Hornby Island Local Trust Committee regular meeting, February 7, 2025

[0:00:00] Voice 3: you soon grant okay

[0:00:02] Voice 6: that's that's all all

[0:00:09] Voice 3: right well good morning everyone i'd like to uh

[0:00:13] Voice 3: open this immediate special electronic meeting of the hornby island local trust committee

[0:00:20] Voice 3: i want to begin by acknowledging that we're fortunate to be able to gather today in locations

[0:00:26] Voice 3: across the territory of co-shaylor's peoples and we respectively acknowledge that hornby island is

[0:00:32] Voice 3: in the unceded traditional territory of the Comox First Nation,

[0:00:37] Voice 3: the traditional keepers of this land.

[0:00:42] Voice 3: There's a long history before our colonial folks arrived here

[0:00:56] Voice 3: and a long and troubled history since.

[0:00:59] Voice 3: And as we're here and respecting that history and the challenges that have taken place in the past and there are challenges today in terms of wanting to build relationships and engage in meaningful reconciliation.

[0:01:23] Voice 3: And that's an ongoing journey, of course.

[0:01:27] Voice 3: My name's Tim Peterson. I'm elected on Laskete Island, and I'm chair of the Hordby Island Local Trust Committee.

[0:01:36] Voice 3: I'm joined today by local trustees Grant Scott and Alex Allen.

[0:01:45] Voice 3: And today's meeting is focused on a presentation of suitable land analysis.

[0:01:54] Voice 3: I'll just Landon Matichuk is going to be is going to be giving some some presentation material on

[0:02:03] Voice 3: that and I'd like to acknowledge our staff Lisa Millard meeting administrator Carly Blaney is

[0:02:09] Voice 3: our recorder today Sonia Zupanek planner and also Nerissa Chadwick and our freshwater specialist

[0:02:22] Voice 3: list uh william shelbaugh so we have an agenda um before us here and i'll look to see if there's

[0:02:32] Voice 3: anything that trustees would like to amend in terms of the agenda not hearing anything uh did

[0:02:43] Voice 3: have some advice from staff that we may want to add a discussion on next steps um so i would say

[0:02:53] Voice 3: we would do that after the presentation at 4.2 um so i'll look to see if that's uh

[0:03:03] Voice 3: amenable for the local trustees and uh not hearing otherwise i'll take it by general consent that

[0:03:12] Voice 3: will adopt the agenda as amended so that takes us to the suitable land analysis review presentation

[0:03:22] Voice 3: presentation and I'm going to turn it over to Freshwater Specialist William Shulba to start us off.

[0:03:31] Voice 3: Yeah,

[0:03:32] Voice 7: thank you so much Chair and I'm just going to jump right in and start sharing my screen

[0:03:39] Voice 7: because this will be an immersive presentation. There's going to be two parts to this. We will go

[0:03:48] Voice 7: through a PowerPoint presentation and about halfway through, I will be transitioning to

[0:03:57] Voice 7: the deliverable that we have for the suitable land analysis, which is a layered mapping

[0:04:04] Voice 7: PDF and we'll go through the layers there and some of the themes.

[0:04:09] Voice 7: So if I'm rushing through the themes and not describing the layers, rest assured that we

[0:04:18] Voice 7: we can um that i'll be talking more to them when we're actually looking at the the data and the

[0:04:24] Voice 7: maps um and and i think through the chair um i i don't mind being um stopped for questions if if

[0:04:34] Voice 7: there's something that comes up through the through the presentation but i'll leave that in

[0:04:39] Voice 7: your capable hands to to steward that and and then at the end of the presentation i i do have some

[0:04:47] Voice 7: call them like developmental questions just broad questions to to rest with the ltc to to consider

[0:04:55] Voice 7: with maybe improvements to the suitable land analysis or or for next steps discussion

[0:05:03] Voice 7: so thank you so much for the hornby local trust committee for for having us this is our

[0:05:12] Voice 7: our first presentation to an LTC for the suitable land analysis.

[0:05:17] Voice 7: And so, yeah, looking forward to rolling this out.

[0:05:25] Voice 7: So, yeah, you know me.

[0:05:28] Voice 7: My name is William Schroeder.

[0:05:30] Voice 7: I'm the freshwater specialist, and I've been taking the lead on this project

[0:05:36] Voice 7: since we had some challenges in our GIS department with resourcing.

[0:05:42] Voice 7: And I was involved in the project beforehand as an external to help steward the freshwater information for this work.

[0:05:51] Voice 7: And over the last six months, I've been taking a lead role.

[0:05:57] Voice 7: And I've also been managing the contract of Landon.

[0:06:02] Voice 7: And I think I'll just allow Landon a minute here just to introduce himself and his work that he's doing with his PhD work at UBC and perhaps he can touch upon the watershed resiliency mapping that he's done with the Islands Trust, which is also part of the suitable land analysis.

[0:06:24] Voice 7: Also, Landon will be describing the maps and data when we're looking at that section of the presentation as well.

[0:06:35] Voice 7: So thanks. I'll just turn it over to Landon for a minute here.

[0:06:39] Voice 5: Hello, everyone. My name is Landon Matichuk. I'm a GIS consultant and researcher working on this project with William.

[0:06:48] Voice 5: William and I have worked on numerous projects over the last four years, I think, with the Islands Trust.

[0:06:55] Voice 5: In addition to that, I've had research projects with the city of Victoria, provincial government

[0:07:02] Voice 5: and various NGOs throughout the province, all related to community mapping, ecosystem

[0:07:09] Voice 5: restoration and ecosystem resilience.

[0:07:13] Voice 5: Currently, I'm studying at UBC and conducting research there for my PhD on ecosystem restoration,

[0:07:21] Voice 5: restoration particularly methods of water storage and sediment storage and habitat creation so

[0:07:29] Voice 5: excited to share with you the results we have so far on this project and listen for your feedback

[0:07:35] Voice 5: as well great

[0:07:39] Voice 7: thank you so much Landon yeah let's let's get it going here hopefully my presentation

[0:07:44] Voice 7: is going to be working out so I'm not going to belabor the the point with the object of the

[0:07:51] Voice 7: trust but i i like to lead almost every presentation with it because um essentially

[0:07:57] Voice 7: the suitable land analysis is is a preserve and protect tool and and we it's um the the intent

[0:08:06] Voice 7: of the suitable land analysis is to as it says on the tin to to identify suitable lands um

[0:08:13] Voice 7: um as a tool in in the island trust housing toolkit and so the the intention here is to

[0:08:21] Voice 7: is to balance the preserve and protect mandate of the island's trust um and and give um uh

[0:08:31] Voice 7: i guess give consideration to the unique amenities of and and the environment of each island as we're

[0:08:39] Voice 7: going through it um and and this is actually a a collaboration or a cooperative tool with with

[0:08:47] Voice 7: other agencies we are using um information that that is not just generated from the islands trust

[0:08:54] Voice 7: it's uh information that that there's some third-party information that that we that we

[0:08:59] Voice 7: have got um and and also primary data that island stresses has created um there's a lot more work

[0:09:07] Voice 7: that we can do uh around this and especially collaborating with um local interest groups

[0:09:14] Voice 7: and and this is the first step of of engaging with the community through an ltc special meeting

[0:09:21] Voice 7: i don't think it stops there and and also um to um coordinate with with first nations and and

[0:09:30] Voice 7: and we're hoping that that we can engage in that as as we continually work on on this tool

[0:09:39] Voice 7: so the suitable analysis is designed to evaluate and prioritize areas across the island's trust

[0:09:49] Voice 7: for sustainable development while preserving protecting or or emphasizing on conservation and

[0:09:57] Voice 7: and a resilient community. The tool integrates several, we're calling them themes, so ecological

[0:10:08] Voice 7: sensitivity and freshwater sustainability, transportation infrastructure to inform

[0:10:15] Voice 7: land use decisions and address opportunities for suitable development. So the objectives of

[0:10:26] Voice 7: of the suitable land analysis is to identify areas

[0:10:30] Voice 7: for additional residential density,

[0:10:33] Voice 7: to support evidence-based land use decision-making

[0:10:38] Voice 7: using mapping and geospatial tools,

[0:10:42] Voice 7: integrate several themes of ecological, social

[0:10:47] Voice 7: and somewhat economic, I think that's lacking right now,

[0:10:51] Voice 7: but perhaps in future iterations,

[0:10:56] Voice 7: more community amenity and and community economic factors can be factored into into this planning

[0:11:03] Voice 7: tool and uh the intention of coming to to hornby and and to the other select islands that we have

[0:11:12] Voice 7: chosen um to do the first run of of the suitable analysis is is to align with um existing uh major

[0:11:21] Voice 7: projects with relation to official community plans and land use bylaws. So the methodology

[0:11:29] Voice 7: involved collating and processing data sets and I'm not going to belabor what they are,

[0:11:36] Voice 7: they're on the screen. So we took the opportunity to not only collate the data but also process it.

[0:11:46] Voice 7: So what that means is there's some data sets that we got from the province, namely saltwater

[0:11:51] Voice 7: intrusion that that had uh challenges in in its in its um delivery in the islands trust area

[0:11:58] Voice 7: especially around its um resolution of of our complex shorelines so uh landon and i worked on

[0:12:07] Voice 7: that data set to to smooth it out and to uh enable it to to um represent the shorelines which was

[0:12:17] Voice 7: important part of this analysis um can we mute trustee scott please i'm getting um getting some

[0:12:27] Voice 7: background noise in my my earbuds thanks um and uh yeah i'll move on so uh like i said we used

[0:12:38] Voice 7: existing maps and spatial information um we we used uh an embedded tool in esri's arc pro it's

[0:12:47] Voice 7: It's the industry standard of geospatial mapping, and it's what our GIS department uses.

