23: as has been asked for the past two years. Minister Kang,

[0:29:07] Voice 23: I urge you to listen to these requests from elected trustees, both past and

[0:29:12] Voice 23: present, and review and update the governance of these beautiful islands so

[0:29:17] Voice 23: so that people are content to pay fair taxes.

[0:29:21] Voice 23: Respectfully, Mairead Boland,

[0:29:23] Voice 23: Trustee for Southerner Island, June 2024.

[0:29:27] Voice 23: I'd appreciate this being included in the minutes.

[0:29:29] Voice 23: I'll send a copy,

[0:29:30] Voice 23: and I intend to send it to Minister Kang myself.

[0:29:34] Voice 23: Thank you for listening.

[0:29:36] Trustee Luckham (probable): Thank you.

[0:29:38] Trustee Luckham (probable): And thank you.

[0:29:40] Trustee Luckham (probable): Let us go to the head of the table there,

[0:29:43] Trustee Luckham (probable): and we'll go with Sam Borswick.

[0:29:44] Trustee Luckham (probable): Oh, sorry.

[0:29:46] Trustee Luckham (probable): I've got to stop micromanaging. Jump in. Trustee Falk.

[0:29:53] Voice 10: Yes, thank you. No worries, Peter. I haven't got anything.

[0:30:00] Voice 10: to update just happy to be attending via zoom and sorry I couldn't be there in person and I'm

[0:30:07] Voice 10: being as present as I can be thank you.

[0:30:11] Voice 47: Trustee Scott.

[0:30:19] Voice 7: Thank you to be very brief I'd just like

[0:30:23] Voice 7: to say that we and we being Alex and I and Tim and the trustees from Denman met with us

[0:30:33] Voice 7: CVRD and with Comox Nation in the last short while we went over STRs we went over relationship

[0:30:40] Voice 7: with both particularly with Comox and how we could assist them to better manage protecting

[0:30:47] Voice 7: the culture and heritage sites of the nation on Hornby and I'd just like to echo what trustee

[0:30:58] Voice 7: Boland said, there's a lot of people on Hornby feel the same way as she expressed. So I think

[0:31:06] Voice 7: I'll just leave it at that. Thank you.

[0:31:11] Voice 47: Thank you. Okay, so we'll start the roundtable with

[0:31:14] Voice 47: Trustee Maberly.

[0:31:20] Voice 8: Thanks. I was worried there was going to be no time left by the time it got back

[0:31:25] Voice 8: to me. So I was just sort of reflecting as I come into this meeting. We're coming up two years now

[0:31:31] Voice 8: on our on our term, both me and Lisa first term. And you sort of go into these things with us,

[0:31:36] Voice 8: of an expectation of progress um when you start because of course you're full of something in

[0:31:43] Voice 8: vinegar when you start and and um you quickly realize the reality of the situation i guess

[0:31:50] Voice 8: you put it and so i look at what we're doing on galliano um you know we've been and you know

[0:31:59] Voice 8: going on some great work that lisa did prior to getting elected um we're hoping that the

[0:32:04] Voice 8: the Giggers Housing Project is going to break ground this fall.

[0:32:08] Voice 8: That's the rumor, and we're pretty excited about that.

[0:32:13] Voice 8: It would mean the 24 units coming to Galliano,

[0:32:17] Voice 8: which is the equivalent, basically, of putting 3,500 new homes in Victoria.

[0:32:22] Voice 8: So that's a big, big thing,

[0:32:24] Voice 8: and the amount of work that Lisa's put into that,

[0:32:28] Voice 8: sort of congratulate her on that.

[0:32:31] Voice 8: um working on long-standing issues with highways you know and getting um some things worked out

[0:32:38] Voice 8: and you work with the community you work with highways and you try and reach agreements and then

[0:32:43] Voice 8: everything looks like it's a go and then you wait right and so it's always that it's always speed

[0:32:50] Voice 8: of process and and one thing that i am excited about is we're working on a couple applications

[0:32:55] Voice 8: with the penelicate nation to be able to give land back to the penelicate nation

[0:33:00] Voice 8: and this is very near and dear to my heart but when i listen to joe and dan speak and about

[0:33:07] Voice 8: and you you talk about you know

[0:33:10] Voice 8: they talk about all the things that were lost right and the fact

[0:33:14] Voice 8: that maybe we're going to step in that direction and start to return some of those things that

[0:33:19] Voice 8: were lost and give them the ability to um to exercise those those traditional uses of those

[0:33:25] Voice 8: lands um that's very exciting for me and and i realize like i say we're two years in and

[0:33:32] Voice 8: would i personally like to be further ahead absolutely but um um it is what it is

[0:33:39] Voice 8: right and so um i'm just hoping as we as we go into the next two years that um this body

[0:33:49] Voice 8: um understands and takes heart as joe put it in in those words of about working together and

[0:33:56] Voice 8: and trying to return some of those lost things.

[0:33:59] Voice 8: So I'm looking forward to the next two years.

[0:34:04] Trustee Luckham (probable): And just before we move to Jamie

[0:34:06] Trustee Luckham (probable): to provide full information,

[0:34:08] Trustee Luckham (probable): Toby's keeping track of time.

[0:34:10] Trustee Luckham (probable): She's got two colored pieces of paper.

[0:34:12] Trustee Luckham (probable): Purple means I think one minute remaining, 30 seconds.

[0:34:16] Trustee Luckham (probable): And orange means it's time to pass the stick

[0:34:19] Trustee Luckham (probable): to the next person.

[0:34:20] Trustee Luckham (probable): So there you go, full information over to you, Jamie.

[0:34:23] Trustee Luckham (probable): Thank you.

[0:34:24] Voice 14: After being in the trustee position here

[0:34:27] Voice 14: on salt spring island um elected into this position on the island with the largest population

[0:34:34] Voice 14: and uh by far the largest tax contribution of the organization and and having experienced the

[0:34:41] Voice 14: dysfunction of the organization a dysfunction that is widely known amongst many in the community here

[0:34:46] Voice 14: on spring island i have come to the conclusion that this organization is not repairable our

[0:34:52] Voice 14: community which includes a large number of local first nations is in need of a functioning

[0:34:56] Voice 14: in government government brother and we need strong leadership to heal the damage that the

[0:35:02] Voice 14: dysfunction um the dysfunctional governance has caused i ask all the trustees here to please

[0:35:09] Voice 14: consider the dire situation of the salt spring island community faces and to join with me and

[0:35:15] Voice 14: asking the provincial government to change the legislation to allow salt spring island to be

[0:35:18] Voice 14: released from the islands trust act and that a municipal structure be made mandatory for salt

[0:35:24] Voice 14: spring island and or at the very least we joined together and asking the provincial government

[0:35:30] Voice 14: for another municipal um referendum or assault for salt spring island where the island's trust

[0:35:37] Voice 14: would have no place um you know after hearing the local first nations speaking um

[0:35:45] Voice 14: you know i realized what i just spoke about is something that isn't going to happen overnight

[0:35:50] Voice 14: and couldn't happen overnight but i do implore that everybody really think about the situation

[0:35:56] Voice 14: that salt spring faces we are in a dire spot here um we don't have to get into all the gory details

[0:36:03] Voice 14: um but i do realize that this would take time in the meantime i really would love um that some

[0:36:11] Voice 14: serious conversation be had about um reconciliation with local first nations and that um you know

[0:36:20] Voice 14: trust council might look at a motion at some point um on considering how the transfer of

[0:36:26] Voice 14: conservancy land present and future to local first nations could be implemented um i think that's

[0:36:32] Voice 14: that would be a very positive step um and a real step for reconciliation i'll leave it there thank

[0:36:39] Voice 14: you

[0:36:43] Voice 12: okay i'll catch everybody up speed time speed wise um for for pender it's been um sort of a

[0:36:53] Voice 12: usual to to not get um as excited about some of the things that we deal with uh on the larger trust

[0:37:02] Voice 12: scale um and hear more about uh local local type things our our house we have a housing

[0:37:10] Voice 12: issue for sure but it does doesn't seem to have uh quite the same impact that it's having on some of

[0:37:17] Voice 12: the other islands um people are are still quite easily able to find housing in different places

[0:37:24] Voice 12: if they are already on the island um but still an important um thing to focus on because it's

[0:37:33] Voice 12: coming regardless of whether we want it to or not um most of this last quarter was quite quiet

[0:37:42] Voice 12: it until uh we the trifecta of the policy statement the 50th anniversary and uh there was

[0:37:50] Voice 12: one other thing that popped in that was uh threw everybody into a bit of a tizzy but uh it's been

[0:37:56] Voice 12: generally pretty good

[0:38:00] Voice 19: um gee i wish denman was able to say that our young people had no trouble

[0:38:09] Voice 19: finding housing but but they do um most of our 1300 people look like me and not enough look like

[0:38:15] Voice 19: my co-trustee trustee barthwick the youngest trustee at the table and that's a crisis if you

[0:38:22] Voice 19: want a sustainable and resilient community so 15 years ago the denman local trust committee of the

[0:38:27] Voice 19: day stopped enforcing illegal housing illegal housing that had existed for decades and i think

[0:38:34] Voice 19: this fall we may be looking at draft bylaws which will make those legal and allow people who own

[0:38:39] Voice 19: land and choose to to share their land and perhaps increase the rental opportunities on them and that

[0:38:47] Voice 19: that will go a long ways to creating an environment where we can work on conservation

[0:38:54] Voice 19: projects and other things thank you all

[0:39:05] Voice 27: right let's skitty it's been a quiet spring but

[0:39:11] Voice 27: some of the stuff that's been going on is our hall has gotten a fantastic new sound system

[0:39:15] Voice 27: that i think was i'm not i don't know a lot about sound systems but i believe they were not even

[0:39:21] Voice 27: using a digital board which is very old so our beautiful hall which is huge for this our

[0:39:27] Voice 27: population is getting some great events happening and yeah roof is being raised when we dance

[0:39:33] Voice 27: um i heard a report today that our rainwater is for the uh the lit pete's lake which

[0:39:41] Voice 27: does a huge amount of our north end water source has the same level of water as it did in april

[0:39:48] Voice 27: 2023 so we have incredible hopefully not going to have be running out of water this year as badly

[0:39:54] Voice 27: as we did not we didn't run out but it was getting a bit scary near the end of the summer

[0:40:00] Voice 27: and what's also happened is i'm sure many of you heard that the pharmacists are now allowed to

[0:40:05] Voice 27: prescribe some certain medications and it also has gone to other um medical situations so on

[0:40:13] Voice 27: the only medical we have is first responders and until the scope update they were not allowed

[0:40:18] Voice 27: to give an epi pen or give um glucogen if you had a low blood sugar a lot of things they should be

[0:40:25] Voice 27: able to do because we're very very remote our best time is 90 minutes to get to the paramedics

[0:40:31] Voice 27: so yeah it's been it's a great that we're going to be able to help people a bit more and yeah

[0:40:38] Voice 27: our summer is coming up lots of events and things happening is and busy busy in the garden

[0:40:51] Voice 31: so gabriela local trust area first i want to thank um trustee critchley for that word share

[0:40:57] Voice 31: that is just so important when we're talking about land on all of the trust islands

[0:41:05] Voice 31: and our governance that word sorry i meant trustee graham

[0:41:12] Voice 31: i have a really good memory of talking to trustee critchley about this same thing and housing on the

[0:41:21] Voice 31: trust islands and sharing is where it's at but onto onto the gabriela trust area

[0:41:27] Voice 31: thanks to our regional planning manager renee jamarat and some incredible groundwork done by

[0:41:34] Voice 31: by my co-trustee, Toby Elliott.

[0:41:36] Voice 31: We are meeting, we have regular meetings scheduled

[0:41:40] Voice 31: government to government with First Nation.

[0:41:44] Voice 31: And so far they've been really positive

[0:41:47] Voice 31: and I'm really happy about that.

[0:41:51] Voice 31: We're working on our official community plan.

[0:41:54] Voice 31: It's coming along a little too slow for my preference,

[0:41:59] Voice 31: but I think we spent a lot of time in the visioning process

[0:42:03] Voice 31: which is really good.

[0:42:04] Voice 31: And I'm really happy with Planner Nerissa Chadwick's assistance.

[0:42:10] Voice 31: She's really been able to parse all of the elements

[0:42:16] Voice 31: that we need to think about for our OCP.

[0:42:19] Voice 31: And so I think it's going to go well.

[0:42:22] Voice 31: And I'm so thankful to Trust Council for approving that $70,000

[0:42:28] Voice 31: that we needed for the water budget that's part of our OCP.

[0:42:33] Voice 31: So just one last little thing here that you might appreciate

[0:42:36] Voice 31: if you were on Gabriola Island for the September Trust Council

[0:42:41] Voice 31: and you may have visited the, it was in progress at the time,

[0:42:45] Voice 31: the Makerspace at our recycling depot.

[0:42:50] Voice 31: And it is now, it's just about to have its grand opening.

[0:42:55] Voice 31: And so I just want to tell you all next time you're on Gabriola,

[0:42:59] Voice 31: it's going to be a fabulous place to visit.

[0:43:02] Voice 31: Thank you.

[0:43:03] Voice 31: All right.

[0:43:13] Voice 16: Well, Hornby continually also has issues with vacation rentals and then it's cell tower.

[0:43:19] Voice 16: Now, if you haven't been paying attention to the news, it's the Provincial Park Trooping.

[0:43:26] Voice 16: They said it was going to be low impact, and it's not at all.

[0:43:30] Voice 16: We've got a huge petition that's on change.org.

[0:43:34] Voice 16: We've got it at the point this morning was 5,370 signatures.

[0:43:43] Voice 16: Basically, it's over the top.

[0:43:47] Voice 16: So what's going to happen is the walk-in campsites can require 3,030 cubic meters of rock and

[0:43:57] Voice 16: gravel, which is 300 to 350 dump trucks.

[0:44:03] Voice 16: And then the existing campground is going to have 11,185 cubic meters of rock and gravel,

[0:44:10] Voice 16: which could be 1,200 to 1,300 truckloads and so the contractors are going to be

[0:44:18] Voice 16: barging all these trucks the construction starts in October and it's

[0:44:25] Voice 16: not low impact at all and it's it's it's for me is very restless again about this

[0:44:31] Voice 16: and and we're not sure what to do about this so our last meeting we did right we

[0:44:36] Voice 16: We did approve a motion to send a letter to the province saying the concerns of our community and how many signatures there are.

[0:44:45] Voice 16: And hopefully we'll hear it because what's happened is that they've come, they said they're going to do a certain process.

[0:44:50] Voice 16: They said they consulted with us, but every time they keep on changing their plans and making it bigger and bigger.

[0:44:57] Voice 16: And when they initially started and purchased these two properties, one they didn't look at was complete wetlands.

[0:45:04] Voice 16: And that was where they were going to expand the campground, and so now they moved to this lovely trail where there's old growth, endangered species, and it's just ridiculous.

[0:45:15] Voice 16: And so it's a big deal.

[0:45:20] Voice 16: And what else?

[0:45:22] Voice 16: Yeah, it's environmentally sensitive wetlands is where they're going to be putting the new campground.

[0:45:29] Voice 16: and this is a walk-in campground and they're going to have additional

[0:45:32] Voice 16: parking spaces for this walk-in campground

[0:45:38] Voice 16: and then I'll just say, add with a positive note that

[0:45:42] Voice 16: as Grant said, we had a great meeting with the Colmar Six Nations which was the first

[0:45:45] Voice 16: time in person, politician-politician

[0:45:49] Voice 16: since 2017 so hopefully we'll have more and that's

[0:45:53] Voice 16: it, thank you.

[0:46:01] Voice 41: Sue Ellen Fast here from Bowen Island and

[0:46:03] Voice 41: And I'll let Judy pick up what I don't catch.

[0:46:09] Voice 41: Bowen is now in its 24th year of being a municipality.

[0:46:13] Voice 41: So I thought I'd just mention a few things now that we're talking about the 50th anniversary of the trust.

[0:46:19] Voice 41: It's almost half we've been a municipality.

[0:46:21] Voice 41: And just this past quarter, since the last Trust Council meeting, Bowen staff opened up the boxes of files that had been shipped from Islands Trust and began to digitize them.

[0:46:37] Voice 41: So it takes a long time for files and systems and everything to be incorporated when you start out with a small group of staff in a few dispersed little office spaces, and you don't know how exactly it's going to go.

[0:46:56] Voice 41: Anyway, just one indication.

[0:47:00] Voice 41: We've also passed, we're about to be opening a community center, but I'm going to let Judy speak to that in terms of a hall.

[0:47:10] Voice 41: It takes us from being a bedroom community into being more of a resilient island community that can have halls like the rest of you wonderful islands do.

[0:47:23] Voice 41: do. And biking tourism, Bill 44. Anyway, I could go on and on. But I'm realizing that the main thing

[0:47:31] Voice 41: I wanted to say is that since we've become a municipality, last year, in grants, we received

[0:47:38] Voice 41: $7,745,000 worth of grants. This is something you can do as a municipality. It took us 10 years to

[0:47:46] Voice 41: get to that spot or over that and that only started about 10 years ago so that's how we're

[0:47:53] Voice 41: building community hall multi-use pathway and connecting water systems things like that so it's

[0:48:02] Voice 41: a very different world over on Bowen but in many ways we're an island in the island's trust we

[0:48:07] Voice 41: We treasure the rural character.

[0:48:09] Voice 41: Thank you.

[0:48:14] Voice 41: Thank you.

[0:48:17] Voice 42: On Gambier, I'll let my esteemed fellow trustee, Bernardo, talk about Keats, because that's how we do things in our little area.

[0:48:29] Voice 42: But on Gambier, the OCP is coming along since, what, 2017?

[0:48:37] Voice 42: We're still chugging along.

[0:48:38] Voice 42: But we had a very good response from the Squamish Nation Rights and Titles staff regarding the priorities and vision for the Squamish and one of the more important islands in their territory.

[0:48:55] Voice 42: and I was really happy to see that a lot of the priorities

[0:49:01] Voice 42: that the local community has are the very same ones

[0:49:05] Voice 42: that we're seeing from the rights and title staff.

[0:49:09] Voice 42: So this is just the beginning,

[0:49:10] Voice 42: but it was really a great opportunity

[0:49:13] Voice 42: to start that process again

[0:49:17] Voice 42: and see where we can go to welcoming Squamish Nation people back

[0:49:25] Voice 42: back onto Gambier Island, to Altonwich.

[0:49:29] Voice 42: The Gambier community continues to work with various levels of government

[0:49:34] Voice 42: to find a long-term ownership and management solution

[0:49:38] Voice 42: to our primary access point, the New Brighton Dock.

[0:49:42] Voice 42: And for those of you who've been around the table for a few years,

[0:49:46] Voice 42: this has been a good 10 years that I've been working on this.

[0:49:50] Voice 42: I think the positive change has been that

[0:49:53] Voice 42: that the Njikai Development Corporation,

[0:49:58] Voice 42: which is the current owners of the dock,

[0:50:00] Voice 42: that's the corporate arm of Squamish Nation,

[0:50:03] Voice 42: is fully on board to seeing a provincial solution

[0:50:07] Voice 42: to this very important access point.

[0:50:12] Voice 42: I'd just do a quick shout out to our past president

[0:50:17] Voice 42: of the Gambier Island Conservancy, Peter Schofield.

[0:50:22] Voice 42: He has been a member for, he's been the chair for 20 years, and he's just finally stepped down and really brought the Gambier Conservancy to a point where we look at some of the largest reserve areas in the Islands Trust.

[0:50:40] Voice 42: And he continues to be such an important member of our small community.

[0:50:45] Voice 42: And very finally, the islanders on Gambier are on alert for the imminent arrival of wood fiber LNGs flotel.

[0:50:55] Voice 42: As apparently, according to today, it's supposed to end up in Howe Sound by Friday.

[0:51:01] Voice 42: And there is a good possibility that it could be parked within the Gambier-Keats marine area.

[0:51:09] Voice 42: So we're on alert. Thank you.

[0:51:12] Voice 42: so

[0:51:16] Voice 18: um some trustees may remember uh trustee laroni and i talked a little bit about our

[0:51:23] Voice 18: ferry situation uh on the skidi over the last year um last spring we had uh some really great

[0:51:30] Voice 18: staff members quit en masse um they had identified unresolved safety issues as a big part of the

[0:51:37] Voice 18: reason they left and we had a very um disrupted summer with some uh staff that really did not

[0:51:48] Voice 18: seem to understand that the ferry is a public service um that was somewhat resolved in the fall

[0:51:55] Voice 18: but recently we had a resident foi some information from transport canada around the

[0:52:03] Voice 18: safety inspections of last year and that really confirmed that the staff that left last spring

[0:52:08] Voice 18: were completely in the right.

[0:52:11] Voice 18: They had addressed their safety concerns

[0:52:15] Voice 18: to the company, the contractor.

[0:52:18] Voice 18: Those were not addressed

[0:52:20] Voice 18: and they felt from a professional point of view

[0:52:22] Voice 18: they couldn't continue working in that environment

[0:52:24] Voice 18: on that boat.

[0:52:27] Voice 18: Happily, Transport Canada has said

[0:52:30] Voice 18: that those safety concerns

[0:52:32] Voice 18: have been substantially addressed

[0:52:34] Voice 18: in the intervening time

[0:52:35] Voice 18: since the July report that was FOI'd.

[0:52:37] Voice 18: But it was I think it was good for for residents to know that when those staff left last year, they left for good reason and that the their safety concerns were completely validated by the Transport Canada inspection of last summer.

[0:52:55] Voice 18: There are some rather scathing remarks from the inspector in those FOI documents.

[0:53:03] Voice 18: A new contract was signed at the end of March.

[0:53:09] Voice 18: There are some minor improvements to the contract over the previous contract,

[0:53:12] Voice 18: but it remains to be seen how that's going to play out in terms of accountability

[0:53:16] Voice 18: when the contractor does not fulfill the terms of the contract they signed, as has happened in the past.

[0:53:23] Voice 18: So we're looking forward to seeing the contract itself.

[0:53:27] Voice 18: It's under FOI request at this point.

[0:53:30] Voice 18: Haven't got our eyes fully on it.

[0:53:32] Voice 18: So interesting developments there.

[0:53:37] Voice 18: Of course, every island's unique, but Liskety has the only subcontracted ferry service.

[0:53:44] Voice 18: And I'll leave it there.

[0:53:48] Voice 47: Thank you, Tim.

[0:53:50] Voice 47: Main Island remains a very busy and vibrant community.

[0:53:54] Voice 47: from a land local trust committee perspective we're just finishing up updates to our

[0:53:59] Voice 47: land use bylaw it's basically housekeeping nothing too major and I think the biggest

[0:54:06] Voice 47: fight that we had was over the the maximum size of a patio so if that's the fight you're

[0:54:13] Voice 47: going to have you know it's a good fight so we're doing good there we're still struggling with deer

[0:54:17] Voice 47: deer, both black tail and fallow. Their destructive influence on the ecosystems is phenomenal.

[0:54:28] Voice 47: The understory is gone. Juvenile trees virtually don't exist. It's a very, very serious thing.

[0:54:36] Voice 47: Trustee Dodge heads up the local deer committee, endlessly trying to lobby with the province.

[0:54:43] Voice 47: Sometimes they make advances, sometimes they don't, but it's very, very frustrating because the ticker on the fallow end of things, this is a man-made situation by the humans of British Columbia, endorsed by the province of British Columbia, and nobody wants to do anything about it except for the people of Maine Island.

[0:55:02] Voice 47: And it's very, very frustrating. And I admire Trustee Dodds for her ongoing tenacity. It's literally you're beating your head against a wall.

[0:55:13] Voice 47: um on a happier note um this this weekend is the campbell bay music festival it's a long um

[0:55:20] Voice 47: outstanding um event on main island on friday um we're going to have a second house poll

[0:55:27] Voice 47: unveiled by the first nations artist chas elliott has been carved by chas and his family

[0:55:35] Voice 47: um they unveiled one last year this will be the second one um it's just amazing beautiful art

[0:55:44] Voice 47: and the work that the music festival's done

[0:55:48] Voice 47: to integrate with the Elliott family.

[0:55:51] Voice 47: It's just been amazing.

[0:55:54] Voice 47: It's going to be a good weekend,

[0:55:55] Voice 47: and invite everybody to attend.

[0:55:57] Voice 47: Thank you.

[0:56:02] Trustee Luckham (probable): I'm going to desperately try and avoid the orange flag.

[0:56:07] Trustee Luckham (probable): But I'm going to follow on Trustee Maude's comments,

[0:56:11] Trustee Luckham (probable): vibrant community.

[0:56:12] Trustee Luckham (probable): Indeed, Thetis Island is a vibrant community also,

[0:56:15] Trustee Luckham (probable): and that's a great characterization.

[0:56:18] Trustee Luckham (probable): And despite the fact that the ferry terminal was wiped out by a school bus about two weeks ago, backed into it, knocked it off the blocks and is now condemned, the Gavi dock, which has been in desperate need of repairs for many years, actually got started on the repairs until apparently the CVRD hadn't done sufficient archaeological investigation to determine that there was an archaeological site there,

[0:56:46] Trustee Luckham (probable): which I think everybody else on Thetis knew that.

[0:56:49] Trustee Luckham (probable): Anyway, so that came to a halt,

[0:56:51] Trustee Luckham (probable): but fortunately they're back to remediating that work now,

[0:56:54] Trustee Luckham (probable): and they've been sifting the materials from there,

[0:56:57] Trustee Luckham (probable): and I expect that that work will continue.

[0:57:00] Trustee Luckham (probable): So that's really good news for our first responders

[0:57:02] Trustee Luckham (probable): who use that dock to get sick people off the island.

[0:57:09] Trustee Luckham (probable): And the only other two things I'd report on

[0:57:12] Trustee Luckham (probable): is we're still awaiting the geoduck tenure,

[0:57:14] Trustee Luckham (probable): year which is not conforming to zoning and uh ministry forest lands and natural resources um

[0:57:21] Trustee Luckham (probable): has been asked to revoke a lease that they were going to provide and we'll see whether or not

[0:57:27] Trustee Luckham (probable): the islanders trust uh counts for anything with respect to that kind of activity that's it for me

[0:57:32] Trustee Luckham (probable): thank you fast yeah

[0:57:41] Voice 34: what is that so

[0:57:44] Voice 42: gabriela um the local trust committee made a significant

[0:57:49] Voice 42: decision last month not to support a subdivision application even though it complies with our

[0:57:54] Voice 42: bylaws in the OCP because a 2005 decision to allocate 50 lots for development on an area

[0:58:01] Voice 42: that's the name of First Nation considered the most sacred in their territory still does not

[0:58:06] Voice 42: have the consent of the nation. So we made a strong choice in May not to support a further

[0:58:12] Voice 42: subdivision and said no to continuing a pattern of decision making that impacts Indigenous rights.

[0:58:19] Voice 42: The 50th anniversary of the Islands Trust, we have a chance to look back at what we've accomplished,

[0:58:23] Voice 42: but what we must do is look ahead at the context we find ourselves in today and how do we balance

[0:58:30] Voice 42: the rights of landholders with Indigenous peoples and with the need for sustainable and healthy

[0:58:36] Voice 42: communities. So I'm just going to end with, because I write too much, in our culturally

[0:58:43] Voice 42: committed learning group um i've got a minute left our coast salish indigenous mentors we

[0:58:50] Voice 42: talked about land use and jorge harris jr of staminas nation said that we are of the land

[0:59:01] Voice 42: we are the land this is our home but this is your home too now for the time that you are here

[0:59:09] Voice 42: here. We are here together with open hearts and open minds. We need to do this work so we can

[0:59:16] Voice 42: coexist together. We are doing this work for the next generation. So that is what I am working for

[0:59:23] Voice 42: for the next 50 years, if I live that long, on Gabriela and the Islands Trust area generally,

[0:59:29] Voice 42: to work towards coexistence together and the balancing of rights of Indigenous and non-Indigenous

[0:59:35] Voice 42: peoples to live together and to make decisions about these lands this isn't about our land or

[0:59:40] Voice 42: whose land it's how do we live together okay

[0:59:50] Voice 9: judy getty from bowen island um the

[0:59:55] Voice 9: unceded territory of the squamish nation so um beautiful house

[1:00:00] Voice 9: I'm looking at the coastal range, and it's like when you're backed up on the ferry

[1:00:04] Voice 9: and you get the seat at the front where you can see the view, then it's worth the wait.

[1:00:09] Voice 9: But ferries have been hellish lately.

[1:00:13] Voice 9: They just can't seem to keep on schedule.

[1:00:15] Voice 9: And we've also got major problems with our infrastructure.

[1:00:19] Voice 9: We've been a municipality for 25 years, and nobody has taken care of the asset management,

[1:00:25] Voice 9: or not particularly well.

[1:00:26] Voice 9: I shouldn't slam them completely.

[1:00:28] Voice 9: completely um and it's all the ducks are coming home or the chickens are coming home to roost at

[1:00:33] Voice 9: this point so we've got huge uh issues with respect to very very expensive infrastructure

[1:00:39] Voice 9: projects water treatment and sewage treatment mostly um so that's the worst of it this community

[1:00:45] Voice 9: center that um i personally have been working on for about 30 years and there's about 100 people

[1:00:50] Voice 9: in the community that have been really persistent with working on this um we finally got the funding

[1:00:55] Voice 9: in place about three or four years ago and we're way behind time-wise but we're still on budget

[1:01:02] Voice 9: and it looks like we're going to open in about a month from now so three years of construction

[1:01:07] Voice 9: I stayed late last night for the figuring out you know you have three years to get this organized

[1:01:14] Voice 9: and it's the last month where you're actually doing the policies so late last night we're

[1:01:19] Voice 9: working on the the rate structure for renting out the rooms um i've started an ocp process and

[1:01:25] Voice 9: we've got a group of nine locals volunteers incredible group of people we're really really

[1:01:31] Voice 9: lucky we live as close to as we do to vancouver because we've got enormous talent that commutes

[1:01:36] Voice 9: into the city on these really high level jobs and they're willing to volunteer so we've got a very

[1:01:41] Voice 9: good committee for that um and we've also uh going through the process of replacing our cao who has

[1:01:49] Voice 9: has opted to have what he thinks is a better job in Sydney and we're going through a process where

[1:01:56] Voice 9: it's already done and we don't have to go through multiple meetings like we're struggling with here

[1:02:00] Voice 9: so it's a slam dunk compared to the process we're going through with the trust and we're doing some

[1:02:08] Voice 9: really good strategic planning we've got an excellent council that's working well together so

[1:02:12] Voice 9: So that's going, feeling lucky.

[1:02:21] Voice 26: Hi, this is Christina Evans from Sudeo South Pender

[1:02:24] Voice 26: from the unceded territories of many WSANIC nations.

[1:02:28] Voice 26: I've got three things to report out on.

[1:02:31] Voice 26: And I might, if I do go a little over,

[1:02:33] Voice 26: I'm going to steal some of Dag's time

[1:02:35] Voice 26: because he didn't have anything to say.

[1:02:38] Voice 26: So the first thing I'm going to report out on is the dip.

[1:02:41] Voice 26: I had a meeting with Moti McElhaney,

[1:02:45] Voice 26: Haney, who is the engineer, CRD, and Adam Olson's office on June 4th to discuss the plans for the

[1:02:53] Voice 26: repairs that have already currently started. We've been trying to get some information out to the

[1:03:00] Voice 26: public. So they are going to be putting together a Q&A based on the questions that I've been

[1:03:05] Voice 26: receiving from the community, as well as some questions that Adam Olson's office has been

[1:03:10] Voice 26: been receiving and also that Paul Brent from the CRD has been receiving so that Q&A will be coming

[1:03:16] Voice 26: we had asked them to have a public meeting as well so I'm not sure whether or not they are

[1:03:23] Voice 26: going to attend that or not but I am going to start working with staff on securing the hall

[1:03:28] Voice 26: on North Panda so we can have a public meeting for both North Panda rights and South Panda rights

[1:03:33] Voice 26: for q and a's regarding the dip um planned uh current repair there is an alternate plan that

[1:03:45] Voice 26: has been submitted to mighty by um a construction company that is working there which is greener and

[1:03:52] Voice 26: about a million dollars cheaper so um hopefully that will get considered because the current

[1:03:59] Voice 26: current plan is I would say not entirely in line with what we what we would envision when we think

[1:04:11] Voice 26: about preserving and protecting our rural island character now I do understand having spoken to

[1:04:19] Voice 26: Modi and McElhaney that they have to have I think they said it has to be a 500 year safety plan in

[1:04:24] Voice 26: place instead of 100 years. So there is that piece. So very quickly, I'm going to steal.

[1:04:33] Voice 26: So the minor project that we've been working on has gone to the APC. And it's really nice in the

[1:04:38] Voice 26: community hearing that there is a little bit more agreement starting to happen, which is awesome. So

[1:04:43] Voice 26: I think we're heading in the right direction where we wind up, we still to be seen. And the last

[1:04:49] Voice 26: piece that I'm going to talk about is I had a separate meeting with Moti, because there are

[1:04:54] Voice 26: members of south pender's community um at the far end of gallon point past hicks that the road gets

[1:05:00] Voice 26: exceptionally narrow and moti have agreed to send people to investigate and to come up with options

[1:05:05] Voice 26: regarding road signage for that area so when that happens i can let you know thank you very much

[1:05:15] Voice 15: thank you uh joe bernardo again from kate's island and as kate louise said i'm going to

[1:05:20] Voice 15: talk about those particular items for our trust area that doesn't that doesn't mean we forgot

[1:05:25] Voice 15: out about all the many associated islands that are part of the gambier lta it's just that there's

[1:05:30] Voice 15: actually not a lot of not a lot not a lot to report for them first issue i want to talk about

[1:05:35] Voice 15: uh it's just an acknowledgement really that the local trust committee moved very quickly to amend

[1:05:40] Voice 15: the keyton land use bylaw to enable the connected coast project to drop a fiber optic line

[1:05:47] Voice 15: to bring broadband to the island we need to have a zoning change

[1:05:52] Voice 15: I won't go through the boring details about that, but I want to thank the staff and my

[1:05:56] Voice 15: fellow trustees, Kate and Peter, for recognizing that that amendment was a priority.

[1:06:02] Voice 15: We didn't want to risk imperiling at all the access to broadband on people in Keats Island.

[1:06:08] Voice 15: Staff and trustees, we acted with urgency and nimbleness to make it happen, and I appreciate

[1:06:14] Voice 15: it, and I think the people on Keats Island appreciate it.

[1:06:16] Voice 15: the second point is that we're continuing work on our proposed amendments to the keats island

[1:06:22] Voice 15: land use bylaw to establish a development permit area along the foreshore it's been a slog

[1:06:30] Voice 15: it's been quite a few years in the making when i came in i had my own views about the thing and

[1:06:36] Voice 15: after a lot a lot of hard work by the staff and trustees the ltc has revised the draft

[1:06:41] Voice 15: asked significantly, and it's been given second reading. There'll be a public hearing on July 31st

[1:06:47] Voice 15: that's scheduled. It will be at the Gibsons Public Market. From my perspective, there's still one

[1:06:54] Voice 15: major issue that needs to be resolved, and I'm hoping that what we hear from the public will help

[1:06:59] Voice 15: us as LTC to resolve that one outstanding issue. About that general point about working through

[1:07:06] Voice 15: things, working on this proposed bylaw, these proposed bylaw amendments, has required a lot

[1:07:12] Voice 15: of our effort to work through differences of perspective differences among trustees and also

[1:07:20] Voice 15: differences in perspective from the staff as usual the challenge is trying to strike a balance

[1:07:25] Voice 15: between environmental protection and trying to find environmental protection and community needs

[1:07:33] Voice 15: and rights of property owners uh it's been work but we've managed to get through it and do it and

[1:07:40] Voice 15: get to the point of having second reading because we actually believe it or not we listen and learn

[1:07:46] Voice 15: from each other uh and if i can on the 50th anniversary here and we all know what the

[1:07:53] Voice 15: challenges are i don't have to repeat them that's really our true job as trustees is to listen to

[1:07:58] Voice 15: each other we've all got opinions uh we've all got perspectives we all know what the perfect

[1:08:04] Voice 15: world would be if only people would see it our way well that's not going to happen uh we have

[1:08:09] Voice 15: to have open minds we have to listen to each other uh doing that our own little way where

[1:08:15] Voice 15: gambler has allowed us to reach consensus on some pretty difficult points uh and it's been

[1:08:19] Voice 15: a respect respectful and constructive process and

[1:08:22] Voice 33: i want to

[1:08:23] Voice 15: thank peter kate and the staff

[1:08:25] Voice 15: uh for um uh being partners in that uh you know i've had some strong opinions of what that

[1:08:32] Voice 15: bylaw time joe and they've listened and i've listened to them thank you thank you joe so

[1:08:40] Voice 30: So in North Pender, as Aaron mentioned, we have a housing project.