[0:12:56] Voice 7: And I should actually say that Landon and I did not come up with the original, I guess, approach to this project.

[0:13:05] Voice 7: This approach was thought of between Robert Kojima, our regional planning manager, and our longtime GIS manager, Mark VanBakel.

[0:13:21] Voice 7: And they identified the suitability modeler tool as an applicable tool to weight these values and layers.

[0:13:44] Voice 7: And so the application is known as a multi-criteria decision-making tool or decision analysis in MCDA.

[0:13:53] Voice 7: And this has been used in many different spatial analysis locally and abroad.

[0:14:04] Voice 7: The Island Stress Conservancy regional conservation tool also uses a multi-criteria decision analysis.

[0:14:16] Voice 7: And even several components of the suitable land analysis like groundwater recharge mapping is also an MCDA approach to undertaking this work.

[0:14:30] Voice 7: And yeah, and then I'll just explain the rest when we start getting into the data.

[0:14:39] Voice 7: So essentially, we're looking at freshwater and the environment as our two main themes, and then looking at how that aligns with sustainable infrastructure.

[0:14:52] Voice 7: And then hopefully in the middle, we find some areas that are potentially suitable for increased housing intensity and density.

[0:15:05] Voice 7: So our main themes are the ones I've been speaking to, and specifically under environment, we have marine shore adjacency, sensitive ecosystems, at-risk ecological communities, and dominant age of forests.

[0:15:25] Voice 7: And then under freshwater, we have groundwater recharge, groundwater well density, watershed resiliency, which Lennon will speak a little bit more to when we get there.

[0:15:35] Voice 7: and saltwater intrusion risk and then under infrastructure it's it's it's light i think

[0:15:43] Voice 7: that there's an opportunity to add a few more layers in here but for the time being we have

[0:15:50] Voice 7: access to roads and and uh geohazards and steep slope so there's a lot to look at here but i just

[0:16:03] Voice 7: just described all the layers there on uh and and each theme and for the analysis we weighted

[0:16:11] Voice 7: each theme um or sorry each layer has been weighted equally um out of a hundred so it's

[0:16:20] Voice 7: it's um value to the suitable line analysis is all equal so in in this case this this first

[0:16:28] Voice 7: iteration we are suggesting that groundwater well density of a weighting

[0:16:34] Voice 7: of 10 is as important as road adjacency or as steep slopes and that may not be

[0:16:44] Voice 7: the the like the consent of the of the community or the or even it may not this

[0:16:56] Voice 7: this weighting may not find relevance in the current planning.

[0:16:59] Voice 7: This suitability weighting is weighting value.

[0:17:08] Voice 7: And in this case, this is the opportunity for the LTC to work with planning staff

[0:17:14] Voice 7: or work with community to adjudicate the weighting

[0:17:22] Voice 7: and to perhaps weigh a layer or a value, a community value, I'm trying to say, more than another.

[0:17:35] Voice 7: So I actually use Chair Peterson's island quite often.

[0:17:40] Voice 7: in since since they're um uh the island's dominated by surface water um resources with

[0:17:50] Voice 7: with uh microhydro and and and and a lot of water sources on luskete are surface water unlike

[0:17:58] Voice 7: hornby where almost the majority of of water uh resources on hornby island are are groundwater

[0:18:07] Voice 7: water due to the um lack of accessible surface water uh so for laskiti that there might be

[0:18:14] Voice 7: a change in in the value of groundwater density compared to say watershed resiliency or or some

[0:18:22] Voice 7: other ecological layer or some other layer that we haven't presented here like say

[0:18:26] Voice 7: archaeological layer or something like this so the the opportunity here for um a specific island

[0:18:35] Voice 7: Dylan, to have a conversation around is to have a discussion if these are, I don't want to say

[0:18:44] Voice 7: suitable, but if these are appropriate layers for the suitability analysis, and then what's the

[0:18:52] Voice 7: weighting of that value can also be changed. And so that's the opportunity that presents itself to

[0:19:02] Voice 7: to the ltc and to the community um what can't be changed is what's under the hood

[0:19:08] Voice 7: um and and so this is a a view of of all of the attributes of of uh the layer say sense

[0:19:18] Voice 7: of ecosystems there's young forest seasonal flooded herbaceous cliffs sand wetland there's

[0:19:23] Voice 7: a lot there let me just flip to fresh water for a second because this is a little bit more

[0:19:29] Voice 7: straightforward so if we look at groundwater well density uh on on hornby and we'll look at the maps

[0:19:37] Voice 7: so rest assured this is i'll give you some colors to look at very soon um but on hornby there's

[0:19:45] Voice 7: areas of the island that has very high well density and and that's a classification value of

[0:19:51] Voice 7: of 30 wells or greater per square kilometer and this is an area like like sandpiper has

[0:19:58] Voice 7: has a very high well density.

[0:20:01] Voice 7: And we have associated a very high well density

[0:20:04] Voice 7: with a very low suitability rating.

[0:20:09] Voice 7: And so a very low well density,

[0:20:11] Voice 7: which is less than one well per square kilometer

[0:20:15] Voice 7: is a very high suitability.

[0:20:17] Voice 7: And so it gets a rating factor out of 10 of 10.

[0:20:23] Voice 7: So the question could be, okay,

[0:20:26] Voice 7: where did these values come from?

[0:20:28] Voice 7: How do we know that more than 30 wells per square kilometer is very high and from 20 to 30 wells per square kilometer is high?

[0:20:36] Voice 7: Well, this is from research and existing data sets.

[0:20:42] Voice 7: And so I was able to provide these classifications and then staff converted these original classifications to suitability weighting.

[0:20:54] Voice 7: And so if I were to just flip, oh, actually, let's talk about risk of saltwater intrusion. So this is a data set from the province. And it's already classified for us as very low, low, moderate, high, and very high risk of saltwater intrusion.

[0:21:12] Voice 7: So then staff have taken that and said, okay, a very high risk of saltwater intrusion is very low for suitability for housing density.

[0:21:22] Voice 7: So that receives a 1 out of 10.

[0:21:26] Voice 7: And so that's an example of where the classification was provided to us by the province.

[0:21:32] Voice 7: and then we put a suitability rating and at times we will reach back to the original data set owner

[0:21:41] Voice 7: like the province and ask them if the suitability rating is appropriate to go back to the

[0:21:47] Voice 7: environmental one which is there's a lot going on here so these classification values and suitability

[0:21:55] Voice 7: ratings were provided by the island stress conservancy so so they they were the ones to

[0:22:02] Voice 7: to to provide us uh those um uh those classifications for their data set and um this

[0:22:11] Voice 7: is all transparent if i'm just going to flip back to the the slide before is is we have the

[0:22:19] Voice 7: references for for each of the the data sets here and when we started this project we identified

[0:22:26] Voice 7: maybe there's 10 additional data layers that that potentially can be used in the suitable

[0:22:32] Voice 7: line analysis and but we chose these 10 as as the most applicable to the five islands that we have

[0:22:40] Voice 7: started with Hornby included. Okay and so now I'm going to jump under the presentation and open up

[0:22:54] Voice 7: the layered PDF document and this is the way that we are presenting this data.

[0:23:02] Voice 7: It's a streamlined way for planning staff to look at the data. We can use this in a presentation.

[0:23:10] Voice 7: it's likely going to be available to the public but this is a static tool so any discussions that

[0:23:18] Voice 7: or yeah any suggestions of of changing the the weighting of each layer needs to be reprocessed

[0:23:28] Voice 7: and then and then the pdfs are created again and then that's provided back to the ltc or the

[0:23:34] Voice 7: the planner for their use what the project team and I've been talking about is is there there may

[0:23:41] Voice 7: be a need for a more dynamic tool where it could be an online dashboard where where planners or

[0:23:51] Voice 7: LTC or even the public can go in and change different values and and and have the suitable

[0:23:57] Voice 7: land analysis update in real time but that's hasn't been requested yet and and you know if

[0:24:04] Voice 7: that's somewhere where the organization like to go that we can present a business case for that

[0:24:09] Voice 7: um so uh chair do you think um we should pause briefly for questions or should i just keep

[0:24:16] Voice 7: rolling let's just

[0:24:21] Voice 3: check in with trustees questions so far i

[0:24:25] Trustee Allen (probable): don't know whether this

[0:24:26] Trustee Allen (probable): is the right time to ask i was just curious william about i don't know whether you know

[0:24:30] Trustee Allen (probable): that we've been looking at vulnerable aquifer areas expanding beyond whaling station and

[0:24:35] Trustee Allen (probable): anderson and looking at galleon and sandpiper but we don't a lot of people feel we don't have enough

[0:24:42] Trustee Allen (probable): data on that um though we are having people running out of water etc etc so i was wondering

[0:24:49] Trustee Allen (probable): if you could comment on that uh

[0:24:52] Voice 7: yeah sure i can comment on that now i haven't been brought into

[0:24:54] Voice 7: to that project so i haven't provided any data information on it and and there's likely data

[0:25:02] Voice 7: information that that will be presented in this meeting that that likely can be used in that

[0:25:08] Voice 7: discussion um and i also find with these things you know it's it's a blend of uh the current

[0:25:15] Voice 7: project we're working on right now um it's a methodology project the freshwater footprint

[0:25:20] Voice 7: print that is um our case study is is uh gabriola island trying to blend the the technical um aspects

[0:25:29] Voice 7: of of data information that we have and with social science and and trying to determine like

[0:25:37] Voice 7: how people are running a water how we're going to do that maybe through survey or or through some

[0:25:41] Voice 7: community engagement and and and that's really important um the suitable land analysis tool is

[0:25:48] Voice 7: is, is only the technical aspect of it, right? So it's, it's only that data information. It's,

[0:25:54] Voice 7: it's really not informed by, by social science or, or on the ground information or, or qualitative

[0:26:02] Voice 7: information. So, so I think, I think there's a lot of helpful information here to, to, to look at

[0:26:11] Voice 7: areas of stress for sure. And, but I, I think that there's a lot of information out there,

[0:26:18] Voice 7: just like how do you bring it together and process and present it right and so in this case here

[0:26:22] Voice 7: we're i i would say that we're more confident looking at the areas of high suitability here

[0:26:30] Voice 7: rather than the areas of low suitability like this tool is designed for suitability in mind

[0:26:37] Voice 7: but if it was designed for conservation in mind maybe the classifications are a little bit

[0:26:42] Voice 7: bit different um so that's just something to keep in mind but um yeah of course like i mean

[0:26:50] Voice 7: hornby's one is not i can pick favorites in the alice trust area so and and i have a really good

[0:26:58] Voice 7: understanding of of you know the water resources on the island and i have deep connections to the

[0:27:04] Voice 7: uh hornby water stewardship so i think all of all of that information and that lived experience

[0:27:12] Voice 7: needs to be brought in to to identify areas of you know expansion of vulnerable areas

[0:27:20] Voice 7: yeah it's really important but i'll leave it there for now because i don't want

[0:27:23] Trustee Allen (probable): i'm just curious

[0:27:25] Trustee Allen (probable): this map here is that accurate like can i ask you what the red i

[0:27:28] Voice 7: will yeah sorry we'll get into it

[0:27:30] Voice 7: yeah yeah all those things yeah yeah please so yeah this will be more of like a uh like a workshop

[0:27:35] Voice 7: workshop session of of the meeting so i'm gonna try i'm gonna have to talk you through this

[0:27:43] Voice 7: because i think that um i could try to make hornby as big as possible without blowing it out um

[0:27:51] Voice 7: i'm gonna be opening and closing layers on the side here and tried my darndest today to make

[0:27:58] Voice 7: this text bigger and and and so if you if it's having a hard time singing or reading it i'll

[0:28:04] Voice 7: i'll be speaking to it as we go um so there's a few um orient like additional layers we're

[0:28:15] Voice 7: calling it which are orientation layers so uh for example we have roads uh parcels and

[0:28:24] Voice 7: and then this is also well locations so i just kind of you know it gets you oriented you guys

[0:28:30] Voice 7: note your island right so um yeah so so this is i'll probably just like leave these on for the

[0:28:38] Voice 7: time being maybe i'm gonna turn off wells until we get to that spot but i think that this would

[0:28:43] Voice 7: be a good way to orient orient us to the island so let's just start you know like a quentin

[0:28:50] Voice 7: tarantino movie let's put the end first and and let's just look at the suitable land analysis

[0:28:54] Voice 7: analysis so in this case here this is this is our final result of the suitable line analysis

[0:29:03] Voice 7: and and in this case um the colors that the trend to the red spectrum are are less suitable

[0:29:13] Voice 7: the colors that trend to the green side are more suitable and i apologize if anybody's

[0:29:21] Voice 7: red green color bind didn't even think about that um if that's the case then let me know and we'll

[0:29:28] Voice 7: we'll fix that later um and and and the more neutral colors like like yellow are are are

[0:29:37] Voice 7: moderate kind of right down the middle didn't say it's less suitable or more suitable so if we just

[0:29:44] Voice 7: want to get brass tacks of just like looking at this tool and and looking at a regional perspective

[0:29:50] Voice 7: effective, you know, a reconnaissance mission, if you will, to find areas of suitability.

[0:29:58] Voice 7: Obviously, we can't.

[0:30:00] Voice 7: we can't develop in the parks so we're going to take those out so those are in like this green

[0:30:05] Voice 7: so those are kind of grayed out uh agricultural land reserve is also something that is going to

[0:30:14] Voice 7: be hard to expand in so we kind of took those out and then there's a bunch of covenants to

[0:30:21] Voice 7: around hornby and so we put those on and they kind of fall in in the in the zones of

[0:30:27] Voice 7: of obviousness on on hornbeam so if if you were to just take a gander at some of the green areas

[0:30:37] Voice 7: there's like i i you know i i don't know what this large parcel is but um um you know that

[0:30:45] Voice 7: like i'll let your eyes train to to to where there can be suitability increase and where there's not

[0:30:54] Voice 7: so that's that's like the tool at its at its highest level and you know you can zoom in but

[0:31:02] Voice 7: but i think that we're really zooming in right now is it's not really needed there's certain

[0:31:09] Voice 7: like let me take off this agricultural land reserve is a you know it's a big hindrance to

[0:31:16] Voice 7: to a lot of the um you know a lot of the suitability but the suitability is there

[0:31:23] Voice 7: largely because it's ALR land like it it's it's a disturbed area it's it's usually not up in the

[0:31:32] Voice 7: recharge zones and and so yeah a lot of the opportunity that we're seeing in other islands

[0:31:38] Voice 7: also rests on agricultural land reserves so that it's it's a good layer to have to when when you're

[0:31:45] Voice 7: looking at this work um we can come back to this uh of course um oh another thing too is is i asked

[0:31:56] Voice 7: landon to um just show the areas of high suitability so that's this one so let me just

[0:32:02] Voice 7: turn off everything else so so all of these areas that are just showing like the forest are are

[0:32:10] Voice 7: actually i could just even turn off that and then turn on parcels yeah let's do that so so all the

[0:32:18] Voice 7: the white is unsuitable and so all of the green areas are showing moderate to high suitability

[0:32:25] Voice 7: so again if we turn on the covenants turn on the agricultural land reserve i'll put your roads back

[0:32:31] Voice 7: on and uh parks it it kind of changes your perspective to look at areas of where there

[0:32:40] Voice 7: can be higher suitability and and and all the white areas are are unsuitable so peninsula

[0:32:46] Voice 7: like a little bit but i guess the hazard of all this mapping and i'll get into challenges and

[0:32:52] Voice 7: opportunities a little bit later but you know like you have a property that's almost totally

[0:33:01] Voice 7: unsuitable and then the adjacent property is suitable so like what's happening there what's

[0:33:07] Voice 7: forcing all these properties to be unsuitable and and like why is one particular property showing

[0:33:13] Voice 7: showing an opportunity for suitable development and that's what we'll go through right now.

[0:33:20] Voice 7: We'll look at these individual layers and yeah please like through the chairs stop me

[0:33:27] Voice 7: if you have any questions about the layers or if you have a burning question you want

[0:33:32] Voice 7: to ask please do it.

[0:33:34] Voice 7: I'm going to turn back on the imagery and turn the parks and covenants off and I can

[0:33:40] Voice 7: turn off there so there's our lovely Hornby Island.

[0:33:44] Voice 7: Okay, so let's start off with an easy one, marine shore adjacency.

[0:33:48] Voice 7: So again, this is not the classification, this is the suitability of each layer.

[0:33:53] Voice 7: So if it's green, it's suitable.

[0:33:56] Voice 7: If it's red trending, it's unsuitable.

[0:33:59] Voice 7: And so in this case here, we have marine shore classifications and the majority of them are showing, I think these are cliff, like you have Halliwell Park there and stuff, these are all cliffs.

[0:34:14] Voice 7: So that suitability is just a little bit higher than like these sensitive beaches and things like that. But for the most part, it's pretty obvious that the shorelines are unsuitable for development. So that forces those properties around the shoreline to be less suitable in the overall analysis.

[0:34:36] Voice 7: Sensitive ecosystems. Again, they're classified as either, like, if it's a map sensitive ecosystem, it's trending to unsuitable, which is the red. All this other area does not have a map sensitive ecosystem that we have access to us in our TAPIS system.

[0:35:00] Voice 7: again there's no data here that was generated just specifically for this project all of these

[0:35:06] Voice 7: data layers were were taken from from external sources to the to the project some of course from

[0:35:15] Voice 7: the island's trust but but we didn't generate any of these uh data sets for this work um and then

[0:35:21] Voice 7: here's ecological uh or um communities of ecological risk so it's a little bit more than

[0:35:29] Voice 7: sensitive ecosystems um and so of course the red is unsustainable unsuitable and and the green is

[0:35:37] Voice 7: suitable areas and then dominant ages this is the um age of of the the ecosystems so the dark red

[0:35:48] Voice 7: are you know strachan valley here and and some other pieces that are are like essentially old

[0:35:55] Voice 7: growth or or very mature second growth and the other kind of orangey stuff is is in the middle

[0:36:02] Voice 7: and and and the um later is is younger ecosystems are disturbed and yeah i i mean hormy is is a

[0:36:13] Voice 7: maturing island um because of the expansive protections and and and rural character of

[0:36:19] Voice 7: of the island.