[1:08:44] Voice 30: That housing project, it's really a lovely pace, I feel like, that we're going at with that in terms of kind of to what you're talking about, Joe.

[1:08:53] Voice 30: Just having a lot of conversations, learning together, listening, coordinating with other agencies.

[1:08:59] Voice 30: We've been thinking about different aspects of the problem.

[1:09:02] Voice 30: We've had the fire hall come and speak with us.

[1:09:06] Voice 30: We've had Viha come and talk to us.

[1:09:08] Voice 30: we had what was the other

[1:09:10] Voice 30: one oh that was slightly different we also had BC Hydro come because some

[1:09:13] Voice 30: folks were worried about submarine cable coming on shore so all of these types of conversations

[1:09:19] Voice 30: they're core to what we do in the Islands Trust in terms of coordinating with other levels of

[1:09:23] Voice 30: government and giving local voice to that space so I really appreciated the way that we're working

[1:09:29] Voice 30: through that project and not trying to make rush decisions right now but trying to listen and come

[1:09:33] Voice 30: up with a what works for us in our local context and how we integrate that with issues of water

[1:09:40] Voice 30: rural character forest cover other things that are important to us from a conservation point of view

[1:09:44] Voice 30: that brings me to my second point which is i am not in love with the province and um that has a

[1:09:51] Voice 30: large to do with the fact that we still have our raptor's nest violation that has no acceptable

[1:09:59] Voice 30: enforcement solution at the moment. And we are potentially in the situation where we are going

[1:10:05] Voice 30: to have to issue a permit to be able to get to some place to enforce on something. And I got to

[1:10:12] Voice 30: tell you, I am not in love with what that situation is. And that's going to impact all of us in some

[1:10:18] Voice 30: way. So we can talk more about that as I rage about it. When what Toby was mentioning earlier

[1:10:27] Voice 30: about the work on the subdivision that you are you know have not accepted or not supported

[1:10:34] Voice 30: we had that happen on james island some time back and we are considering a second application for

[1:10:42] Voice 30: subdivision on that island my one question for that development continues to be what does consent

[1:10:49] Voice 30: look like for First Nations. And then, sorry, there's five here, five. Thank you very much

[1:10:58] Voice 30: to the other trustees for letting us know when you're sending letters to ministers. I will so

[1:11:04] Voice 30: inform others as well. And the DIP communication, thanks for including us. North Bender would like

[1:11:10] Voice 30: to know that. And last thing, and yes, I am ignoring the little orange thing since several

[1:11:15] Voice 30: for all the people today.

[1:11:16] Voice 30: Okay.

[1:11:18] Voice 30: This Staeus Claclatches effort

[1:11:22] Voice 30: on North and South Pender Islands,

[1:11:24] Voice 30: which is part of the long time

[1:11:26] Voice 30: community to community reconciliation work

[1:11:28] Voice 30: that's been going on on the Penders

[1:11:30] Voice 30: has just received a grant

[1:11:32] Voice 30: from the Real Estate Foundation of BC

[1:11:34] Voice 30: to create place names of all significant

[1:11:36] Voice 30: and traditional essential places on the island.

[1:11:39] Voice 30: So we're really thankful to them for the work they do.

[1:11:41] Voice 30: And thank you to all of who came from the Penders

[1:11:43] Voice 30: to be here today.

[1:11:44] Voice 30: day. Thank you.

[1:11:50] Voice 24: Hi, thank you. I'm Lee Middleton from, excuse me, Saterna Island. I'll also be

[1:11:55] Voice 24: borrowing some of Dag's time. No, actually, I won't. This will be a very succinct and to the

[1:12:01] Voice 24: point statement here. As many of you are aware, Saterna Island continues to be a bastion of peace,

[1:12:06] Voice 24: order, and gun government. We don't feel the stresses of the Federation quite as much as some

[1:12:13] Voice 24: other islands do, but we do, we are very much aware that we are members of the Federation of

[1:12:18] Voice 24: islands and it's important to us that the federation is healthy and you can't i came in

[1:12:24] Voice 24: here by boat today and you just can't come into this harbor and look at the number of people

[1:12:28] Voice 24: living in substandard accommodation on the water and think all is well um salt spring is important

[1:12:34] Voice 24: to us our children come to school here same with pender and so again i've been doing this 10 years

[1:12:40] Voice 24: and i harp back now to the fact you will i've heard this has a broken record the governance

[1:12:47] Voice 24: of this organization needs to change for the next 50 years to be a success. And by that, I think we

[1:12:53] Voice 24: know it's not a lack of commitment by any one of us at this table. It's an inability to have tools

[1:13:01] Voice 24: that allow us to talk across values, values, say, from Mr. Harris through to maybe what some of the

[1:13:06] Voice 24: signs here are saying. We're not going to get there if we don't look at change for ourselves

[1:13:11] Voice 24: in terms of how we run this organization you know i i hark back george graham said if if we can't do

[1:13:17] Voice 24: this be a beacon of hope for communities everywhere when it comes to deep green reform

[1:13:21] Voice 24: where it can be now look at our agenda we're talking about how you compensate for missing

[1:13:26] Voice 24: a meal at trust council you know there's nobody it's not to point fingers at anyone just to say

[1:13:32] Voice 24: that the vision is lacking not in each of us but in a way where we can all come together and get

[1:13:39] Voice 24: a common set of policy directives together learn to talk about different values and be able to kind

[1:13:45] Voice 24: of lay a foundation of much strength for the next 50 years to deal with the stresses that we're all

[1:13:52] Voice 24: very well aware of thank you ken

[1:14:03] Voice 50: hunter thetis island as trustee luckham has stated it really

[1:14:07] Voice 50: is a beautiful quiet nice lovely little island and he's stated everything that i was going to

[1:14:15] Voice 50: say except that the um fiber optic is alive and well and they're almost completed thank you

[1:14:25] Voice 36: oh thank you i'm very happy to be here um i'd like to um commend uh trustee maberly on his

[1:14:32] Voice 36: remarks about the speed of process for applications uh galliano's moving

[1:14:39] Voice 36: slow slower than i like process progress are we actually canceled our last meeting um

[1:14:45] Voice 36: Um, but, um, uh, the June 5th was the, uh, 50th anniversary of the Allen's Trust.

[1:14:51] Voice 36: So I had a party and, uh, we had cake and community members came down and I brought

[1:14:59] Voice 36: some of their comments.

[1:15:01] Voice 36: So, um, yeah, here we go.

[1:15:03] Voice 36: Uh, I want to take this opportunity to thank the elected trustees.

[1:15:07] Voice 36: These, these are things that I've heard from that at the meeting, um, offer our heartfelt

[1:15:12] Voice 36: gratitude, the past, present, and future trustees.

[1:15:15] Voice 36: whose dedication and vision has been key to our success.

[1:15:21] Voice 36: Their commitment has enabled the Allen's Trust to navigate complex challenges,

[1:15:26] Voice 36: including climate change, freshwater limitations, development pressures,

[1:15:31] Voice 36: and the conservation of hundreds of species at risk.

[1:15:36] Voice 36: And for its work in reconciliation.

[1:15:39] Voice 36: reconciliation uh reconciliation reconciliation is not easy but it is the great work of our time

[1:15:46] Voice 36: and it is an honor to participate in uh this needs to underpin everything that we do

[1:15:52] Voice 36: and how we do it and i've heard that said here at trust council at previous trust councils by

[1:15:59] Voice 36: trustees i've heard staff say it i know we all believe it um yeah some wise words from from

[1:16:06] Voice 36: from Galliano. Thank you.

[1:16:12] Voice 39: Hello, Laura Patrick. I'd like to welcome my fellow trustees to Salt

[1:16:16] Voice 39: Spring. I hope you enjoy your brief stay here. Anyone wanting to tour the island, just let me

[1:16:21] Voice 39: know and I'll happily haul you around. I am a little worried because last time you gathered

[1:16:26] Voice 39: here, a worldwide pandemic was declared, so let's hope the week is quiet. If you have not observed

[1:16:34] Voice 39: the many forms of illegal housing, including RVs, tents, and boats, you might need to look a little

[1:16:40] Voice 39: little closer. I had hoped we could have brought you out on the water in a water taxi to cruise

[1:16:46] Voice 39: the harbor firsthand so that you could see why Salt Spring Island ranks 16th in Canadian

[1:16:52] Voice 39: communities over 10,000 with highest income inequality. That ranks right behind North

[1:16:57] Voice 39: Vancouver. This isn't good. Income inequality is known for its effects on health, happiness,

[1:17:02] Voice 39: and community ties. I read in the tie today that I'm described as a pro-developer who is

[1:17:08] Voice 39: weaponizing the housing crisis. Wow! When you sit in meetings like Gary Holman, our electoral area

[1:17:16] Voice 39: director, and I do, and hear our public nurse report that young mothers who cannot afford their

[1:17:21] Voice 39: rent or are living in appalling conditions are not only facing losing their homes, but they're

[1:17:27] Voice 39: also facing having their children taken away. You have to ask how any human being with an ounce of

[1:17:33] Voice 39: feeling could ignore that. Well, I'm not going to apologize for caring for the well-being of a

[1:17:39] Voice 39: fellow islanders who are struggling to find safe and secure housing. As you enjoy the hospitality

[1:17:45] Voice 39: of the various people serving you during your visit here, please ask them about the housing

[1:17:50] Voice 39: situation. Our efforts to bring in accessory dwelling units, according to this article in the

[1:17:56] Voice 39: TAI, will reportedly double the population. Well, back in 2013, the Salt Spring Island Local Trust

[1:18:02] Voice 39: Committee brought in a pilot area for allowing secondary suites, which consisted of over 2,000

[1:18:07] Voice 39: and lots here on Salt Spring.

[1:18:09] Voice 39: Well, folks, the verdict's in.

[1:18:11] Voice 39: The CRD recently reported that the number of suites

[1:18:14] Voice 39: that have actually been constructed since 2013, 10.

[1:18:20] Voice 39: For the Local Trust Committee,

[1:18:22] Voice 39: our most significant project

[1:18:24] Voice 39: is the complete community assessment work,

[1:18:27] Voice 39: which is the result of $150,000 grant.

[1:18:30] Voice 39: This project is intended to provide

[1:18:31] Voice 39: considerable geospatial information,

[1:18:33] Voice 39: or in human speak, data presented visually

[1:18:37] Voice 39: to inform the OCP land use by-law update project.

[1:18:41] Voice 39: We should be seeing the results of this project in September.

[1:18:45] Voice 39: Staff have done a good job of setting up the OCP land use by-law project for kickoff in the fall.

[1:18:50] Voice 39: There's a detailed work plan, which I believe is going to set an example for OCP projects from now on.

[1:18:56] Voice 39: There is one significant risk to this project, staffing resources.

[1:19:00] Voice 39: We have challenged staff to try to build in project management into the terms of reference for consulting services.

[1:19:06] Voice 39: Finally, for National Indigenous Peoples Day, groups and organizations across Salt Spring

[1:19:15] Voice 39: have coordinated several events for this weekend.

[1:19:19] Voice 39: Invitations to all First Nations with territorial interests to attend the event have been made,

[1:19:24] Voice 39: and the response has been good.

[1:19:26] Voice 39: It's really unfortunate that the organizers asked for help one week after the UBCM C2C

[1:19:32] Voice 39: funding deadline had expired because they need help covering honorariums these kind of events

[1:19:38] Voice 39: are exactly what the c2c funding is supposed to support thanks uh

[1:19:47] Voice 11: yeah i'm i'm very grateful to

[1:19:48] Voice 11: be on salt spring uh this is uh it's been a long time since i was last on salt spring i was probably

[1:19:54] Voice 11: 20 years ago that i was last on salt spring and at which point i would not have been eligible to

[1:19:58] Voice 11: to sit at this table, as my co-Trustee Graham has pointed out earlier.

[1:20:04] Voice 11: Speaking of my fellow trustees, I want to echo what Trustee Allen and Trustee Graham

[1:20:10] Voice 11: have said.

[1:20:11] Voice 11: It's been, we've been able to have a really good initial meeting with the Comox First

[1:20:18] Voice 11: Nation recently, and that I'm really grateful for their collaboration in that, as well as

[1:20:25] Voice 11: that of uh director freighter uh joe elliott and other staff um i'm really looking forward to

[1:20:30] Voice 11: getting to where gabriel is with regular meetings with their first nation i think that's a really

[1:20:35] Voice 11: important way for us to figure out how co-governance can can advance in this province

[1:20:43] Voice 11: similarly to uh well to reference what uh what uh the trustees from galliano were saying about the

[1:20:51] Voice 11: speed of process i've been also uh learning a lot in the last couple of years my first term

[1:20:56] Voice 11: term about what I call the speed of government um and uh and yeah it's it is slow um and I also

[1:21:04] Voice 11: have a greater appreciation for the uh the components therein and the care and thought

[1:21:10] Voice 11: with which uh staff approach things and also the the great uh deficit in in their resources so I'm

[1:21:18] Voice 11: really grateful to the staff who do the work that they do uh and I'm looking forward to moving

[1:21:22] Voice 11: towards developing land sharing opportunities for people in our community, which I firmly believe

[1:21:28] Voice 11: are one of the best ways we can reduce the impact on our natural environment without

[1:21:33] Voice 11: building tons and tons of stuff and hopefully reduce the number of massive luxury, partly

[1:21:40] Voice 11: occupied buildings. Yeah, that's me. Thanks.

[1:21:51] Trustee Luckham (probable): Okay, trustees, thank you for sharing all the

[1:21:55] Trustee Luckham (probable): stories and what's happening on your islands appreciate that very much um i if you if you

[1:22:01] Trustee Luckham (probable): don't mind i would like to create a little extra space in this uh time that we have here um kurt

[1:22:07] Trustee Luckham (probable): erwin a penelope tribes member wanted to join us earlier today and was unable to but he has joined

[1:22:13] Trustee Luckham (probable): us now and i would like to provide him that opportunity to address just counsel um if that's

[1:22:19] Trustee Luckham (probable): all right with everybody so please kurt um if you might join us up at the front here and uh

[1:22:26] Trustee Luckham (probable): address trust council there's a there's a microphone over there yeah and let's turn

[1:22:47] Trustee Luckham (probable): that button on you

[1:22:50] Voice 13: need a speaker oh i'm live yeah okay hi tech what's up okay hi everyone

[1:22:57] Voice 13: my name is uh kurt erwin i'm a third generation fourth generation salt spring islander i'm uh

[1:23:03] Voice 13: I sit on Peneliket Chief and Council.

[1:23:05] Voice 13: I'm one of the council people on Peneliket Island.

[1:23:09] Voice 13: Sorry, I kind of smell like fish.

[1:23:11] Voice 13: I'm helping with the Indigenous Days this weekend,

[1:23:14] Voice 13: so I'm in charge of fish.

[1:23:15] Voice 13: So that's why everybody was moving away from me.

[1:23:17] Voice 13: I just finished dealing with a bunch.

[1:23:19] Voice 13: And once I'm done, sorry, I have to go again

[1:23:21] Voice 13: just because I'm helping with the games.

[1:23:23] Voice 13: But I just wanted to take a moment and come here.

[1:23:26] Voice 13: I'd just like to thank everybody for joining us

[1:23:29] Voice 13: on, I guess, our unceded territories of Peneliket.

[1:23:34] Voice 13: our ancestors and creator have allowed us to be here today some of my ancestors were were dug up

[1:23:39] Voice 13: 20 feet in front of us when they put the pool in front of the harbour house here so

[1:23:43] Voice 13: my family goes back a long ways we have a lot of stuff so i've recently got on council and my job

[1:23:50] Voice 13: is to try and help my people on penelope to help them thrive and grow and live and sustain where

[1:23:56] Voice 13: they live which they do now so my people live off the land and this is why i'm here to speak

[1:24:02] Voice 13: to all the trustees and I'd like to share a couple of concerns I have as a

[1:24:07] Voice 13: Penelakut person not gonna say I'm not speaking for everybody else these are my

[1:24:11] Voice 13: concerns I'm concerned about the state of the land we live in right now my

[1:24:17] Voice 13: people live off the land Penelakut people we live off clams oyster salmon

[1:24:24] Voice 13: and as an Islander I'm really disappointed when I leave in my boat out

[1:24:28] Voice 13: of Ganges Harbor and it's turned into a floating garbage dump all those

[1:24:33] Voice 13: wrecked ships that are floating up that become part of Islands Trust. They're

[1:24:37] Voice 13: sitting there, they're leaching out all kinds of contaminants that go right in

[1:24:42] Voice 13: to our traditional areas where we harvest clams, oysters, fish, and I think

[1:24:47] Voice 13: we need to do better. We need to do better as a group. The lands where we

[1:24:52] Voice 13: once hunted, we get our medicine from. It's all subdivisions. In Connecticut, we

[1:24:59] Voice 13: have no land on salt spring when our elders get washed up on shore we have no place to rebury

[1:25:05] Voice 13: them to keep them sacred on our own traditional area i think that's important that people recognize

[1:25:11] Voice 13: this for our people in respect to our first nations and i asked islands trust in the word

[1:25:17] Voice 13: of reconciliation i think we could do better i think you guys need to reach out you say you

[1:25:23] Voice 13: invite people and a lot of meetings i go to as a first nations person i'll sit in the room and then

[1:25:29] Voice 13: people say they did consultation with first nations no i just sat in the room but because

[1:25:35] Voice 13: i'm there that's what people do so i think it's important that the communication be opened up more

[1:25:40] Voice 13: with trust we need land it's important to us our people still live off gear and seafood and

[1:25:48] Voice 13: everything i can't reiterate that enough when i was going around for council on penelaket

[1:25:53] Voice 13: every person there had a bucket of clam shells or oysters or something out in their front yard

[1:25:57] Voice 13: are that's just how we live their employment is very low they don't have much money on penelakut

[1:26:02] Voice 13: these are our neighbors and this is all part of our traditional area all through here so the north

[1:26:08] Voice 13: end all the way through at one time we had a big house at the end of southern point it's all gone

[1:26:14] Voice 13: and everybody pretends they don't remember the elders i work with they remember it they remember

[1:26:18] Voice 13: where all the burial sites are in our traditional areas where we had potlucks and it's all gone so

[1:26:25] Voice 13: i'm just here today i know people can't work miracles but i just want you to keep us in mind

[1:26:30] Voice 13: and i ask that you try to keep us involved and engaged so my job as a council person i'm trying

[1:26:37] Voice 13: to open those windows and build relationships it's very tough with the residential school people just

[1:26:43] Voice 13: don't trust people because of what they've all gone through so i'm trying to build that trust

[1:26:47] Voice 13: and i think with your help we should be able to do it together so just like to thank everybody for

[1:26:52] Voice 13: your time for coming to our area thank you thanks all

[1:27:10] Trustee Luckham (probable): right so we're going to move along here now to

[1:27:14] Trustee Luckham (probable): delegations opportunity for us to hear from other voices in the room in the community here

[1:27:19] Trustee Luckham (probable): just sort of give you a bit of a heads up there was some criticism about inadequate time for

[1:27:23] Trustee Luckham (probable): the public comments period but i'd just like to say that certainly we've got four or five

[1:27:30] Trustee Luckham (probable): delegations here which have asked for an extended period of time to present to us and that we honor

[1:27:35] Trustee Luckham (probable): that um um ideally you know we're we're running a little bit of overtime but ideally we'll pick up

[1:27:43] Trustee Luckham (probable): with the comments period and although there is a break scheduled at three o'clock to 3 15 i want

[1:27:48] Trustee Luckham (probable): to honor that break to give you that pause but i want to just say two things that we will pick up

[1:27:53] Trustee Luckham (probable): the public comment period after that until we've heard from those people uh that want to address

[1:27:59] Trustee Luckham (probable): the Islands Trust today, and that I would suggest that in that break, if there's an opportunity for

[1:28:05] Trustee Luckham (probable): you to engage with Salt Spring Islanders in that small window of time, that would be also a

[1:28:11] Trustee Luckham (probable): terrific way to communicate with council. So we're going to go through the public here that

[1:28:17] Trustee Luckham (probable): we should address this today, before and after the break, based upon the timing. So we're going

[1:28:23] Trustee Luckham (probable): to try and do the best we can with the time that we have available here today. The first

[1:28:29] Trustee Luckham (probable): First, there was a little bit of reordering requested by Trustee Morrison for a couple of delegates that need to travel to come and go from here today.

[1:28:39] Trustee Luckham (probable): And so I'm going to follow that suggestion.

[1:28:42] Trustee Luckham (probable): Council approved that.

[1:28:43] Trustee Luckham (probable): So Peter Parr, Gulf Island Sioux Big Oil, will go first.

[1:28:48] Trustee Luckham (probable): Going second would be Jennifer Margerson, Friends of the Gulf Islands.

[1:28:53] Trustee Luckham (probable): And then third, we'll pick up with Ted Olenek.

[1:28:55] Trustee Luckham (probable): I saw you just standing up there a moment ago, Ted.

[1:28:57] Trustee Luckham (probable): Thank you for joining us.

[1:28:59] Trustee Luckham (probable): And then we'll continue through the other delegations, Glenn Stevens and Ronald Wright.

[1:29:04] Trustee Luckham (probable): So let's go to Peter Parr. Over to you. Thank you.

[1:29:12] Trustee Luckham (probable): Can we get the microphone turned on?

[1:29:13] Trustee Luckham (probable): My name

[1:29:14] Voice 2: is Peter Parry. I'm a resident of Sudeas, also known as Pender Island in Wissinich Territory.

[1:29:22] Voice 2: And I'm a member of a group on many of the southern Gulf Islands that are supporting the idea of bringing a class action lawsuit against the big oil companies to recover some of the costs of climate change.

[1:29:39] Voice 2: And I presented to you, I think some of you may remember, last September, and you referred that issue to staff.

[1:29:46] Voice 2: And as far as I know, you're still considering it.

[1:29:48] Voice 2: and so we thought we'd follow up and uh because you may have questions and also to give you an

[1:29:55] Voice 2: update on the campaign uh andrew gage with west coast

[1:30:00] Voice 2: Environmental Law, who is the convener of this lawsuit, has agreed to join us and give a

[1:30:07] Voice 2: presentation. So thank you. Turn it over to Andrew.

[1:30:12] Voice 48: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be back in this

[1:30:14] Voice 48: beautiful on the Gulf Islands. Always have such great memories when I'm here. Next slide. So the

[1:30:23] Voice 48: basic argument you're probably familiar with is the financial one. You know, we cannot afford to

[1:30:29] Voice 48: to have the residents of the Gulf Islands

[1:30:31] Voice 48: and of other communities around the province

[1:30:33] Voice 48: paying 100% of the cost of climate change,

[1:30:35] Voice 48: while global fossil fuel companies

[1:30:37] Voice 48: that have played the leading role

[1:30:38] Voice 48: in causing climate change pay nothing

[1:30:40] Voice 48: and, in fact, are rewarded financially for their actions.

[1:30:44] Voice 48: We got a snapshot of what climate impacts look like in 2021.

[1:30:47] Voice 48: That's what this slide's about.

[1:30:49] Voice 48: But these impacts are being felt on an ongoing basis.

[1:30:53] Voice 48: The Insurance Bureau of Canada estimates

[1:30:55] Voice 48: that to avoid the worst impacts of climate change,

[1:30:58] Voice 48: local governments across the country need to spend 5.3 billion dollars every year to prepare for

[1:31:03] Voice 48: for impacts next slide a quick look at your local news coverage as well as climate projections for

[1:31:09] Voice 48: the region show the type of costs that gulf island residents are facing and they're already paying

[1:31:15] Voice 48: and they're going to be huge for the region next slide but of course the islands trust

[1:31:21] Voice 48: doesn't own the infrastructure that is damaged you do however have a wide range of programs

[1:31:26] Voice 48: which are intended to address climate change and which are in themselves costly

[1:31:30] Voice 48: and which need to be ramped up if Gulf Island residents are to be kept safe from climate change.

[1:31:37] Voice 48: And, you know, an example of that's the freshwater sustainability strategy,

[1:31:41] Voice 48: which, you know, have specific commitments that, according to the strategy,

[1:31:46] Voice 48: could cost anywhere between half a million or millions of dollars.

[1:31:49] Voice 48: And in addition, you fund the Islands Trust Conservancy,

[1:31:53] Voice 48: which is responsible for 34 nature reserves and 79 conservation covenants next slide and the um

[1:32:02] Voice 48: denman's islands conservancy uh wrote to you about this uh next slide please um in october

[1:32:10] Voice 48: uh identifying so the wide range of climate costs that they see in their management of

[1:32:16] Voice 48: conservation lands um and uh you know that's the basis on which they were supporting the idea that

[1:32:22] Voice 48: to be working towards this lawsuit next slide these costs are of course the direct result of

[1:32:30] Voice 48: the heat trapping blanket of fossil fuel pollution that surrounds the planet and other gases but

[1:32:37] Voice 48: primarily fossil fuel pollution and next slide a scientist named richard heady has identified that

[1:32:43] Voice 48: about two-thirds of that heat trapping blanket can be traced back to the operations and products of

[1:32:48] Voice 48: just 90 entities mostly fossil fuel companies those same companies have made an average of

[1:32:54] Voice 48: 50 billion dollars every day over the last 50 years those profits are of course an illusion

[1:33:00] Voice 48: click and twice once once we'll make it spin out of sight and yeah next slide yeah

[1:33:09] Voice 48: yeah there's a disappear part um and then the next one many of those same companies were put

[1:33:15] Voice 48: on notice in 1959 that the burning of their products caused climate change and that with

[1:33:22] Voice 48: particular interest to those of us who live on the coasts that most coastal cities would be covered

[1:33:29] Voice 48: as a result of that the next slide and the decades that followed their own scientists

[1:33:35] Voice 48: highlighted the impacts this is a 1982 estimate by exxon mobil about how much greenhouse gas

[1:33:43] Voice 48: gas emissions and temperatures were going to or greenhouse gas concentrations rather and

[1:33:48] Voice 48: temperatures would increase over the coming decades next slide you know that's where we

[1:33:52] Voice 48: are right now so they were extremely accurate in their predictions they um in many cases these

[1:33:59] Voice 48: companies held patents on solar technology low emission vehicles that they failed to develop

[1:34:03] Voice 48: and instead of working to provide us with alternatives and other sources of energy they

[1:34:08] Voice 48: worked very actively to oppose moves away from fossil fuels. Next slide. When governments started

[1:34:16] Voice 48: taking action, they upped their game with misinformation campaigns. These are some of

[1:34:23] Voice 48: the reports that document in great detail the considerable efforts of public relations campaigns

[1:34:28] Voice 48: of the oil and gas industry to keep us hooked on their products so that they could continue to make

[1:34:32] Voice 48: profits. Next slide. And even now, oil and gas companies continue to put short-term profits

[1:34:39] Voice 48: over ahead of the health of our communities. Shell, Suncor, and BP all recently rolled back

[1:34:46] Voice 48: their commitments to ramp up renewable technology because they're making too much money from the

[1:34:52] Voice 48: current high prices on oil and gas. And they continue to work actively against a phase-out

[1:34:59] Voice 48: of fossil fuels. Next slide. In 2021, 23 academics from a variety of disciplines asked the question,

[1:35:08] Voice 48: why were we not successful in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the decades that we've been

[1:35:11] Voice 48: trying to do that? The answer was power, essentially, and especially the power associated

[1:35:17] Voice 48: with the fossil fuel economy, not just the companies, but also the governments and investors

[1:35:20] Voice 48: and others who have an entrenched interest in those industries. So next slide. The Soobig Oil

[1:35:28] Voice 48: campaign calls on all BC local governments to work together to take action to protect us from

[1:35:34] Voice 48: the impacts of climate change, but also as part of that to make a contribution towards

[1:35:42] Voice 48: a class action lawsuit. Peter referred to me as the instigator of the lawsuit. Just to be clear,

[1:35:49] Voice 48: the lawsuit would be handled by lawyers hired by whatever local governments bring the case.

[1:35:54] Voice 48: It wouldn't be West Coast Environmental Law. We're the instigators of the campaign asking for it.

[1:35:58] Voice 48: um and to work with other local governments to bring that lawsuit next slide i've got some

[1:36:05] Voice 48: animations in here that don't work so well we have to keep doing next slide but basically uh

[1:36:09] Voice 48: you know what this lawsuit accomplishes is it gets the cost of climate change uh onto the same

[1:36:14] Voice 48: balance sheets as the cost that our communities pay as the profits of the fossil fuel industry

[1:36:19] Voice 48: as long as those are separate it's very difficult to fight climate change when you've got an

[1:36:23] Voice 48: industry making and investors and governments making billions of dollars uh continuing to sell

[1:36:28] Voice 48: the products that cause the harm next slide um so we're trying to bring those together next slide

[1:36:35] Voice 48: um and you know we want to emphasize that this type of case is possible this is the successful

[1:36:41] Voice 48: case of milieu defense versus shell the dutch friends of the earth who sued shell successfully

[1:36:48] Voice 48: in the dutch courts uh for responsibility for the the emissions from their products it wasn't

[1:36:53] Voice 48: a damages case but it very much established that the company is legally has legal obligations to

[1:36:58] Voice 48: to protect the public against the harm they cause.

[1:37:01] Voice 48: And we've seen in the lawsuits against tobacco, opioids,

[1:37:05] Voice 48: the fact is if you sell a product that you know

[1:37:08] Voice 48: will inevitably cause harm,

[1:37:10] Voice 48: you have some responsibility to pay some of that harm.

[1:37:13] Voice 48: Today, there's about 70 local and state governments

[1:37:16] Voice 48: that are suing fossil fuel companies in the US,

[1:37:20] Voice 48: as well as similar cases in Germany and Switzerland.

[1:37:22] Voice 48: And there's a solid basis in Canadian law.

[1:37:24] Voice 48: Next slide.

[1:37:26] Voice 48: It's fiscally manageable because the case would be brought as a class action lawsuit.

[1:37:31] Voice 48: Each local government can pool, the local governments can pool their resources.

[1:37:34] Voice 48: They're also protected from the possibility of having to pay legal fees if the case is

[1:37:38] Voice 48: unsuccessful under BC legislation.

[1:37:42] Voice 48: Because we've asked local governments to put in $1 per resident towards the cost of

[1:37:46] Voice 48: certifying the class action because the Allens Trust overlaps with the regional districts.

[1:37:51] Voice 48: districts, the idea would be to have the Allen's Trust put in 50 cents per resident or to come

[1:37:56] Voice 48: out to some other arrangement with the regional districts to share those costs.

[1:38:00] Voice 48: Next slide.

[1:38:02] Voice 48: British Columbians support this when they understand that the purpose is so the fossil

[1:38:06] Voice 48: fuel industry shares a fair share of the cost as opposed to having the public pay all of

[1:38:10] Voice 48: it.

[1:38:12] Voice 48: Next slide.

[1:38:13] Voice 48: And we've just got a couple of minutes more.

[1:38:15] Voice 48: And you know, the benefits occur very early on when a judge will rule out as the first

[1:38:21] Voice 48: motion in the case that there whether or not there is a winnable case at that

[1:38:25] Voice 48: point if there's not we can all pack up and go home but the hope is and we

[1:38:28] Voice 48: believe the judge will rule that yes this case could be one that means that

[1:38:31] Voice 48: any further decisions about the case will have a lot more information but

[1:38:35] Voice 48: also fossil fuel companies and their investors will have more information

[1:38:38] Voice 48: about the potential so that they will be held liable and the goal of course is to

[1:38:43] Voice 48: get this necessary resources for our communities next slide there are now

[1:38:48] Voice 48: Now, seven communities across British Columbia, including most recently Burnaby and the city

[1:38:54] Voice 48: Port Moody, who have signed on to the campaign.

[1:38:56] Voice 48: We are very much hoping, next slide, that the Allens Trust will be the first local government

[1:39:02] Voice 48: that is not a municipality, and again, we're asking for 50 cents per resident, a pledge.

[1:39:08] Voice 48: That's a pledge.

[1:39:08] Voice 48: You don't need to put that money aside.

[1:39:10] Voice 48: You need to simply confirm that when a local government steps up and agrees to be laid

[1:39:14] Voice 48: plaintiff, that they'll have the benefit of your support.

[1:39:17] Voice 48: and a call to your regional districts that you overlap with to contribute the other 50 cents

[1:39:21] Voice 48: and a pledge to work with other local governments to bring that class action because the islands

[1:39:26] Voice 48: trust does have this unique structure uh if you don't actually get involved in pushing this

[1:39:31] Voice 52: and

[1:39:32] Voice 48: the case goes ahead most likely the islands trust would not be included because you're not

[1:39:35] Voice 48: covered by under the local government actor of the community charter uh thank you i know we don't

[1:39:40] Voice 48: have any time for questions but i'd love to answer questions if anyone wants to contact me directly

[1:39:46] Voice 48: or possibly at the break.

[1:39:50] Trustee Luckham (probable): Thank you very much for coming today, good information.

[1:40:01] Trustee Luckham (probable): So our second delegate here is at 5.15

[1:40:05] Trustee Luckham (probable): and that's Jennifer Margerson of the Friends of Gulf Island.

[1:40:18] Trustee Luckham (probable): Yep, I'll turn the microphone on, yeah, thank you.

[1:40:22] Voice 28: On?

[1:40:23] Voice 28: Okay, I'm going to really speak up

[1:40:25] Voice 28: because we were having a lot of difficulty

[1:40:27] Voice 28: hearing the trustees at the back of the room.

[1:40:29] Voice 28: room. Good afternoon, trustees and Island Trust staff. I'm Jennifer Margeson, a resident from

[1:40:37] Voice 28: across the waters on Galliano, traditional territory of the Coast Salish, representing

[1:40:44] Voice 28: Friends of the Gulf Islands, a society with members throughout the Islands Trust area.

[1:40:51] Voice 28: I believe engagement is one of the important values of the Islands Trust, and we're engaged

[1:40:58] Voice 28: age today, I think, as you can see. Friends of the Gulf Islands represents trust area residents

[1:41:06] Voice 28: and visitors who support the original intent of the Islands Trust Act to preserve and protect

[1:41:14] Voice 28: the unique islands that you as trustees represent from excessive development and

[1:41:20] Voice 28: environmental degradation. We support the Islands Trust operating as a trust with

[1:41:29] Voice 28: a mandate to protect the trust areas natural environment and rural character

[1:41:36] Voice 28: for all British Columbians. We are in fact friends of the Islands Trust as it

[1:41:46] Voice 28: was originally intended 50 years ago. Protection and preservation is never an outdated concept.

[1:41:57] Voice 28: We would like to take this early opportunity to make some initial comments on the newest

[1:42:03] Voice 28: draft of the Trust Policy Statement released on May 3rd. We would also like to comment on

[1:42:10] Voice 28: on some of what was heard regarding the draft TPS

[1:42:15] Voice 28: in the committee of the whole meeting on May 30th.

[1:42:19] Voice 28: We recognize that this draft was prepared by staff

[1:42:22] Voice 28: and hope trustees will carefully consider

[1:42:27] Voice 28: the implications of the document as it currently exists.