[0:36:20] Voice 7: The other islands do not look like this.

[0:36:22] Voice 7: There's some oddness to this.

[0:36:25] Voice 7: Like you could just see the park is an obvious line.

[0:36:31] Voice 7: There's challenges with every mapping,

[0:36:34] Voice 7: but in this case, they just, you know,

[0:36:36] Voice 7: classified the park all as one value

[0:36:38] Voice 7: rather than you can see here where this is actually

[0:36:41] Voice 7: the interior of the island is following

[0:36:44] Voice 7: like ecosystem outlines.

[0:36:46] Voice 7: lines so there's challenges for sure to every layer okay so that that was the environment

[0:36:54] Voice 7: side and now we'll go into fresh water so groundwater recharge again hornby has a

[0:37:01] Voice 7: quite expansive moderate groundwater recharge environment there's a little bit of high

[0:37:07] Voice 7: recharge up on the mountain but mostly it's it's it's moderate so this may look like green to red

[0:37:14] Voice 7: but this is actually orangey so it's it's like low suitability not very low but um

[0:37:21] Voice 7: what this is suggesting is that in in in most development scenarios uh on the islands there

[0:37:33] Voice 7: is going to be some type of impact to recharge and so it can't be the only adjudicating layer

[0:37:38] Voice 7: there when undertaking this work, but for the most part, when development happens in

[0:37:47] Voice 7: the island's trust area, there's going to be an impact to groundwater resources in some

[0:37:53] Voice 7: way.

[0:37:58] Voice 7: This is watershed resiliency.

[0:38:00] Voice 7: I'll pop back to that at the end because I'll have Landon speak to that and also speak a

[0:38:05] Voice 7: little bit more to attributes and and how they um relate to suitability so we'll come back to that

[0:38:11] Voice 7: groundwater well density is a good one so i'm gonna put the wells back on boom and i'm also

[0:38:15] Voice 7: gonna put the parcels on didn't have those on sorry on the roads so right right off the bat

[0:38:23] Voice 7: here we can see um the areas of the island that have um quite dense population i mean we know this

[0:38:31] Voice 7: but it's good to see it on a map um and and of and of course here the red is high well density so

[0:38:39] Voice 7: that that's low suitability and and the green of course in the park there's there's maybe one or

[0:38:44] Voice 7: two wells up there but but there's no wells in the park so um or in these large parcels i should

[0:38:52] Voice 7: say not just the park but the i don't know i'm interested in this parcel now i don't know what

[0:38:56] Voice 7: that is maybe someone could tell me but um that that there's uh you know no there's very low wells

[0:39:02] Voice 7: there so that that can lead to a high suitability rating but it's it may not be that like like in

[0:39:08] Voice 7: this case it probably is but in some cases there's low well density just because the groundwater

[0:39:13] Voice 7: resources aren't that great there but we didn't go there if it's if it's low well density then

[0:39:20] Voice 7: the suitability is higher uh we know qualitatively that areas with with really high well density

[0:39:29] Voice 7: has issues especially on hornby island with coliforms and e coli issues um you know well

[0:39:38] Voice 7: well per lot septic per lot um has its challenges um and so yeah and and and well we could just see

[0:39:50] Voice 7: laid out here that the interesting part about that about this is that we are um like we we have

[0:40:00] Voice 7: identified this layer as important as marine shore adjacency which is fine but you can see that the

[0:40:12] Voice 7: interior of the island of marine shore adjacency is very high suitable um where where groundwater

[0:40:18] Voice 7: water well density is is kind of the opposite so so every layer is kind of playing off each other

[0:40:26] Voice 7: um but uh chair i see that trustee allen's um hand was put up so yeah

[0:40:32] Trustee Allen (probable): thank you i'm just

[0:40:32] Trustee Allen (probable): going to call

[0:40:33] Voice 7: on trustee go

[0:40:34] Voice 3: ahead do

[0:40:35] Trustee Allen (probable): you have a like all these wells because when you know you

[0:40:38] Trustee Allen (probable): i work for the co-op manager the gas bar and we were looking for put a new well in and there's

[0:40:43] Trustee Allen (probable): also the provincial parks put new wells right behind the gas bar there just recently. And

[0:40:50] Trustee Allen (probable): when we were looking at it, there's just a ton of wells around the co-op that are decommissioned

[0:40:54] Trustee Allen (probable): that were done by previous managers over the years. And so when we look at this map, are

[0:40:59] Trustee Allen (probable): these existing wells? Do you have a record of whether they're decommissioned or running

[0:41:04] Trustee Allen (probable): wells? Or do you have anything of that?

[0:41:06] Trustee Allen (probable): that uh

[0:41:07] Voice 7: yeah great point uh with the dots on the map um i have to ask lennon but we just kind of

[0:41:14] Voice 7: layered on these as an orientation layer um but the um the the the heat map that you see here

[0:41:22] Voice 7: has been created with with registered active wells like not abandoned or anything so it could

[0:41:30] Voice 7: could be that that there's there's wells that have been drilled that are registered and they're

[0:41:37] Voice 7: not active but they have active status and it's like we can't do anything with that right um a

[0:41:43] Voice 7: well is abandoned after it sits for 10 years and i know wells have been sitting in the island's

[0:41:49] Voice 7: just area for 100 so yeah it like that that's a limitation of the data for sure so yeah in the

[0:41:57] Voice 7: in the area you're saying around the park uh you know around the co-op in the park um that that

[0:42:03] Voice 7: there could be duplicate wells and and so there can be an issue there since i started with the

[0:42:09] Voice 7: island's trust um it was just a year into where well registry was um was then regulated under the

[0:42:18] Voice 7: groundwater protection regulation new water sustainability act before that it wasn't it

[0:42:22] Voice 7: was voluntary and over over the seven years that i've been working here the the data set has has

[0:42:30] Voice 7: really um has really refined itself and and the province has done a lot of work to to go in and

[0:42:36] Voice 7: look at oddities like you don't see wells landing in the ocean anymore or before there's just wells

[0:42:42] Voice 7: everywhere because they the data was bad so um yes so so

[0:42:48] Voice 3: trustee scott can you mute your your

[0:42:52] Voice 3: Your volume, please.

[0:42:54] Voice 7: So there can be an issue there.

[0:42:57] Voice 7: Since they started with the Island Trust.

[0:43:00] Voice 7: Trustee

[0:43:01] Voice 3: Scott, can you mute, please?

[0:43:03] Voice 7: He's like delayed.

[0:43:04] Trustee Allen (probable): That's not Grant.

[0:43:04] Trustee Allen (probable): It's somebody else.

[0:43:05] Trustee Allen (probable): It's somebody who works for you.

[0:43:07] Voice 7: Groundwater Protection Regulation, Water Stability Act.

[0:43:09] Voice 7: Before that, it wasn't as voluntary.

[0:43:11] Voice 7: Listen to

[0:43:11] Trustee Allen (probable): who that is.

[0:43:12] Voice 6: And over the seven years that I've worked in here.

[0:43:15] Voice 7: You can just force mute him, though.

[0:43:18] Voice 7: Yeah,

[0:43:19] Voice 3: that has to be this.

[0:43:21] Voice 3: the um the

[0:43:22] Voice 7: province has done a lot of work to has

[0:43:24] Voice 3: to be staff i guess lisa can you just force me

[0:43:27] Voice 7: it sounds

[0:43:28] Voice 3: like ruben okay

[0:43:29] Voice 7: before there's just wells everywhere because they

[0:43:31] Voice 7: no it's me like it's

[0:43:34] Voice 3: william on a delay i don't know what's going on

[0:43:35] Voice 3: yeah hey

[0:43:37] Voice 3: lisa

[0:43:38] Voice 7: are you there can we

[0:43:40] Voice 7: yes

[0:43:40] Voice 8: uh who would you like me to mute

[0:43:43] Voice 7: trustee scott trustee scott

[0:43:47] Voice 7: thank you that's weird oh yeah that was really weird so trustee scott is is yeah at least fine

[0:43:55] Voice 7: like seems like a few minutes behind fortunately okay um trustee allen did i sufficiently ask for

[0:44:04] Voice 7: answer your question yeah

[0:44:06] Trustee Allen (probable): i'm just wondering is there it'd be great if that could be dealt with

[0:44:09] Trustee Allen (probable): one day because um is this is this not being looked at by the province or at all in terms of

[0:44:16] Trustee Allen (probable): because it's important data to know that whether something's not running anymore decommissioned or

[0:44:21] Trustee Allen (probable): shut down etc in terms of water studies and i'm just curious why it hasn't been proactively dealt

[0:44:29] Trustee Allen (probable): with yeah

[0:44:30] Voice 7: well if you ask anybody yourself included who has put in a water license application

[0:44:36] Voice 7: and how long that takes to adjudicate they're not going to go chase after areas that aren't a

[0:44:42] Voice 7: of priority um i would say that they the province is looking to prioritize um um taking a deeper

[0:44:51] Voice 7: look at at hornby they did some aqua remapping on demon as part of our as part of the project

[0:44:59] Voice 7: that we were working on as well for groundwater recharge so um if there is a a new water

[0:45:06] Voice 7: license like non-domestic water license application and there's a lot of wells in

[0:45:12] Voice 7: the area they'll go through and they'll look at every single well tag and and if they determine

[0:45:16] Voice 7: that there's a property with five wells on it um that they'll reach out and and ask what's going on