[1:42:32] Voice 28: We will certainly have more to say about this draft

[1:42:36] Voice 28: and subsequent ones,

[1:42:38] Voice 28: but we want to speak here today about two primary concerns with the current draft and what was said

[1:42:47] Voice 28: in the committee of the whole meeting. Firstly, the very underpinnings of this draft policy

[1:42:57] Voice 28: statement underpinning is problematic. Neither the current TPS nor the draft TPS make any reference

[1:43:08] Voice 28: to the fact that the Islands Trust is a trust.

[1:43:14] Voice 28: The current TPS describes it as a, quote,

[1:43:19] Voice 28: unique land use planning agency acting for the residents

[1:43:25] Voice 28: of both the trust area and the province generally

[1:43:29] Voice 28: and having a special conservation-oriented responsibility, unquote.

[1:43:35] Voice 28: quote. This draft revision describes it as, quote, a special purpose provincial government agency

[1:43:44] Voice 28: equipped with a suite of land use planning powers and a conservation-oriented mandate.

[1:43:54] Voice 28: Where is the recognition in either version that this unique organization is, in fact, a trust?

[1:44:03] Voice 28: The glaring absence of any reference to the trust nature and function of the island's trust promotes the faulty understanding and behavior of an organization that thinks and acts as if it is just a local government, whose duty is to primarily represent the voices of their constituents.

[1:44:32] Voice 28: Additionally, the new draft contains no mention that Trust Council is responsible for ensuring

[1:44:42] Voice 28: the trust area is protected for the benefit of all British Columbians.

[1:44:50] Voice 28: Secondly, the value of the TPS and its success as a governing document is dependent upon

[1:44:59] Voice 28: the clarity of its policies and the requirement that they be followed. As in

[1:45:06] Voice 28: my first point, wording is critical and ambiguity is a death knell. This document

[1:45:14] Voice 28: is ripe with slippery words such as consider, should, strive to ensure. Such

[1:45:25] Voice 28: Such words make the policies mere suggestions and could pit trustees and their communities

[1:45:33] Voice 28: against one another in futile attempts to find current, coherent direction.

[1:45:41] Voice 28: It is stated in the draft that the guiding principles are intended to establish general

[1:45:50] Voice 28: commitments of the Trust Council.

[1:45:53] Voice 28: The words intended to is yet another form of should and means the principles are not mandatory.

[1:46:08] Voice 28: Because carrying out the object of the Islands Trust Act is primarily achieved through land use regulation by LTCs with Trust Council and its executive committee providing regional oversight,

[1:46:24] Voice 28: these principles should be mandatory.

[1:46:28] Voice 28: The ambiguity of the wording contradicts the purpose of a directive.

[1:46:34] Voice 28: Indeed, why have directive policies if trustees do not have to abide by them?

[1:46:41] Voice 28: We don't find this vague aspirational wording in other legislation, as in people should consider not speeding or shall strive not to rob banks.

[1:47:01] Voice 28: We also heard this dangerous ambiguity promoted by Tyler Brown, the facilitator in the committee of the whole meeting.

[1:47:10] Voice 28: when referring to directive policies he said quote attempts have been made to not make them

[1:47:20] Voice 28: too prescriptive unquote he then added if you don't leave room or sorry he then added

[1:47:30] Voice 28: um you might if you don't leave room you might be assuring certain things sorry i'm just getting a

[1:47:40] Voice 28: a little mixed up here. You don't leave room for adaptability, flexibility, and innovation.

[1:47:50] Voice 28: This apparent move to emphasize a discretionary approach to directives undermines the entire TPS,

[1:48:01] Voice 28: if not the purpose of the trust, which is preserving and protecting. The intention of the

[1:48:09] Voice 28: the TPS is to have trustees make decisions within the confines of its policies. It defines their

[1:48:17] Voice 28: duties as trustees. Policies are implemented through regulations. Words like consider,

[1:48:26] Voice 28: should, and strive to do not carry any weight to influence decisions. They undermine the ability

[1:48:34] Voice 28: of the trust to fulfill its mandate under the Act. We believe the implementation of this policy

[1:48:45] Voice 28: statement or any revision that does not address these two major flaws will consign trustees,

[1:48:54] Voice 28: the communities they represent, and all British Columbians to a very uncertain future

[1:49:01] Voice 28: in the future marked by conflict and dissent.

[1:49:07] Voice 28: If the intention is to ensure trust staff

[1:49:11] Voice 28: and elected trustees carry out the object,

[1:49:17] Voice 28: then this draft TPS is wholly inadequate.

[1:49:24] Voice 28: Thank you very much.

[1:49:28] Thank you, Jennifer.

[1:49:37] Trustee Luckham (probable): Ted Olenek, BC Hydro Operations.

[1:49:41] Trustee Luckham (probable): This is the moment you've been waiting for.

[1:49:43] Trustee Luckham (probable): Thank you for your patience in getting to be a delegation that you had tried on previous

[1:49:51] Trustee Luckham (probable): occasions.

[1:49:52] Trustee Luckham (probable): So glad to have you here today.

[1:49:55] Trustee Luckham (probable): Microphone.

[1:49:58] Voice 49: Oh, good.

[1:49:59] Voice 49: Okay.

[1:49:59] Voice 49: Didn't know if it was working.

[1:50:00] Voice 49: So I brought security just in case.

[1:50:06] Voice 49: Thank you very much.

[1:50:07] Voice 49: Thank you for the opportunity to present to Highlands Trust.

[1:50:10] Voice 49: trust with me is Stefan Peters. He's the line manager for the Southern Gulf Islands, looking

[1:50:16] Voice 49: after all the islands in the area and working through the nights during the long outages

[1:50:21] Voice 49: sometimes impacting the area. BC Hydro has operations across the province. We have operations

[1:50:34] Voice 49: across the province and are located on Indigenous traditional territory. I acknowledge I'm on

[1:50:39] Voice 49: the unceded territory and ancestors of Coast Salish First Nations of Salt Spring Island and

[1:50:44] Voice 49: surrounding areas who continue to use and steward the lands and waters of the Salish Sea. These

[1:50:49] Voice 49: include the Cowichan, Penelakut, Pakmin, Malahat, Tsewat, Sartlip, and Sakem Nations. We thank them

[1:50:57] Voice 49: for this beautiful land. We acknowledge the impacts that hydro system and operations have

[1:51:01] Voice 49: had on these nations and the land they have made use of since time immemorial. We share in the

[1:51:06] Voice 49: responsibility to act as stewards for this land and all land in which we operate and care for its

[1:51:11] Voice 49: resources in the land can we go there already we back up no okay okay sure that'll do sure go next

[1:51:23] Voice 49: yeah so um just a quick example of how much uh of our system you know we're a hydro based facility

[1:51:29] Voice 49: um we have hydroelectric generation throughout the province um a lot of lines to deal with which

[1:51:37] Voice 49: which, of course, deals with the vegetation management, transmission, distribution lines,

[1:51:42] Voice 49: substations that you see across, of course, dotted on this island, on Galliano, and across the province.

[1:51:47] Voice 49: Can we go to the next slide, please?

[1:51:49] Voice 49: Okay.

[1:51:50] Voice 49: And here we have is our system.

[1:51:52] Voice 49: The majority of our power, of course, is generated in the peace system and in the Columbia

[1:51:57] Voice 49: and comes down to Vancouver Island coming across on two transmission cables.

[1:52:03] Voice 49: cables uh we generate about 40 percent of our um power on the island um the remainder of course

[1:52:11] Voice 49: would come via uh the cables and the big cable system is the ones that go across qualicum bay

[1:52:15] Voice 49: by nile creek up there um just north of qualicum beach and of course that vitr and duncan the big

[1:52:21] Voice 49: substation there we have another transmission cable submarine transmission cable system coming

[1:52:26] Voice 49: across them to awesome um we have a number of generating facilities on the island we have john

[1:52:31] Voice 49: Heart. You're looking for something to do this summer back on Vancouver Island. You can go up

[1:52:36] Voice 49: to Campbell River, a great visitor center up there to look at. You can see the other facilities we

[1:52:41] Voice 49: have at Ash and Comox and of course Jordan River. Next slide please. So this is a loop we have.

[1:52:53] Voice 49: The loop was put in about 20 years ago. Before that, it wasn't a loop. We had connected the

[1:52:58] Voice 49: islands, but it wasn't a loop. Unlike other Gulf Islands in the northern part, this is a loop. The

[1:53:04] Voice 49: The other ones are radial feed, like Quadra will come from Vancouver Island.

[1:53:09] Voice 49: Cortez comes from Lund on the Powell River side.

[1:53:12] Voice 49: Demmon and Hornby are fed.

[1:53:13] Voice 49: It's a radial line.

[1:53:14] Voice 49: So, unfortunately, when one part of that line goes out, feeding that line, everything downstream of it is out.

[1:53:20] Voice 49: With this, though, if one part goes out, Stephan and his crews are able to make repairs,

[1:53:25] Voice 49: but the whole island system doesn't have to go out as it did before, before 2020 or before 2006.

[1:53:33] Voice 49: 2006. Next slide, please.

[1:53:38] Voice 49: So today's environment is rapidly evolving for us. There's policy changes

[1:53:43] Voice 49: at all levels of government, higher customer expectations, and a greater reliance on

[1:53:47] Voice 49: electricity than ever before. EVs, heat pumps, more electronics. Population is growing. We are

[1:53:53] Voice 49: acutely aware of the urgency to ensure that new housing gets built in our province and local

[1:53:57] Voice 49: governments can achieve their housing targets. And of course, climate change. We're facing

[1:54:02] Voice 49: in fluctuating weather patterns with an increase

[1:54:03] Voice 49: in severity and frequency of weather

[1:54:06] Voice 49: events. We know we're going to get more

[1:54:07] Voice 49: storms that are going to be more intense, and they're going to be more intense

[1:54:10] Voice 49: that we have to deal with. While we're in the

[1:54:12] Voice 49: business of responding to day-to-day operational

[1:54:14] Voice 49: emergencies, we're also working to respond

[1:54:16] Voice 49: to long-term climate emergency. We're in the midst

[1:54:18] Voice 49: of an energy transition in British

[1:54:20] Voice 49: Columbia, looking to switch and encourage

[1:54:22] Voice 49: people switching from fossil fuels

[1:54:24] Voice 49: to cleaner, renewable resources of power.

[1:54:26] Voice 49: We're not going to get everything switched

[1:54:28] Voice 49: over, but we're hoping to get as much as

[1:54:30] Voice 49: we can switched over to

[1:54:31] Voice 49: to electricity as our source of power.

[1:54:36] Voice 49: Today, electrification is the most available pathway

[1:54:38] Voice 49: for our customers to decarbonize.

[1:54:40] Voice 49: That's very important for our customers.

[1:54:42] Voice 49: It's resulted in unprecedented level

[1:54:44] Voice 49: of anticipated interest in demand in our electricity system.

[1:54:48] Voice 49: We know that today's system

[1:54:49] Voice 49: is not gonna meet tomorrow's needs.

[1:54:51] Voice 49: It's evolving.

[1:54:53] Voice 49: That's why we're taking significant steps

[1:54:55] Voice 49: towards sourcing clean electricity that's needed

[1:54:57] Voice 49: and building out the required infrastructure

[1:54:59] Voice 49: to meet future demand.

[1:55:00] Voice 49: looking ahead our integrated resource plan which was recently approved by the

[1:55:07] Voice 49: BC Utilities Commission lays out what load growth looks like and how we'll

[1:55:11] Voice 49: supply it with clean electricity population across BC is estimated to

[1:55:15] Voice 49: increase by 1 million by 2032 which means a lot more housing across the

[1:55:21] Voice 49: province changing technologies and growing the adaptation of electric

[1:55:25] Voice 49: vehicles and heat pumps is driving the demand and it's our job our obligation

[1:55:30] Voice 49: Our mandate is to make sure that we keep the power flowing for those customers.

[1:55:36] Voice 49: We have an integrated resource plan.

[1:55:39] Voice 49: The last one was just recently approved by the BC Utilities Commission.

[1:55:43] Voice 49: We have a new integrated IRP, integrated resource plan that we're putting forward and developing in the initial stages.

[1:55:49] Voice 49: So we invite, I'll send out a note to all elected officials, invite you to have input.

[1:55:53] Voice 49: The public's invited for input as well.

[1:55:54] Voice 49: go to our website bc hydro because in june we'll begin consultation on the long-term topics

[1:56:00] Voice 49: that will help inform the development of our next irp this includes feedback on options for planning

[1:56:05] Voice 49: over the next 20 to 30 years and planning for scenario scenarios with higher and lower lower

[1:56:11] Voice 49: energy demand so if you have specific input you'd like to share please uh go to the bc hydro site

[1:56:17] Voice 49: site. It's actually integrated.resource.plan at bchydro.com. Next slide, please. And we

[1:56:28] Voice 49: have a call for power. Part of that right now, meaning the new growth, I mean, our integrated

[1:56:32] Voice 49: resource plan allows us to pivot quite quickly, and we've done that with our last plan, realizing

[1:56:36] Voice 49: we need to bring on more generation. While we have Site C coming online very soon, we're

[1:56:41] Voice 49: going to have to bring on more power. The call for power will add about 3,000 gigawatt

[1:56:45] Voice 49: hours of clean and renewable energy. That's equivalent to about 5% of our current supply

[1:56:50] Voice 49: and enough to power about 2,700 homes across the province.

[1:56:54] Voice 49: Projects are anticipated to come online in fall of 2028 and all the way up to 2031.

[1:57:02] Voice 49: It's significant in this call in that First Nation involvement.

[1:57:10] Voice 49: We want to find meaningful economic reconciliation opportunities,

[1:57:13] Voice 49: and that's part of the requirement in this plan.

[1:57:16] Voice 49: plan. 25% equity ownership is required for all new participants in the call if they're

[1:57:22] Voice 49: on traditional territory of or whatever traditional territory they are on. That First Nation must

[1:57:27] Voice 49: have at least a 25% participation in that. And of course the best form of new electricity

[1:57:33] Voice 49: is buying at your expected use back is demand side management. We always look for that.

[1:57:39] Voice 49: It's the cheapest, the most energy efficient and the greenest form. Realizing my time,

[1:57:45] Voice 49: we just did a big call we just have a big capital plan it's going to be uh helping us uh meeting the

[1:57:50] Voice 49: growth upgrading the system we have a lot of work to do um to upgrade the system meeting our ghg

[1:57:59] Voice 49: reduction our reduction targets um and and sustain the system as well to make sure it's there and

[1:58:04] Voice 49: it's it's available and and ready to be used because of growth in many communities and here's

[1:58:11] Voice 49: Here's again a map of the Gulf Islands.

[1:58:16] Voice 49: The line right now currently comes over from Salt Spring, I mean it comes over from Vancouver

[1:58:20] Voice 49: Island, goes to Salt Spring, to Pender, and then does a loop across from Tegeliano, then

[1:58:26] Voice 49: loops across Fault in the Gulf Islands to North Pender.

[1:58:30] Voice 49: So to keep up with growth and maintain reliability, we're adding some more cables to the system

[1:58:37] Voice 49: and upgrading the system.

[1:58:39] Voice 49: We have two submarine cable projects.

[1:58:41] Voice 49: We're going to be putting in a new line from Salt Spring over to Pender.

[1:58:47] Voice 49: That's the red and the blue is replacing the current one.

[1:58:51] Voice 49: After the red is complete, we'll be replacing the blue one.

[1:58:54] Voice 49: It'll be a shorter route, but it'll be essentially the same lines and just added there.

[1:59:00] Voice 49: As well, down by Musgrave for those on Salt Spring.

[1:59:03] Voice 49: Musgrave's always been a bit of a challenge when I hear the last areas to be restored

[1:59:07] Voice 49: on Salt Spring and the Gulf Islands, it's always Musgrave.

[1:59:09] Voice 49: But we're going to be looking at putting the line from Maple Bay, Genoa Bay area over to Musgrave.

[1:59:16] Voice 49: And as soon as we have been doing work in other Gulf Islands, this is the line that we put across from Mudge to the Gabriela Island.

[1:59:24] Voice 49: So that's from Vancouver Island. I think looking over to, that's taken from Mudge looking at Vancouver Island.

[1:59:30] Voice 49: We had to do the reinforcement work there in 2019.

[1:59:34] Voice 49: And the active pass submarine cable work that was done in 2021 replaced three existing cables that had reached their end of life.

[1:59:42] Voice 49: great a lot of work for us over there um next slide please and this is something that we're

[1:59:47] Voice 49: working on over here which is uh adding regulator work uh new new regulators pardon me which will

[1:59:53] Voice 49: help with voltage fluctuation um having to cite one on main island uh it can be a bit of a challenge

[2:00:00] Voice 49: from trying to place it, but it's something we need to have

[2:00:02] Voice 49: to ensure that there's not undue pressure

[2:00:05] Voice 49: put on the lines, there's proper voltage,

[2:00:08] Voice 49: otherwise you could damage sensitive electronic equipment,

[2:00:10] Voice 49: whether it's at the schools,

[2:00:11] Voice 49: whether it's the medical offices,

[2:00:13] Voice 49: we wanna make sure there's proper voltage

[2:00:14] Voice 49: for all to be connected.

[2:00:18] Voice 49: And finally, as I say, we have about 250 submarine cables

[2:00:23] Voice 49: that connect all of the Gulf Islands

[2:00:26] Voice 49: in the area in the Salish Sea.

[2:00:28] Voice 49: So we have crew stationed on Salt Spring,

[2:00:30] Voice 49: We also have a crew truck on a number of the Gulf Islands up and down the coast.

[2:00:37] Voice 49: What will happen, obviously, is sometimes BC ferries can't get there.

[2:00:41] Voice 49: So we'll have crews go over there by water taxi and make repairs, make emergency repairs as required.

[2:00:48] Voice 49: We'll never eliminate outages completely, but what we hope to do is lessen the impact on our customers.

[2:00:54] Voice 49: We're doing a lot of vegetation work, reinforcing the system.

[2:00:57] Voice 49: So while we never eliminate them completely, we hope to lessen the impact on our customers.

[2:01:02] Voice 49: Did I stay within 10 minutes?

[2:01:03] Voice 49: Okay, good.

[2:01:06] Trustee Luckham (probable): So there's potentially a couple of questions.

[2:01:08] Trustee Luckham (probable): I'm not sure if you're staying on the break or not, and whether or not you might be able to answer some questions over the break.

[2:01:13] Trustee Luckham (probable): Is that all right for answering questions on the break?

[2:01:16] Trustee Luckham (probable): Or do you want to ask it now?

[2:01:17] Voice 30: I think it's just important because there was a slight.

[2:01:19] Voice 30: Yeah.

[2:01:19] Voice 30: Yeah. So the cable between Beaver Point and Thieves, slide 10, if just where it lands in Thieves Bay, just from my understanding of the situation, is that it's not a given that it's going to be Thieves Bay.

[2:01:32] Voice 30: There's conversation. So just for anybody watching that there is conversation about where's the landing point exactly for that.

[2:01:38] Trustee Luckham (probable): OK, super. Any other questions? Alex Allen, Hornby Island.

[2:01:43] Trustee Luckham (probable): Yeah,

[2:01:44] Voice 16: thank you for your presentation.

[2:01:46] Voice 16: We have a lot of outages on Hornby Island, as you know, and one, a lot of us would like

[2:01:53] Voice 16: to see having a truck actually park all the time on our island, because quite often we

[2:01:59] Voice 16: get outages on the weekend.

[2:02:00] Voice 16: We have to wait two days or something, or is it Sunday or something, or an evening.

[2:02:04] Voice 16: As well, I was wondering on the spot, the amount of money that arborists, you pay arborists

[2:02:11] Voice 16: versus burying, you know, the blinds instead of having poles.

[2:02:15] Voice 16: Have you ever thought about that on islands?

[2:02:18] Voice 49: Very, very quickly we thought about that.

[2:02:21] Voice 49: The cost would be astronomical to do that.

[2:02:23] Voice 49: We're an overhead utility.

[2:02:25] Voice 49: It wouldn't be practical to do that.

[2:02:28] Voice 49: It doesn't eliminate outages completely at all.

[2:02:31] Voice 49: You're still going to have a problem in some areas.

[2:02:34] Voice 49: And it just wouldn't work just based on the geography.

[2:02:39] Voice 49: I know critical mass people, you know,

[2:02:40] Voice 49: friends will tell me well they've been to europe and they've seen the netherlands or something like

[2:02:44] Voice 49: that and it's very different well they're you know very small compact population we don't have that

[2:02:50] Voice 49: ability here and we try to keep rates low what brings us here brings economic activity here is

[2:02:54] Voice 49: having some of the lowest rates in north america and to do that is is the best ways to maintain an

[2:02:59] Voice 49: overhead system thank

[2:03:04] Voice 42: you i'm not sure if you are responsible for uh the house sound area or who we

[2:03:11] Voice 42: would speak to about that but um i'm hoping there's consideration of redundancies to the

[2:03:17] Voice 42: islands in the house sound as well as potential expansion as gambier is only one-third electrified

[2:03:25] Voice 42: thank you

[2:03:26] Voice 49: i don't well i mean it's a question of of economics i can say your question of

[2:03:32] Voice 49: maintaining the system so there isn't redundancy required um it's a distribution line that feeds

[2:03:38] Voice 49: gambier i know that and i know that it's just a challenge there it's a question how many permanent

[2:03:42] Voice 49: residents there are and um it would be very costly to put in a redundancy

[2:03:49] Trustee Luckham (probable): okay um

[2:03:53] Trustee Luckham (probable): thank you uh ted

[2:03:54] Trustee Luckham (probable): and your partner there for joining us today and um it's very informative thank you so we're going to

[2:04:10] Trustee Luckham (probable): continue on with our um uh delegations it would be nice to get delegations complete before the break

[2:04:15] Trustee Luckham (probable): and then we can pick up public comment period after the break so let's go to glenn stevens

[2:04:20] Trustee Luckham (probable): clear and safe harbors initiatives glenn thank you glenn for joining us and thank you for updating

[2:04:28] Trustee Luckham (probable): your presentation we flagged and i'm going to flag again for your benefit that it's really critical

[2:04:35] Trustee Luckham (probable): that you address the federation-wide issue associated with this vessel derelict vessel

[2:04:41] Trustee Luckham (probable): and Abandoned Vessel Program, more so than specifically about Salt Spring Island. This

[2:04:47] Trustee Luckham (probable): body does not directly influence Salt Spring Island bylaws, and you have continued to reference

[2:04:53] Trustee Luckham (probable): those. So just keep that in mind in your presentation. Keep it Federation, fairly high

[2:04:58] Trustee Luckham (probable): level, and glad to have you here today. Well,

[2:05:00] Voice 53: thank you for having me today. I want to first

[2:05:03] Voice 53: applaud the First Nations Councilman who spoke passionately about the need to preserve and

[2:05:10] Voice 53: protect excuse me are valuable and unique land and marine environment and also the friend of the fur

[2:05:20] Voice 53: of the trust who spoke about the mandatory not discretionary duties of the trustees you are

[2:05:29] Voice 53: fiduciaries who have fiduciary duties to preserve and protect effectuate the object of the trust

[2:05:37] Voice 53: I'm here today because we are praying that the entire Trust Council join together to

[2:05:48] Voice 53: prioritize ensuring that our valuable and unique Gulf Islands harbors and adjacent shorelines

[2:05:55] Voice 53: are clean and safe.

[2:05:58] Voice 53: A year ago, almost to this day, I presented to our local Trust Committee and made a similar

[2:06:07] Voice 53: a similar presentation with regard to prioritizing the cleanliness and safety of our harbors.

[2:06:14] Voice 53: One year ago, they directed the staff to write a review of what we call the CASHI initiative,

[2:06:22] Voice 53: but for whatever reasons, that has not been done.

[2:06:25] Voice 53: For far too long, nothing has been done as far as we can say in the last 15 or so years

[2:06:32] Voice 53: to make this a priority, and frankly, we're stunned.

[2:06:37] Voice 53: There are very few things that are, in our opinion,

[2:06:40] Voice 53: a unique amenity and an environment.

[2:06:43] Voice 53: I understand there's a debate about whether infrastructure

[2:06:46] Voice 53: or tourism or livelihoods are, in fact, a unique amenity,

[2:06:52] Voice 53: and they may or may not be,

[2:06:53] Voice 53: but unequivocally, our valuable harbors

[2:06:57] Voice 53: and adjacent shorelines are both a unique amenity

[2:07:01] Voice 53: amenity and environment, you have the unequivocal power via your bylaw authority to regulate

[2:07:14] Voice 53: and address this situation.

[2:07:16] Voice 53: This is what, and we have, you know, these are pictures that you should see from the

[2:07:20] Voice 53: Ganges perspective.

[2:07:21] Voice 53: Hey, can you do the first slide, please?

[2:07:24] Voice 53: This is the current state, and this is all through the Gulf Islands.

[2:07:29] Voice 53: There are many liveaboards, and I want to make this absolutely clear.

[2:07:32] Voice 53: We're not trying to kick liveaboards out of the harbors.

[2:07:35] Voice 53: There is a bylaw, and I'm not familiar with the bylaws on the other islands, that on Salt

[2:07:41] Voice 53: Spring at least, absolutely prohibit living and dwelling on vessels.

[2:07:46] Voice 53: We want to change that.

[2:07:48] Voice 53: We want to change that to legitimate living in the harbors.

[2:07:52] Voice 53: But the balance for that is that you have to be reasonable citizens.

[2:07:58] Voice 53: You need to have proper containment equipment.

[2:08:01] Voice 53: You need to have registered boat.

[2:08:02] Voice 53: You can't impede navigation.

[2:08:04] Voice 53: You can't cause congestion.

[2:08:06] Voice 53: You need proper safety equipment.

[2:08:08] Voice 53: And I think we can join together to make that happen all through the Gulf Islands.

[2:08:14] Voice 53: One of the concerns was that if we imposed regulations on Salt Spring Island, people would move to other islands.

[2:08:21] Voice 53: Where there aren't such regulations, if we join together and work together, we can make this, that, excuse me, will not happen.

[2:08:33] Voice 53: Next slide.

[2:08:38] Voice 53: There was a recent meeting hosted by the CRD.

[2:08:41] Voice 53: Some of you probably attended.

[2:08:43] Voice 53: And I believe it was April 30th.

[2:08:45] Voice 53: And the consideration was the placement of buoys.

[2:08:48] Voice 53: Right now, buoys can be placed anywhere.

[2:08:50] Voice 53: And they are being placed everywhere.

[2:08:52] Voice 53: There were three options that were considered.

[2:08:55] Voice 53: one, banning buoys, which is unrealistic. It's like banning

[2:08:58] Voice 53: liveaboards. That's not reality. People want to live on the water, or

[2:09:02] Voice 53: because of the housing crisis, have to live on vessels.

[2:09:07] Voice 53: The second option that they considered was getting a license of

[2:09:10] Voice 53: occupation. That was rejected, too, to Cumberson

[2:09:14] Voice 53: Complex. So the third one which was advocated

[2:09:18] Voice 53: was regulate, which dovetails entirely with

[2:09:22] Voice 53: with what we're proposing as part of the CASHI initiative.

[2:09:27] Voice 53: And both groups, yes, independently arrived at

[2:09:31] Voice 53: what I consider not rocket science.

[2:09:33] Voice 53: We need to regulate with effective and fair laws

[2:09:37] Voice 53: that are enforced.

[2:09:39] Voice 53: Next slide.

[2:09:43] Voice 53: So what we have in mind is a permit scheme

[2:09:47] Voice 53: where in order to reside in the harbors or to put a buoy,

[2:09:50] Voice 53: You need to get a permit from the trust, and in order to get a permit, you have to certify that you have the proper equipment, proper containment equipment, not going to throw waste and trash overboard, that your boat is movable.

[2:10:09] Voice 53: And we also have an insurance requirement, which, because we're sensitive to the fact that there are costs associated with insurance, a moratorium for a year we proposed while we try to find a solution.

[2:10:21] Voice 53: You get liability insurance, you don't necessarily have to insure the boat.

[2:10:28] Voice 53: Next slide.

[2:10:29] Voice 53: it. So one of the things that is frustrating to us is that we've written to the trust. I've written

[2:10:43] Voice 53: to all of you asking you to prioritize making our harbors clean and safe. And I got two responses

[2:10:52] Voice 53: saying, frankly, we already have priorities. We're not including this in this year's priorities.

[2:10:59] Voice 53: It hasn't been included in the last 15-year priorities as far as we can see. And we are

[2:11:05] Voice 53: stunned by that because, as I shared with you, the twofer is this is both a unique amenity and

[2:11:11] Voice 53: an environment. If everything is a unique amenity, nothing is. I'm looking at the page 40 and 41 of

[2:11:23] Voice 53: the agenda, which has the 2018-22 strategic plan organized under a variety of areas. Land

[2:11:32] Voice 53: And stewardship, the second marine and freshwater stewardship.

[2:11:37] Voice 53: And the only thing addressed in that is the mapping of eelgrass, which we applaud, but it states specifically Trust Council has not supported moving forward with phase two at this time.

[2:11:49] Voice 53: That's the only thing that's mentioned under protecting marine and freshwater stewardship.

[2:11:55] Voice 53: stewardship um i will mention to you that just within the last few days because i'm sorry you

[2:12:05] Voice 53: had i have three minutes left you said thank you in the last few days the crd has effectively

[2:12:15] Voice 53: closed churchill beach on ganges because of e coli the high count of e coli i mean that's just

[2:12:23] Voice 53: a symptom that's an example of what's going on here and i'm going to leave you with this i looked

[2:12:29] Voice 53: looked at what is called the key accomplishments.

[2:12:33] Voice 53: This is both in your 2022 and 2023 annual report,

[2:12:39] Voice 53: and 2023-2024 proposed annual report.

[2:12:44] Voice 53: And there is not one mention on a key accomplishment

[2:12:48] Voice 53: of doing anything for the marine environment.

[2:12:51] Voice 53: In fact, my, it's reasonable,

[2:12:54] Voice 53: one of the most embarrassing accomplishment is this,

[2:12:58] Voice 53: and it's in both of these lists.

[2:13:01] Voice 53: This year, Islands Trust mailed a living in the trust area

[2:13:05] Voice 53: information package to new property owners

[2:13:08] Voice 53: across the trust area.

[2:13:11] Voice 53: That's one of the top 10.

[2:13:13] Voice 53: Last year, it was the same one, except they put 100.

[2:13:17] Voice 53: They put the number 100.

[2:13:19] Voice 53: We mailed out 100.

[2:13:20] Voice 53: I hope you guys are better than that.

[2:13:23] Voice 53: You have responsibilities as trustees,

[2:13:26] Voice 53: and I think you're legally accountable

[2:13:28] Voice 53: accountable to effectuate this object. It's not discretionary.

[2:13:32] Voice 53: It can't ignore the statutory object which has been

[2:13:36] Voice 53: far too ignored for far too long in this particular

[2:13:39] Voice 53: area. Please work for the benefit of all the

[2:13:44] Voice 53: stakeholders in our Gulf Islands. Thank you.

[2:13:48] Voice 53: Thank

[2:14:05] Trustee Luckham (probable): you very much for your presentation today. Our final

[2:14:08] Trustee Luckham (probable): delegation in this section of the public comment is

[2:14:12] Trustee Luckham (probable): is Ronald Wright, Keep Salt Springs Sustainable, 5.14.

[2:14:17] Trustee Luckham (probable): And you wish to speak to the policy statement,

[2:14:21] Trustee Luckham (probable): if I'm not mistaken.

[2:14:37] Voice 20: Can everybody hear me in the distant corners?

[2:14:42] Voice 20: Great. Thank you.

[2:14:45] Voice 20: Chair Luckert, members of council,

[2:14:47] Voice 20: and particularly those of you from other islands,

[2:14:51] Voice 20: I hope you'll find time while you're here

[2:14:54] Voice 20: to enjoy some of Salt Spring's unique amenities

[2:14:59] Voice 20: and that you won't spend all your time in this room,

[2:15:02] Voice 20: which may be a fine amenity, but it's certainly not unique.

[2:15:09] Voice 20: My name's Ronald Wright.

[2:15:11] Voice 20: I'm here to speak for Keep Salt Spring Sustainable.

[2:15:18] Voice 20: And we're a group of residents working to uphold our island's environmental well-being

[2:15:24] Voice 20: and rural character.

[2:15:26] Voice 20: We are alarmed, as others have been here this afternoon, by the content and the process of draft changes to the Trust Policy Statement.

[2:15:41] Voice 20: Above all, this Council's proposed rewrite of the Trust Act's famous 50-year mandate to preserve and protect the island's unique amenities and environment.

[2:15:56] Voice 20: These amenities you now tell us after discussing public business in secret are to become, I quote, broad ranging and may include issues such as, but not limited to, housing, livelihoods, infrastructure and tourism.

[2:16:21] Voice 20: isn't. The weasel words, but not limited to, pave the way for a massive paragraph. Anything,

[2:16:34] Voice 20: any council may choose to add to a list of things that are not unique at all. What's next for this

[2:16:44] Voice 20: list, I wonder? Unique motels? Unique gas stations? Thousands of unique Airbnbs and

[2:16:51] Voice 20: timeshare combos? This council has further declared the current governance committee

[2:17:04] Voice 20: summarized and clarified all previous legal opinions in arriving at this new definition.

[2:17:13] Voice 20: Well, the only legal opinions you've brought into the light of day are two short excerpts,

[2:17:19] Voice 20: both by the same lawyer, written 20 years apart. But I bring good news. You don't need to waste

[2:17:30] Voice 20: your time and ours in reinterpreting the Trust Act. If the Act really meant what

[2:17:38] Voice 20: you wanted to mean, there would have been absolutely no point in passing it in the

[2:17:43] Voice 20: first place. These islands would have been no more protected than Langford or

[2:17:48] Voice 20: Langley. The writers of the Act chose their words carefully. The Oxford English

[2:17:56] Voice 20: dictionary defines unique as one-of-a-kind, unparalleled. The act means exactly what it says.

[2:18:06] Voice 20: Unique amenities are things found nowhere else. Back in 1982 on the Socrates watch,

[2:18:23] Voice 20: the trust survived an attempt to shut it down by antitrusters using much the same arguments.

[2:18:31] Voice 20: you're now trotting out again.

[2:18:35] Voice 20: So, in 1986, the Trust and Municipal Affairs Ministry published Position Paper No. 1,

[2:18:43] Voice 20: giving specific examples and clear definitions that leave no room for doubt

[2:18:49] Voice 20: on what is preserved and what is protected.

[2:18:53] Voice 20: And I'm going to quote from that.

[2:18:56] Voice 20: 500 islands and the extensive coastline and sheltered waters,

[2:19:01] Voice 20: Diverse and unusual natural features, vegetation and wildlife, almost continuous tree cover, a unique water supply situation, small watersheds, shallow soils, and heavy reliance on groundwater sources, end quote.

[2:19:25] Voice 20: Now, the paper also addressed some human matters, but these are either pre-existing or dependent on the natural features.

[2:19:38] Voice 20: Quote, areas of heritage or archaeological significance, tranquil rural areas, sustainable economic development, and the self-sufficiency yet interdependence that island living entails.

[2:19:57] Voice 20: end quote. Furthermore, the paper defined what is meant by the Act's words for the benefit

[2:20:07] Voice 20: of trust residents and the province, quote, a benefit must be sustained and long-term

[2:20:18] Voice 20: and must not be at the expense of the amenities or environment of the islands, end quote.

[2:20:28] Voice 20: So, how very odd that the so-called all-previous legal opinions that you claim to have examined do not include this most thorough and important legal precedent, done in 1986 after wide public discussions, not in a secret backroom in one day.

[2:20:55] Voice 20: As recently as 2021, a report for a Trust Council meeting, March 2021, underlined the 1986 paper's importance, noting that, quote, it provided explicit, detailed interpretations of the Islands Trust object, the mandate, and stating that, quote,

[2:21:19] Voice 20: the Act is fundamentally about conservation-oriented, place-based protection, not traditional human-centric land use planning.

[2:21:32] Voice 20: So, was all this forgotten, or is it being deliberately ignored?

[2:21:41] Voice 20: Incidentally, if anybody wants to check out in more detail what I'm saying here,

[2:21:46] Voice 20: Here, my article in the TAI today, which has already been brought up by a trustee who doesn't appear to be in the room anymore, gives you, it's all laid out at greater length with all the sources.

[2:22:06] Voice 20: So this council, continuing this, this council's recklessness and lack of openness are alarming.

[2:22:15] Voice 20: Your so-called consensus was cooked up behind closed doors.

[2:22:19] Voice 20: Closed meetings are sometimes needed to hear sensitive legal advice, but they are not for discussing public business in secret.

[2:22:30] Voice 20: That is at least an abuse of process and, at worst, a breach of the law.

[2:22:37] Voice 20: If Trust Council keeps going down this road, it risks making itself look illiterate, foolish, and lacking in good faith.

[2:22:48] Voice 20: Having lost every referendum since Bowens at the end of the last century, those seeking to undermine the trust protections have now infiltrated the trust itself and are gutting it from within.

[2:23:11] Voice 20: I remind you that all trustees are required to follow the trust's standards of conduct, the very first of which is, quote, to serve the public, advocate the trust mandate, and adhere to the trust policy, end quote.

[2:23:32] Voice 20: Yet this council has appointed a governance committee whose chair is from the one island that became a municipality and whose vice chair openly calls for the trust to be shut down or for this island, the biggest one, to leave it.

[2:23:56] Voice 20: Is this good governance and acting in good faith?

[2:24:02] Voice 20: No, it's a slow-motion coup to overthrow the very purpose of the Islands Trust.

[2:24:11] Voice 20: Thank you.

[2:24:25] Trustee Luckham (probable): So thank you, Ron, and thank you, Council.

[2:24:29] Trustee Luckham (probable): I would like to go to our bake and provide you an opportunity to engage with some of the voices you've heard at our podium and others that might wish to speak to us.

[2:24:39] Trustee Luckham (probable): so let's come back in 15 minutes which would be uh 20 minutes after three

[2:24:52] Voice 34: what

[2:24:53] Trustee Luckham (probable): are we at we're at

[2:24:54] Trustee Luckham (probable): okay

[2:24:58] Voice 33: council

[2:25:08] Trustee Luckham (probable): i'm going to begin this public comment period

[2:25:12] Trustee Luckham (probable): so let's get the conversations up to the front table here please

[2:25:18] Trustee Luckham (probable): And if there's other conversations that want to continue, I'm going to politely ask you to take them outside.

[2:25:26] Trustee Luckham (probable): So if I can get a show of hands from members of the public that wish to address Trust Council today, gives me an idea of where we're at.

[2:25:34] Trustee Luckham (probable): I'm going to ask. That's fantastic.

[2:25:38] Trustee Luckham (probable): So I'm going to ask you to kind of self-organize yourself at the front there.

[2:25:41] Trustee Luckham (probable): You see Peter Lamb standing there. You all know Peter Lamb.

[2:25:44] Trustee Luckham (probable): If you could line up with him, then I would just ask you to proceed in orderly fashion.

[2:25:50] Trustee Luckham (probable): and I'm going to ask Peter Lamb, past trustee with the Alice Trust, to take the microphone up there

[2:25:57] Trustee Luckham (probable): and start us off on the public comment period. Now, of course, I really want to ask you to be

[2:26:03] Trustee Luckham (probable): polite and kind to your friends and neighbors that are in the room, the trustees that are at

[2:26:09] Trustee Luckham (probable): the table, and those that are joining us online. And although we may be supportive of some people,

[2:26:15] Trustee Luckham (probable): we may not be supportive of other people applause makes for an unsafe place where other voices can't

[2:26:24] Trustee Luckham (probable): be heard because they feel intimidated so let's keep that applause and i know that you would never

[2:26:30] Trustee Luckham (probable): boo somebody that had something to say so let's just keep that balanced and enjoy what they have

[2:26:36] Trustee Luckham (probable): to say and thank them for their time with us thank you mr chairman i'm party just hang on a second so

[2:26:46] Trustee Luckham (probable): So I think that what we're going to do is about two minutes per person, and I'm going to just ask you to manage your own time.

[2:26:53] Trustee Luckham (probable): I've certainly got Toby Elliott here who's got her orange flags and violet flags.

[2:26:58] Trustee Luckham (probable): If you could please keep an eye on her and start wrapping up when you see the flags coming up.

[2:27:04] Trustee Luckham (probable): And that will be respectful of those people that are following you with their presentation today.

[2:27:11] Trustee Luckham (probable): So, Peter Lamb, you start us off.

[2:27:13] Trustee Luckham (probable): Really grateful to you.

[2:27:14] Voice 1: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

[2:27:16] Voice 1: I'm here on a different reason than many other people you've been listening to, and that is I'm here primarily to celebrate the 50th year anniversary of the Trust.

[2:27:29] Voice 1: I think it's an event, it's a history of reviews and studies and referendums and all kinds, and it's done very well.

[2:27:39] Voice 1: It even survived the proposed abolition of the Trust back in 1982.

[2:27:44] Voice 1: So I think the Trust can celebrate 50 years.

[2:27:49] Voice 1: It's been, I think, in my view, my experience as a trustee and watching the developments

[2:27:58] Voice 1: since then, I think it's done a remarkably good job in preserving and protecting the

[2:28:04] Voice 1: islands and the waters surrounding the islands.

[2:28:07] Voice 1: The only thing I have to deal with is trying to be brief on what's happened since my 2009

[2:28:17] Voice 1: version of the trust story.

[2:28:19] Voice 1: And for me, there were two very major changes that trust and indeed all governments around

[2:28:28] Voice 1: the world have had to deal with.

[2:28:29] Voice 1: The first one, obviously, is climate change, and I think the Trust really needs to do a

[2:28:36] Voice 1: little more on the issue of climate change.

[2:28:40] Voice 1: One of the earlier speakers spoke about that, too.

[2:28:42] Voice 1: The second thing, which I think is progressing quite well, the Trust, is this reconciliation

[2:28:49] Voice 1: commitment that you've made, and I think it's going quite well.

[2:28:53] Voice 1: I couldn't finish this update without obviously mentioning the housing crisis that we're facing

[2:28:59] Voice 1: In some ways, it's national, maybe even more global than that.

[2:29:04] Voice 1: I know when I was a trustee in 2005-2008, we were dealing with affordable housing problems then, and there still are.

[2:29:16] Voice 1: So I just hope that the housing crisis can be resolved.

[2:29:20] Voice 1: I hope it can be resolved without tampering with or impacting on the mandate of the trust

[2:29:26] Voice 1: that was given to them by the government 50 years ago.

[2:29:29] Voice 1: So thank you very much.

[2:29:34] Voice 47: Okay, we'll just go to online with Mr. Brazier, please.

[2:29:37] Voice 47: Mr. Brazier, if you're there, if you would make your presentation.

[2:30:04] Voice 47: All right. So we'll just wait for Mr. Brazier. We'll next speaker, please.

[2:30:22] Voice 5: Thanks. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, trustees, for this opportunity to speak with you today.

[2:30:27] Voice 5: My name is David Donison and I live here on Salt Spring. And first, let me congratulate you on the

[2:30:34] Voice 5: 50th anniversary. And please allow me also to extend my personal gratitude that you're holding

[2:30:38] Voice 5: this quarterly meeting here on Salt Spring. What I'd like to share with you today are thoughts that

[2:30:44] Voice 5: arose from my recent property tax bill. And no, I'm not here to complain about the amount.

[2:30:53] Voice 5: What caught my attention was this circular, which accompanied the bill,

[2:30:58] Voice 5: and that included the language that the Islands Trust is a special purpose government mandated

[2:31:04] Voice 5: to preserve and protect over 450 islands and surrounding waters in the Salish Sea.

[2:31:09] Voice 5: Now, the statement about surrounding waters is clearly aspirational, given the absence of full

[2:31:16] Voice 5: old jurisdiction over these waters. And as we know, the relative lack of the program or other

[2:31:22] Voice 5: activity. That your quarterly meeting is being held here in Ganges and adjacent to Ganges Harbor

[2:31:30] Voice 5: has a certain irony as it relates to this statement. Ganges Harbor has the second largest

[2:31:37] Voice 5: collection of hazardous, abandoned and derelict vessels in Canada. And it's not alone in the

[2:31:42] Voice 5: the Islands Trust area. Montague also has a problem. There's been problems at Bowen,

[2:31:46] Voice 5: but we just seem to have ground zero here. It's a major environmental concern. And if the Islands

[2:31:53] Voice 5: Trust wishes to assert authority over the surrounding waters, as stated in the thing

[2:31:58] Voice 5: that accompanied my bill, then Ganges Harbor would seem to be ground zero for these efforts.

[2:32:06] Voice 5: Thus, I strongly encourage you to consider the proposal from the Clean and Safe Harbors

[2:32:10] Voice 5: Initiative that you heard from earlier today. If the Islands Trust is truly committed to protecting

[2:32:15] Voice 5: our surrounding waters, then cleaning up this harbor has to be job one. If we really want

[2:32:21] Voice 5: something to celebrate on our 50th anniversary, then let's make Ganges a pristine example of a

[2:32:27] Voice 5: well-managed, clean, and safe waterway that we can replicate throughout the Islands Trust area.

[2:32:31] Voice 5: Thank you very much for your time.

[2:32:35] Voice 47: Okay, once again for Mr. Brazier. You're muted, Mr. Brazier.

[2:32:43] Voice 47: Hello. You

[2:32:46] Voice 56: can hear me?

[2:32:48] Voice 47: Yes, go ahead, sir.

[2:32:49] Voice 56: Oh, good. Thank you. I'm Graham Brazier. I'm

[2:32:53] Voice 56: talking to you from Denman Island. And I'll be very brief. I'm deeply concerned about your lack

[2:33:02] Voice 56: of commitment to communicating with your public. It has been evident over the course of the last

[2:33:09] Voice 56: six to eight months, and I'd like to draw your attention to a couple of quotes from your website

[2:33:17] Voice 56: that are relevant. Quote, a guiding principle of the Islands Trust is that open, consultative,

[2:33:27] Voice 56: public participation is vital to effective decision-making for the trust area, close quote.

[2:33:35] Voice 56: quote, and from your contact us page, I quote, we want to hear from you. You have been hearing from

[2:33:47] Voice 56: us for the last six to eight months. Now, we want to hear from you. Thank you.

[2:33:59] Voice 47: Next speaker, please. So Mike, come on in your name, please, sir.

[2:34:12] Voice 54: My name is Peter Lloyd-Jones. I'm the chair of the South Spring Accommodation Group.

[2:34:18] Voice 54: Chair and trustees, thank you for holding this event here on Salisbury today.

[2:34:23] Voice 54: I want to talk to you about the issue of tourism.

[2:34:28] Voice 54: Tourism is a vital economic driver for Salisbury Island and the Gulf Islands.

[2:34:34] Voice 54: It generates approximately $12 million worth of revenue for Salisbury and it contributes about

[2:34:43] Voice 54: a quarter of a million in MRDT taxes a year, of which 180,000 goes towards affordable housing.

[2:34:50] Voice 54: This is just from the tax for accommodations. And one of the reasons I want to speak to you is that

[2:34:56] Voice 54: we have an issue regarding vacation rentals, as you probably are well aware. Our belief is that

[2:35:02] Voice 54: vacation rentals should be treated the same way as, in a sense, B&Bs are, but they need to be

[2:35:07] Voice 54: be regulated. The problem we are facing is that we have a lack of regulation around vacation rentals.

[2:35:14] Voice 54: And we believe that the bylaw in Salt Springs, the bylaw 355, just not adequately address or

[2:35:21] Voice 54: doesn't address vacation rentals at all, and doesn't in any way look at the current issue of

[2:35:28] Voice 54: tourism accommodation or preferences. It looked at it from about 25 years ago, so that we need to

[2:35:34] Voice 54: to change that. So I'm here to ask the trust to take a following actions. One is to collect

[2:35:44] Voice 54: relevant data. We are working for mostly from anecdotes and very little data is collected

[2:35:50] Voice 54: on Salisbury, never mind in the other islands, regarding tourism preferences, accommodation

[2:35:55] Voice 54: preferences and how they're managed. We ask for the relevant stakeholders to sit around

[2:36:01] Voice 54: roundtable to discuss the need for the change in the bylaw and to address the issue of vacation

[2:36:08] Voice 54: rentals and to investigate local licensing mechanisms, which would include business

[2:36:16] Voice 54: licenses. So some very simple three or four things that we should do in order to get going.

[2:36:21] Voice 54: Thanks very much.

[2:36:29] Voice 55: Good afternoon. I'm Jack Spears. I'm a Salt Spring resident who lives

[2:36:34] Voice 55: just down the road from Churchill Beach, which has recently been closed by the CRD.

[2:36:40] Voice 55: And I wanted to come and really draw your attention to what a disaster is going on with

[2:36:50] Voice 55: the foreshore and the marine environment.

[2:36:53] Voice 55: I had an opportunity to meet with several, actually more than several, quite a few folks

[2:36:58] Voice 55: who live on the harbor and hear from them exactly what their living conditions are like.

[2:37:02] Voice 55: And I want to share that with you because it was shocking to me, and I hope that it will be shocking to you and that you really understand what the scope of the problem is.

[2:37:11] Voice 55: I was under the impression that a lot of these vessels actually had holding tanks and maybe they were dumping their raw sewage overboard because it was too much of a hassle to get to the pump out station at the dock, etc.

[2:37:23] Voice 55: In fact, a lot of these vessels are such that there is no sewage facilities whatsoever.

[2:37:29] Voice 55: And you have folks essentially pooping in a bucket and dumping that overboard on a daily basis.

[2:37:37] Voice 55: And so when you go to Churchill Beach, you don't it's not sewage that's been put into the water.

[2:37:43] Voice 55: You're talking about toilet paper, feminine hygiene products that are washed up on shore.

[2:37:48] Voice 55: Unbelievable. In addition to that, a lot of these vessels, because of the state that they're in there, they're often purchased for little money.

[2:37:56] Voice 55: They haven't had maintenance in a long time, but they do have motors in them that have

[2:38:00] Voice 55: Are slowly deteriorating and leaking oil into the bilge

[2:38:04] Voice 55: once that bilge

[2:38:06] Voice 55: Becomes filled with oil and water because a lot of these vessels leak what do they do?

[2:38:10] Voice 55: They pump that water oily water over again on a weekly basis

[2:38:16] Voice 55: These things are you know, it's not a minor issue the the number of vessels that are

[2:38:22] Voice 55: our liveaboards in Ganges and other places throughout the islands has increased dramatically.

[2:38:30] Voice 55: It's not 25 vessels, it's 150 vessels.

[2:38:33] Voice 55: This is an issue, you know, Salt Spring and the Islands Trust,

[2:38:37] Voice 55: you like to make yourselves out as paragons of environmentalism.

[2:38:43] Voice 55: It's the birthplace of the Green Party.

[2:38:45] Voice 55: And yet you've got this disaster that you're in charge of.

[2:38:50] Voice 55: And I would urge you to make this a priority and at least send a signal that this is being worked on and is a priority.

[2:38:57] Voice 55: Thank you.

[2:39:14] Voice 4: Hi, good afternoon.

[2:39:15] Voice 4: My name is Ian Peace, and I live on Salt Spring.

[2:39:17] Voice 4: I'd like to congratulate you all for your role in the 50th anniversary celebrations.

[2:39:24] Voice 4: Personally, I feel like it's an honor to be down here in this community.

[2:39:28] Voice 4: This is what I see as community here, that the folks in this room, the elected representatives,

[2:39:36] Voice 4: these are the exemplars of what it means to be a community, the official elected representatives

[2:39:42] Voice 4: of this community.

[2:39:45] Voice 4: And community is what's important here.

[2:39:47] Voice 4: This is what we're talking about.

[2:39:50] Voice 4: There's all kinds of different beliefs and values across the spectrum.

[2:39:54] Voice 4: spectrum. There's a lot of folks who are invested in the Judeo-Christian cosmology of go forth and

[2:40:01] Voice 4: multiply and the growth that comes with that. And that's been good for a lot of folks. And it

[2:40:05] Voice 4: produces a lot of good things for everybody. We can all agree on that. And there's folks on the

[2:40:10] Voice 4: other areas of the spectrum that have a different perspective. They see an animated environment

[2:40:14] Voice 4: where we're minor bit players. Humans are a minor bit player in an overall life system that's very

[2:40:23] Voice 4: very important. And both of those areas and most of the areas in the spectrum share the idea that

[2:40:30] Voice 4: they want to live in community. So here we are, we're in the community where we all agree it's

[2:40:35] Voice 4: important to be in community. So that's the important part. We're in community and almost

[2:40:46] Voice 4: everything we agree on. We wouldn't be here if we didn't really agree on almost everything.

[2:40:53] Voice 4: everything there's a few things that we're not necessarily agreeing on and I can get right in

[2:40:58] Voice 4: there you know I think that the dilution of the statements in the trust policy statement could be

[2:41:05] Voice 4: a stalking horse for developers that are trying to like use a cover to get in there and keep growing

[2:41:11] Voice 4: and stuff that's just my opinion I'm not that sure I'm correct but I'm worried about it and

[2:41:18] Voice 4: And the only way I can relieve my concerns about this is to understand what folks in other areas

[2:41:29] Voice 4: of the spectrum think about this stuff. And that's the best I can do, is to just try to

[2:41:37] Voice 4: increase my understanding of where folks who completely disagree with me or sort of agree

[2:41:42] Voice 4: with me on these particular few things, where are they coming from? And I don't think I'll

[2:41:48] Voice 4: change their mind i don't know if they'll change my mind but increasing understanding is the key

[2:41:56] Voice 4: to making some progress thank you very much for the signals sharon

[2:42:11] Voice 40: bywater i live here on salt

[2:42:14] Voice 40: spring on malibu drive here we are celebrating 50 years of the islands trust and the carefully

[2:42:21] Voice 40: crafted mandate that has served the islands well unfortunately islands trust council has decided

[2:42:27] Voice 40: in a far-from-transparent manner to water down the celebrated mandate.

[2:42:33] Voice 40: In this place is new wording that expands and reinterprets unique amenities.

[2:42:38] Voice 40: I have no doubt the changes will result in environmental policies being compromised

[2:42:42] Voice 40: or excluded to enable development.

[2:42:45] Voice 40: With the proposed changes, we will no longer have a trust,

[2:42:48] Voice 40: and the trust area will not have the wording needed

[2:42:51] Voice 40: to ensure conservation-oriented land-use planning and regulation.

[2:42:55] Voice 40: regulation. As droughts get longer, weather more extreme, this feels like a giant step backwards.

[2:43:03] Voice 40: I asked Trust Council to reconsider the dismantling of what was an effective

[2:43:08] Voice 40: preserve and protect mandate. I know our government system isn't an easy one to work

[2:43:14] Voice 40: with. I spent 14 years on water, sewer, and liquid waste commissions with the CRD.

[2:43:19] Voice 40: I've been on the island for 30 years. I'm a blue-collar retiree now. I was a blue-collar

[2:43:25] Voice 40: worker and so was my husband when I moved here. Blue-collar families, while there's still some

[2:43:31] Voice 40: of them left on Malibu, it saddens me too that they have trouble finding housing. But we do

[2:43:37] Voice 40: have to work within the constraints of the environment. And I have grandchildren, lots of

[2:43:43] Voice 40: them, and I look at them and I worry about what's going to be left for them if we don't put

[2:43:49] Voice 40: environment first in all of the decisions that we're making, because we've seen what happens

[2:43:55] Voice 40: when we don't. We're living it in climate change. So I ask all of the Trust Council here today

[2:44:02] Voice 40: to just look at their communities, and we all can exercise more patience with each other

[2:44:09] Voice 40: and come to housing bylaws, roads, all of that in a way that will work.

[2:44:17] Voice 40: Thank you.

[2:44:26] Voice 3: My name is Maiken Baldado.

[2:44:29] Voice 3: Some people call me Forrest.

[2:44:30] Voice 3: Trustees and staff, thank you for your work.

[2:44:33] Voice 3: It's very easy to criticize, and I wouldn't be doing your job any better.

[2:44:39] Voice 3: So I run a small ecological construction company.

[2:44:41] Voice 3: I was appointed to be on this island's housing task force.

[2:44:46] Voice 3: I have a simple message today because I only have about a minute and 30 seconds, but I'm available outside of this forum through Homes with Love.

[2:44:59] Voice 3: And it's to unify people.

[2:45:02] Voice 3: You know, we all agreed pretty much in this room on conservation and this idea of, you know, development versus environment and all that.

[2:45:10] Voice 3: I have a pretty simple message.

[2:45:11] Voice 3: My specialty is low footprint housing, which includes cabins, it includes tiny homes, RVs, whatever it is that people are doing to deal with the situation.

[2:45:22] Voice 3: As with Mr. Stearns brought up, the boat issue, it's pretty much a technical no-brainer to ensure that these things are safe.

[2:45:30] Voice 3: People are going to do it anyway.

[2:45:32] Voice 3: So what are the mechanisms that we can put in place to make sure they're fire safe, the waste is being dealt with reasonably?

[2:45:39] Voice 3: reasonably and by the same token that these structures should be under no more burden of

[2:45:43] Voice 3: proof of safety than a once approved house or csa approved trailer that might be full of rat

[2:45:50] Voice 3: chewed wires uh mold and i work on a lot of these places so i know the state of the housing park on

[2:45:57] Voice 3: this island uh you know if people are going to say we don't have enough water for country

[2:46:01] Voice 3: grocer workers to live in little cabins well are they doing rainwater conservation

[2:46:05] Voice 3: conservation? Are people doing solar? Are people all pitching in together? There's no moral high

[2:46:11] Voice 3: ground here. And I've gone taking this as far as the federal government to the leader of the

[2:46:17] Voice 3: opposition. And we have to unite across all principles. We're a green constituency, but we've

[2:46:23] Voice 3: got to talk to everybody. Thank you very much for your time.

[2:46:37] Voice 35: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of

[2:46:40] Voice 35: Trust Council. My name is Michael Sketch. I live on North Pender Island. Let it not be thought

[2:46:46] Voice 35: after this afternoon's display, heartfelt display, that the trust object is irrelevant,

[2:46:51] Voice 35: that it is something that one can just say, ah, yes, we do that. But when last did you,

[2:46:58] Voice 35: each one of you, councillors, read on a staff report or beside a bylaw, this trust action

[2:47:06] Voice 35: is not inconsistent with the trust object? When? I've never read it in 20 years of looking.

[2:47:13] Voice 35: Yes, the trust policy statement, but that's the workaround. You can get around the trust policies.

[2:47:18] Voice 35: You cannot get around section 4 of the Islands Trust Act.

[2:47:24] Voice 35: I speak to trust staff accountability for carrying out the object,

[2:47:28] Voice 35: that is, for implementing the object, which is section 3 of the Act.

[2:47:34] Voice 35: Five decades have passed since the province legislated the preserve and protect object,

[2:47:39] Voice 35: object, and three decades since Council should have given certainty to implementation of

[2:47:44] Voice 35: the object by adopting an effective trust policy statement by law.

[2:47:49] Voice 35: But there is no such certainty.

[2:47:53] Voice 35: The failure is egregious in the light of section 4 of the Act, where accountability for Councillors

[2:47:59] Voice 35: and Trustees is explicit.

[2:48:02] Voice 35: Trust Council and the LCCs are continued—that is to say, you exist—in order to implement

[2:48:09] Voice 35: implement the object, but under Section 4, the statement of accountability for trust

[2:48:15] Voice 35: bodies does not name trust staff, specifically in the staff role as advice givers.

[2:48:24] Voice 35: Staff are Council employees, but under the Public Services Act, Council delegates management

[2:48:31] Voice 35: of staff to the chief administrative officer.

[2:48:34] Voice 35: The CAO should then formally require that staff implement the object in their advice

[2:48:41] Voice 35: to decision-makers, and staff reports should so reflect.

[2:48:46] Voice 35: In turn, Council should require an annual audit of the CAO,

[2:48:51] Voice 35: which details compliance with the object or not of staff advice.

[2:48:57] Voice 35: The requirement for CAO audit of consistency of staff actions with the object

[2:49:05] Voice 35: should be stipulated in the CAO job description, as the post is now being advertised.

[2:49:12] Voice 35: Thank you.

[2:49:26] Voice 32: Hello.

[2:49:28] Voice 32: My name is Maxine Leichter.

[2:49:30] Voice 32: Can you hear me okay?

[2:49:32] Voice 32: Sounds weird up here.

[2:49:34] Voice 32: Okay.

[2:49:35] Voice 32: Thank you very much for allowing me to address you just now.

[2:49:39] Voice 32: And I also want to say that I wish to address staff as well.

[2:49:43] Voice 32: The mandate of the trust is to protect the environment and the unique amenities of the trust islands.

[2:49:49] Voice 32: When the mandate was written, environment meant natural environment.

[2:49:54] Voice 32: environment. Housing, livelihoods, infrastructure, and tourism may be amenities, but they are not

[2:50:00] Voice 32: unique and therefore cannot be unique amenities. The Draft Trust Policy Statement, with a few

[2:50:09] Voice 32: laudable exceptions, does not establish meaningful protections, but rather only topics to be

[2:50:16] Voice 32: addressed. Meaningful details on how they are to be addressed is missing. That may be appropriate

[2:50:22] Voice 32: for municipalities that have no special mandate but not for the island's trust. Unless the mandate

[2:50:29] Voice 32: is reflected by directives that impose meaningful requirements, the trust is no different than a

[2:50:36] Voice 32: municipality and the mandate is invalid. In addition to mandatory directives, we also need

[2:50:44] Voice 32: enforcement. Without requirements and enforcement, the environment cannot be protected.

[2:50:55] Voice 32: Our forests, our wildlife, our harbors, as we've heard quite a bit about today, will continue downhill.

[2:51:05] Voice 32: Many of us are here today to ask you not to let this happen.

[2:51:09] Voice 32: And the way to do that is tomorrow, when you set your priorities, make these things your priorities.

[2:51:17] Voice 32: Directives that are meaningful and enforcement. Thank you.

[2:51:40] Voice 25: My name is Ashley Roslinski, and I'm a resident of Salt Spring.

[2:51:45] Voice 25: At the Islands Trust, when I moved here 10 years ago, I was told their mandate was preserve and

[2:51:50] Voice 25: protect. So what does that mean? What that means to me is it is your job as elected officials to

[2:51:56] Voice 25: protect me and future generations. What do I mean by that? It's your job to make sure we have

[2:52:02] Voice 25: adequate housing. It is your job to make sure our environment stays clean. Currently, none of that

[2:52:10] Voice 25: is happening. We are seeing people in liveaboards. We are seeing people live on mountainsides. We are

[2:52:15] Voice 25: are seeing human waste being dumped everywhere. Our environment around us is being destroyed.

[2:52:21] Voice 25: So you are failing at your current duty by allowing this to continue to happen.

[2:52:27] Voice 25: What is the solution? We need housing for our workers here, not ship them in from another

[2:52:34] Voice 25: island every morning, ship them back. This is not an island for the rich. This is an island for

[2:52:41] Voice 25: for everyone. That is not being addressed. We need to implement housing for folks. Saying,

[2:52:49] Voice 25: no, we can't have housing because we don't have adequate water. No, I'm sorry, that answer doesn't

[2:52:54] Voice 25: work for me. The people are here anyways. They are just living illegally. The problem is not

[2:53:00] Voice 25: going away. You need to address this. The fact that my generation, my children's generation,

[2:53:07] Voice 25: my grandchildren's generation have no hope of ever sustaining life on this island is very sad.

[2:53:13] Voice 25: So that is where you have all failed. So what I would like to know is what are the trustees going

[2:53:20] Voice 25: to do to solve this problem? It is not going to solve itself. So stop making everyone a criminal

[2:53:26] Voice 25: for just trying to succeed here. We are not criminals. So help us succeed. Preserve what

[2:53:34] Voice 25: what we have around us.

[2:53:36] Voice 25: Preserving that means helping all of us

[2:53:38] Voice 25: to continue to succeed

[2:53:40] Voice 25: and all future generations to succeed.

[2:54:13] Voice 34: If nature survives in the same sea

[2:54:17] Voice 34: It ain't gonna hurt no economy

[2:54:21] Voice 34: If water and air are kept fresh and clean

[2:54:26] Voice 34: It won't take a job from a working man now

[2:54:32] Voice 34: all right we're gonna make it all right all right all right if we think about each other just a little

[2:54:50] Voice 34: a little bit more now.

[2:55:05] Voice 34: Sun, rain, and wind, and wild ones.

[2:55:10] Voice 34: Feel my heart, oh, so strong.

[2:55:15] Voice 34: My love for you goes on and on and on.

[2:55:23] Voice 34: Oh, yeah, it does.

[2:55:30] Voice 34: Things are heating up.

[2:55:32] Voice 34: There's not much time.

[2:55:35] Voice 34: Don't let the pressure

[2:55:37] Voice 34: pull at your mind.

[2:55:40] Voice 34: Love and care

[2:55:41] Voice 34: are number one.

[2:55:44] Voice 34: Let's keep our hearts

[2:55:46] Voice 34: open while we get the job

[2:55:48] Voice 34: done. Now, all

[2:55:50] Voice 34: right, all

[2:55:52] Voice 34: right, we're

[2:55:56] Voice 34: gonna make it all right.

[2:55:59] Voice 34: All

[2:55:59] Voice 34: right, all

[2:56:01] Voice 34: right.

[2:56:03] Voice 34: If we think about each other

[2:56:06] Voice 34: Just a little bit more now.

[2:56:17] Voice 33: The lights are down low.

[2:56:19] Voice 33: I'd have you sing this with me.

[2:56:21] Voice 33: But I know it doesn't feel that way.

[2:56:23] Voice 33: It doesn't mean you can't do it.

[2:56:26] Voice 33: Just one chorus.

[2:56:28] Voice 34: All right.

[2:56:30] Voice 34: You

[2:56:31] Voice 33: can call it aspirational if you want.

[2:56:33] Voice 33: Yeah, we're going to make it all right.

[2:56:36] Voice 33: Nothing wrong with aspiring.

[2:56:40] Voice 34: All right.

[2:56:42] Voice 34: If we think about each other, it's just a little bit more now.

[2:56:50] Voice 33: Thanks, you guys.

[2:56:51] Voice 33: Keep on working.

[2:57:05] Trustee Luckham (probable): Well, thank you very much, sir.

[2:57:07] Trustee Luckham (probable): A beautiful ending to a public comment period.

[2:57:10] Trustee Luckham (probable): I want to especially thank you for that.

[2:57:12] Trustee Luckham (probable): And thank, of course, all of the other folks that have provided us with very heartfelt messages today.

[2:57:19] Trustee Luckham (probable): And we will take this all into consideration as we move forward, trying to figure out where we are.

[2:57:27] Trustee Luckham (probable): We are at the Executive Committee section of your agenda, 6.1.

[2:57:35] Trustee Luckham (probable): The consent agenda items is on page 35, the Executive Committee Work Program Report.

[2:57:41] Trustee Luckham (probable): Unless there's a reason to have a conversation or any questions associated with that document,

[2:57:46] Trustee Luckham (probable): I would just receive that for information.

[2:57:51] Trustee Luckham (probable): Okay, so we'll receive that for information.

[2:57:55] Trustee Luckham (probable): The next item on the agenda at 6.2, page 38,

[2:58:00] Trustee Luckham (probable): It's CAO Russ Hudson-Pillers

[2:58:04] Trustee Luckham (probable): Administrative Officers Report

[2:58:05] Trustee Luckham (probable): And before you say it, Russ

[2:58:09] Trustee Luckham (probable): This is going to be your last report

[2:58:10] Trustee Luckham (probable): To Trust Council

[2:58:16] Trustee Luckham (probable): Give

[2:58:16] Voice 17: you another one

[2:58:18] Voice 17: Over to you, sir

[2:58:19] Voice 17: Who wants to follow rock stars

[2:58:25] Voice 17: That's a hard one, yeah

[2:58:27] Voice 17: Tell a few jokes

[2:58:28] Voice 17: Well, you can learn to play guitar now

[2:58:32] Voice 17: there's a difference between learning to play guitar and enchanting the enchanting trust council

[2:58:39] Voice 17: um you've got my report on page 38 there's nothing extremely profound um associated with it

[2:58:45] Voice 17: if i were you i'd have confidence in your corporate planning process

[2:58:50] Voice 17: um for those of you that are tracking it it is a process your working group is is able-bodied

[2:58:58] Voice 17: i'd say we're probably halfway through it it's going to take another year um probably of

[2:59:03] Voice 17: of fine-tuning if you're gonna have a suite of policies at the end of it that reflect all that

[2:59:07] Voice 17: work um but um i'll leave you with that um i am happy to say that from a staffing perspective

[2:59:16] Voice 17: we've um got uh someone who's coming in to manage our i.t function to run our i.t function we've

[2:59:22] Voice 17: been without that for a number of months and it's a great relief to have that there because that is

[2:59:28] Voice 17: the backbone of much of what we do at the trust and we're also going to be going out for the gis

[2:59:32] Voice 17: coordinator position so that's a big piece um a fair amount of work gone into um organizing the

[2:59:41] Voice 17: strategic planning session tomorrow i encourage all of you to participate in that you've been

[2:59:45] Voice 17: waiting for that for a year i remember the meeting we had um a year ago on this topic and it's

[2:59:52] Voice 17: arranged um we've got a very good professional in to help us except that it's hard to get 26

[2:59:59] Voice 17: six different opinions.

[3:00:00] Voice 17: and collated into a coherent five or six actions,

[3:00:04] Voice 17: but we're going to do our best.

[3:00:06] Voice 17: So with that, that's my report,

[3:00:08] Voice 17: and I'll just move on to anything else

[3:00:09] Voice 17: or respond to any questions you have.

[3:00:11] Voice 17: Any questions for the CAO?

[3:00:14] Trustee Luckham (probable): No, you got off easy.

[3:00:16] Trustee Luckham (probable): Overview of the strategic plan initiative

[3:00:18] Trustee Luckham (probable): on page 40 of our agenda.

[3:00:20] Trustee Luckham (probable): There's a briefing there.

[3:00:21] Trustee Luckham (probable): Are you going to launch us into that one?

[3:00:23] Voice 17: Well, I will, but this is basically,

[3:00:26] Voice 17: I did this report a year ago.

[3:00:28] Voice 17: That's just taking the temperature

[3:00:29] Voice 17: of the strategic plan that was adopted

[3:00:34] Voice 17: by the previous council and it was held over by you

[3:00:37] Voice 17: as many of those actions were in your interest.

[3:00:40] Voice 17: So this is reference for you as you move forward

[3:00:43] Voice 17: into your consideration of strategic planning tomorrow.

[3:00:49] Voice 17: Certainly when I came in eight years ago,

[3:00:52] Voice 17: there was a very ambitious strategic plan.

[3:00:54] Voice 17: It felt, I'm trying to think of who was in the room

[3:00:58] Voice 17: at the time um certainly there was 85 or 90 items on that strategic plan you we collectively moved

[3:01:09] Voice 17: it to a slightly more um workable suite of items so that was like 35 or 40 in the last strategic

[3:01:16] Voice 17: plan and the task in front of you is to is to take those core things and move them forward so that's

[3:01:20] Voice 17: this report we have here and attached with it is an updated several pages of the various initiatives

[3:01:28] Voice 17: associated with the previous strategic plan.

[3:01:30] Voice 17: So you can use that to see whether you want to move forward

[3:01:33] Voice 17: with any of those initiatives.

[3:01:34] Voice 17: You heard even today in the public commentary,

[3:01:37] Voice 17: speaking about marine health or something,

[3:01:41] Voice 17: or any given issue, how comprehensive is the work

[3:01:45] Voice 17: that's associated with a very wide ranging plan.

[3:01:49] Voice 17: As resources are limited, you're going to think about

[3:01:53] Voice 17: how can we get the most out of the work

[3:01:55] Voice 17: over the next number of years.

[3:01:56] Voice 17: years. So that's on page, starts on page 40 and moves through to the end of page 54. All right,

[3:02:09] Trustee Luckham (probable): so questions. I see Devin Morrison's hand up.