[0:45:23] Voice 7: there so and i've seen that happen on on other like significant applications for water um i think

[0:45:32] Voice 7: that's the only way to do it like you can't just go walk around like some of these wells are a foot

[0:45:37] Voice 7: off the ground two feet of grass right you're not going to find them so the the usually the

[0:45:43] Voice 7: easy way is to do is to identify areas that are problems like like i said multiple wells

[0:45:49] Voice 7: per property and and then just contact the owner and ask them what's going on and i know the

[0:45:54] Voice 7: province has been doing that and and if if it's if it's an element of a significant application then

[0:46:03] Voice 7: then i i think there's there's effort there um can also always inquire as well like this is the

[0:46:10] Voice 7: first time i heard of of there being multiple wells there and and we can you know we can go

[0:46:15] Voice 7: in and blow up this map and and this is public data you can go in and and observe i can see

[0:46:22] Voice 7: right now that there's many wells on one property right where my hand is so yeah yeah it's a good

[0:46:28] Voice 7: good point it's a good catch so maybe we can we can look at that offline as well because that

[0:46:34] Voice 7: could change like i mean that could change well it does change the suitable land analysis right

[0:46:39] Voice 7: very moderately in this case because we're only looking at well density as 10 percent over the

[0:46:46] Voice 7: overall 100 percent of suitable land um in my opinion i like i think it should be more it's

[0:46:54] Voice 7: It's like working with the Hornby Water Stewardship,

[0:46:56] Voice 7: like well density is a significant impact to, you know,

[0:47:03] Voice 7: the sustainability of water supplies due to identified water chemistry issues

[0:47:12] Voice 7: that the Hornby Water Stewardship has been undertaking.

[0:47:15] Voice 7: So, yeah, anyway, I'm digressing, I think.

[0:47:20] Voice 7: uh and then risk of saltwater intrusion and this one's kind of obvious and yeah thanks to landon

[0:47:28] Voice 7: for um for interpolating the like the poor um resolution of map that we got from the province

[0:47:38] Voice 7: to identify coastline and and so here we have where green green is uh high suitability because

[0:47:48] Voice 7: it's low saltwater intrusion risk and and yellow and oranges is moderate and and saltwater intrusion

[0:47:58] Voice 7: mapping is difficult because it it relates to not only the inherent nature of of how the coastlines

[0:48:06] Voice 7: work like you know this is all cliff sides that's why it's lower saltwater intrusion risk

[0:48:10] Voice 7: but also it takes an account for well density and it's kind of a complex data set and and

[0:48:18] Voice 7: And, you know, we're not here to adjudicate this data set

[0:48:21] Voice 7: or pull it apart.

[0:48:22] Voice 7: We just are trying to use it to make it work

[0:48:25] Voice 7: in a suitable land analysis.

[0:48:26] Voice 7: And then just to finish it off, we have proximity to roads.

[0:48:30] Voice 7: So that's an obvious one.

[0:48:33] Voice 7: And then slope is, because if you have a steep slope,

[0:48:38] Voice 7: obviously it's hard to build there.

[0:48:40] Voice 7: And if you have lower line slopes,

[0:48:43] Voice 7: it's easier to build there.

[0:48:44] Voice 7: So this is more of like a geohazard analysis.

[0:48:47] Voice 7: analysis pretty straightforward so let me uh just turn back to watershed resiliency here and i'll

[0:48:55] Voice 7: and i'll drive this for lennon so lennon if you don't mind pop yourself off of mute there

[0:49:01] Voice 7: just let me

[0:49:01] Planner Chadwick (probable): know i'm gonna

[0:49:02] Voice 7: take off well locations and then maybe i'll turn on

[0:49:07] Voice 7: how about you speak you let me know what you want to turn on i'm gonna start with

[0:49:11] Voice 7: with this and then we'll go from there okay

[0:49:14] Voice 5: sounds good yeah so watershed resiliency was uh

[0:49:18] Voice 5: developed when I was conducting research for the Capital Region District, and they were acquiring

[0:49:25] Voice 5: a new watershed and thinking about including that watershed as part of their contributing area to

[0:49:33] Voice 5: their fresh water supply. So they needed a way to identify the resilience of the system. How do we

[0:49:41] Voice 5: define that? How do we quantify that? So resiliency in an ecosystem is an ecosystem's

[0:49:50] Voice 5: ability to withstand, recover, and respond to disturbances. So these can be natural disturbances

[0:49:59] Voice 5: such as wildfires, floods, can be for different types of trees, type of fungus, or as we saw

[0:50:10] Voice 5: with the pine beetle can also be anthropogenic disturbances so uh human cause disturbances

[0:50:16] Voice 5: and the way that uh we quantify that and have applied that here is with uh variety and

[0:50:27] Voice 5: variability of different characteristics so uh it's a character of variability in uh the amount

[0:50:35] Voice 5: of species, so tree species in an area, the diversity of these species in this area, and

[0:50:44] Voice 5: then also structural diversity as well. So in these areas, is there a wide range of ages? Is

[0:50:53] Voice 5: there a wide range of size? Is there a wide range of land classification? Do we have cleared areas

[0:51:01] Voice 5: with herbs and shrubs as well as some old growth or is it just a completely

[0:51:08] Voice 5: cleared area? Also incorporated in this metric is the variability of that one

[0:51:18] Voice 5: area to its neighbor. So how similar is that one area and the characteristics in

[0:51:24] Voice 5: that area to its surrounding neighbors. From that, we're able to get a metric.

[0:51:34] Voice 5: The areas with high resiliency are going to have a wide variety of different tree species,

[0:51:42] Voice 5: herb species, shrub species, a wide variety of ages and heights, and a wide range and variety

[0:51:53] Voice 5: variety of other structural components as well. It's also going to be different than its neighbor,

[0:52:00] Voice 5: different than its surrounding area as well. So you can see how those different responses,

[0:52:05] Voice 5: if we think about an area that has just strictly pine trees and pine beetle infestation happens,

[0:52:13] Voice 5: then it's going to have a limited response to that disturbance versus if you have a variety

[0:52:20] Voice 5: of species as well. And if we think about wildfire risk as well, the resilience to that,

[0:52:30] Voice 5: if you have the variety of heights and variety of different land covers, that's going to have

[0:52:34] Voice 5: a variety and a wide range of responses. So in this layer here, we want to protect

[0:52:44] Voice 5: and we are indicating which areas have the high resiliency.

[0:52:50] Voice 5: So with high resiliency, that is an area that we're interested in.

[0:52:56] Voice 5: That's going to have a lower suitability for development.

[0:53:00] Voice 5: So we have those areas with high resiliency in the red here

[0:53:04] Voice 5: and then areas with low resiliency in the green.

[0:53:13] Voice 7: Great. Thanks, Landon.

[0:53:14] Voice 7: And, yeah, and so, yeah, like, if we toggle on and off the suitable land analysis, you can see that there's some areas where resiliency, like, let's look at this big parcel again.

[0:53:37] Voice 7: I'm interested in this big parcel.

[0:53:40] Voice 7: We can see that there is an area where the resiliency is showing through.

[0:53:45] Voice 7: through but that's also can be um uh because of other layers too right so it's interesting so this

[0:53:55] Voice 7: sense of ecosystem layer here is showing red but then if we look at the resiliency it's the

[0:54:02] Voice 7: opposite so that that just shows that like that that they are independent layers and and the the

[0:54:10] Voice 7: the metric that that um landon is talking about on how how resilient a an area of the forest is

[0:54:17] Voice 7: is not just what's inside of it like sense of ecosystem it's how it's relating to its neighbor

[0:54:24] Voice 7: and and how well its neighbor can can help in the resiliency of a particular area of of land so

[0:54:32] Voice 7: So, um, yeah, it's, uh, I really, it's a novel approach and, and, um, and, and, you know, I'm, I'm grateful that Landon is, has put some effort to the Island's Trust area to, to bring this, um, methodology to us.

[0:54:47] Voice 7: Um, yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's an, plays an important role in the Capital Regional District looking at, um, their, their, uh, their water resource, you know, for, for our capital.

[0:54:59] Voice 7: portal. And do you have anything else to add for that, Landon?

[0:55:08] Voice 6: No.

[0:55:09] Voice 5: No, that's, yeah. That's good. That's, yeah, that's interesting. We'll look at

[0:55:14] Voice 5: that area there. We have a

[0:55:16] Voice 5: question in the chat about a

[0:55:20] Voice 7: zoning layer. Yeah.

[0:55:22] Voice 7: Yeah, we didn't put on zoning layers. We'll add that to the list, though. Okay.

[0:55:30] Trustee Allen (probable): Okay, Peterson, excuse me, excuse me, somebody connecting to audio in the bottom. I don't know if that's trustee Scott's got out of the meeting.

[0:55:40] Voice 2: Trustee Scott's

[0:55:41] Voice 2: having difficulties. He keeps trying to log in. So good thing it's recorded.

[0:55:46] Trustee Allen (probable): All right, just wondering.

[0:55:50] Voice 7: Okay, so I would like to flip out of the PDF and just go back to the presentation to round it off.

[0:55:58] Voice 7: off chair is there any other thoughts or questions before I do

[0:56:04] Voice 6: that trustees

[0:56:09] Voice 3: not hearing anything

[0:56:14] Voice 3: so go ahead okay thanks okay

[0:56:22] Voice 7: well appreciate your patience there okay so what's the planning

[0:56:27] Voice 7: role here for the suitable land analysis in in freshwater sustainability so it's integrating

[0:56:33] Voice 7: Integrating with the Island Trust Freshwater Sustainability Strategy, this is a strategic priority for Trust Council.

[0:56:43] Voice 7: It's helping to identify and protect watersheds and recharge zones and drinking water sources.

[0:56:51] Voice 7: And the intention is to identify areas to support equitable and sustainable water resource management.

[0:57:01] Voice 7: What's the role of suitable land analysis and policy integration?

[0:57:04] Voice 7: and i also i had marissa help me with this so it's this is not just for my brain um so it's

[0:57:11] Voice 7: supporting land use planning official community plans it could align with zoning and density

[0:57:15] Voice 7: allocations or or look at areas of opportunity where that can be changed um can support land

[0:57:22] Voice 7: use bylaws to in regulation um yeah i'm hoping that this can be a a collaborative partnership

[0:57:31] Voice 7: partnership and community engagement tool um to start discussing like how do we continually

[0:57:37] Voice 7: advance evidence-based decision making um it interests me because of my work with the

[0:57:46] Voice 7: freshwater sustainability strategy how do we start engaging this in in in land use practices not just

[0:57:53] Voice 7: by taking a map and making a development permit area on it which has its place you know not on

[0:57:59] Voice 7: on LISC-ED, there's no DPAs on LISC-ED as I recall.

[0:58:03] Voice 7: So this is another way to start integrating

[0:58:06] Voice 7: our freshwater information into planning

[0:58:13] Voice 7: and decision-making.

[0:58:15] Voice 7: And I think that by undertaking this work

[0:58:19] Voice 7: and removing some of these data sets

[0:58:22] Voice 7: from their archive location on either on mapping agent

[0:58:26] Voice 7: agent or or in a report by by enhancing the access to this data and and creating some public

[0:58:33] Voice 7: transparency over these decision making this is representing the data and which is being informing

[0:58:39] Voice 7: the decision making um and that shouldn't just be behind closed doors on in a planner's office so I

[0:58:46] Voice 7: I'm I I'm I'm kind of assuring myself this process is leading to more community engagement with with

[0:58:56] Voice 7: with the work that I've been doing with freshwater and, and, and that's,

[0:59:00] Voice 7: that has been feeling my involvement in this project for sure.

[0:59:05] Voice 7: So what are some, Oh, I see Chair Peterson raised his hand.

[0:59:12] Voice 3: Just, I mean, I think this is, this is great.

[0:59:16] Voice 3: And you're probably going to get kind of get there. So if I'm jumping the gun,

[0:59:19] Voice 3: I apologize. But I think when we there,

[0:59:25] Voice 3: I think there's a strong desire throughout the trust area

[0:59:28] Voice 3: for science-based or science-backed decisions about land use.

[0:59:39] Voice 3: And in terms of, I think we, I'm going to assume that we have a way to go

[0:59:48] Voice 3: to start integrating this into those actual land use planning decisions

[0:59:54] Voice 3: decisions uh sort of on an individual basis but i am excited by

[1:00:00] Voice 3: the potential to have mapping and the science-based tools available for members of the public

[1:00:12] Voice 3: that speak to some of the basis of the land use decisions that LTCs are going to be making.

[1:00:21] Voice 3: So I'm not sure if it's you or maybe it's Planner Chadwick or who's going to talk a

[1:00:30] Voice 3: a little bit about how we're going to be able to integrate this into our actual decision-making

[1:00:35] Voice 3: process but um if i've interrupted and it's not the right spot then just go ahead and and go where

[1:00:44] Voice 3: you were going thank you no

[1:00:46] Voice 7: no thank you for that that that that was kind of my intention of this

[1:00:49] Voice 7: slide um you know i i'm a technocratic person so uh my mind always goes through you know like for

[1:00:58] Voice 7: for access to information dashboards and tools.

[1:01:03] Voice 7: But for how this will be integrated into a planning process

[1:01:11] Voice 7: we'll have the planners speak to that.

[1:01:14] Voice 7: I'm three slides away from the conclusion here.

[1:01:18] Voice 7: And my last slide is just,

[1:01:19] Voice 7: I worked with Narissa to just have some,

[1:01:23] Voice 7: not rhetorical questions,

[1:01:24] Voice 7: but they're just questions to fuel conversation.

[1:01:27] Voice 7: conversation and hopefully when we just present those and then we can have a discussion with

[1:01:34] Voice 7: planning staff. I see that Nerissa has popped up here and I would like to turn it over to her. I'm

[1:01:41] Voice 7: just going to quickly finish off my few slides here. So we have challenges and opportunities

[1:01:47] Voice 7: with this tool. There's challenges for data availability and accuracy from island to island,

[1:01:56] Voice 7: in data can be different um we're working with different data sources from different agencies so

[1:02:01] Voice 7: it it takes some analysis for us to bring it those data sets into the tool to get them to work

[1:02:08] Voice 7: and and so there's just some just technical issues there's uh that we're that we need to

[1:02:15] Voice 7: solve as we go uh there's complex ecosystem interactions as we're talking about on how we

[1:02:20] Voice 7: looked at watershed resiliency has a high suitability in an area where there's a sense

[1:02:26] Voice 7: of ecosystem with low suitability and and and how all those ecosystems interact with groundwater

[1:02:31] Voice 7: and it's this holistic approach um so and and some of the resiliency to climate from these

[1:02:39] Voice 7: different elements are interdependent or dependent on each other and and so but by no means can this

[1:02:46] Voice 7: just be like this is the the tool of all tools i mean it's a decision-making aid right so we still

[1:02:54] Voice 7: need to plan it's not uh suitability land analysis is not an ai planner for sure um and then

[1:03:03] Voice 7: then the discussion comes to the decision making right the balancing conservation with development

[1:03:08] Voice 7: as i said all development has impact on on groundwater resources pretty much anywhere

[1:03:14] Voice 7: where you put on the island so how do you balance that aside from finding areas that are showing to

[1:03:20] Voice 7: be suitable based on this tool and the opportunities is improved data-driven decision

[1:03:27] Voice 7: making so we're structuring data we have good data management strategies where we cleaned all

[1:03:33] Voice 7: this data like that started five six years ago with my work with with with the freshwater

[1:03:39] Voice 7: water sustainability strategy we just collected all the data and processed it and and and a lot

[1:03:45] Voice 7: of that work's been done now so now we can use this data readily which is really exciting i think

[1:03:50] Voice 7: this is proactive conservation planning um it's it's facilitating climate resilience and

[1:03:56] Voice 7: sustainability for sure and then it it can't it can't open the door to collaborating with with

[1:04:02] Voice 7: first nations and and with the comox to to present them this tool and say this is you know to

[1:04:09] Voice 7: to have that conversation around it.

[1:04:11] Voice 7: And I'm not one to lead that,

[1:04:14] Voice 7: but I'm really interested just to participate

[1:04:17] Voice 7: in a process like that.

[1:04:21] Voice 7: So here are some questions and I'm not,

[1:04:26] Voice 7: I won't read them right now.

[1:04:28] Voice 7: I think I'm just gonna turn this over to Narissa now.

[1:04:30] Voice 7: This is the, so that's it, yeah.

[1:04:32] Voice 7: That's the, oops, this is my last slide here.

[1:04:35] Voice 7: So here's a few questions that you can read better than I can.

[1:04:41] Voice 7: And if you need me to go back to the map, let me know.

[1:04:45] Voice 7: But for now, I think I'm just going to turn it over to Nerissa and Sonia to go through the last little bit of the presentation here.

[1:04:55] Voice 7: Thanks.

[1:04:58] Voice 3: William, just before you start, I've got to quickly ditch out for a minute or two.

[1:05:06] Voice 3: So you can go ahead, but I just let you know,

[1:05:09] Voice 3: I just got to take care of something for about two minutes here.

[1:05:11] Voice 3: I'll be right back.

[1:05:19] Planner Chadwick (probable): Yes, Sonia's here as well.

[1:05:20] Planner Chadwick (probable): So we can both dig into these questions.

[1:05:28] Planner Chadwick (probable): And I think, William, you started into the conversation a little bit already.

[1:05:34] Planner Chadwick (probable): And Trustee Allen, you were starting to head into that conversation

[1:05:38] Planner Chadwick (probable): about how we can be using this in land use decision making.

[1:05:45] Planner Chadwick (probable): And so currently there's a number of major projects in the trust area.

[1:05:52] Planner Chadwick (probable): Hornby's OCP review, we've got Denman Island doing quite an extensive housing review.