[3:02:13] Voice 30: Thanks for putting this on one spot.

[3:02:17] Voice 30: So we have two years left on this current council. And from my experience in the last trust council,

[3:02:23] Voice 30: how the strategic parties were set in that one, which, you know, was whatever, 27, I think it was

[3:02:30] Voice 30: last term i want to say um yeah i feel like it was 27 different items last term anyway um i'm just

[3:02:39] Voice 30: wondering i guess um about the time energy and resources allocated to strategic planning when

[3:02:48] Voice 30: we have two years left and the trust policy statement seems to be where a lot of the values

[3:02:53] Voice 30: and guidance for the organization legally sits as opposed to budgetarily sways with the wind of

[3:03:00] Voice 30: of trustees. And so I'm concerned about the emphasis and time we spend on, not that I don't

[3:03:07] Voice 30: appreciate all the staff doing it, I'm concerned that we're not getting to the trust policy

[3:03:12] Voice 30: statement, which is actually the teeth of our organization versus this work. So just, I don't

[3:03:20] Voice 30: know how that's a question, but it's related to this, all of this work and the time and this agenda.

[3:03:25] Voice 30: to us?

[3:03:34] Voice 17: Let me reflect. Much of what's in your strategic plan or the items that you talked about

[3:03:40] Voice 17: in March are actually policies will end up being reflected in the policy statement. If you take

[3:03:46] Voice 17: any one series of endeavors, though, climate change, all of it won't be reflected in the

[3:03:51] Voice 17: policy statement, but they're still met like corporate responses to climate change or

[3:03:56] Voice 17: reconciliation actions that would only be half-hearted if it was only reflected in the

[3:04:00] Voice 17: a policy statement. There's actually organizational work that we can do around reconciliation. So

[3:04:06] Voice 17: while you might not, I recommend you complete the policy statement because that's the expression of

[3:04:11] Voice 17: your power, right? I don't think you can go, and I'll use this term lightly, in a half measure.

[3:04:19] Voice 17: So you'd want any organizational elements or other elements to follow along and reflect those

[3:04:24] Voice 17: things too, if it's a bucket of five things you're interested in. The other thing to reflect on is

[3:04:29] Voice 17: On a $10 million budget, at the most, strategic planning is $300,000, $400,000, $500,000 of effort.

[3:04:37] Voice 17: So it's not the dominant product that's offered.

[3:04:41] Voice 17: And so you could, if you had less items and you narrowed them, I think you could have both of those things and not be too resource-stretched.

[3:04:53] Voice 17: Parting words.

[3:04:54] Voice 47: Trustee Evans.

[3:04:56] Voice 47: Okay.

[3:04:57] Voice 26: Thanks, Cecil.

[3:04:58] Voice 26: Just going to add on to that.

[3:04:59] Voice 26: part of strategic planning the last year we didn't actually get to do this trust council

[3:05:04] Voice 26: strategic planning we followed on with the previous trust council's strategic plan um one

[3:05:10] Voice 26: of the purposes of having a strategic plan which is part of the corporate planning process

[3:05:14] Voice 26: is to say what where are the priority uh dollars going to be spent how are we going to be spending

[3:05:20] Voice 26: our our resources staff and money that's going to flow out of the strategy now if the strategy is

[3:05:28] Voice 26: the trust policy statement takes priority and the corporate planning takes priority now we know where

[3:05:33] Voice 26: to direct our resources our finances and our staff now we have our priorities set currently we don't

[3:05:39] Voice 26: have that so we have to set that otherwise we'll just continue doing as we've always done and try

[3:05:45] Voice 26: and cram in as much as we can and accomplish very little looks like so

[3:06:00] Trustee Luckham (probable): then maybe

[3:06:02] Voice 30: i'll just add one

[3:06:03] Voice 30: thing to that then so i perfectly understand what a strategic plan is that's not really my concern

[3:06:09] Voice 30: um what my concern is is that it's taking us two years to get to a point where we can have

[3:06:16] Voice 30: um a strategic plan and i understand why don't get me wrong i understand the challenges we face

[3:06:21] Voice 30: as a council i guess my concern is you know i just i'm concerned that we're spending a large

[3:06:31] Voice 30: portion of tomorrow talking about strategic planning and not about the trust policy statement

[3:06:35] Voice 30: and that's going into meetings that are virtual in the the you know committee of a whole and those

[3:06:41] Voice 30: are some of the things that are so core to what is actually legally our responsibility sure

[3:06:50] Trustee Luckham (probable): thank you i asked for myself to be put on the list um you know i certainly understand what you're

[3:07:00] Trustee Luckham (probable): saying there devon i'm sympathetic and supportive i guess but you know what we've got to do tomorrow

[3:07:04] Trustee Luckham (probable): tomorrow is land this. Let's get these strategic items figured out and land it so that indeed we

[3:07:12] Trustee Luckham (probable): can move on with some of this other work. And absolutely, the corporate plan is part of that

[3:07:18] Trustee Luckham (probable): measure to enable us to get to being successful at the work at the local trust committee as well

[3:07:25] Trustee Luckham (probable): as federation-wide. And the policy statement is key. But let's land this strategic plan because

[3:07:30] Trustee Luckham (probable): it's taken quite a bit more time than potentially would but it's not that we've treated it lightly

[3:07:37] Trustee Luckham (probable): and you know frankly i think in the past some of you have sat there strategic planning has

[3:07:42] Trustee Luckham (probable): been treated lightly so we're taking a good strong look at it and um so let's land it tomorrow thank

[3:07:49] Trustee Luckham (probable): you i

[3:07:56] Voice 18: just want to take a moment to appreciate um where we are in terms of strategic strategic

[3:08:01] Voice 18: strategic planning, as opposed to some previous terms.

[3:08:06] Voice 18: I really want to appreciate how short this list is.

[3:08:10] Voice 18: My first two terms, we were looking at really, really long, really big lists.

[3:08:17] Voice 18: I think this Trust Council has done a good job of keeping it shorter.

[3:08:22] Voice 18: And I just want to echo what Chair Lockham said.

[3:08:27] Voice 18: Let's wrap this up tomorrow.

[3:08:29] Voice 18: let's take the time but let's wrap it up tomorrow and we can move on to the other

[3:08:33] Voice 18: other stuff but i just want to appreciate this trust council has been much more

[3:08:44] Voice 18: much wiser and much more conservative in in the scope of what we've tried to put in the plan and

[3:08:52] Voice 18: and honestly this is such a huge improvement over the previous two terms the size and the

[3:08:58] Voice 18: the scope of this. So thank you. Trustee Patrick.

[3:09:04] Voice 39: Well, the other thing is we're trying to make a

[3:09:07] Voice 39: strategic plan that doesn't only address $300,000. We're trying to make a strategic plan that really

[3:09:14] Voice 39: sets the priorities of the work that we're doing. So think of that tomorrow.

[3:09:37] Trustee Luckham (probable): Okay, when I have my

[3:09:38] Trustee Luckham (probable): computer. So let's move along on the agenda. Thank you very much. And so here's an item

[3:09:43] Trustee Luckham (probable): that we're actually making some progress on.

[3:09:47] Trustee Luckham (probable): And I'm going to turn it over to the CAO

[3:09:49] Trustee Luckham (probable): to provide us the background for the motion that's here

[3:09:51] Trustee Luckham (probable): with respect to the follow-up action list consolidation.

[3:09:57] Voice 17: So, Trust Council, this is ironically

[3:10:01] Voice 17: a follow-up action list item about the follow-up.

[3:10:04] Voice 17: You know, if you've got a little bit of sense of humor

[3:10:06] Voice 17: on local government, just kill yourself with that.

[3:10:09] Voice 17: But a few months ago, we endeavored together

[3:10:12] Voice 17: to get rid of the 50 or 60 items we had in our list that were vestigial or maybe time had passed

[3:10:17] Voice 17: by or whatever it might be some consolidations of very similar motions perhaps consolidations

[3:10:24] Voice 17: of an idea that maybe didn't have a verb or you know it just didn't land so those things have

[3:10:30] Voice 17: been put together you reviewed that list you said come back with a couple um revisions and i'm happy

[3:10:36] Voice 17: to report you down to about 30 or 35 i feel good about that as i move forward that that you and

[3:10:43] Voice 17: whoever's doing this after me um will have a bit less of a burden and you've got some clarity there

[3:10:48] Voice 17: so the only two things i think that are sort of initiatives without a home are these two here

[3:10:53] Voice 17: but i couldn't very well just take them off the list because you said put them on the list

[3:10:57] Voice 17: so i've recommended that that you reconsider these or define them better um and i put the rationale

[3:11:04] Voice 17: for those in the report so i'm not going to repeat them again unless asked and then i attached the um

[3:11:10] Voice 17: the updated fuel not to say that 35 items is great um given we have lots of other work and

[3:11:19] Voice 17: i'm sure we'll get you know usually every trust council we get like six to ten um or four to six

[3:11:25] Voice 17: but um i just turn it back to you mr chair to see if there's any questions associated with this

[3:11:32] Voice 17: is this to trust council's liking and if so um would you consider the recommendation thank you

[3:11:38] Trustee Luckham (probable): so i'll look to see if there's any questions otherwise there is a motion in your package

[3:11:42] Trustee Luckham (probable): and i'd love to hear that too any questions or emotion oh question from trustee yates

[3:11:53] Voice 31: i was going to make the motion oh please okay i move that trust council amend its follow-up

[3:12:02] Voice 31: action list by removing the following a trust council requested executive committee follow-up

[3:12:08] Voice 31: with ministry of forest lands natural resources operations and rural development around forest

[3:12:13] Voice 31: management. And B, in cooperation with executive committee, provide a list of needed resources in

[3:12:19] Voice 31: priority order to advance the trust's reconciliation activity with First Nations in British Columbia

[3:12:25] Voice 31: that council may debate and endorse for advocacy to British Columbia.

[3:12:30] Trustee Luckham (probable): Do I have a seconder? Trustee Evans. Thank you. Any discussion? Hold on. All those in favor?

[3:12:38] Trustee Luckham (probable): and online okay any hands down and online hands down any opposed none opposed that carries

[3:12:55] Trustee Luckham (probable): unanimously thank you very much council uh next item is david mauler and get you screwed up to

[3:13:00] Trustee Luckham (probable): the front there will you do it from here yeah thank you

[3:13:03] Voice 46: all right thanks uh yeah page 67 is

[3:13:07] Voice 46: the agenda package, it's a briefing. This is actually three requests that have been placed

[3:13:16] Voice 46: into a single briefing. So it's just separated into three items. So this was a request from

[3:13:21] Voice 46: council from June 2023 for looking at options on providing access to documents. And part of that

[3:13:32] Voice 46: request was to meet with some interested trustees to look at the scope of what that would look like

[3:13:39] Voice 46: and then also in march of 2024 a request for options for providing meeting agendas in html

[3:13:45] Voice 46: as well as in pdfs so and also the the third one there is the access to a calendar

[3:13:54] Voice 46: so i just laid out all three of those in the briefing the first item which is the access

[3:14:01] Voice 46: to documents. Myself and the executive coordinator at the time met on August 23, 2023, with some

[3:14:09] Voice 46: trustees that were interested. In a general sense, it's pretty much any document that's

[3:14:16] Voice 46: being created or available, and would like to have access to that in some way. The ideal

[3:14:25] Voice 46: access would be to have a read-only access to the local area network that staff have

[3:14:30] Voice 46: have access to. The current technology that we have doesn't really allow us to do that. There's

[3:14:36] Voice 46: a lot of concerns around security, around freedom of information, protection of privacy. So to go

[3:14:43] Voice 46: that route, it would take a change in technology. And I've laid that out in the briefing for you,

[3:14:47] Voice 46: what that would look like. And it is something that there's other reasons to go that route as

[3:14:54] Voice 46: well, not just to provide access to trustees for documents, but also for a more robust

[3:14:59] Voice 46: trust records management system generally as we move from paper to electronic so there is an

[3:15:06] Voice 46: intent to bring forward a business case later this year to look over the next year and the year after

[3:15:14] Voice 46: for making some technological changes for the records management and that would then

[3:15:20] Voice 46: provide the ability part of this would be to provide ability for trustees to have that read

[3:15:26] Voice 46: on the access to certain sections of the local area network for access to particular documents

[3:15:34] Voice 46: so given that we don't really have the technology right now and as laid out in the briefing

[3:15:41] Voice 46: it would be a fair amount of administrative work uh to create copies there's a whole bunch of

[3:15:47] Voice 46: problems around creating copies anyway from a records management point of view

[3:15:52] Voice 46: um that the current system we have there is ways to provide access through web dev

[3:15:57] Voice 46: through the meeting agendas for most and by requesting them from staff or other ones and

[3:16:03] Voice 46: i think that might be the best way i can't really think of another way

[3:16:08] Voice 46: to continue to provide documents until we have a better system in place so that's the documents

[3:16:16] Voice 46: The calendar is a little different. It's simpler. And I don't really see any downsides from

[3:16:26] Voice 46: Freedom of Information, Protection of Privacy or Security from talking with the IT team.

[3:16:33] Voice 46: This appears to be doable. It's a calendar that we have available for staff. We can make

[3:16:39] Voice 46: it available for trustees the only um downside might be the access for those trustees that might

[3:16:47] Voice 46: be using um a different software than what's available through the allen's trust so if you're

[3:16:54] Voice 46: not using an allen's trust provided laptop you can probably access it but whether or not it can

[3:17:01] Voice 46: actually help you if you've got any problems with it might be a different story so that's just a

[3:17:05] Voice 46: precaution to think about and then the third one the html agenda is that's something we can do

[3:17:12] Voice 46: our current e-scribe system isn't set up very well for doing it but e-scribe is being upgraded

[3:17:20] Voice 46: it's been rebuilt from the ground up and we are looking at september for implementing that the

[3:17:28] Voice 46: alums trust and that should then give us the ability to provide html access i'm not sure

[3:17:35] Voice 46: exactly what that's going to look like i don't think it'll be through the website initially

[3:17:39] Voice 46: that's a completely different consideration but it is possible for a portal for the trustees to

[3:17:47] Voice 46: have access to that can provide html so i suggest that we get the upgrade to escribe and then part

[3:17:56] Voice 46: of that will be making sure that we can provide the html and the pdf documents for trustees so

[3:18:04] Voice 46: This is a briefing. I'm not asking for any direction, but of course, if you don't agree

[3:18:08] Voice 46: with the direction or the way we're heading in here, you can obviously pass a resolution to

[3:18:13] Voice 46: provide some direction. But yes, I'll leave it there and just pass it back to the chair. Thank

[3:18:21] Voice 46: you. Thank

[3:18:23] Trustee Luckham (probable): you very much, David. So are there any questions on the briefing or some clarity

[3:18:27] Trustee Luckham (probable): that's necessary joe bernardo uh

[3:18:31] Voice 15: thank you uh for the presentation david um the two questions uh

[3:18:35] Voice 15: with respect to the um first item that you talked about trustee access to documents and um that

[3:18:43] Voice 15: your sync staff will be preparing a business case for the next fiscal year uh with respect to

[3:18:51] Voice 15: upgrading our capacity in that respect do you this may be an unfair question do you have any

[3:18:56] Voice 15: but i specialize in those is there any um even a rough estimate you have of what that cost might be

[3:19:05] Voice 46: uh no i'd just be guessing and i would have to ask the it group to work with me to look at the

[3:19:12] Voice 46: type of technology so what we need to do first is look at what our needs are look at what's

[3:19:17] Voice 46: available in technology um there's different ways it can be done possibly in-house but whether we

[3:19:23] Voice 46: have the capacity in Harris to actually do that. Now, I don't mean the expertise, but the actual

[3:19:28] Voice 46: resource time to do it versus off-the-shelf solutions. So we'll be coming to you with

[3:19:33] Voice 46: options and we'll make one of those recommendations. All right. So I can't even guess what the cost

[3:19:38] Voice 46: would be. I understand

[3:19:39] Voice 15: that needs more development. Got it. The other question I've got is with your

[3:19:44] Voice 15: third item about HTML agendas. I'm not sure I entirely follow this because one of the things

[3:19:50] Voice 15: things I've found incredibly vexing is that with all of our agendas, it would be very helpful

[3:19:58] Voice 15: to have a link when you're looking at the agenda item that takes you to the documents,

[3:20:03] Voice 15: the support documents, instead of having to either scroll down or it's just, it's pretty painful.

[3:20:09] Voice 15: So are we to understand what you say here in this briefing document that it's just not feasible to

[3:20:16] Voice 15: put in the hyperlinks with the with the current pdf documents like a pdf agenda is put in hyperlinks

[3:20:23] Voice 15: to the supporting documents and does that await this html approach to preparing agendas yeah so

[3:20:32] Voice 46: the um the problem with having the embedded hyperlinks is that the documents link has to

[3:20:39] Voice 46: live somewhere and that's probably going to be on our website right now uh so that is doable but

[3:20:45] Voice 46: But keeping that live, like not losing that link,

[3:20:50] Voice 46: could be a problem down the road.

[3:20:52] Voice 46: So if we're creating agendas in HTML,

[3:20:54] Voice 46: we need to know that those links are going to stay there.

[3:20:56] Voice 46: They're going to work there.

[3:20:58] Voice 46: So what we're talking about is purely an HTML agenda

[3:21:03] Voice 46: where everything is clickable and you have access to it that way.

[3:21:07] Voice 46: Or alternatively, you can go and pick up a PDF

[3:21:10] Voice 46: that has everything in it like you have right now.

[3:21:16] Voice 47: Christy Bolland.

[3:21:17] Voice 46: Hi.

[3:21:21] Voice 23: Well, as you know, this was my idea, my hobby horse. I find, thank you for the information,

[3:21:32] Voice 23: but I found the analysis of the requirement to be very disappointing. I don't think you've

[3:21:38] Voice 23: really described or captured the value of what we've asked for to trustees. In the case

[3:21:46] Voice 23: of the calendar of course I know we can go to a calendar and we can scroll

[3:21:52] Voice 23: around date by date by date to see what's there and yes the agenda and the

[3:21:57] Voice 23: minutes are there as well but that's not what we asked for eventually you circle

[3:22:02] Voice 23: back to the fact that we wanted an overview to avoid conflicts and to

[3:22:06] Voice 23: understand what the entire calendar of the trust looked like and with respect

[3:22:12] Voice 23: to the documents I mean you just talked about the fact that the hyperlinks

[3:22:16] Voice 23: don't work because there's no guarantee that the documents will remain in that fixed position.

[3:22:22] Voice 23: Those are the documents we seek access to and if they were, when the agenda was created,

[3:22:29] Voice 23: put in a locked repository they would a be accessible to us and b the links would continue

[3:22:36] Voice 23: to work. So I don't think the analysis is complete and also if I go back to the original RFD

[3:22:45] Voice 23: we asked for I prepared it I asked for a short list of key documents access to not every piece

[3:22:55] Voice 23: every document that all the staff are working on the RFD referenced building a case for

[3:23:02] Voice 23: certain documents to be permanently accessible I spend my time thinking oh which agenda was that in

[3:23:11] Voice 23: and can I remember was it trust council or was it regional planning I've been following things

[3:23:16] Voice 23: for quite a while and I think I can trace things back but for most people the amount of waste

[3:23:26] Voice 23: of time and resources that is caused by the fact that you have to try and remember

[3:23:33] Voice 23: where and when a key piece of information was in a three or four hundred page agenda

[3:23:39] Voice 23: agenda is just appalling and the work that staff do is also wasted because very often they have to

[3:23:47] Voice 23: repeat it or at least repeat the communication because people don't know about the work that

[3:23:54] Voice 23: was done prior to this okay thanks i'll leave it at that and sorry one last thing when you say that

[3:24:01] Voice 23: staff will prepare it i think you should involve some trustees in the analysis of the requirements

[3:24:07] Voice 23: Thank you.

[3:24:15] Voice 42: I guess I'm not quite clear on exactly the goal. I understand the briefing, but the comments back, I'm not quite sure about because I'm looking at my PDF file here and I can jump to every single topic very easily.

[3:24:35] Voice 42: easily um and i think we have to recognize also that we do access information differently

[3:24:43] Voice 42: depending on our own preferences and our own place in in life on how we deal with this um

[3:24:50] Voice 42: yeah these are big topics there's there's a lot of different documents um i can't remember what

[3:24:57] Voice 42: we did last year but one of the techniques that i'm using and it's just for me is i have a

[3:25:03] Voice 42: spreadsheet and every single decision we make and every single link to a potential document

[3:25:10] Voice 42: is listed in that excel file as we go as we talk because i'm doing different committees and things

[3:25:19] Voice 42: i identify it by different committees and i'm finding that that is working really well for me

[3:25:24] Voice 42: so when a topic comes up i can just look on my excel file done year by year um and i'm not sure

[3:25:33] Voice 42: I would be able to accommodate somebody else's system.

[3:25:36] Voice 42: And so I think at some point,

[3:25:38] Voice 42: we also have to allow ourselves

[3:25:40] Voice 42: to have our own organizational system that works for us.

[3:25:45] Voice 42: And I don't want to spend a huge amount of time

[3:25:47] Voice 42: and money on this.

[3:25:50] Voice 42: I think it has an importance to it,

[3:25:53] Voice 42: but I'm also looking at some

[3:25:55] Voice 42: of our bigger topics

[3:25:56] Voice 42: that we've been looking at.

[3:25:58] Voice 42: So that's just more of a comment more than anything.

[3:26:02] Voice 42: Chair Luckert.

[3:26:03] Voice 42: The

[3:26:09] Trustee Luckham (probable): CAO has some remark to make.

[3:26:11] Trustee Luckham (probable): Well, I've got

[3:26:12] Voice 17: a lot of

[3:26:12] Trustee Luckham (probable): historical analysis and reflection

[3:26:16] Voice 17: to offer Trust Council at this particular meeting.

[3:26:18] Voice 17: But I'm pretty sure we were paper-based nine years ago.

[3:26:24] Voice 17: So you got a huge binder, and you walked around with 600 pages in your binder.

[3:26:31] Voice 17: We've got one current adopter right there, and we mailed it out to you.

[3:26:37] Voice 17: And if you weren't there, we brought it to the meeting and put it on the table.

[3:26:43] Voice 17: So we're striving to improve at all times, and it's never right in the moment.

[3:26:49] Voice 17: But in 10 years, we've come a fair distance as we move forward.

[3:27:00] Trustee Luckham (probable): Thank you.

[3:27:01] Trustee Luckham (probable): I have an innovation on these paper binders.

[3:27:04] Trustee Luckham (probable): You can put tabs on it, and it allows you to get to the section.

[3:27:07] Trustee Luckham (probable): All joking aside, we moved to eScribe years ago.

[3:27:13] Trustee Luckham (probable): thinking that was going to be the problem solver.

[3:27:16] Trustee Luckham (probable): And indeed, it saved a lot of problems.

[3:27:18] Trustee Luckham (probable): We ended up going backwards because I think in the end,

[3:27:21] Trustee Luckham (probable): we didn't like the iPads or something.

[3:27:25] Trustee Luckham (probable): But that said, just to,

[3:27:26] Trustee Luckham (probable): so will the new version of e-scribes have the potential to do,

[3:27:31] Trustee Luckham (probable): if they're building it from the ground up in 2024,

[3:27:34] Trustee Luckham (probable): does that not necessarily,

[3:27:36] Trustee Luckham (probable): is that potentially going to embrace some of the demands

[3:27:39] Trustee Luckham (probable): that not just the Anthroposophists but others are doing?

[3:27:42] Trustee Luckham (probable): You hope, okay, so there's hope there.

[3:27:44] Trustee Luckham (probable): So that may not be a significant additional financial cost, although there'd be some

[3:27:47] Trustee Luckham (probable): incremental cost.

[3:27:49] Trustee Luckham (probable): But also the thing that I recall is that an individual, the hyperlink thing is interesting

[3:27:54] Trustee Luckham (probable): and that there has to be a hyperlink forever.

[3:27:56] Trustee Luckham (probable): And you know, that's a problem with every generation of a website you ever build.

[3:28:00] Trustee Luckham (probable): Things just disappear.

[3:28:03] Trustee Luckham (probable): Except that I think the whole idea of HTML is actually that HTML is self-referencing

[3:28:09] Trustee Luckham (probable): integral into an internal document so that the hyperlink is actually in the document,

[3:28:13] Trustee Luckham (probable): not in the page.

[3:28:15] Trustee Luckham (probable): So I think I only provide that information because I'm an IT guy.

[3:28:22] Trustee Luckham (probable): And potentially the new IT staff we're about to bring on board, right,

[3:28:29] Trustee Luckham (probable): that maybe there'll be some new insights and some new technology

[3:28:32] Trustee Luckham (probable): that we might be able to connect into this

[3:28:35] Trustee Luckham (probable): because we're not the only people who have this problem.

[3:28:37] Trustee Luckham (probable): Anyway, thank you, David, for the work.

[3:28:40] Trustee Luckham (probable): Trustee Fast.

[3:28:42] Voice 41: Thank you.

[3:28:43] Voice 41: I was also one of the working group.

[3:28:47] Voice 41: that met in august last year and uh in on zoom uh with david and others and uh there were a number of

[3:28:59] Voice 41: trustees expressing different needs it was hard to pin down what they were

[3:29:04] Voice 41: and uh but one of the things that did pop out was the need for less scrolling and more uh

[3:29:12] Voice 41: clicking on links to get to what you wanted to do and that's the html so i'm really glad to see that

[3:29:18] Voice 41: is coming along with the upgrade um and uh that report was i think in our last trust council

[3:29:26] Voice 41: uh the recommendation from the working group and then um uh i wanted to

[3:29:33] Voice 41: um mention that there there's a document library under resources at the website uh too that

[3:29:40] Voice 41: sometimes I found really useful and I just haven't heard it mentioned here. Is there some reason

[3:29:47] Voice 41: that nobody's mentioning it? Is it broken? Because it works for me. If you haven't used it

[3:29:54] Voice 41: at the Allen's Trust website it's under mapping and resources document search document

[3:30:00] Voice 41: library thank you thanks

[3:30:07] Voice 26: um yeah so for myself because this is my first term as a trustee i know

[3:30:11] Voice 26: that there's been a lot of uh reports done by consultants and and i know that these documents

[3:30:16] Voice 26: exist and i cannot find them and it could be that i'm putting the wrong words in because i have tried

[3:30:22] Voice 26: that document search function and like even find trying to look for like the the governance review

[3:30:27] Voice 26: i couldn't i spent two days looking for it and i gave up and i finally went and asked staff because

[3:30:32] Voice 26: I could not find it no matter what I put in. So that's a lot of time searching for things that

[3:30:38] Voice 26: you have an awareness that a report has been done on water sustainability, or, you know,

[3:30:43] Voice 26: there's been some analysis done on something else, but you just don't quite know what the

[3:30:47] Voice 26: right search words are. But you don't have a list of external reports that have been created that

[3:30:53] Voice 26: we've paid for that we can't access unless we go and ask staff. So this is sort of what we're

[3:31:00] Voice 26: saying is there are some specific documents that if we had a repository that was easily accessible

[3:31:06] Voice 26: by trustees that would be awesome especially for trustees that are new in office so that you have

[3:31:14] Voice 26: somewhere to go so you can get caught up on work that's already been done so you don't ask for it

[3:31:18] Voice 26: to be redone again and so my uh my other question to you was you've marked this pro this task as

[3:31:26] Voice 26: as completed, but you're saying that there's going to be some more work as you're looking

[3:31:30] Voice 26: at doing a business case, would you amend that to say it's 90% done, or are you putting

[3:31:37] Voice 26: it down as completed, and just in case it falls off the radar, is sort

[3:31:41] Voice 26: of what I'm getting

[3:31:42] Voice 26: at.

[3:31:43] Voice 46: All right, you got me.

[3:31:44] Voice 46: I'll make it 90% completed until we actually get the work done.

[3:31:48] Voice 46: Trustee Borsley.

[3:31:50] Voice 11: Yeah, I'd want to echo a little bit what Christina was saying.

[3:31:54] Voice 11: I've also found that the document searching thing to be difficult and it is the the I think it's

[3:31:59] Voice 11: probably quite useful if you know what you're looking for um but if you don't know what you're

[3:32:03] Voice 11: looking for if you don't know that such a study exists um you know for me the biggest I think the

[3:32:08] Voice 11: biggest asset that would be here would allow me to do my own research on you know getting myself

[3:32:12] Voice 11: up to speed on stuff that we've already paid for is really just documents that are public um like

[3:32:17] Voice 11: stuff that's already been included in agendas and is already part of the public record so then we

[3:32:21] Voice 11: we don't have to worry quite so much about security would be my feeling and

[3:32:24] Voice 11: they don't need to exist in an updatable manner. They can be static, you know,

[3:32:28] Voice 11: but having the option to access those previous agendas,

[3:32:33] Voice 11: because I, and, and, and, you know, I may well know a study happened,

[3:32:36] Voice 11: but if it was before my term, I've got, you know,

[3:32:40] Voice 11: a snowball's chance in hell of finding it. So.

[3:32:45] Voice 11: Trustee Morris.

[3:32:46] Voice 30: So having just gone through this exact problem in the creation of the RFD that

[3:32:51] Voice 30: that I created for this meeting, it is an issue.

[3:32:55] Voice 30: So, and what I ended up doing is I've downloaded

[3:32:58] Voice 30: every digital document that we ever had for every meeting.

[3:33:02] Voice 30: So I just searched my own computer.

[3:33:04] Voice 30: And so, but that's not really what I want to be able to do

[3:33:08] Voice 30: from a public point of view.

[3:33:10] Voice 30: I want public to be able to find those easily, right?

[3:33:12] Voice 30: And then maybe one other thing just to think about

[3:33:15] Voice 30: related to that, but I think we just cluster them in topics.

[3:33:18] Voice 30: It's a growing thing, I agree with Russ.

[3:33:19] Voice 30: like I said it's an emerging continuous thing as we work on the website as we do iterations like

[3:33:24] Voice 30: it'll hopefully all become beautiful so I have hope so but I think one of the other things that

[3:33:32] Voice 30: hasn't been said here so far which in my recent search came up a lot there has been a number of

[3:33:39] Voice 30: RFDs that did pass into motions so the motions attached to them passed but the briefing notes

[3:33:45] Voice 30: that were part of the RFD are difficult to locate.

[3:33:49] Voice 30: And there was a lot of rich information

[3:33:53] Voice 30: in those briefing notes.

[3:33:54] Voice 30: So I went back to packets

[3:33:56] Voice 30: and looked through the RFDs of other people

[3:33:59] Voice 30: that had done work on governance for the past six years

[3:34:03] Voice 30: and pulled information all together in one place.

[3:34:06] Voice 30: I also, in doing that, looked at,

[3:34:08] Voice 30: came across like, who is it?

[3:34:11] Voice 30: Trustee Colburn's reconciliation details,

[3:34:14] Voice 30: details like the background that's in there is a rich resource that we should really have as a

[3:34:19] Voice 30: public document so i'm thinking about the rfds that are successful of like those briefing notes

[3:34:25] Voice 30: might want to be considered as either fodder for the website for like things to as research you

[3:34:30] Voice 30: know talking points for people or background education materials they're they're just rich

[3:34:35] Voice 30: resources i also had the same problem when i was trying to find my own rfd for the climate change

[3:34:39] Voice 30: emergency motion one time just to

[3:34:42] Voice 42: follow up i think just the examples that people are given

[3:34:47] Voice 42: is the depth of how we see information differently and how much information actually has to be on the

[3:34:53] Voice 42: website which creates monsters and it certainly isn't unique to the islands trust i think most

[3:34:59] Voice 42: regional districts are sitting on the same issue um but if uh what i do often with trying to find

[3:35:08] Voice 42: documents for island stress is i just go to google i go to ai it works beautifully it's scary as it

[3:35:17] Voice 42: is um using the ai ai is getting me far closer to what i'm looking for on the website so it's

[3:35:24] Voice 42: just a suggestion dr

[3:35:32] Trustee Luckham (probable): frager well

[3:35:33] Voice 29: this won't change what's in the document library i'm happy to report

[3:35:36] Voice 29: we've let a contract and we are expecting improvements to that search engine that drives

[3:35:40] Voice 29: the document library within about a month so i'll let you know when that's complete you can all test

[3:35:44] Voice 29: it let us know if it's producing better results and if not we can go back for further improvements

[3:35:49] Voice 29: so thank you

[3:35:53] Voice 45: okay

[3:35:56] Trustee Luckham (probable): that's it is that it for this conversation awesome let's go to the governance

[3:36:02] Trustee Luckham (probable): committee chair's report that's in your agenda on page 71. uh chair getty you'd like to speak to

[3:36:08] Trustee Luckham (probable): your report all

[3:36:09] Voice 9: right so so page 71 has the work matrix for the governance committee and um i've

[3:36:17] Voice 9: been stewing a lot in terms of what i wanted to report to council about the work of the governance

[3:36:23] Voice 9: committee and i um been stewing about it right up until arriving and then while i'm sitting here as

[3:36:30] Voice 9: well so um i can give you an outline of and some points in terms of the content that we've gone

[3:36:39] Voice 9: through with the governance committee um clearly we've been spent a lot of time on the governance

[3:36:44] Voice 9: review um and we had a um we're trying to set up a meeting with the consultants and we figured out

[3:36:52] Voice 9: back and forth and figured out a whole bunch of doodle polls we got a date that was agreeable and

[3:36:57] Voice 9: And at the meeting of the committee before that, we talked about having questions for the consultants.

[3:37:08] Voice 9: We actually never got into a discussion about what those questions would be.

[3:37:13] Voice 9: I had a briefing with the consultants and they started off with, you know, we interviewed people three years ago.

[3:37:20] Voice 9: We wrote our report two years ago.

[3:37:23] Voice 9: It's been a while.

[3:37:24] Voice 9: what exactly is it that you want to talk to us about and it was like

[3:37:28] Voice 9: uh specifics okay um i don't have any but um i know that there's a lot of interest and there

[3:37:39] Voice 9: there must be so um give me a couple of days i will put it out to the committee i will ask them

[3:37:45] Voice 9: for specifics and hold on to that date and we'll get this better organized and i didn't get anything

[3:37:53] Voice 9: anything back um so uh then I told them to um and there was a price tag that we hadn't heard about

[3:38:01] Voice 9: before so um we have postponed that and we haven't gotten back into discussing what the next steps

[3:38:10] Voice 9: are going to be in terms of the governance committee meeting with the consultants or

[3:38:14] Voice 9: figuring out whether or not we can afford to bring the consultants to talk to the whole committee and

[3:38:20] Voice 9: And what exactly we'd be asking for.

[3:38:22] Voice 9: One of the things that we did, one of the other things that we asked for at our November meeting was to get a report from staff because they had never had an opportunity to respond to that report.

[3:38:33] Voice 9: And we've received that.

[3:38:35] Voice 9: And we have had a little bit of discussion about that.

[3:38:40] Voice 9: um we in the um those two motions in terms of getting clarity about meeting with the consultants

[3:38:49] Voice 9: and um to um i'd have to look it up actually those were um motions that were proposed by

[3:38:59] Voice 9: um an ex-officio member of the committee and so that process was challenged and we've gone through

[3:39:09] Voice 9: part of every meeting since talking about what the specifics of ex officio are and that i believe is

[3:39:17] Voice 9: something that's coming up at the very end of this meeting so personally i think it's a digression

[3:39:23] Voice 9: it made absolutely no difference to the vote um either that time or at a later meeting and there's

[3:39:30] Voice 9: the principle of the thing that we're going to be discussing and um personally frankly i'm

[3:39:37] Voice 9: I'm struggling with that because I think that it's a red herring and I think

[3:39:40] Voice 9: that we're missing the time and the energy talking about the things that are

[3:39:46] Voice 9: in our matrix, but that's,

[3:39:50] Voice 9: that's a discussion that the group is going to have.

[3:39:55] Voice 9: And they're dragging me into it, kicking and screaming, but there we are.

[3:40:00] Voice 9: So the we've also been,

[3:40:06] Voice 9: I have, as chair of the committee, have been involved with the CAO hiring committee, and that has been meeting and talking by Zoom every two, three weeks regularly.

[3:40:17] Voice 9: regularly um and that is um that's an incredible process in terms of the um the people that we're

[3:40:27] Voice 9: going through the process of hiring the consultants and working through um a job description and

[3:40:33] Voice 9: and figuring out what it is that we want to highlight and what we want to go so

[3:40:37] Voice 9: um it's a group effort working with some very very good uh consultants and we're getting there

[3:40:45] Voice 9: there um the question of um asking the province for an update uh the original letter that went

[3:40:54] Voice 9: out to the province um we were at the last meeting talking about are those questions still the same

[3:41:01] Voice 9: there's six items that were outlined in the letter to the minister way back when and um we were asked

[3:41:10] Voice 9: to consider whether or not those were still valid whether or not we still wanted to pursue that or

[3:41:14] Voice 9: change it and there was one addition to that in terms of representation by population whether or

[3:41:21] Voice 9: not that is separate from some of the other points that were raised as something that we're going to

[3:41:27] Voice 9: be talking about at some point in the future so um what i'm stewing about is um there's times when

[3:41:37] Voice 9: And it's, I'm new to this position in terms of working with as the chair of a committee, and I've been through all sorts of other situations and I've worked with all sorts of other populations and think I have reasonably good skills at listening and synthesizing, and I'm

[3:41:56] Voice 9: finding this process in terms of millions of great ideas and no resources and very little time to be

[3:42:05] Voice 9: be um difficult uh challenging and um i think the the blowback from the section three mandate um

[3:42:18] Voice 9: publicity release uh you know has been become personal a little bit and it's just i mean we

[3:42:24] Voice 9: heard a lot this today right so um and we haven't had a chance in this committee to talk about where

[3:42:30] Voice 9: were the mistakes and how would we improve it how do we analyze it how do we make sure that we don't

[3:42:36] Voice 9: do the same thing again and we get bogged down in all of this other stuff and we don't give

[3:42:40] Voice 9: ourselves the opportunity and i personally i'm not sure that i'm comfortable with getting feedback

[3:42:48] Voice 9: from uh the group so um i toyed with the idea of i gave up a really fabulous retirement

[3:42:57] Voice 9: environment. What was I thinking? Right? And can I go back? Can I just quit and walk away?

[3:43:14] Voice 9: And what does that mean? I would, I'd have to give up all the wonderful stuff that I'm doing

[3:43:18] Voice 9: on Bowen that I really love, and all the people that I'm working with, and it's working really

[3:43:22] Voice 9: well and you know i would have i wouldn't have won i wouldn't have worked it through i wouldn't

[3:43:31] Voice 9: have figured out a solution so that switched around in terms of okay you can't quit that's

[3:43:36] Voice 9: easy you know that's just chicken so um what couple of things that came up i wanted i started

[3:43:46] Voice 9: asking questions about a code of conduct and there's a new code of conduct that's come before

[3:43:49] Voice 9: the executive committee and we've agreed that there's going to be a special meeting of the

[3:43:54] Voice 9: the governance committee to go through the code of conduct. I've just set up the agenda for that

[3:43:58] Voice 9: and I've added Squamish's code of conduct because it's the strongest in the province and possibly

[3:44:05] Voice 9: wider and it has teeth in terms of penalties. It's one of the few that has a section on penalties so

[3:44:14] Voice 9: I want us to discuss that and I want us to think seriously about it. I also went to Ellie Mina who

[3:44:21] Voice 9: who was the fellow that came to our very early sections

[3:44:24] Voice 9: to help us talk about good governance.

[3:44:28] Voice 9: And he's really very, very helpful and kind.

[3:44:33] Voice 9: And Sue Ellen suggested that I read this book

[3:44:36] Voice 9: about 101 Board Problems.

[3:44:38] Voice 9: So I've bought copies of this book

[3:44:42] Voice 9: for everybody that's on council.

[3:44:44] Voice 9: I have a few extra.

[3:44:46] Voice 9: Apparently the staff already have it.

[3:44:48] Voice 9: but I suggest you put it beside your bed or you know

[3:44:54] Voice 9: beside the whatever wherever you're sitting

[3:44:57] Voice 9: comfortable they're little tiny anecdotes one at a time work your way through the book not

[3:45:03] Voice 9: everything applies a lot of it's really helpful and it's based on the whole issue of collaboration

[3:45:10] Voice 9: collaboration. And that triggered the oath of office that we took. So one of the points in the

[3:45:20] Voice 9: six or seven things that we all swore to in our oath of office, that one of them is,

[3:45:24] Voice 9: will be accountable for all the actions that I take while I'm in office. I will be respectful

[3:45:30] Voice 9: of others and I will demonstrate leadership and collaboration. So I need for myself to figure out

[3:45:40] Voice 9: about how to get my mind around, because I've been raised and worked in a very competitive

[3:45:45] Voice 9: profession, what collaboration means, right? I want to be able to sit down with a group and talk

[3:45:52] Voice 9: reasonably about highs and lows, goods and bads, things that we've flopped at, things that we've

[3:46:00] Voice 9: done well, and how to improve. And I don't want to get beaten up in the process. So we're going

[3:46:08] Voice 9: going to talk about the code of conduct and the metaphor that i kept thinking about was

[3:46:14] Voice 9: we're all in the same boat we're here with the islands trust we're on this council okay i'm not

[3:46:20] Voice 9: sure that we have the same destination or goal and we have to sort that out and i think that's

[3:46:26] Voice 9: what strategic planning is about i'm not sure we're all facing in the same direction and i'm

[3:46:32] Voice 9: not sure that we're paddling in sync and if we really want this to work and we want to accomplish

[3:46:38] Voice 9: accomplish something in the time that we've got here, then I think we have to figure out

[3:46:43] Voice 9: who's facing the wrong way. How do we turn them around? You know, if they're not going to paddle

[3:46:49] Voice 9: in sync, do we take the paddle away? Because it's slowing us down. What do we do? Right? So

[3:46:57] Voice 9: that's my report on the Governance Committee.

[3:47:03] Voice 47: Thank you. So we start with trustee Bolin.

[3:47:06] Voice 47: And I have extra.

[3:47:08] Voice 47: So Bolin, Stanford, and Annette.

[3:47:10] Voice 47: Thank

[3:47:14] Voice 23: you, Julie. I've also considered my retirement and how nice it was multiple times during this past two years.

[3:47:22] Voice 23: So I don't think you're alone in that. I appreciate the background and I'd like to ask you why.

[3:47:34] Voice 23: why so to me the response to the province that's gone on for two years and and it constantly

[3:47:42] Voice 23: goes backwards because we have to do something else first and now the code of conduct at the

[3:47:49] Voice 23: last minute bumped it again I thought there was a plan to have a draft response for this trust

[3:47:56] Voice 23: council and I listened to that meeting and the code of conduct bumped it and there was a discussion

[3:48:02] Voice 23: about the code of conduct with something that implied that it was very urgent and that it

[3:48:09] Voice 23: would be prepared for this trust council so I'm just a bit disappointed that the request isn't

[3:48:17] Voice 23: here and the item that bumped it seems to have lost its urgency and the other thing I would

[3:48:24] Voice 23: like to ask you actually is just I don't understand what matters outside our jurisdiction

[3:48:29] Voice 23: the item there, representation of provincial interest on TC, simple idea, complex, etc.

[3:48:37] Voice 23: I don't know what that means, and I'd appreciate it if you could give a little insight.

[3:48:44] Voice 23: Thank you.

[3:48:46] Voice 23: I don't understand the question.

[3:48:48] Voice 23: I've got two questions.

[3:48:50] Voice 23: Number one, why is the Code of Conduct not here, given that it bumped the response to the province off the agenda?

[3:48:58] Voice 23: And the second one is, what does the representation of provincial interest on TC mean?

[3:49:09] Voice 9: Okay, so underneath the matrix, the second point, the matters outside of our jurisdiction,

[3:49:15] Voice 9: which we consider neither urgent nor a priority,

[3:49:18] Voice 9: is representation of the provincial interest on trust council.

[3:49:22] Voice 9: So there was a suggestion, I believe, in the governance review

[3:49:26] Voice 9: view that we find a member of one of the ministries or some sort of a representation

[3:49:32] Voice 9: by the province to become a member of trust council so

[3:49:37] Voice 23: similar to islands trust conservancy

[3:49:40] Voice 23: that they would appoint representatives i suppose okay thanks i understand that point

[3:49:47] Voice 9: was it's a

[3:49:47] Voice 9: simple idea it's complex in execution there's multiple solutions and we didn't think when we

[3:49:53] Voice 9: first set up the matrix that it was something that was either urgent or a priority or within

[3:49:59] Voice 9: our jurisdiction.

[3:50:00] Voice 47: Okay, thank you. Trustee Stanford.

[3:50:07] Voice 42: First of all, I would just really like to thank

[3:50:09] Voice 42: Trustee Getty for all the work that she's put into this. I do feel that given I was part of

[3:50:19] Voice 42: the original review in the previous term, at least seeing the results of it, I haven't stepped up to

[3:50:26] Voice 42: the level i think i should be able to um with this committee i do understand its challenges

[3:50:32] Voice 42: um i there's all sorts of ideas that i think we can work with as a as a group it's more big

[3:50:40] Voice 42: picture it's more sitting down together i think we have um lacked the ability outside of meeting

[3:50:50] Voice 42: on zoom we really haven't sat down and talked about the bigger picture of what this means and

[3:50:57] Voice 42: we're getting stuck in the weeds um quite frequently with very specific issues um so i'm

[3:51:04] Voice 42: looking forward to trying to to find the heart of it um and having those bigger conversations which

[3:51:11] Voice 42: i think everyone is angling for they might not be easy answers but we haven't even asked the

[3:51:20] Voice 42: questions yet we haven't even talked about them yet and i think that's what a lot of people are

[3:51:25] Voice 42: missing with the governance committee um not so much interested in whether or not somebody gets

[3:51:31] Voice 42: a vote or not um it's more where are we going what could we do let's let's just put it out there

[3:51:39] Voice 42: you know it's aspirational to begin with and then pull back into the detail to say

[3:51:45] Voice 42: say, is this realistic or not? So it's those bigger questions that I find we need to ask and

[3:51:52] Voice 42: we haven't had the opportunity to yet.

[3:51:58] Voice 47: Trustee Evans.

[3:52:01] Voice 26: Thank you. For myself, I'm really appreciative

[3:52:05] Voice 26: that you're here and that you're not retired anymore. I'm super happy that you are on the

[3:52:11] Voice 26: Governance Committee and that we've got this committee in good hands. I wanted to add on to

[3:52:18] Voice 26: your analogy um it may not be necessarily that we're paddling in different directions it could

[3:52:22] Voice 26: just be that we've got different tools some of us could have paddles some of us could have a drum

[3:52:27] Voice 26: others could have sponges and others could have buckets they're all important it's just we've

[3:52:33] Voice 26: got to figure out how we're working together exactly so um but i did like that analogy

[3:52:45] Voice 26: um so i just wanted to my comment that i was sort of wanting to get out there and we've heard a lot

[3:52:50] Voice 26: of it we've seen a lot of lectures we've had a lot of people standing up at the podium today

[3:52:54] Voice 26: raising this issue and i know that we've already had something go out but do we need to have

[3:52:59] Voice 26: another letter going out from the executive committee or you know through the governance

[3:53:03] Voice 26: committee addressing the in-camera conversation that we had regarding the legal opinion because

[3:53:10] Voice 26: that's all that we discussed in camera was that legal opinion now we came out a bit with an

[3:53:16] Voice 26: and understanding from that legal opinion

[3:53:20] Voice 26: that seems to have stirred up quite the little hornet's nest.

[3:53:26] Voice 22: Do

[3:53:27] Voice 26: we need to have something that goes out a little bit more broadly

[3:53:31] Voice 26: rather than just addressing directly those people,

[3:53:34] Voice 26: maybe something that goes out to the broader public?

[3:53:36] Voice 26: Or do we need to have another meeting for this council

[3:53:40] Voice 26: to land on what is our position?

[3:53:42] Voice 26: position um because i do think we need to address this that this is just a continuous conversation

[3:53:49] Voice 26: that's happening and if we don't address it soon it can become something that can actually wind up

[3:53:55] Voice 26: being an achilles heel and the work that we're trying to accomplish really

[3:54:02] Trustee Luckham (probable): grateful that you've

[3:54:04] Trustee Luckham (probable): raised this in the way that you have um because i've said to a number of you and to staff and

[3:54:12] Trustee Luckham (probable): to others, this is a hurdle we have to get over. We can't ignore it. We need to get over it so that

[3:54:20] Trustee Luckham (probable): the public can have their answers and we can move on with, again, the important work that we need

[3:54:25] Trustee Luckham (probable): to do, particularly around the policy statement. And I'm going to give full credit to CAO Hudson

[3:54:30] Trustee Luckham (probable): Pillar on this, because I asked him the other day about this. How are we going to get over this

[3:54:34] Trustee Luckham (probable): hurdle? He says, we are going to have to have a meeting in public where we talk about it. And

[3:54:39] Trustee Luckham (probable): And you've just intimated that that's the answer

[3:54:42] Trustee Luckham (probable): because the only way we're going to be able

[3:54:44] Trustee Luckham (probable): to provide this answer is to redo that conversation.

[3:54:48] Trustee Luckham (probable): Maybe we'll come up with a different conclusion

[3:54:50] Trustee Luckham (probable): because we've certainly heard a lot of concerns

[3:54:53] Trustee Luckham (probable): from around the trust area.

[3:54:56] Trustee Luckham (probable): So think about it.

[3:54:57] Trustee Luckham (probable): We're going to have to schedule this,

[3:54:58] Trustee Luckham (probable): whether it's committee of the whole,

[3:54:59] Trustee Luckham (probable): which is our new tool, which seems ideal for that

[3:55:03] Trustee Luckham (probable): because then we can make a recommendation to council.

[3:55:05] Trustee Luckham (probable): And we need to get over this hurdle.

[3:55:08] Trustee Luckham (probable): It is a hurdle.

[3:55:10] Trustee Luckham (probable): In my mind.

[3:55:11] Trustee Luckham (probable): And so I give Trustee

[3:55:15] Voice 47: Yates and Bernardo.

[3:55:18] Voice 31: Thank you.

[3:55:19] Voice 31: I just wanted to sincerely thank Trustee Getty for this gift.

[3:55:25] Voice 31: I thought perhaps it was a goodbye gift from CAO Hudson-Piller.

[3:55:32] Voice 22: I really did.

[3:55:34] Voice 22: I really did.

[3:55:35] Voice 22: I'm so glad I wanted to read this.

[3:55:39] Voice 31: I really appreciate Elimina's work.

[3:55:43] Voice 31: I've been following him for 40 years, actually, in my first job, not a trustee, even before I was a trustee.

[3:55:51] Voice 31: He taught me some really important things.

[3:55:54] Voice 31: So I love this book.

[3:55:55] Voice 31: Thank you.

[3:55:56] Voice 31: And I want to tell, this is an important gift, too.

[3:56:00] Voice 31: This means a lot to many of us who really do support the Islands Trust object and mandate.

[3:56:08] Voice 31: and i just want to assure you all that paddling more or less in the same direction is really

[3:56:16] Voice 31: important we made a motion about half an hour ago to remove two things from our strategic plan

[3:56:23] Voice 31: and i made that motion and one of those things originally was really important to me to stay

[3:56:29] Voice 31: on the list but i want to paddle in the right direction working with everybody that's why i

[3:56:36] Voice 31: made that motion thank you mr bernardo

[3:56:40] Voice 15: thanks um about governance committee and our struggles on

[3:56:46] Voice 15: that um yeah we're pulled in a bunch of different directions there's just a lot of competing demands

[3:56:52] Voice 15: uh if you look go back to the governance review there's just a lot in there uh we

[3:56:58] Voice 15: pushed ahead with corporate planning and fobbed it off basically on npc and the subgroup that's

[3:57:02] Voice 15: working on that and so we have a kind of a general oversight function on that but not a lot of

[3:57:10] Voice 15: heavy lifting to do but it's in in the it's in the nature of the work of the committee that we

[3:57:16] Voice 15: actually unlike other committees we don't really have staff to rely on to do much of the work and

[3:57:24] Voice 15: it's not work really that can be staff centric one of the challenges we have is that we actually

[3:57:31] Voice 15: have to do the thinking and the development work and then have a discussion but we haven't

[3:57:38] Voice 15: necessarily made that as a priority and it makes it a little hard for us to make use of the matrix

[3:57:43] Voice 15: in that respect i

[3:57:49] Voice 45: can

[3:58:14] Voice 15: i can proceed now yeah

[3:58:17] Trustee Luckham (probable): i'm sorry yeah i

[3:58:18] Trustee Luckham (probable): just saw some other stuff happening

[3:58:19] Trustee Luckham (probable): and

[3:58:20] Voice 15: yes thank you like i said committee is being pulled in different directions it's hard for us

[3:58:25] Voice 15: to make use of the matrix because in order to actually advance any one of these items

[3:58:31] Voice 15: we actually have to do the work of it and i think that's just a function of self-organization

[3:58:37] Voice 15: judy talked about you know um not everybody's pulling or paddling the same direction yeah

[3:58:43] Voice 15: that's true but we have to balance that against the fact that as elected representatives people

[3:58:49] Voice 15: are entitled to have their opinions about different things it's not as if that we just

[3:58:54] Voice 15: have to simply come into the committee agreeing ahead of time the work that we have to do amongst

[3:59:00] Voice 15: ourselves is to figure out how to reach agreement and and how to develop the work and um that's a

[3:59:07] Voice 15: challenge and we're not perfect at it but you know it's symptomatic of the same issue that

[3:59:11] Voice 15: all the committees in the organization as a whole faces but we i think we do have some priorities

[3:59:18] Voice 15: The fact that we're dealing with this code of conduct, it has not preempted the other work.

[3:59:25] Voice 15: We scheduled a special meeting to deal with that expressly so it doesn't interfere with our regular work.

[3:59:32] Voice 15: And my understanding of it is the urgency comes from really it's a staff proposal about more or less bringing our code of conduct into alignment with where the UBCM is right now.

[3:59:45] Voice 15: And we just want to take care of that piece of business.

[3:59:48] Voice 15: I believe it's a straightforward matter.

[3:59:50] Voice 15: It's going to take one meeting for us to review this thing.

[3:59:53] Voice 15: And I think the trust council is likely to see something at the next meeting.

[3:59:58] Voice 15: I hope I'm right about that.

[4:00:01] Voice 15: With respect to the general discussion about the Section 3 issue that's come up, on that front, yeah, the communication over this, let's face it, we've got to be honest with ourselves, we failed as an organization because we have a lot of misunderstanding out in the community about what the intent of that was.

[4:00:20] Voice 15: There's a lot of people who are anxious who think that we're changing the direction of the trust, which is actually not true.

[4:00:24] Voice 15: through. What the whole purpose of that whole thing was to reach an accurate understanding

[4:00:32] Voice 15: of what Section 3 has always meant. And as we have discussed and discussed, I think,

[4:00:39] Voice 15: in open session back in September, there's a tremendous amount of discretion on the part

[4:00:45] Voice 15: of the trustees in terms of how they interpret Section 3. It's just that it calls for a balancing

[4:00:50] Voice 15: Act. We didn't do a very good job in communicating that. And you heard it today. There's quite a bit

[4:00:57] Voice 15: of suspicion that we're up to something. I don't think we can do much about a conspiratorial

[4:01:02] Voice 15: mindset, but we can be more transparent. And I do think we ought not to sort of revisit the

[4:01:09] Voice 15: whole thing. That hasn't proved to be productive in the past. To revisit things, that's how things

[4:01:15] Voice 15: end up in the ditch we made a decision on the basis of a lot of good reasons

[4:01:19] Voice 52: but

[4:01:20] Voice 15: i'm thinking

[4:01:22] Voice 15: that our original decision um to withhold the relevant opinions from the public i think we

[4:01:30] Voice 15: need to have a discussion about whether or not the way to deal with this is simply

[4:01:34] Voice 15: release those things into the public i don't know if that's the right thing i think we'd have to

[4:01:39] Voice 15: consult with legal counsel about the merits of that whether there's risks involved what if there

[4:01:43] Voice 15: There are any, but they were the basis for the decision that we got to.

[4:01:50] Voice 15: And the public, well, they may not agree with our conclusion, but at least it will address the question of good faith.

[4:01:59] Voice 15: And how I don't necessarily have a position on whether we should release it or not.

[4:02:03] Voice 15: But I do think it would be fruitful for us to have a discussion about whether those legal opinions should be released.

[4:02:09] Voice 15: Thank you.

[4:02:13] Voice 9: Well, I'm thinking this is a discussion that needs to happen in the Governance Committee rather than with the whole Council at this point, and then we can hash it out and make a presentation.

[4:02:23] Voice 14: Trustee Harris.

[4:02:25] Voice 14: Thanks.

[4:02:27] Voice 14: Yeah, I'm fairly troubled with this Code of Conduct business.

[4:02:31] Voice 14: business. The reasoning that was given for it to be brought up was that I recall correctly from

[4:02:38] Voice 14: Trustee Patrick was that there was a trustee last term who had a complaint about a code of conduct

[4:02:45] Voice 14: issue and wasn't made aware of that expediently. And so this whole reasoning for the code of

[4:02:51] Voice 14: conduct review was to make the people that were being complained against made aware of it ASAP.

[4:02:58] Voice 14: Well, I've heard that once, but now all I seem to hear is I've heard from the chair of the governance committee saying people who aren't paddling in the same direction should have their paddles taken away, and the enforcement needs to have teeth, maybe some of the harshest in BC.

[4:03:13] Voice 14: I've heard Trustee Patrick speak about social media.

[4:03:18] Voice 14: I am very happy, though, to hear Chair Getty from the governance committee speak about the proportional representation or the undemocratic representation aspect.

[4:03:28] Voice 14: of um the island's trust and its structure um because that is an issue um so i think maybe

[4:03:34] Voice 14: that would be first and foremost something that we should be talking about or not the code of

[4:03:37] Voice 14: conduct or taking um paddles away from people i'm very troubled by what i've heard um i hope others

[4:03:43] Voice 14: are um willing to speak about this as well thanks so

[4:03:47] Trustee Luckham (probable): i just want to speak to this a bit just to add

[4:03:51] Trustee Luckham (probable): a broader context um certainly there over the years there have been concerns about the court

[4:03:58] Trustee Luckham (probable): of conduct at the executive committee level um and we hear we hear complaints from people

[4:04:05] Trustee Luckham (probable): generally but it's actually neither here nor there because it's common among all local governments

[4:04:10] Trustee Luckham (probable): and there is a provincial direction through ubcm for all of us as local governments to put into

[4:04:18] Trustee Luckham (probable): place and tighten up our code of conduct and and indeed some of the elements that have been raised

[4:04:25] Trustee Luckham (probable): with respect to how that's being implemented

[4:04:27] Trustee Luckham (probable): at executive committee and with staff

[4:04:30] Trustee Luckham (probable): needs to be addressed.

[4:04:32] Trustee Luckham (probable): And that's why this has happened

[4:04:34] Trustee Luckham (probable): is to make it a more,

[4:04:36] Trustee Luckham (probable): an appropriate document

[4:04:39] Trustee Luckham (probable): that there is definitely direction

[4:04:42] Trustee Luckham (probable): from the province and through UBCM

[4:04:44] Trustee Luckham (probable): to have all local governments

[4:04:46] Trustee Luckham (probable): meet some kind of a minimum standard

[4:04:48] Trustee Luckham (probable): as far as code of conduct.

[4:04:49] Trustee Luckham (probable): But that conversation,

[4:04:51] Trustee Luckham (probable): as Judy has said,

[4:04:52] Trustee Luckham (probable): is going to happen within that committee.

[4:04:53] Trustee Luckham (probable): and then i'll come back to you for review and so i don't think we can dig into that today

[4:04:58] Trustee Luckham (probable): and then in my subtle way i'm trying to advance us on the agenda

[4:05:02] Voice 24: trustee mills

[4:05:06] Voice 24: yeah the benefit of some history here i think um i am a little confused by this i have to say now

[4:05:11] Voice 24: i was i was away uh when obviously the topic came up um but we worked on the code of conduct at the

[4:05:18] Voice 24: last uh as the last council and in fact um it was drafted uh it was adopted we had a feedback

[4:05:24] Voice 24: session it was in response to ubcm uh guidelines so what's going on right i mean we obviously have

[4:05:32] Voice 24: a compliant code of conduct and what i hear i do have to echo trustee harris's comments

[4:05:38] Voice 24: there is an underlying air of discipline and disapproval that i'm hearing in our chair's

[4:05:45] Voice 24: comments and I'm hearing from the executive in terms of the idea that there's punishment for

[4:05:51] Voice 24: trustees who miss a meal or have something that happens that they can't come to a meeting in the

[4:05:58] Voice 24: hotel room is squandered and I just think is this a symptom of our lack of direction is that the

[4:06:05] Voice 24: only tools that the executive and chairs of committees can now reach for are tools of control

[4:06:10] Voice 24: oh no this is a real feeling in the room so so hang

[4:06:18] Trustee Luckham (probable): on trustee middleton yeah a point of order

[4:06:21] Trustee Luckham (probable): is a point of order so i'll answer

[4:06:25] Trustee Luckham (probable): go ahead point of order what is your point of order

[4:06:27] Trustee Luckham (probable): this

[4:06:36] Voice 22: was a

[4:06:41] Voice 42: report and i don't understand why we're having this discussion at this council

[4:06:45] Voice 42: table I'd like to move

[4:06:46] Voice 42: on to the other speakers who are scheduled and I don't

[4:06:51] Voice 42: understand why honestly it just feels like you're uncomfortable with some

[4:06:58] Voice 42: decisions that were made and we need to deal with that

[4:07:00] Trustee Luckham (probable): in appropriate this

[4:07:01] Trustee Luckham (probable): points of order all over well yeah

[4:07:04] Trustee Luckham (probable): places here but I think that we need to

[4:07:08] Trustee Luckham (probable): proceed no I'm still talking and at some point in time I am the chair

[4:07:17] Trustee Luckham (probable): and I've got a point of order on the table and I'm trying to explain that point of order.

[4:07:21] Trustee Luckham (probable): All right. So we are on the governance committee report. And I think that the point of order is

[4:07:31] Trustee Luckham (probable): swaying that we're going beyond the conversation on the agenda, which is the governance report.

[4:07:37] Trustee Luckham (probable): There may be other matters that need to be dealt with and they should be dealt with in committee.

[4:07:43] Trustee Luckham (probable): And so in terms of the code of conduct, if you've got interests or concerns about the code of

[4:07:47] Trustee Luckham (probable): conduct. Let's bring that up in the place where that conversation is being held. And thank you,

[4:07:52] Trustee Luckham (probable): Trustee Middleton. We'll take note of your remarks there. And thank you, Trustee Elliott, for the

[4:07:59] Trustee Luckham (probable): point of order. But I would also suggest on that that what we want to do is stick to what's wrong

[4:08:05] Trustee Luckham (probable): that's happening on the agenda as opposed to other accusations or other comments with respect to

[4:08:12] Trustee Luckham (probable): of the conversation so let's move on is that okay anybody object to that then you can call

[4:08:21] Trustee Luckham (probable): the chair on it and i'm not afraid of that so let's move on

[4:08:26] Voice 47: trustee harris you

[4:08:29] Trustee Luckham (probable): have a further

[4:08:29] Trustee Luckham (probable): point

[4:08:30] Voice 14: of order well yes because it seemed to me that what trustee middleton was speaking about

[4:08:34] Voice 14: was completely irrelevant into the conversation we've got other trustees speak about um chair

[4:08:38] Voice 14: getty's um report and that's what he was doing so i really don't understand how why he was so

[4:08:44] Voice 14: rudely interrupted and um and myself i was um i'm very interested in what he had to say i'm not sure

[4:08:50] Voice 14: if anybody else felt that way thank you

[4:08:52] Trustee Luckham (probable): i am interested in what uh chair middleton has to say

[4:08:55] Trustee Luckham (probable): i think that you know calling a point of order is a point in a conversation where it's gone too far

[4:09:03] Trustee Luckham (probable): and i think that we've crossed that bridge and we need to bring it back in and we'll just continue

[4:09:08] Trustee Luckham (probable): you on and i think it stands let's have this conversation in the committee about the thing

[4:09:14] Trustee Luckham (probable): and lee middleton wishes to attend that meeting can certainly attend that susan

[4:09:21] Voice 30: i don't have a

[4:09:21] Trustee Luckham (probable): point of order

[4:09:22] Voice 30: i do have a question about the governance committee perfect okay

[4:09:25] Voice 30: my question

[4:09:26] Voice 30: is actually um on the notes in the matrix it says that the code of conduct was added in may

[4:09:33] Voice 30: May, sorry, I'm having a scrolling issue.

[4:09:36] Voice 30: Thank you.

[4:09:37] Voice 30: May 13th.

[4:09:38] Voice 30: So I don't know why I'm not tracking that,

[4:09:42] Voice 30: but I don't understand how that was added to,

[4:09:45] Voice 30: it didn't seem,

[4:09:45] Voice 30: I looked in the governance report and couldn't see it.

[4:09:48] Voice 30: And I don't understand why the governance committee

[4:09:50] Voice 30: is getting things that should, from my perspective,

[4:09:54] Voice 30: be the EC's business.

[4:09:57] Voice 34: Okay.

[4:09:57] Trustee Luckham (probable): I think CAO Hudson-Piller can help us out

[4:09:59] Trustee Luckham (probable): with this point here.

[4:10:01] Voice 17: My fault.

[4:10:04] Voice 17: The executive committee was reviewing the standards of conduct and have been doing so for some period of time.

[4:10:10] Voice 17: David has gone out and done a review of relevant current standards of conduct from a variety of different perspectives.

[4:10:19] Voice 17: That was done.

[4:10:20] Voice 17: We have a sitting governance committee.

[4:10:23] Voice 17: Standards of conduct are intimately associated with governance.

[4:10:28] Voice 17: And it's simply the courtesy of referring it to that body before it came to trust counsel.

[4:10:34] Voice 17: felt like the appropriate thing to do.

[4:10:35] Voice 17: I recommended that to executive committee

[4:10:37] Voice 17: and they said, when's the next meeting?

[4:10:40] Voice 17: So I said, it's in two weeks.

[4:10:43] Voice 17: So I requested that they refer to governance committee.

[4:10:50] Voice 17: Okay.

[4:10:52] Voice 30: So the last follow-up on that then.

[4:10:54] Voice 30: So my only comment on that for EC

[4:10:57] Voice 30: is I vehemently oppose adding things additional

[4:11:00] Voice 30: to governance committee.

[4:11:02] Voice 30: They have a lot of work on their plate.

[4:11:03] Voice 30: We have heard multiple people today

[4:11:05] Voice 30: say that we want to see progress on the things and we obviously don't want to overstress our

[4:11:09] Voice 30: governance committee i really disagree with anything that relates to governance landing

[4:11:14] Voice 30: on their plate thank you

[4:11:17] Trustee Luckham (probable): that's fair enough we'll take that into consideration i don't want to drag

[4:11:21] Trustee Luckham (probable): the conversation for a long time i'd like to continue on with our agenda because we do have

[4:11:25] Trustee Luckham (probable): some drop dead times here today jamie harris thank

[4:11:31] Voice 14: you very briefly i don't mean to uh

[4:11:34] Voice 14: be leaguer of the point, but I just want to

[4:11:37] Voice 14: I've just heard

[4:11:37] Voice 14: and thank you to CAO

[4:11:40] Voice 14: for telling us that he suggested it go

[4:11:42] Voice 14: to the Governance Committee, but I swear

[4:11:44] Voice 14: maybe I could go back to the

[4:11:47] Voice 14: meeting, the recording,

[4:11:48] Voice 14: but I swear I thought I heard you, Trustee

[4:11:50] Voice 14: Luckham, say that Laura Patrick was spearheading

[4:11:52] Voice 14: the Code of Conduct review

[4:11:54] Voice 14: and that's why it was being brought to the Governance Committee.

[4:11:56] Voice 14: Did I

[4:11:56] Trustee Luckham (probable): hear wrong? I doubt very much

[4:11:58] Trustee Luckham (probable): I said that. I don't

[4:12:00] Trustee Luckham (probable): have a recollection. I'll go back then.

[4:12:02] Voice 14: I'm pretty sure I heard that. Thank you.

[4:12:04] Trustee Luckham (probable): Okay. Have we concluded the governance committee report? Joe, if

[4:12:11] Trustee Luckham (probable): you can be

[4:12:11] Voice 15: brief, if you don't mind.

[4:12:13] Voice 15: Apologies to everybody, because I know none of us really want to keep chewing this over and again.

[4:12:18] Voice 15: But I just want to register that what Trustee Milton was interrupted and never had a chance to conclude his remark,

[4:12:25] Voice 15: it was actually responsive to something that Chair Getty had actually said,

[4:12:31] Voice 15: which is how to approach you know introducing a certain element of discipline in terms of

[4:12:38] Voice 15: trustee behavior with respect to code of conduct and that kind of stuff and then

[4:12:42] Voice 15: so the middleman had mentioned he has some reservations about that the only reason i'm

[4:12:47] Voice 15: bringing that up is to say it actually was responsive to the presentation with respect

[4:12:52] Voice 15: to the governance committee and on that basis i think he should be allowed to at least finish

[4:12:55] Voice 15: his point or his question and then perhaps we can move on but it was it seems to me entirely

[4:13:00] Voice 15: Fair

[4:13:03] Trustee Luckham (probable): enough. It's that fine line of providing feedback on the comment in the conversation and then expanding that into other horizons and assumptions and accusations, I would say.

[4:13:20] Trustee Luckham (probable): So if you would like to wrap that particular part of the chair's report up in a

[4:13:27] Trustee Luckham (probable): respectful way.

[4:13:29] Trustee Luckham (probable): Absolutely.

[4:13:29] Voice 24: And for the comment there, I didn't quite get to the conciliatory part, perhaps. And so Vice Chair Elliott is quite correct. It's wrong to insinuate that there was some kind of nefarious deeds. And I need to be careful in my comments. I don't attribute any of this to any individual malice. I see this as systemic failures in our governance.

[4:13:54] Voice 24: it's what we've all been handed executive you're trying to do your best with with this structure

[4:14:00] Voice 24: um but i'm just i was just concerned there that suddenly we feel we might make everything all

[4:14:08] Voice 24: right by focusing on sort of an enhanced discipline when as i think as many people

[4:14:14] Voice 24: around the table you know

[4:14:15] Voice 24: we need to focus on on actually that how do you speak to somebody

[4:14:21] Voice 24: who doesn't share your values without um diminishing the importance of their values

[4:14:27] Voice 24: like we do not have these tools i've been harping on this uh for a long time a group of 26 it's

[4:14:33] Voice 24: really almost criminal that we can

[4:14:34] Trustee Luckham (probable): wrap it up

[4:14:35] Voice 24: given like an access but that i guess does that

[4:14:39] Voice 24: um illustrate my point perhaps a little more i just uh wanted to clarify that i'm not pointing

[4:14:44] Voice 24: Pointing at individuals, yeah.

[4:14:46] Trustee Luckham (probable): Yeah, and I did say at the end of my decision

[4:14:49] Trustee Luckham (probable): that I respect and understand your point.

[4:14:52] Trustee Luckham (probable): Right, no, thank you.

[4:14:54] Trustee Luckham (probable): It's how we carry the message.

[4:14:56] Trustee Luckham (probable): Are we good to move on?

[4:14:59] Trustee Luckham (probable): So, thank you.

[4:15:02] Trustee Luckham (probable): I want to jump immediately to Chair Smith's presentation.

[4:15:07] Trustee Luckham (probable): We agreed earlier on to reshuffle

[4:15:09] Trustee Luckham (probable): the Trust Area Services section

[4:15:11] Trustee Luckham (probable): to provide her that opportunity to advance that work.