[1:06:00] Planner Chadwick (probable): We've got an OCP on Gabriola Island, a very extensive OCP rewrite,

[1:06:07] Planner Chadwick (probable): right i would even call it um and uh and main island's also got a um housing review so um we're

[1:06:15] Planner Chadwick (probable): we're quite excited to have this data um available to us um to be able to because in all of these

[1:06:21] Planner Chadwick (probable): cases one of the the key um discussions on the on um that are that's being had is is um the question

[1:06:31] Planner Chadwick (probable): around how do we create more affordable housing or housing that's attainable to

[1:06:36] Planner Chadwick (probable): people who are a lower middle income and ultimately that you know that that means

[1:06:43] Planner Chadwick (probable): in this in this in this environment the options are really limited to from a

[1:06:52] Planner Chadwick (probable): a land use perspective to being able to support flexibility within regulations to allow for some

[1:07:03] Planner Chadwick (probable): additional smaller units and rental. But the big question is, you know, should we really,

[1:07:08] Planner Chadwick (probable): are there better places

[1:07:09] Voice 10: on

[1:07:10] Planner Chadwick (probable): all of the islands that are more suitable for more people to be

[1:07:14] Planner Chadwick (probable): living in them so this data uh allows us to to get a sense of that and um and so that uh you know

[1:07:24] Planner Chadwick (probable): that sort of that's why i'm particularly excited about it because of you know it's we we it's data

[1:07:32] Planner Chadwick (probable): that we've had and it's data that we've gained over the not the last little while with the work

[1:07:36] Planner Chadwick (probable): that william's done with the um the freshwater uh work um and it's it's a it brings it all together

[1:07:44] Planner Chadwick (probable): so that we can all look at it together

[1:07:46] Planner Chadwick (probable): in a way that hopefully makes sense.

[1:07:53] Planner Zupanec (probable): And I can quickly summarize

[1:07:55] Planner Zupanec (probable): for anyone who's watching the recording as well.

[1:07:58] Planner Zupanec (probable): The Local Trust Committee currently has requested

[1:08:01] Planner Zupanec (probable): to defer consideration of further readings

[1:08:04] Planner Zupanec (probable): of the proposed bylaws

[1:08:06] Planner Zupanec (probable): to amend the official community plan and land use bylaw

[1:08:08] Planner Zupanec (probable): and to defer consideration

[1:08:10] Planner Zupanec (probable): of some of the recommendations they've received

[1:08:12] Planner Zupanec (probable): from their advisory planning commission

[1:08:13] Planner Zupanec (probable): until they received this presentation.

[1:08:15] Planner Zupanec (probable): So today is really important because as staff, we understood that this, even at its preliminary stage, this data could very well inform how the local trust committee interprets the recommendations of staff and the advisory planning commission around permitting additional dwelling units on small lots across every residential zone on Hornby Island, which this mapping is starting to illustrate whether or not that might be appropriate.

[1:08:45] Planner Zupanec (probable): to do at this stage. So it's really important for the next business meeting in March for the

[1:08:51] Planner Zupanec (probable): local trust committee to consider whether or not they feel confident that the current bylaws as

[1:08:55] Planner Zupanec (probable): drafted can proceed, or if they're considering amendments to those bylaws to increase density

[1:09:01] Planner Zupanec (probable): beyond secondary suites and consider additional dwelling units, that there might be some serious

[1:09:06] Planner Zupanec (probable): implications based on the data that you've presented today. And that's what staff is

[1:09:10] Planner Zupanec (probable): trying to buy some time to allow the local trust committee to consider those implications.

[1:09:16] Planner Zupanec (probable): because the bylaws are at first reading and if they are to proceed to public hearing

[1:09:22] Planner Zupanec (probable): staff is going to continue to remind the local trust committee of their

[1:09:25] Planner Zupanec (probable): responsibility to ensure that all considerations are made before amending those bylaws regarding

[1:09:32] Planner Zupanec (probable): the appropriateness or suitability of increases in density or intensity of use in areas where

[1:09:38] Planner Zupanec (probable): there's known issues or potential adverse implications on the natural environment

[1:09:44] Planner Zupanec (probable): groundwater, or even First Nations interests. The other piece to consider for the general public,

[1:09:50] Planner Zupanec (probable): and again to remind the local trust committee, is the Comox First Nation has asked specifically

[1:09:54] Planner Zupanec (probable): to review this data as well prior to completing their referral response back to you regarding

[1:10:00] Planner Zupanec (probable): short-term vacation rentals and secondary suites as drafted in the current bylaws, the proposed

[1:10:06] Planner Zupanec (probable): bylaws. And so they will also be receiving a copy of these maps, setting up a date with the

[1:10:11] Planner Zupanec (probable): the consultant and William to review this information and provide their referral response

[1:10:17] Planner Zupanec (probable): around their issues and concerns around and their perspectives around increased density or intensity

[1:10:23] Planner Zupanec (probable): of use in areas that are significant ecologically to the nation or that have significant cultural

[1:10:30] Planner Zupanec (probable): heritage. Thank you.

[1:10:40] Voice 3: Rusty Allen, do you have a question?

[1:10:43] Trustee Allen (probable): Yes, I guess following up with what

[1:10:44] Trustee Allen (probable): what Sonia just said so have you so you did meet so in terms of this paragraph saying on page 35

[1:10:52] Trustee Allen (probable): about a tentative meeting January early February that's not happened yet that's what's going to

[1:10:57] Trustee Allen (probable): happen that you just mentioned where you're going to be meeting with William and KFN staff shortly

[1:11:03] Trustee Allen (probable): soon is that correct correct

[1:11:06] Planner Zupanec (probable): KFN's confirmed that they'd like to see the maps for both Denman and

[1:11:11] Planner Zupanec (probable): Hornby Island before setting the date and that information was clarified late last or mid last

[1:11:15] Planner Zupanec (probable): last week. So we will be in the process with staff to discuss how that's going to be conducted

[1:11:20] Planner Zupanec (probable): and set a meeting date as soon as possible to allow their staff to receive the same

[1:11:27] Planner Zupanec (probable): technical clarification that you've just received today.

[1:11:30] Trustee Allen (probable): Okay, so essentially we have to, we need

[1:11:34] Trustee Allen (probable): to hold off on our project charter until this happens. That's correct?

[1:11:40] Planner Zupanec (probable): You may have the information

[1:11:41] Planner Zupanec (probable): you need by your March meeting. I'm not suggesting that there's any further delay. I'm suggesting that

[1:11:45] Planner Zupanec (probable): behind the scenes we're still working with kfn on a number of things um having access to this data

[1:11:51] Planner Zupanec (probable): from our perspective is supportive already of some of the recommendations we've been making

[1:11:58] Planner Zupanec (probable): and it'll be important for your consideration of the apc recommendations and public correspondence

[1:12:03] Planner Zupanec (probable): moving forward in march yeah

[1:12:06] Trustee Allen (probable): and i also wanted to add in terms of the referral responses like

[1:12:09] Trustee Allen (probable): even from viha it's they're quite serious uh recommendations and that's where we have to

[1:12:17] Trustee Allen (probable): take these seriously beyond everything else right we've got a lot of these are all in terms of all

[1:12:23] Trustee Allen (probable): these responses there's they're very specific and um we need to account for those in our decision

[1:12:28] Trustee Allen (probable): making obviously correct

[1:12:30] Planner Zupanec (probable): that nobody is taking lightly the fact that increases in density or

[1:12:34] Planner Zupanec (probable): intensity of use is a one-sided discussion point around making sure people have access to housing.

[1:12:41] Planner Zupanec (probable): There's other implications to that that need to be considered. So these referral responses are

[1:12:47] Planner Zupanec (probable): critical to show everybody just how complex the situation is. It isn't as simple as allowing

[1:12:53] Planner Zupanec (probable): every residential lot on the island to have a secondary suite or an additional dwelling unit.

[1:12:58] Planner Zupanec (probable): On its face, that seems like the solution, but the implications of that down the road

[1:13:03] Planner Zupanec (probable): could be problematic for people, the planet, the environment, and First Nations interests as well.

[1:13:12] Voice 9: Thank you. So, sorry.

[1:13:25] Voice 9: Oh, yeah, no,

[1:13:26] Voice 6: no, go ahead.

[1:13:28] Trustee Allen (probable): So what is your recommendation, staff, at this particular juncture?

[1:13:36] Planner Zupanec (probable): Today was simply to ensure that trustees and the chair have access to this information before your March meeting.

[1:13:43] Planner Zupanec (probable): It's part of the toolkit of supporting documentation.

[1:13:46] Planner Zupanec (probable): we will be providing you a staff report with recommendations for your March meeting regarding

[1:13:53] Planner Zupanec (probable): next steps for the proposed bylaws that you currently have at first reading. That's the

[1:13:57] Planner Zupanec (probable): point in time when you'll be considering any additional referral responses that come in

[1:14:02] Planner Zupanec (probable): between now and then, as well as the Advisory Planning Commission's referral response and

[1:14:07] Planner Zupanec (probable): recommendations that you've already received, but you deferred consideration until you had

[1:14:12] Planner Zupanec (probable): this presentation. So at this point in time today, we have no recommendations for you other than

[1:14:17] Planner Zupanec (probable): please use this time to vet any questions to the technical expertise that you have to ensure

[1:14:24] Planner Zupanec (probable): preparation for your March meeting. We will have a staff report with recommendations for that meeting

[1:14:30] Planner Zupanec (probable): around whether or not to proceed with the bylaws as drafted, whether or not any changes should be

[1:14:35] Planner Zupanec (probable): considered and analysis of the responses that you've received from other agencies and any

[1:14:41] Planner Zupanec (probable): First Nation responses. I hope that helps.

[1:14:48] Trustee Allen (probable): One more question. Oh, I had a question for

[1:14:54] Trustee Allen (probable): William. Yes, please. So you kind of said earlier about you want all this information to stay with

[1:15:03] Trustee Allen (probable): planners and not go out to the public or something. Did I misread that?

[1:15:07] Voice 7: I think so.

[1:15:08] Voice 7: So, yeah, it's kind of the opposite.