[4:15:15] Trustee Luckham (probable): And given the timing that we've got, I think it would be appropriate to provide her that opportunity now.

[4:15:20] Trustee Luckham (probable): And we'll pick up whatever we can on Trust Area Services before we break at 545 to hear from the inclusive governance session from Adam Olson, who I don't think I mentioned that he is attending the session electronically.

[4:15:34] Trustee Luckham (probable): He's not coming in person. He was unable to come. So, Risa Smith.

[4:15:41] Trustee Luckham (probable): Is this on?

[4:15:43] Trustee Luckham (probable): There you

[4:15:43] Voice 37: go. I missed you

[4:15:44] Trustee Luckham (probable): sneaking up there.

[4:15:46] Trustee Luckham (probable): Chair of the Island Trust Conservancy, so nice to see you at Council again, and please, the floor is yours.

[4:15:51] Voice 37: Hi, everybody, and thank you for having me again.

[4:15:54] Voice 37: First, I'm here to talk about the Island Trust Conservancy and to let you know about what we're doing

[4:16:00] Voice 37: and catch you up on some of the details and the way forward.

[4:16:04] Voice 37: But I want to start with saying happy anniversary to the Island Trust.

[4:16:08] Voice 37: It's your 50th anniversary. That is an incredible accomplishment and very exciting.

[4:16:13] Voice 37: exciting and i do want to tell you a very brief story about how i first got in in introduced to

[4:16:19] Voice 37: the islands trust when i was a graduate student there was a study called the girls study gulf

[4:16:25] Voice 37: island land and resource stewardship study and it was nobody except me seems to have ever heard

[4:16:33] Voice 37: about it and the professor who talked about it has since deceased so there we go but there is a

[4:16:38] Voice 37: thesis a graduate student thesis about it and in that study they looked at there was no islands

[4:16:44] Voice 37: trust at the time and they looked at um the way that these islands were governed and they looked

[4:16:52] Voice 37: at the system we had with regional governments and was that working they looked around the world

[4:16:58] Voice 37: different types of systems for these this kind of ecosystem with an archipelago and they came to the

[4:17:05] Voice 37: conclusion that this uh the regional government system that we had wasn't working because we are

[4:17:14] Voice 37: a group of islands and it sort of fragmented us in terms

[4:17:18] Voice 37: of governance so out of that

[4:17:21] Voice 37: came the islands trust and that was a 1970s study and in 1974 the islands trust came

[4:17:27] Voice 37: so it's sort of funny that i'm the only one who knows about that but it shows how old i am i know

[4:17:32] Voice 44: know about it

[4:17:33] Voice 37: oh okay she shows how old you are as well but um i want to remind people of that

[4:17:40] Voice 37: because it's kind of funny we all have our own stories about history and that's my story about

[4:17:44] Voice 37: the trust um at the time of the original act there was actually in a vision that the islands trust

[4:17:51] Voice 37: would have to have some mechanism to hold property to have protected areas but the actual

[4:17:59] Voice 37: mechanism to do that was not enacted until 1990. It was proclaimed in 1989. And in 1990,

[4:18:07] Voice 37: we had the trust fund, which later morphed into the Ellen's Trust Conservancy. So

[4:18:12] Voice 37: I have no idea of the politics of why it took so long for us to have a mechanism to hold property.

[4:18:19] Voice 37: But that's a little bit of the history. Alex, I'm going to do this to change slides. So this

[4:18:25] Voice 37: is what we do and also relax it says i'm going to talk for 45 minutes but i am not because i

[4:18:33] Voice 37: am experienced enough to know that i would be late so don't worry about that um this is uh

[4:18:39] Voice 37: regional conservation planning this is what we do to think of to plan conservation for the whole

[4:18:46] Voice 37: region this is our really core planning document for itc and if you want to look at the data the

[4:18:54] Voice 37: the numbers, the trends. This is where you should look. This is a lot of work in planning. The first

[4:18:59] Voice 37: two were five-year plans, and now we have a 10-year plan. It's actually going to be a little

[4:19:05] Voice 37: bit later, because we've just agreed that instead of the 2018 to 2027 plan, it's going to be to

[4:19:13] Voice 37: 2029. And that is specifically so that we can do a much better job of incorporating the knowledge

[4:19:19] Voice 37: knowledge and engagement with First Nations people. So this is really important to us and

[4:19:24] Voice 37: that's a lot. And so we're going to take a little bit more time. Alex. So the first thing I wanted

[4:19:31] Voice 37: to be able to tell you is, do you need the ITC? Has it done anything for you? What's the

[4:19:37] Voice 37: counterfactual? What would have happened if you didn't have us? And that's so hard. I'm a scientist

[4:19:42] Voice 37: by training and this idea of the counterfactual, what if you didn't exist, is very difficult

[4:19:47] Voice 37: to prove so and i i it would be a lot more to do this but um after looking at a lot of data

[4:19:55] Voice 37: i came to the conclusion that you do need us i'm not biased i don't care one way or the other but

[4:20:00] Voice 37: actually we have accomplished a lot and when i say we it's all of us because i have to thank you

[4:20:08] Voice 37: it's the trust council that gives us our budget and so i thank you for that and for considering

[4:20:13] Voice 37: our requests and for understanding what we do and that we heard the public talk about

[4:20:19] Voice 37: preserve and protect and their concerns, we aren't the only preserve and protect part

[4:20:25] Voice 37: of the Islands Trust, but we are a key part of it.

[4:20:29] Voice 37: And so by the Trust Council agreeing to fund us and thinking about our requests, it's really

[4:20:36] Voice 37: appreciated and we're aware of that.

[4:20:38] Voice 37: So I'll say that.

[4:20:38] Voice 37: So what have we done?

[4:20:39] Voice 37: Today, we have about 20% of the land in the Islands Trust area protected, and 8.5% of that is protected by ITC.

[4:20:48] Voice 37: That's huge. That's awesome.

[4:20:51] Voice 37: What we don't have is marine protected areas.

[4:20:54] Voice 37: Somebody somewhere talked about that.

[4:20:56] Voice 37: And that's one of my sort of personal wishes, that we would look at our coastal areas and the need

[4:21:03] Voice 37: to protect them as well.

[4:21:05] Voice 37: And I can't say it's our mandate or anybody on the board agrees with that.

[4:21:09] Voice 37: but it is something that I'm particularly aware of Alex let's see how I've done this three four

[4:21:18] Voice 37: okay so this just looks by island the percent protected this is the this is from 2019 it's the

[4:21:27] Voice 37: most recent data I could find and of course it's off a bit better because certain islands have had

[4:21:32] Voice 37: more protected but you can see it's not equal on all islands so some islands have a lot protected

[4:21:37] Voice 37: protected.

[4:21:38] Voice 37: Saturn has always had a lot protected.

[4:21:40] Voice 37: Some islands have a long way to go for a lot of reasons, maybe historical, but that's something

[4:21:48] Voice 37: that we're conscious of.

[4:21:49] Voice 37: We had a goal in 2005 to have 15% of all the islands protected.

[4:21:57] Voice 37: We got there for a lot of the islands, but not for all the islands, so I wanted to raise

[4:22:04] Voice 37: that.

[4:22:05] Voice 37: Alex, next slide. Now, for me, trends are the most important. This is really hard to get from

[4:22:12] Voice 37: the data. What I want to know is, is it getting better or worse? This is like a policy question.

[4:22:18] Voice 37: For many years, I did state of environment reporting, first for the province, and then,

[4:22:23] Voice 37: although I went to the federal government to not do that anymore, I ended up doing that there too.

[4:22:28] Voice 37: and so policy people always want to know we invested did it get better or worse and so I

[4:22:34] Voice 37: wanted to know that here too and what this graph shows you the colors it's green on the top green

[4:22:41] Voice 37: is 2017 and the darker is 2004 so for each island has it gotten better and it has and I'm sorry I

[4:22:50] Voice 37: couldn't do this uh more recently but this analysis is done with the percentage of natural

[4:22:57] Voice 37: ecosystems protected. So it takes out the industrial area and the agricultural area,

[4:23:03] Voice 37: the residential developments from the land base. So again, you can see it's improved on every

[4:23:10] Voice 37: single island, but some islands more than others. So Alex, then I want to go through really briefly.

[4:23:19] Voice 37: So how do we do this? And this is kind of exciting because, and this has all happened before I came

[4:23:26] Voice 37: around but i have taken ownership of it because it's it's a good model we have lots of tools we

[4:23:32] Voice 37: don't just have one tool and those the idea that we have lots of tools is very important

[4:23:38] Voice 37: so the first tool we have is nature reserves you probably all know about that we have 34 nature

[4:23:45] Voice 37: reserves they cover 607 hectares on 13 islands so these are protected areas in a sort of more

[4:23:52] Voice 37: traditional way that people think of protected areas. About 14 of them are accessible to the

[4:23:57] Voice 37: public, and the rest are not. So they're more like, I'm going to talk about this later, fortress

[4:24:02] Voice 37: conservation more. People don't, it's, they're more for the ecology to let nature develop, but they

[4:24:11] Voice 37: don't have access. And this is a picture of one on Gabriela Island, but they're all fantastic and

[4:24:19] Voice 37: beautiful they range in size there's a tiny one of 0.25 hectares on gabriola that's the

[4:24:25] Voice 37: coats millstone nature reserve and there's a really big one on gambier of 107 hectares

[4:24:31] Voice 37: and i i so badly want to go there i'm trying to get an invite but so far there hasn't been any

[4:24:38] Voice 37: bites uh alex the next tool is the nap tips these are the natural area protection tax exemption

[4:24:47] Voice 37: program. This is actually your program that we administer, and this is a program where

[4:24:53] Voice 37: people who have land holdings want to put some or part of that into a protection

[4:25:02] Voice 37: category. They get a covenant on it. They get a tax break, 65 percent of the taxes on that

[4:25:11] Voice 37: particular piece of land that's in the covenant, for doing that. And this program is really

[4:25:16] Voice 37: important. Some of them are very small and one there's the smallest is Weninick

[4:25:22] Voice 37: on Salt Spring Island at 1.6 hectares and the largest NAPTEP is 45.4 hectares

[4:25:29] Voice 37: Moss Mountain Covenant on Salt Spring Island so and everything in between and

[4:25:34] Voice 37: these are really important because these are things that people voluntarily think

[4:25:39] Voice 37: geez I have a really special area it's a wetland it's an old-growth forest it's

[4:25:45] Voice 37: got some endangered species on it and they voluntarily protect it. And it is a covenant

[4:25:50] Voice 37: and it's in perpetuity. So if that land changes hands, it's still protected. And that's a land

[4:26:00] Voice 37: trust, and we are a land trust all over the world, use this tool. But ours is exciting because

[4:26:06] Voice 37: there's this tax break part of it. Alex, the next tool is conservation covenants that aren't

[4:26:14] Voice 37: so these are covenants that go on the title of the land but and they are also protected in

[4:26:22] Voice 37: perpetuity but they don't get this tax break directly but there are um economic implications

[4:26:31] Voice 37: to these covenants as well because um they're on the title and they will devalue your land in a

[4:26:39] Voice 37: a sense so then you get if your land is devalued obviously you pay less taxes so um it's and then

[4:26:46] Voice 37: people do people like this because they still maintain the title but they um that land even

[4:26:52] Voice 37: if they die will be will be conserved this is working alex i know the next one is um the last

[4:27:01] Voice 37: tool i want to talk to is about our opportunity fund we started this in 2005 and these are very

[4:27:07] Voice 37: very small grants that we give to organizations on all the islands in order to sort of take them

[4:27:14] Voice 37: over a hump in their conservation efforts so say you're fundraising for a big area and you just

[4:27:21] Voice 37: need someone to pay for the legal part or the survey these are grants they're usually in the

[4:27:27] Voice 37: five to seven thousand dollar range and they they're incredible because they just they give

[4:27:34] Voice 37: that little push to help organizations do the big work and we've invested 175 000 approximately

[4:27:42] Voice 37: since 2005 and then if you assess all the lands that you know the assessment authority that have

[4:27:48] Voice 37: been protected that we've contributed to in this little way it comes to 55 million dollars so

[4:27:54] Voice 37: that's like pretty good leverage i think and we can be i think this this fund is a very good idea

[4:28:01] Voice 37: action. Now, I put this slide in here. Kate Louise Sanford and I created this slide together

[4:28:09] Voice 37: a couple of years ago. I'm not going to tell you where it is, but I'm putting it here

[4:28:13] Voice 37: just to say that we're trying to think more creatively. Sometimes you can put several tools

[4:28:19] Voice 37: together across the land. You may have several landowners. You may have some area that's protected,

[4:28:25] Voice 37: say by a government agency and if you can get people together which you can you can create a

[4:28:32] Voice 37: huge unfragmented area looking at different tools so in this case there's a fully protected area

[4:28:40] Voice 37: nature reserve by itc there's three different landowners involved they've got naptep government

[4:28:47] Voice 37: government covenants, and then one has a, what do you call that, a profit of ponder, where you just

[4:28:55] Voice 37: limit something on that land, like it may be you can't cut trees or something like that. So this

[4:29:01] Voice 37: is like a way to go, and I think it's very creative of our staff that they've been open to this and

[4:29:07] Voice 37: trying to encourage landowners to get together. So I'd love that. Anyways, next. Alex, our strengths.

[4:29:14] Voice 37: Thanks. You guys have been sitting here for so long. I'm so appreciative of that.

[4:29:22] Voice 37: Monitoring. I want to talk about this because people come to me all the time, and this is in

[4:29:28] Voice 37: the land trust movement. We all work. This is like a volunteer position, really. But my real

[4:29:34] Voice 37: day job, I work for the World Commission on Protected Areas, and people always wonder about

[4:29:39] Voice 37: this. Are covenants secure? Do they make any sense? Are they just a waste of the paper?

[4:29:45] Voice 37: and so they are unless they're monitored but as an organization ITC monitors they

[4:29:53] Voice 37: monitor our covenants we monitor our nature reserves and this is really our strength

[4:30:00] Voice 37: We go out there, we look, are there infringements?

[4:30:02] Voice 37: Are there problems?

[4:30:03] Voice 37: Maybe there's a breach of something

[4:30:07] Voice 37: or even something natural that's happening.

[4:30:10] Voice 37: And we roughly annually, we check all our properties

[4:30:15] Voice 37: and we look at whether,

[4:30:18] Voice 37: and if there's big breaches on a covenant,

[4:30:20] Voice 37: we try and work with the landowners,

[4:30:22] Voice 37: but sometimes we even have to go to court

[4:30:25] Voice 37: and we have done that.

[4:30:27] Voice 37: So this is really what makes us a strong organization, I'd say the Islands Trust, because these tools we use, we don't just put them on a piece of paper, we go there and we monitor them.

[4:30:42] Voice 37: And the act of monitoring often means engaging with people, and that also helps with protecting these lands.

[4:30:53] Voice 37: Alex another strength enhancing connectivity this is something that really impresses me and it's on

[4:31:02] Voice 37: several islands where we may own a little piece of land or a couple small pieces but together with

[4:31:09] Voice 37: all the other protection that's happening this creates a huge unfragmented area so this is the

[4:31:17] Voice 37: picture of Galliano Island where I live and the big red circles the the darker ones are

[4:31:23] Voice 37: our islands trust conservancy land but you can see from there that there's lots of other protected

[4:31:29] Voice 37: areas there and this whole what we call the mid-island protected areas network is 660 hectares

[4:31:35] Voice 37: so we have some key parts but the galliano conservancy is there bc parks is there the

[4:31:42] Voice 37: nature trust of bc parks is there the provincial coastal douglas for land use order is one of them

[4:31:48] Voice 37: There's some crown land there. And so together, everybody working together has created a really,

[4:31:54] Voice 37: a really unfragmented area. I'm going to show one more. This slide's a little bit harder to see,

[4:32:02] Voice 37: but this is on Gambier. This is a 525 hectare connected protected area. 107 hectares of it

[4:32:09] Voice 37: are ITC land, but, and the ITC land, some of you may know these areas, which I'm, as I said,

[4:32:15] Voice 37: at Dying to See, Mount Ardaban, the Long Bay Wetlands, Nature Reserve, and Brigade Bay Bluffs.

[4:32:25] Voice 37: But there's other owners in there too. Ours are the ones that are a little bit darker green.

[4:32:30] Voice 37: And then I could have shown a map similar to this for Bowen Island, also incredibly exciting,

[4:32:36] Voice 37: fantastic network. And we've got little key pieces in it, but there's many other players.

[4:32:43] Voice 37: Alex. Next. It took me a long time to put this slide together, I just want you to know that.

[4:32:52] Voice 37: Our strengths are partnerships. We work with partnerships. I heard people around this table

[4:32:58] Voice 37: talking about the need to work together. That is how ITC achieves everything. We work with

[4:33:04] Voice 37: other organizations, and this is like, I couldn't get everybody's logo here, but we're working

[4:33:10] Voice 37: We're working with the conservancies on every island.

[4:33:12] Voice 37: We're working with the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

[4:33:15] Voice 37: We're working with the Habitat Acquisition Trust Fund, like provincial, federal, and local organizations to create a protected areas network everywhere.

[4:33:27] Voice 37: And these partnerships are important.

[4:33:29] Voice 37: One thing that's not here is the partnerships we have with people, the actual residents of all of our islands.

[4:33:37] Voice 37: And these people, we have so many people who come to the Gulf Islands because it's beautiful.

[4:33:43] Voice 37: They recognize that they have something that is really special.

[4:33:47] Voice 37: They want to protect it.

[4:33:49] Voice 37: And they come and work with us.

[4:33:51] Voice 37: So without them, even the other things we do, we couldn't do without them.

[4:33:55] Voice 37: So partnerships are everything.

[4:33:58] Voice 37: And it's hard to have partnerships.

[4:34:01] Voice 37: It takes time to have partnerships.

[4:34:03] Voice 37: It's relationships.

[4:34:04] Voice 37: partnerships. And so this is hard to do. But without these partnerships, we would be nothing.

[4:34:09] Voice 37: So there you go. Alex, I'm getting to the end. Don't worry, guys. We have a special program

[4:34:17] Voice 37: called the Species at Risk Program. So you guys all know we got about two, we're in the fifth year

[4:34:24] Voice 37: of the program. It's been extended to 2026. And this program, we've got funding from Environment

[4:34:30] Voice 37: and climate change canada and it's part of a national program so it's very specific what we

[4:34:35] Voice 37: do there and it's not something that we can play around with what we do there we have to implement

[4:34:40] Voice 37: this program and it's got two contexts the first is this the biodiversity plan um so canada has

[4:34:50] Voice 37: developed a 2020 nature strategy and it's in the context of international commitments we made

[4:34:57] Voice 37: some people know this as the coming montreal global biodiversity framework so we had a big

[4:35:03] Voice 37: meeting of the convention on biological diversity it was in montreal for it was supposed to be in

[4:35:09] Voice 37: china because of covid they didn't want to have it and canada said okay we'll have it we had in

[4:35:17] Voice 37: montreal was so lucky to be there and it was an amazing experience all the countries coming

[4:35:22] Voice 37: coming together, you probably heard about the 30 by 30, protect 30% of land, waters and marine

[4:35:31] Voice 37: areas by 2030. But there's much more to that. And there's a big part about restoration, spatial

[4:35:39] Voice 37: planning, inclusive decision making, especially with Indigenous peoples. Internationally, that's

[4:35:47] Voice 37: incredibly important as part of this this framework addressing threats to biodiversity

[4:35:55] Voice 37: educating nature's contribution to people and positive and negative incentives so we get this

[4:36:01] Voice 37: money because canada has bought into this and canada has got a plan to implement our part of it

[4:36:09] Voice 37: and we are part of that plan so that's i think very personally i'm very excited about that

[4:36:16] Voice 37: But because in my old life, I worked as the Government of Canada person who developed the positions at the Convention on Biological Diversity.

[4:36:26] Voice 37: So this is like super exciting to me that we right here are part of this.

[4:36:33] Voice 37: Also in that program is another reason.

[4:36:37] Voice 37: So the government, well, Environment and Climate Change Canada has developed 11 priority places in Canada to help implement this.

[4:36:45] Voice 37: and I actually was there when these 11 priority places I used to work for these guys

[4:36:51] Voice 37: were developed and it was very intense engaging process with many different players and

[4:36:59] Voice 37: stakeholders and these places were chosen because one they had significant biodiversity

[4:37:05] Voice 37: two they had a concentration of species at risk but I would say most importantly because there

[4:37:13] Voice 37: there were opportunities to advance conservation efforts.

[4:37:17] Voice 37: So if all this was happening in a place,

[4:37:20] Voice 37: but there was no opportunity to make good things happen,

[4:37:23] Voice 37: then that wasn't going to be a priority place.

[4:37:25] Voice 37: There wasn't any sense in that.

[4:37:26] Voice 37: So one of these places is southwest BC, and we are part of it.

[4:37:32] Voice 37: So some of the ecosystems that are important because of that

[4:37:36] Voice 37: are Douglas fir forests, our Gary Oak ecosystems,

[4:37:40] Voice 37: ecosystems and our coastal wetlands this is uh that picture is by david dennings who lives on

[4:37:47] Voice 37: salt springs i'm sure some of you know him so um again this is like this these priority places

[4:37:56] Voice 37: um the central importance is working with indigenous people so if that wasn't going to

[4:38:01] Voice 37: happen that place wasn't going to be um identified have to have a clear collaborative approach

[4:38:08] Voice 37: it has to have shared priorities and leadership and it has to use evidence for decision making

[4:38:15] Voice 37: so it can't just be made up there has to be some evidence behind it that doesn't necessarily mean

[4:38:20] Voice 37: scientific evidence it means evidence and there's many ways of knowing and this kind of process

[4:38:26] Voice 37: has to incorporate different ways of knowing including indigenous ways of knowing so and

[4:38:32] Voice 37: that that's a hard thing actually for us at ITC we're just learning just beginning to learn how

[4:38:38] Voice 37: how to do that so i'm not pretending that we're there but um this is um important the next slide

[4:38:44] Voice 37: i'm going to go over although it's true to my heart i just wanted to show you like some trends

[4:38:48] Voice 37: to these priority places aren't just a joke um in this case this looks at eel grass beds in the

[4:38:55] Voice 37: salish sea and they have declined by 41 but what's even more striking is how fragmented they are

[4:39:02] Voice 37: okay thanks peter i thought i had 45 minutes now okay you did five

[4:39:08] Trustee Luckham (probable): minutes left of the 40 oh we

[4:39:11] Voice 37: know that's not true i could block you anyways i'm hurrying up alex alex next slide this slide

[4:39:20] Voice 37: is a little plug you're going to have the opportunity to learn all about this this uh

[4:39:25] Voice 37: program in the islands trust area so i highly recommend you go to this it's june 26 uh 7 to

[4:39:33] Voice 37: 8 30 p.m on zoom you've all got an invitation to it and i'm just doing this little plug because i

[4:39:39] Voice 37: think you'll really enjoy it you really learn what this is about because it's something we don't talk

[4:39:43] Voice 37: about a lot here alex i gotta go through this is this is the part i really want to talk about the

[4:39:49] Voice 37: most anyways but i won't be able to this is the going forward the going forward this is where we

[4:39:55] Voice 37: really have a lot to learn we know we have a lot to learn but we want to go there the first thing

[4:40:00] Voice 37: work, it relates to Indigenous leadership and conservation. So the old paradigm was fortress

[4:40:07] Voice 37: conservation. You put a boundary around something, nobody's allowed to go there. And what that did

[4:40:11] Voice 37: was exclude particularly Indigenous people from using the land that was theirs the way they always

[4:40:18] Voice 37: used it. And that is every, I can't say everybody, but most people in the protected areas world

[4:40:24] Voice 37: realize that that wasn't a good idea. And we

[4:40:28] Voice 41: have to move

[4:40:28] Voice 37: away from that. We have to move

[4:40:30] Voice 37: into a new paradigm where people are part of nature. Indigenous people can use it in the way

[4:40:36] Voice 37: that they had in a sustainable way, where there's new decision-making models. They're part of the

[4:40:43] Voice 37: decision-making model, and we make a much better job of learning from their knowledge and maybe

[4:40:51] Voice 37: reviving some of the incredible practices they had historically in managing. I'm just going to

[4:40:58] Voice 37: to tell one quick example I'm sorry Peter I'm talking fast four minutes okay there's a study

[4:41:09] Voice 37: done on Quadra that showed that clam beds even today from the old clam beds that were created

[4:41:15] Voice 37: the clams in the old clam beds are 100 to 300 percent more productive than outside of clam beds

[4:41:22] Voice 37: and that's on Quadra Island that's just a practice if you know up and down the coast you find these

[4:41:27] Voice 37: old clam breads and it's amazing so uh next balance the next thing that we climate change

[4:41:35] Voice 37: right the next thing that we're not doing a great job at and i've heard this talked about here we

[4:41:41] Voice 37: have a declaration on climate change everybody believes it's an emergency we've had experience

[4:41:45] Voice 37: of it but how to turn those sort of declarations into real action and at itc we've had trouble

[4:41:54] Voice 37: doing that. We've had trouble. We've had a project charter to start that, but it's been deferred

[4:42:04] Voice 37: due to lack of budget or resources. And we've had a really hard time really doing meaningful work on

[4:42:11] Voice 37: climate change. We always bring it into our decisions, but we don't really have a lot of

[4:42:15] Voice 37: data behind it. So I would say that's something that we really have to work on in the future.

[4:42:19] Voice 37: And my last thing, which some people will not like, is risk reduction.

[4:42:26] Voice 37: So in the past, when we've managed our properties, we've really looked at safety to people.

[4:42:31] Voice 37: You know, are our trails safety? Do we have danger trees? And this is important.

[4:42:36] Voice 37: But in today's world, in the context of climate change particularly, risk reduction is something much bigger.

[4:42:44] Voice 37: How are we managing our properties for fire, for drought, for water, and safety too?

[4:42:51] Voice 37: But we need to have a better picture of risk reduction, and we have discussed this at the

[4:42:57] Voice 37: board, but we haven't really fully comprehended what this means because all these things take

[4:43:02] Voice 37: resources. Last slide, Peter. Thank you. The people at the front are our current board,

[4:43:12] Voice 37: and many of them are here. Could you put your hands up if you're here? There they are and you've

[4:43:18] Voice 37: got Charles in the back and me and our ITC staff, our incredible staff and I have Kate's picture

[4:43:27] Voice 37: there because that's what the staff gave me but Carolyn Stewart just started yesterday. There she

[4:43:32] Voice 37: is. She's going to be our new manager of ITC. So excited to have you on board Carolyn with the

[4:43:38] Voice 37: great team that you have so that is it i hope you've learned something i'll be around for dinner

[4:43:45] Voice 37: if you want to pick my brain or yell at me whichever i don't care i'm not sensitive um and uh

[4:43:53] Voice 37: i can i don't think peter's gonna let me entertain questions now no okay thank you

[4:44:10] Trustee Luckham (probable): mla olsen so quickly kate thank

[4:44:14] Voice 42: you i just want to acknowledge that our nap tip program which

[4:44:18] Voice 42: is unique in the province and the country, was instrumentally started by

[4:44:25] Voice 42: Kim Benson. Trustee Kim Benson is in the room and she's a former chair of New Orleans

[4:44:30] Voice 42: Press Council.

[4:44:35] Trustee Luckham (probable): Okay. Adam Olson. Adam, hot on the tails of the

[4:44:44] Trustee Luckham (probable): Allen Trust Conservancy. Risa Smith, I hope that you know her. I'm certainly

[4:44:48] Trustee Luckham (probable): very glad to know you and I'm glad to see you with us today I'm sorry that you

[4:44:52] Trustee Luckham (probable): couldn't be here in person so Adam over to you maybe we can get him large on the

[4:44:59] Trustee Luckham (probable): screen um

[4:45:07] Voice 52: there

[4:45:10] Voice 6: we go can we can we hear and see as is needed that's

[4:45:15] Trustee Luckham (probable): we can hear

[4:45:16] Trustee Luckham (probable): you now can we get him up on the screen the big screen you're

[4:45:24] Voice 6: just sharing the

[4:45:25] Voice 6: agenda there I

[4:45:26] Trustee Luckham (probable): want to respect the time with us that you have with us so you go

[4:45:29] Trustee Luckham (probable): go ahead and we'll see if we can get you up

[4:45:31] Trustee Luckham (probable): on the bigger screen.

[4:45:32] Voice 6: Sure, Peter, just wanna confirm,

[4:45:35] Voice 6: I've got about 40 minutes or so, 45 minutes, is that right?

[4:45:44] Voice 45: Hello?

[4:45:46] Voice 45: Yeah.

[4:45:48] Voice 45: It's not worth the time.

[4:45:50] Voice 6: Okay, can you hear me?

[4:45:52] Trustee Luckham (probable): Yes.

[4:45:53] Voice 6: Okay, .

[4:45:55] Voice 6: Good evening, honoured leaders, community leaders.

[4:45:59] Voice 6: My name is Adam Olson.

[4:46:00] Voice 6: My is Sahanap.

[4:46:03] Voice 6: I am from the chocolate village.

[4:46:05] Voice 6: I've had the pleasure of working with many of you over the last seven years and even longer than that, frankly,

[4:46:12] Voice 6: and I appreciate the opportunity to attend your meeting.

[4:46:15] Voice 6: I'm sorry also that I'm not able to be there in person.

[4:46:20] Voice 6: I just want to acknowledge that I've lived my whole life in the Chautla village and on the Saanich Peninsula,

[4:46:26] Voice 6: and I have family ties, ancient family ties to Eitlang on Skathak on Main Island.

[4:46:33] Voice 6: It's interesting listening to Risa talk about the First Nations Indigenous way,

[4:46:40] Voice 6: Wilna way of knowing and of doing.

[4:46:44] Voice 6: And I prepared a few comments here.

[4:46:47] Voice 6: And then I also want, just in terms of how that relationship works,

[4:46:52] Voice 6: and I also want to talk about overall governance of the Islands Trust area and my experience.

[4:46:59] Voice 6: I was elected member of the Legislative Assembly for Saanich North and the Islands in 2017, and my first elected role was at the Central Saanich Council table, where many of you might know me from starting way back in 2008, where I served for five years and got a considerable experience in navigating provincial and regional, provincial, international governance landscapes.

[4:47:20] Voice 6: landscapes. We've created a truly spectacular web of jurisdictional authorities and due

[4:47:27] Voice 6: to overlaps, misalignment, in some cases poor politics, on many accounts they do not deliver

[4:47:31] Voice 6: the transparent, accountable and responsive governance that is necessary to keep the confidence

[4:47:36] Voice 6: of our shared constituents. In consideration of the ongoing legal and moral obligation

[4:47:41] Voice 6: that Crown governments have to reconcile the long-standing land question in British Columbia

[4:47:47] Voice 6: that was referenced in the presentation before me part of which has been downloaded to you in

[4:47:52] Voice 6: your role as an elected government trustee the reality we face collectively is that for the past

[4:47:58] Voice 6: 175 years elected officials of crown authorized institutions have been running away from that

[4:48:04] Voice 6: legal and moral obligation however they have been unsuccessful in escaping our collective faith

[4:48:11] Voice 6: so even as elements of our political landscape claim that they'll reverse the reconciliatory

[4:48:16] Voice 6: steps forward, retreating again into darkness and shadows, it's important to acknowledge that

[4:48:23] Voice 6: the advancements that have been made are in spite of, in many cases, deep institutional inertia in

[4:48:29] Voice 6: the Crowns to change our theoretical approach from denial of Aboriginal rights to rights

[4:48:35] Voice 6: recognition. While politicians advance promises at the meeting table, the story I have heard from

[4:48:41] Voice 6: leaders, my relatives, consistently is that when their administrators roll up their sleeves to

[4:48:48] Voice 6: deliver the promise, they face a wall of resistance from their counterparts. This is exemplified in

[4:48:55] Voice 6: the words that we choose to describe the governing bodies. And if you'll give me just a few minutes

[4:48:59] Voice 6: here to talk about something that has emerged for me as very problematic, and I'd just like to

[4:49:06] Voice 6: highlight. Consider for a moment the words that we use when we reference the nations. I just invite

[4:49:13] Voice 6: you to consider what that means. Who are the nations? It was different when I was a kid. I

[4:49:21] Voice 6: am a status Indian. I was a status Indian, a member of a Sartliff Indian band as per the band list,

[4:49:29] Voice 6: living on a lot of on the land reserve of Sartliff with my family had a certificate of

[4:49:34] Voice 6: possession for the authority of the Minister of the Federal Crown. Indians, bands and reserves

[4:49:40] Voice 6: are constructs of that Indian Act. Despite remaining legally operational to this moment,

[4:49:46] Voice 6: these terms are not used publicly anymore. In the 1990s or the 2000s we became

[4:49:51] Voice 6: Sartliff First Nation when the word Indian had fallen out of social favour. Growing out of the

[4:49:59] Voice 6: important legislative work to enshrine the articles of the International Declaration on the Rights of

[4:50:03] Voice 6: indigenous people around 2019 there's been yet another linguistic transformation increasingly

[4:50:09] Voice 6: i'm hearing politicians and bureaucrats refer to the nations we've dropped first from the monitor

[4:50:15] Voice 6: so what are the nations what do we mean i want to be clear here i mean no disrespect for my

[4:50:24] Voice 6: cm people who step up in the chief and band council elections to lead

[4:50:29] Voice 6: our villages as an elected official i understand the sacrifice they make i've often said

[4:50:35] Voice 6: that some of the best leaders in our country are our chiefs and back councillors.

[4:50:38] Voice 6: They do more with less and from way behind. However, it is important that they fill the

[4:50:44] Voice 6: role that they're elected to do in the governing body that was created. These federal crown,

[4:50:50] Voice 6: I refer to them as hallucinations, the legal and bureaucratic entities that we see and engage with

[4:50:57] Voice 6: today do not reflect how the people, First Nations people, Indigenous people in the territory I

[4:51:03] Voice 6: represent the legislature traditionally governed their territory the villages that these federally

[4:51:10] Voice 6: regulated bodies were set up to govern and our film of relatives living in the neighboring

[4:51:15] Voice 6: villages had complex deeply in great integrated and effective local regional and international

[4:51:22] Voice 6: governing territorial governing protocols cultural values of sharing with those in need

[4:51:30] Voice 6: need. Sustainable resource harvesting embedded in the

[4:51:33] Voice 6: SNPUNUC, the teaching to take only what you need, and balanced

[4:51:37] Voice 6: wealth distribution was the result of those teachings, the

[4:51:41] Voice 6: SNPUNUC, along with alliances and agreements to protect the

[4:51:44] Voice 6: territory against raids. The villages that we now

[4:51:47] Voice 6: thoughtlessly refer to as the nations were home to a complex

[4:51:52] Voice 6: web of familial connections. My dad always tells me to know who

[4:51:57] Voice 6: your relatives are. It's an important cultural value to know that my family is related to all

[4:52:04] Voice 6: parts of this territory in the Southern Gulf Islands and beyond. That it is our network and

[4:52:09] Voice 6: it is strong. That's how the Hwylmwf governed state-nich territory. Our neighbouring relatives

[4:52:15] Voice 6: all around us also govern their territory similarly. My family's connections extend to

[4:52:20] Voice 6: the Cowichan Valley, the Fraser River, Bellingham, San Juan Islands, and on to the

[4:52:27] Voice 6: south into the Victoria area and across the Olympic Peninsula. The point here is to highlight

[4:52:35] Voice 6: the nations look much different than we envision them. The federal and provincial crowns have

[4:52:42] Voice 6: only ever had a paternalistic approach with the entities they created and kept.

[4:52:49] Voice 6: It was never been to the interest of those governments, those Crown governments, to have

[4:52:54] Voice 6: the villages in Hrusatnich, and Cullits, and Tumenis, and Sunanemo, Songhees, Esquimalt,

[4:52:59] Voice 6: Suk, and all of our relatives across the international border to actually come together.

[4:53:05] Voice 6: The experiences of the Crown have enjoyed exploiting the gaps that were created between

[4:53:09] Voice 6: us, between our relatives. There are powerful governance tools and deeply entrenched cultural

[4:53:16] Voice 6: cultural values about how satanage and our relatives from neighboring villages do our

[4:53:20] Voice 6: important work. I want to raise this issue about language we use and possible outcomes that it

[4:53:26] Voice 6: creates in the settings where the government decisions are being made and where we're

[4:53:31] Voice 6: interacting with each other and our administrations. What we see on Indian reserves today is created

[4:53:37] Voice 6: by the federal and provincial crown governments through the Indian Act. It does not need to be

[4:53:41] Voice 6: this way and they do our villages and our leaders no favors indeed everything is immeasurably more

[4:53:49] Voice 6: difficult as the result of a band of indians as it's legally laid out in the indian act as

[4:53:54] Voice 6: uncomfortable as that makes people feel when they hear it becoming one of the nations that needs to

[4:54:00] Voice 6: be consulted of course the matter of consultation is real the legal and moral responsibility remains

[4:54:08] Voice 6: the elected leaders of our villages have a critical role in ensuring the services that

[4:54:12] Voice 6: they handle are delivered to our Hwylmuth relatives in the best way they can. They certainly have an

[4:54:19] Voice 6: important role leading the territorial governance and it's an easy trap just to flow with the Crown

[4:54:24] Voice 6: bureaucratic momentum. The Crown are creating the nations and it's easy to follow the rationale that

[4:54:32] Voice 6: we'll have to be at the table and so it has to be this way etc. As I move about this territory

[4:54:41] Voice 6: territory. The Willamette leaders that I talked to want to be working together in a more integrated

[4:54:47] Voice 6: way than is currently happening. The systems and protocols that they are working under,

[4:54:53] Voice 6: the structures that have been constructed, are in essence the federal and provincial crowns

[4:54:57] Voice 6: and local governments consulting with entities they created and are reliant on them.

[4:55:03] Voice 6: There is a growing dissatisfaction with that system. Perhaps it's time to look at the

[4:55:08] Voice 6: the governance protocols that served these territories

[4:55:11] Voice 6: since time immemorial.

[4:55:14] Voice 6: So for the Islands Trust who has a long list

[4:55:16] Voice 6: of the nations that need to be engaged and consulted,

[4:55:20] Voice 6: a federal and provincial crown responsibility

[4:55:22] Voice 6: delegated to the trust with no real direction

[4:55:25] Voice 6: or resources to do it properly,

[4:55:27] Voice 6: we wonder why it has become so challenging.

[4:55:32] Voice 6: Add to the mix the election cycles,

[4:55:34] Voice 6: volume of elected leaders in the area,

[4:55:36] Voice 6: limited time, building trusting relationships

[4:55:39] Voice 6: partnerships is nearly impossible. And yet, we sit together at the tables. Similar to what I hear

[4:55:45] Voice 6: from my Wilno relatives, a desire to sit together and work together. I hear our colleagues around

[4:55:50] Voice 6: the meeting table, the virtual Zoom room express the desire to be working more closely together

[4:55:55] Voice 6: and more effectively together. We collectively struggle to hold the federal and provincial

[4:56:00] Voice 6: crowns accountable to what their responsibilities are. They leverage and exploit the gaps in between,

[4:56:05] Voice 6: just like I described happens between the Indian reserve villages that they created.

[4:56:10] Voice 6: So we cannot manage our bays and inlets. We have little to no voice on massive industrial

[4:56:15] Voice 6: expansions in our backyard. We watch as a lack of action on regulatory enforcement

[4:56:21] Voice 6: allows challenges to emerge and grow into wicked problems. I'm hopeful that my Hwung

[4:56:28] Voice 6: Ngoc relatives are afforded the resources to escape the Crown's systems for managing territory

[4:56:33] Voice 6: territory and engaging with adjacent governing bodies.

[4:56:36] Voice 6: I hope these few thoughts have provided some insight about why,

[4:56:41] Voice 6: despite a huge effort to advance reconciliation,

[4:56:44] Voice 6: we continue to experience obstacles and to serve as a reminder that these are

[4:56:49] Voice 6: legal and moral obligations on the Canadian state, the province of British

[4:56:53] Voice 6: Columbia and the governing bodies created through federal and provincial statute.

[4:56:57] Voice 6: This work is not an act of generosity or charity.

[4:57:01] Voice 6: it is a legal and moral obligation that we as elected officials and colleagues to each other

[4:57:08] Voice 6: have inherited. While there needs to be considerable work by our Hwylmwch relatives on territorial

[4:57:14] Voice 6: governance in defining the nations that will be a definite benefit to how the Islands Trust meets

[4:57:20] Voice 6: its legal and moral obligations with Hwylmwch people, there is much more work to be done at

[4:57:25] Voice 6: the Islands Trust through the Islands Trust Act by the provincial government to ensure the Islands

[4:57:30] Voice 6: Trust is an effective and efficient governing body and partner in the collective, and by that I mean

[4:57:35] Voice 6: the multi-governing structures of the territories that we're responsible for, stewardship, and by

[4:57:40] Voice 6: that I mean the ecological, social, and economic stewardship of these beautiful territories that

[4:57:45] Voice 6: we're responsible for. It is the responsibility of the Crown to ensure our statutes are current

[4:57:53] Voice 6: and relevant. It is our job to assess whether the current statutory framework is successfully

[4:57:58] Voice 6: successfully delivering the mandate as it's set up.

[4:58:01] Voice 6: We have several laws like the freedom of information and privacy laws that require

[4:58:06] Voice 6: by law, regular statutory reviews, laws that have been on the books

[4:58:11] Voice 6: with no substantive update,

[4:58:14] Voice 6: laws that have been on the books with no substantive updates for decades,

[4:58:20] Voice 6: needs substantive democratic attention by provincial legislators

[4:58:24] Voice 6: to make sure that they remain current and relevant.

[4:58:26] Voice 6: them. Provincially, there are a half dozen MLAs that represent the Islands Trust area residents.

[4:58:33] Voice 6: There are slightly more than 30,000 residents in the Islands Trust area. 17,576 or 57% of those

[4:58:41] Voice 6: people are my constituents living in the Southern Gulf Islands. It's not that my provincial colleagues

[4:58:48] Voice 6: are disinterested in the Islands Trust sociopolitical issues. However, it is true

[4:58:54] Voice 6: that the member for Saanich North and the Islands will always be substantively more invested

[4:58:59] Voice 6: and attentive to these issues. At 11,510 residents, Salt Spring Island is the

[4:59:07] Voice 6: 34th most populated area in British Columbia. If Salt Spring were actually able to be added

[4:59:12] Voice 6: to that list or if they were added to that list, they would be right after Souk and right before

[4:59:17] Voice 6: Nelson. Just to provide some context about the communities that are within my riding,

[4:59:23] Voice 6: As you all know, a majority of the advocacy in my office is related to the governance, regulatory, and enforcement systems and structures in the southern Gulf Islands.

[4:59:34] Voice 6: It's really remarkable how much of the advocacy work we do is directly related to this.

[4:59:40] Voice 6: It's produced by the Islands Trust Act and the Local Government Act.

[4:59:43] Voice 6: Our office, our constituency office, is not designed to be dealing with these kind of governance-related issues in the way that they arrive at our table.

[4:59:53] Voice 6: table. An off-quoted celebrity once characterized Salt Spring as an argument surrounded by water.

[5:00:00] Voice 6: Building community consensus in the southern Gulf Islands is challenging at the best of times.

[5:00:05] Voice 6: Much like my Qu'ilnuk relatives, residents have a powerful connection, love, passion, and desire to protect the islands, the environment, and their unique cultures that have evolved over decades.

[5:00:17] Voice 6: To some, this may sound like an argument.

[5:00:20] Voice 6: I hear it as a general frustration that the residents want to be part of the solution

[5:00:25] Voice 6: and the provincial government is reluctant to engage for fear it turns into a political

[5:00:30] Voice 6: fiasco.

[5:00:32] Voice 6: I've personally experienced the political and social polarization created by the Islands

[5:00:37] Voice 6: Trust Act.

[5:00:38] Voice 6: And while we may hear the voices of one side or another, this side or that, our side or

[5:00:44] Voice 6: theirs, I believe there is an equally strong support for and opposition to the Islands

[5:00:50] Voice 6: trust. As a result, the yes or no binary achieved through referendum is an inappropriate democratic

[5:00:58] Voice 6: tool to achieve transformative democracy. There are widely divergent opinions regarding the

[5:01:04] Voice 6: sources of the frustration, and without the ability to directly influence or control local

[5:01:09] Voice 6: priorities, residents and elected leaders are left feeling helpless and without agency. However,

[5:01:15] Voice 6: However, it's not all fractious.

[5:01:18] Voice 6: I'm deeply engaged on a range of issues

[5:01:21] Voice 6: and have diverse relationships

[5:01:22] Voice 6: across the Southern Gulf Islands.

[5:01:24] Voice 6: I can confidently say that where there are divided opinions

[5:01:27] Voice 6: about what to do, with equal confidence,

[5:01:31] Voice 6: I say common ground between the sides of the debate

[5:01:33] Voice 6: is that something should be done.

[5:01:36] Voice 6: In 2018, I sat with a high ranking member

[5:01:40] Voice 6: of the BCNDP cabinet in the legislative chamber

[5:01:45] Voice 6: when there's bill debate going on.

[5:01:47] Voice 6: You can just get up and walk over and sit down next to your colleagues and have some of these conversations that help foster understanding and get information.

[5:01:58] Voice 6: I'd been only in MLA for a short period of time at this point, but the governance challenges in the Southern Gulf Islands had already emerged in my constituency office.

[5:02:07] Voice 6: I asked them if the government would review the Islands Trust Act.

[5:02:11] Voice 6: I was clear.

[5:02:12] Voice 6: This is a provincial act.

[5:02:14] Voice 6: We are responsible for it.

[5:02:17] Voice 6: It's more than 50 years old. We should ensure the Act is achieving the local and provincial outcomes

[5:02:22] Voice 6: the residents in the province wants. The Minister was clear to me, her government was not going to

[5:02:29] Voice 6: review the Act because it's too politically costly. Since 2017, I've met with every Minister

[5:02:40] Voice 6: of Municipal Affairs that the provincial government has had, and that's a lot, much more

[5:02:44] Voice 6: than other ministries, includes Honourable Selina Robinson, Honourable Josie Osborne, Honourable

[5:02:49] Voice 6: Nathan Cullen and Honourable Anne Kang. Under Minister Robinson, the ministry was Municipal

[5:02:54] Voice 6: Affairs and Housing. Following Housing was with Attorney General, where I met with Honourable

[5:02:59] Voice 6: David Eby. And now it's a standalone minister, where I've met with the current minister,

[5:03:04] Voice 6: Honourable Ravi Kalan. There's been a remarkable turnover of ministers in the ministry since 2017,

[5:03:10] Voice 6: but thankfully there has been consistency in the senior bureaucrats in the ministry. Despite

[5:03:15] Voice 6: my considerable efforts to inform the revolving door of ministers coming and going from Municipal

[5:03:20] Voice 6: affairs about the challenges created by the current governance structure the senior bureaucrats know

[5:03:26] Voice 6: the issues well each time i have advocated for the province to take responsibility for our act

[5:03:32] Voice 6: the minister acknowledges the challenges and advises me that the respect that they respect

[5:03:37] Voice 6: the democratic nature of the islands trust i agree they've been consistent the islands trust

[5:03:43] Voice 6: council asks they've been consistent until the islands trust asks for a review it won't happen

[5:03:51] Voice 6: However, by experience that's also not the case. With so many trustees from a broad range of

[5:03:57] Voice 6: communities, each with your own unique culture and needs, the political realities that the

[5:04:03] Voice 6: Islands Trust makes for structural challenges to meet that convincing threshold. That said,

[5:04:13] Voice 6: I passed the Minister's responses on to my Islands Trust colleagues and encouraged

[5:04:17] Voice 6: encouraged many of you still sitting around the table and some of you who were not there

[5:04:21] Voice 6: prior to 2022, your predecessors, encouraged them to work together to make the request directly to

[5:04:30] Voice 6: the provincial government. The Islands Trust Council in June 2022 debated and passed 21 to 2

[5:04:38] Voice 6: from what I could see the following motion tabled by Trustee Paul Brent, Saterna, and Trustee Scott

[5:04:43] Voice 6: called Colborne-Gabriola.

[5:04:46] Voice 6: One, that the Islands Trust requests

[5:04:47] Voice 6: the Lieutenant Governor and Council

[5:04:49] Voice 6: for the Province of British Columbia

[5:04:50] Voice 6: to conduct a review of the Islands Trust

[5:04:52] Voice 6: mandate governance and structure.

[5:04:53] Voice 6: Two, that the Islands Trust Chair

[5:04:55] Voice 6: on behalf of the Council submit a letter

[5:04:58] Voice 6: to the Lieutenant Governor and Council

[5:04:59] Voice 6: making the review request under Section 8 of the Islands

[5:05:04] Voice 6: Trust Act that outlines the potential scope of a review,

[5:05:07] Voice 6: including but not limited to,

[5:05:09] Voice 6: an assessment of the optimum governance model

[5:05:11] Voice 6: to preserve and protect the trust area

[5:05:13] Voice 6: area pursuant to the province's vision for the future of the trust area.

[5:05:17] Voice 6: Be the object of the Islands Trust Act

[5:05:19] Voice 6: and clarification of the mandate of the organization.

[5:05:22] Voice 6: See the governance structure of the organization.

[5:05:25] Voice 6: Be the alignment of decision making

[5:05:27] Voice 6: processes and governance with the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous

[5:05:30] Voice 6: People's Act, be the geographic scope of the organization,

[5:05:35] Voice 6: in particular authority over marine areas and the funding mechanisms provided

[5:05:39] Voice 6: to the organization in light of a clarified mandate.

[5:05:42] Voice 6: The Islands Trust trustees, your former colleagues, did exactly what multiple ministers had directly recommended to them.

[5:05:54] Voice 6: However, the motion was debated just a few months from the pending local government election, Fall 2022.

[5:06:02] Voice 6: Then Minister of Municipal Affairs Hon. Nathan Cullen decided not to act on the request,

[5:06:07] Voice 6: but instead review the significant policy work and delay his decision until after the

[5:06:12] Voice 6: Newtown Islands Trust Council had been elected and weighed in. From my perspective, this was

[5:06:18] Voice 6: a deeply frustrating action. With all due respect to this current Council, at that time there was

[5:06:24] Voice 6: no more informed Council than the one that had spent the past four years working within the

[5:06:29] Voice 6: governance structure. Acknowledging the concern of former Minister Cullen that there is a substantive

[5:06:35] Voice 6: of policy needed to review the Islands Trust Act thoroughly and to ensure it is informed by the

[5:06:40] Voice 6: public, the Act governs. This factor needs to be centrally informed that action is taken by

[5:06:46] Voice 6: government. My experience working with the Southern Gulf Island people, groups, and communities

[5:06:51] Voice 6: representing a vast majority of the population in the Islands Trust area, I believe there would

[5:06:57] Voice 6: be a preference for a review process designed and driven by Islands residents. An example of this

[5:07:03] Voice 6: is in December 2004, the Citizens' Assembly on electoral reform tabled their report to the

[5:07:09] Voice 6: British Columbia provincial government. The Citizens' Assembly consisted of 160 British

[5:07:15] Voice 6: Columbians from each electoral area in the province. Members were picked by random draw

[5:07:20] Voice 6: and they undertook a historic public engagement process over 11 months. The Citizens' Assembly

[5:07:27] Voice 6: is an effective tool used by the provincial government to empower citizens to lead the

[5:07:32] Voice 6: democratic process of reviewing the issue and making recommendations. It strengthens democracy

[5:07:39] Voice 6: by increasing public engagement and confidence in the outcome. The Islands Trust Act is the

[5:07:45] Voice 6: responsibility of the Minister of Municipal Affairs currently, Honourable Anne Kane.

[5:07:50] Voice 6: Only the provincial government has the power to call a review and make statutory changes.

[5:07:57] Voice 6: An example of this is in 2020 when the All-Party Committee to Reform the Police Act was

[5:08:03] Voice 6: appointed to review and make recommendations to the Legislative Assembly to reform policing in

[5:08:09] Voice 6: British Columbia. I was a member of that committee and it proved to be one of the most democratic,

[5:08:14] Voice 6: collaborative and productive legislative working environments that I've been in as a legislator.

[5:08:19] Voice 6: Special committees are empowered by the provincial government through terms of reference

[5:08:23] Voice 6: and a budget. Committees have the ability to manage their affairs as they see best fits the

[5:08:29] Voice 6: needs of the project that they've been tasked with. With a provincial election scheduled for

[5:08:35] Voice 6: October 2024, just a few short months from now, no matter the electoral outcome, a new government

[5:08:40] Voice 6: with a new four-year mandate will be elected. A minister will be appointed with a new mandate.

[5:08:46] Voice 6: This represents a unique opportunity for this trust council now with 20 months experience

[5:08:51] Voice 6: working within the Act to revisit the resolution of your predecessors and for yourselves resolve

[5:08:57] Voice 6: to make a request to the minister to empower

[5:09:01] Voice 6: a democratic statutory review of the Islands Trust Act.

[5:09:05] Voice 6: I'm here asking that you reconsider the resolution

[5:09:07] Voice 6: previously passed by the near unanimous vote in 2022

[5:09:12] Voice 6: to the new government at the earliest possible moment

[5:09:15] Voice 6: after the appointment of the new minister coming this fall.

[5:09:19] Voice 6: Perhaps you can recommend the use of a citizen's assembly.

[5:09:22] Voice 6: Either way, should you decide to debate this resolution

[5:09:26] Voice 6: and reaffirm it, your request to the minister

[5:09:28] Voice 6: would allow for the longest possible timeframe

[5:09:31] Voice 6: for the minister to act on the request

[5:09:33] Voice 6: and to get the projects substantially underway

[5:09:36] Voice 6: during the next parliament.

[5:09:38] Voice 6: I thank you for this opportunity to speak with you

[5:09:40] Voice 6: on a couple of issues that are connected in many ways,

[5:09:44] Voice 6: connected to the previous presentation in many ways

[5:09:50] Voice 6: and are really a result of the honor

[5:09:54] Voice 6: that I've had over the last number of months,

[5:09:55] Voice 6: or last number of months many many months last number of years uh serving as the mla so i

[5:10:01] Voice 6: appreciate the opportunity and i'm prepared to uh answer any questions on either of the issues

[5:10:08] Voice 6: uh in the time that i have remaining thank you uh chair luckum um

[5:10:14] Trustee Luckham (probable): yeah thank you thank you mla olsen

[5:10:21] Trustee Luckham (probable): um for your insight and wisdom and sharing this with us here today um i'm going to go to council

[5:10:26] Trustee Luckham (probable): and ask if there's any questions for the MLA.

[5:10:29] Trustee Luckham (probable): I see, and then I'll let you manage the speakers list

[5:10:32] Trustee Luckham (probable): and we'll go with Judy Getty.

[5:10:35] Voice 9: MLA Olson, I think you might be happy to learn

[5:10:38] Voice 9: that those list of questions were on the agenda

[5:10:42] Voice 9: of the governance committee on the May 13th meetings

[5:10:45] Voice 9: in terms of asking that group whether or not they want,

[5:10:49] Voice 9: one of the same questions asked if there was anything extra,

[5:10:52] Voice 9: whether there's anything that they wanted to change.

[5:10:54] Voice 9: So I take your point very well

[5:10:57] Voice 9: and thank you very much for that little bit

[5:11:01] Voice 9: of a cattle prod for us.

[5:11:06] Voice 6: Thank you, Trustee Getty.

[5:11:08] Voice 6: I appreciate that and hope that continues

[5:11:13] Voice 6: to proceed through your process

[5:11:15] Voice 6: and felt that it was an important opportunity now

[5:11:18] Voice 6: prior to the election,

[5:11:21] Voice 6: hoping that if the council decides

[5:11:23] Voice 6: to go in this direction,

[5:11:24] Voice 6: that it works and fits

[5:11:27] Voice 6: within the provincial electoral cycle

[5:11:30] Voice 47: trustee stanford anybody else first

[5:11:39] Voice 15: of all i just uh

[5:11:44] Voice 15: uh emily olsen i just want to thank you for your presentation and your remarks and and your

[5:11:48] Voice 15: insights are extremely helpful and uh certainly consistent with the experience of the trustees

[5:11:54] Voice 15: on this council uh in terms of the frustrations you've described and the frankly the dysfunctional

[5:12:00] Voice 15: features of the governance structure. I'm also glad that you introduced that by a discussion of

[5:12:08] Voice 15: the challenges of our indigenous communities and First Nations in terms of dealing with

[5:12:14] Voice 15: the existing governance structures. There's a tremendous amount of goodwill on this Trust

[5:12:21] Voice 15: Council in terms of wanting to advance reconciliation, which in part includes

[5:12:26] Voice 15: really some genuine learning about what it involves or what it means but we we suffered

[5:12:33] Voice 15: from a powerful constraint which is our legislative structure the framework that we have just isn't

[5:12:40] Voice 15: designed to facilitate reconciliation uh you know it's an administrative law thing where we have a

[5:12:46] Voice 15: certain amount of jurisdiction to do a certain amount of things the development the creativity

[5:12:54] Voice 15: creativity the new structures that we need to advance reconciliations it's simply outside of

[5:13:00] Voice 15: our grasp we don't have the power and um we need a better legislated framework to advance

[5:13:07] Voice 15: reconciliation as part of our governance arrangement and um your call and your suggestion

[5:13:16] Voice 15: that we uh approach a province again i think we do have to include that in our in our reference

[5:13:22] Voice 15: because frankly it's of the moment and uh we have serious our current structure is a serious

[5:13:29] Voice 15: impediment to even getting the first base on that and i think that in in whatever um overture we

[5:13:36] Voice 15: make to the province has to be prominent um in our communication but i want to thank you again

[5:13:41] Voice 15: for your presentation it's galvanizing at least for me and i hope for the rest of my colleagues

[5:13:46] Voice 15: please. Thank you. I

[5:13:48] Voice 6: may just respond by saying I'm glad that that emerged. I didn't in reflection

[5:13:56] Voice 6: on the comments that I made, I perhaps wasn't direct enough in first saying that the frustration

[5:14:03] Voice 6: that local governments, Islands Trust or those under the Local Government Act face in dealing

[5:14:09] Voice 6: with the crowns uh is reflected in the um communities uh that we're neighbors with and

[5:14:16] Voice 6: that you know we share borders with and we share interests with and we share communities uh with

[5:14:21] Voice 6: and so they face the very same frustrations and and divisions that that are created through

[5:14:28] Voice 6: uh that those crown policies and so i think uh you know in introducing that i i wanted to tie

[5:14:36] Voice 6: together I think a bit of an understanding as to the language that we're using and how we use it

[5:14:42] Voice 6: to ensure that we're not making it a more difficult environment to be inadvertently making

[5:14:49] Voice 6: it a more difficult environment to be operating in but as well that as a prime example of why

[5:14:57] Voice 6: statutory reviews are prudent in governance is that 50 years ago when the Islands Trust was

[5:15:04] Voice 6: was created for all of the good reasons

[5:15:07] Voice 6: that the Islands Trust was created,

[5:15:09] Voice 6: reconciliation and we had federal provincial crowns

[5:15:13] Voice 6: that were fighting and basing their legal arguments

[5:15:16] Voice 6: on the denial of aboriginal rights.

[5:15:18] Voice 6: So that clearly has changed in this province.

[5:15:21] Voice 6: And so it's no wonder why there's frustration

[5:15:23] Voice 6: trying to fit that into a framework

[5:15:25] Voice 6: that was never designed to have a basket to hold it in,

[5:15:31] Voice 6: to use an analogy.

[5:15:32] Voice 6: So I appreciate that emerged from my from my comments, even though it was not directly expressed.

[5:15:40] Voice 6: Thank

[5:15:43] Voice 24: you. And thank you very much, Emily Olson, for for your comments.

[5:15:47] Voice 24: I appreciate that very much. I have two questions, perhaps pragmatic questions.

[5:15:53] Voice 24: We sort of know that the province wants to say no to a request for review.

[5:15:56] Voice 24: review um so I I wonder what guidance you might have in terms of the form of submission that we

[5:16:05] Voice 24: make the request to the province if there's anything we knew differently than was done last

[5:16:08] Voice 24: time um or if we just need to um uh stick to the the process we used and then secondly if uh one

[5:16:18] Voice 24: of the ways the province sort of tries to delay the review is I could see them saying we would

[5:16:24] Voice 24: like you to show more evidence of engagement with the nations in the trust area before we move on

[5:16:30] Voice 24: on this request and if they do come back with that i just wonder if you would be so kind as to perhaps

[5:16:35] Voice 24: consider a response for us thank you yeah

[5:16:39] Voice 6: the um the um the governing bodies governments that

[5:16:46] Voice 6: exist the the um the consultation the duty to consult is uh the the provincial government's

[5:16:54] Voice 6: responsibility it's a this is a provincial act and there's no doubt that i think there's definite

[5:17:00] Voice 6: value in the islands trust also having a very robust and and uh efficient uh effective

[5:17:08] Voice 6: relationship building and and consultation engagement uh operation within within your

[5:17:14] Voice 6: the institution however when it comes to the to the uh a provincial government statute that's

[5:17:20] Voice 6: that lands at the feet of the minister and the mandate that they gave that they give a committee

[5:17:25] Voice 6: or they give their their their staff so that would be one of the things that I would say

[5:17:32] Voice 6: the other thing I think is important is that that it be made very clear to you know that I

[5:17:38] Voice 6: I think the the mandate of the last vote was very strong if that's something that happens

[5:17:44] Voice 6: emerges here. Again, if that vote is reflective of a very, very strong mandate to have this happen,

[5:17:54] Voice 6: I think the Allens Trust puts itself with a unique situation with quite qualified trustees

[5:18:02] Voice 6: who have experienced the situation for the last nearly two years. By that time, it will be two

[5:18:08] Voice 6: years uh and um a new government and a new ministry that um that should be listening to

[5:18:15] Voice 6: the elected democratic this is exactly what my colleagues provincially have been telling me to do

[5:18:21] Voice 6: and say get the islands trust council to make the request themselves and i think that the way that

[5:18:27] Voice 6: you communicate that and the the amplification of the communication that you do of it um should be

[5:18:35] Voice 6: be a strong enough message to a provincial government,

[5:18:37] Voice 6: whatever government gets elected,

[5:18:39] Voice 6: that this is something that needs to be done.

[5:18:43] Voice 47: Trustee Elliott.

[5:18:47] Voice 42: Thank you so much for this excellent presentation,

[5:18:50] Voice 42: Emily Olsen.

[5:18:51] Voice 42: I just wanted you to, if you could expand a little bit

[5:18:54] Voice 42: on the citizens assembly point that you made

[5:18:58] Voice 42: and how would that fit in as a strategy?

[5:19:00] Voice 42: You, I believe mentioned something like

[5:19:03] Voice 42: the ministers expressed a preference for a review process

[5:19:07] Voice 42: designed by Islands residents and using the citizens assembly to empower

[5:19:12] Voice 42: citizens and force the province to take action so how does that fit in with the

[5:19:17] Voice 42: call to the province would that be part of our request and with the province

[5:19:21] Voice 42: fund that you mentioned terms of reference in a budget so if you can yeah

[5:19:28] Voice 6: I mean I again I same same response previously it's a provincial it's a

[5:19:36] Voice 6: provincial law provincial statute the statutory review is the responsibility of the provincial

[5:19:42] Voice 6: government uh and um so we we we're solely responsible for the for for that but i think

[5:19:51] Voice 6: that we would do well in being very collaborative and engaging in that process and so i've kind of

[5:19:58] Voice 6: laid out again maybe too indirectly but i've laid out that one of the ways that we do the most

[5:20:04] Voice 6: effective way that I've seen that we do a statutory review is through a special committee, so that

[5:20:09] Voice 6: could be appointed by the minister through the premier's office, appoint a special committee,

[5:20:14] Voice 6: and I simply have floated the idea of a citizens' assembly. Victoria and Saanich are currently

[5:20:20] Voice 6: using a citizens' assembly to discuss the potential amalgamation of those two municipalities.

[5:20:26] Voice 6: I use the example of the citizens' assembly on electoral reform, which produced, I think,

[5:20:32] Voice 6: a very collaborative sense coming out of it. So I only float that as one of the ways and it's

[5:20:41] Voice 6: partly informed by the fact that I just don't think that there's any space for the provincial

[5:20:47] Voice 6: government to come up with the solution on their own. There simply is no social license in my

[5:20:52] Voice 6: opinion for that and so i just turned to one fairly familiar tool familiar tool uh of of

[5:21:02] Voice 6: deliberative democracy i guess and one that's proven to be successful in delivering that

[5:21:08] Voice 6: similarly each island could be represented uh randomly by people who well by people who are

[5:21:14] Voice 6: interested or or just random selection and people get invited to participate if they choose to

[5:21:20] Voice 6: And it could be a fairly substantial process that takes some time and listens to people, engages with people.

[5:21:27] Voice 6: And at the end of it is something that we can celebrate as a democratic event that built understanding and that daylighted some of the issues that we deal with around the governance tables.

[5:21:40] Voice 6: Thank you

[5:21:45] Voice 30: so, so much, Adam, for this work and for just laying it out in the way you

[5:21:52] Voice 30: have.

[5:21:53] Voice 30: You know, these issues have been just everywhere for so many years.

[5:22:02] Voice 30: I think the work that you're talking about around, oh, the one I wanted to comment was

[5:22:11] Voice 30: was the motion that you referenced that was in 2022.

[5:22:16] Voice 30: Did we lose Adam?

[5:22:18] Voice 51: Yeah.

[5:22:18] Voice 51: Okay.

[5:22:19] Voice 30: The motion that you're referencing from 2022,

[5:22:22] Voice 30: I just wanted to add a piece for the 13 or so new trustees,

[5:22:27] Voice 30: that that was put forward by Trustee Colburn and Trustee Brent,

[5:22:31] Voice 30: who on almost every other issue, I think,

[5:22:34] Voice 30: worked against each other.

[5:22:35] Voice 30: And so at the time,

[5:22:37] Voice 30: it was like a significant move to have very different people within the trust come together

[5:22:43] Voice 30: about something and like put it forward as a motion so i just wanted to lay that on the table

[5:22:48] Voice 30: oh

[5:22:49] Voice 6: so it is that is such a fine point to be made honestly that there was you know i remember having

[5:22:57] Voice 6: conversations leading up to that when i heard that those were those who was bringing it forward

[5:23:02] Voice 6: forward and recognizing what it means politically to have that divergent opinions standing together on on that was was really critical. And so thank you for raising that or trustee Morrison. Sorry.

[5:23:20] Voice 18: Yeah, thank you so much. Emily Olson.

[5:23:25] Voice 18: My question is just around language.

[5:23:28] Voice 18: I've heard you use the term statutory review a number of times.

[5:23:33] Voice 18: I don't think that's the language that we had in the previous motion.

[5:23:38] Voice 18: It sounds like, and I'm just looking for your recommendation,

[5:23:42] Voice 18: it sounds like that language should be included in a request going to the province.

[5:23:49] Voice 18: Is that your recommendation?

[5:23:51] Voice 6: No, I just referred to your lawyers on that.

[5:23:54] Voice 6: I believe it's a statute and I believe that we're trying to review it.

[5:23:57] Voice 6: But whether that's the correct language or not, your lawyers will give you a nod.

[5:24:01] Voice 6: I think they've got an idea of what you would be trying to achieve and they would be able to make sure that you have the right language in a motion.

[5:24:08] Voice 6: So I'm using

[5:24:09] Voice 6: it just simply because we've got these provincial statutes and we review them.

[5:24:13] Voice 6: So it might end up being the correct language.

[5:24:15] Voice 18: OK, thanks.

[5:24:16] Voice 18: yeah

[5:24:19] Trustee Luckham (probable): adam um we're sort of running out of time here and i want to um acknowledge and appreciate

[5:24:25] Trustee Luckham (probable): the significant amount of time you spent with us and and the the significant amount of wisdom and

[5:24:32] Trustee Luckham (probable): knowledge that you hold that you've spent the time to prepare um this very thoughtful thought out

[5:24:39] Trustee Luckham (probable): um recommendation i'm going to call it um and i would just say that you know what you said there

[5:24:46] Trustee Luckham (probable): about the the beauty of divergent opinions coming together for a common purpose and indeed there's a

[5:24:52] Trustee Luckham (probable): divergent spectrum of views at this table and there is ongoing work at this time and a common

[5:25:01] Trustee Luckham (probable): interest in advancing this question to the province and i for one speaking for myself that

[5:25:08] Trustee Luckham (probable): that I would be more than happy to speak for this council

[5:25:13] Trustee Luckham (probable): with you to advance this work.

[5:25:16] Trustee Luckham (probable): Because as you characterize the conversations

[5:25:18] Trustee Luckham (probable): that you've had in the past,

[5:25:21] Trustee Luckham (probable): the opportunity exists to have those conversations again

[5:25:24] Trustee Luckham (probable): with a greater strength and what's the word I'm looking for?

[5:25:29] Trustee Luckham (probable): Not resilience, but bold request to go forward

[5:25:34] Trustee Luckham (probable): to advance this, what is very important work.

[5:25:38] Trustee Luckham (probable): I can't say it's without coincidence

[5:25:40] Trustee Luckham (probable): that you have followed Risa Smith,

[5:25:43] Trustee Luckham (probable): the chair of the Honours Trust Conservancy,

[5:25:46] Trustee Luckham (probable): in that the significant work that she and her board

[5:25:50] Trustee Luckham (probable): are undertaking that is part and parcel

[5:25:53] Trustee Luckham (probable): of this significant question that's before us.

[5:25:58] Trustee Luckham (probable): And Nathan Collins, indeed, did, you know, potentially the right thing in saying, well, we're not going to make the decision now, but post-election, we can help you with that decision.

[5:26:11] Trustee Luckham (probable): And we've spent the time thinking about the question to ask.

[5:26:16] Trustee Luckham (probable): And I think with your stimulus here, I'm seeing so many nodding, warm, smiling faces around the table.

[5:26:23] Trustee Luckham (probable): We're perhaps ready to advance that.

[5:26:25] Trustee Luckham (probable): then and what we would i can say i think would appreciate your support in this well

[5:26:32] Voice 6: it's been a

[5:26:32] Voice 6: it's a it's always a pleasure i think i'm like i don't know 15 islands trust breakfasts at the

[5:26:39] Voice 6: ubcm beef now so it's been a long time that we've been having breakfast together and breaking bread

[5:26:44] Voice 6: with each other and um you know i i don't say at all with any resentment in my voice that the

[5:26:50] Voice 6: the member for Saanich North and the Islands has an outsized responsibility

[5:26:56] Voice 6: when it comes to carrying some of the issues

[5:26:59] Voice 6: and some of the opportunities facing the Islands Trust into the legislature.

[5:27:04] Voice 6: I do it with pride.

[5:27:05] Voice 6: I love representing the communities in the Southern Gulf Islands.

[5:27:09] Voice 6: And so I appreciate the generosity that all the trustees have given me over the years.

[5:27:15] Voice 6: And thank you for this opportunity to speak to you tonight

[5:27:17] Voice 6: And I in a more direct and forthright way than I than I've practiced in the past.

[5:27:21] Voice 6: But I did not want to miss the political timeline and the opportunity of that.

[5:27:26] Voice 6: So I appreciate this opportunity.

[5:27:28] Voice 6: And I'm sorry, I can't have dinner with you instead.

[5:27:30] Voice 6: It's just maybe breakfast in September.

[5:27:34] Trustee Luckham (probable): Indeed, there's a quote actually about something about fortune is is seized at the turn of the tide.

[5:27:41] Trustee Luckham (probable): And I think that's what we're talking about.

[5:27:45] Trustee Luckham (probable): The timing is right.

[5:27:47] Trustee Luckham (probable): and so council let's get this conversation underway and with that said i think it's time

[5:27:55] Trustee Luckham (probable): to recess for the day as

[5:27:58] Voice 6: we see him thanks