[1:15:10] Trustee Allen (probable): Okay, because I think this would be really cool

[1:15:12] Trustee Allen (probable): if it eventually got on a website

[1:15:14] Trustee Allen (probable): and actually interactive with the public

[1:15:16] Trustee Allen (probable): in terms of, you know,

[1:15:18] Trustee Allen (probable): entering their address where they live or something

[1:15:19] Trustee Allen (probable): and then they could see all their layers

[1:15:21] Trustee Allen (probable): and that would just be brilliant, John.

[1:15:22] Voice 7: Yeah, yeah, that's a topic that I brought up

[1:15:27] Voice 7: just before the demo.

[1:15:29] Voice 7: Lana and I have been talking about that,

[1:15:31] Voice 7: you know, the technical hurdles to make that happen.

[1:15:35] Voice 7: and um but it it's it's it's definitely a possibility uh the the the suitability tool

[1:15:43] Voice 7: that we use in in arc gis and esri is is quite rigid so so it would be um using the same idea

[1:15:54] Voice 7: but but having it online and and and having the ability for um for a resident or decision maker

[1:16:02] Voice 7: or researcher or consultant or whoever to to go into a certain parcel or zone and and and see what

[1:16:10] Voice 7: the like the weighting that the local trust committee is has decided on and and perhaps

[1:16:16] Voice 7: they can also change the weighting and see how that would change the the um uh the suitable

[1:16:23] Voice 7: analysis also for the freshwater section landon is also has a separate contract working with me

[1:16:31] Voice 7: on the freshwater atlas which is um not only going to be presenting these layers in map form but also

[1:16:38] Voice 7: have a educational online experience um to to um kind of educate like what is watershed resiliency

[1:16:48] Voice 7: what is groundwater recharge potential so by looking at at that and then also looking at

[1:16:55] Voice 7: suitable land analysis could be very powerful for for uh you know someone who has interest in that

[1:17:01] Voice 7: to to explore um yeah so um yeah so it is the opposite of that i hope this doesn't just sit

[1:17:09] Voice 7: on a planner's desk and i hope this is a tool for the community going forward but but the the the

[1:17:16] Voice 7: intention of of doing it on the five islands as uh this first round like narissa was saying is

[1:17:22] Voice 7: is because of these official community plans

[1:17:24] Voice 7: and land use bylaw changes

[1:17:26] Voice 7: and planning staff providing this tool

[1:17:30] Voice 7: directly to trustees.

[1:17:31] Voice 7: And that's our main driving right now.

[1:17:36] Voice 7: And hopefully the next steps

[1:17:38] Voice 7: can be community engagement more

[1:17:39] Voice 7: and cool tools, right, online.

[1:17:43] Voice 7: The one thing that I don't want this meeting to time out

[1:17:46] Voice 7: before I really get this across

[1:17:48] Voice 7: is that the local trust committee

[1:17:52] Voice 7: and the community has the opportunity to change the suitability weightings to balance the values

[1:18:00] Voice 7: of the community, that is an opportunity that we have opened for the community and for LTCs

[1:18:11] Voice 7: to decide. And as I said before, we're equally weighting how close you are to a road to the

[1:18:18] Voice 7: the density of wells right and so if there is a discussion to be had um can happen now or or you

[1:18:26] Voice 7: know sometime in the future but but if if there is um like i don't know how to balance this

[1:18:33] Voice 7: conversation to to increase the values or decrease the values of each but there's an opportunity

[1:18:39] Voice 7: there and i just want to make that known to the ltc um this is this is staff's recommendation

[1:18:46] Voice 7: though like we think that this is a good way to go to balance everything equally it just i think

[1:18:52] Voice 7: it makes it more transparent on what each layer is doing to the suitable land analysis however

[1:18:57] Voice 7: if there is a value a layer here that that the ltc values more that we can increase groundwater

[1:19:04] Voice 7: well density to to 20 and remove five from from road adjacency and steep slopes and so that

[1:19:12] Voice 7: that increases that value, you know,

[1:19:15] Voice 7: doubled and everything else.

[1:19:16] Voice 7: And that would really push the SLA to,

[1:19:20] Voice 7: to focus more on groundwater well density.

[1:19:23] Voice 7: So I just wanted to make sure that that was clear,

[1:19:26] Voice 7: that that's an opportunity for the LTC and the community to engage on.

[1:19:30] Voice 7: Thanks.

[1:19:36] Trustee Allen (probable): Yeah. Thanks. Are we going to be able to get a copy of this?

[1:19:40] Trustee Allen (probable): Your PowerPoint, because it would be nice to get it ahead.

[1:19:43] Trustee Allen (probable): And then we would have been able to,

[1:19:44] Trustee Allen (probable): i would be able to sort of weigh weigh the waiting pun intended um because uh i i can't just come up

[1:19:51] Trustee Allen (probable): with something right now just looking at this i can barely even read it and um yeah it'd be nice

[1:19:55] Trustee Allen (probable): to have a little bit more time to weigh way into that way i

[1:19:59] Voice 7: i agree i mean there was a hazard of

[1:20:01] Voice 7: releasing this powerpoint before i spoke to it because it is so complex right but but now i think

[1:20:06] Voice 7: that you have the opportunity to to know what i'm talking about and i hope i've been clear i i never

[1:20:12] Voice 7: never know on these things right if this made sense or if it was just mush um but yeah you'll

[1:20:17] Voice 7: get the powerpoint presentation um you can feel free to to engage with me after the fact of course

[1:20:23] Voice 7: and and then we can also i can also work with sonja to to see if there's another opportunity

[1:20:29] Voice 7: touch point to to take this on but i'm not sure about that that's kind of you know her project

[1:20:35] Voice 7: not mine um so but yes i'll for sure you can have the powerpoint presentation and also also this

[1:20:42] Voice 7: this um special meeting has been recorded as well so you can go back through it and if there's

[1:20:48] Voice 7: something you want to see again and and also i can also provide you the the um the the pdf as

[1:20:55] Voice 7: well the layered pdf that might be a technical hurdle there because you you need a viewer that

[1:21:00] Voice 7: can look at those layers but if you have an island stress issue laptop you'll be able to

[1:21:05] Voice 7: you. Great. Thank

[1:21:06] Voice 7: you. Yeah, you're welcome.

[1:21:09] Voice 3: Trustee Scott's hand up. Lisa, is it possible

[1:21:25] Voice 3: that you, can you unmute Trustee Scott on your end?

[1:21:30] Voice 8: No, he just muted himself. I'm not able to

[1:21:33] Voice 3: mute him

[1:21:34] Voice 8: regardless. He's unmuted now. I'm not

[1:21:36] Voice 8: sure that we're hearing him.

[1:21:39] Voice 3: Okay. Trustee Scott,

[1:21:40] Voice 3: can you unmute yourself? Go ahead. Looks like you're unmuted. We can't hear him.

[1:21:46] Planner Zupanec (probable): Perhaps he

[1:21:47] Planner Zupanec (probable): He could type in his question.

[1:21:50] Voice 3: Do you want to type a question into the chat there, Trustee Scott?

[1:21:54] Voice 3: And we'll give you some time here to unfortunate technical difficulties are no fun.

[1:22:08] Voice 3: Planner Zipnick?

[1:22:09] Planner Zupanec (probable): I had a quick question for William about the turnaround time if a local trust committee comes back with a request to weight the themes or the suitability weighting slightly differently,

[1:22:19] Planner Zupanec (probable): to do maybe three scenarios where you have the staff recommended scenario and then one or two

[1:22:24] Planner Zupanec (probable): other scenarios on either end with significantly different weightings how long would that turn

[1:22:29] Planner Zupanec (probable): around time for that analysis be to provide a new series of pdf layers reflecting those

[1:22:36] Planner Zupanec (probable): alternate weightings say

[1:22:40] Voice 7: a reasonable time is like three to five business days like and i mean

[1:22:45] Voice 7: if we're under the gun we can do it faster but since we have you know like the five other ltc's

[1:22:50] Voice 7: going on there's a lot going on for Landon and I right now but um yeah it's it's not like a because

[1:22:55] Voice 7: we already have the system you know and it would just be going in and but every time that we do a

[1:23:02] Voice 7: new one like Landon and I go through it to make sure that that it because it's the the tools like

[1:23:10] Voice 7: the the ArcGIS tool is a little bit clunky so it can do bad things like change ones to tens and

[1:23:18] Voice 7: and we've had those battles.

[1:23:19] Voice 7: So it's not this huge technical challenge,

[1:23:24] Voice 7: but it does take some review and that'd be the time, yeah.

[1:23:28] Planner Zupanec (probable): Great, that's helpful for the local trust committee, thanks.

[1:23:38] Voice 6: Yeah, I see that trustee Grant was

[1:23:45] Voice 7: through the chair,

[1:23:47] Voice 7: is asking for a paper copy of the presentation.

[1:23:52] Voice 7: So yeah, we will have the presentation accessible

[1:23:54] Voice 7: and if Trustee Scott needs like a physical copy,

[1:24:00] Voice 7: then we'll have to leave that

[1:24:01] Voice 7: with the Northern office staff to ship them one, I guess.

[1:24:06] Voice 7: But yeah, it will be available in PDF.

[1:24:10] Voice 7: Once the presentation is done,

[1:24:12] Voice 7: I don't know if it'll go on the meeting page or whatnot.

[1:24:14] Voice 7: I'll work with planning staff to ensure

[1:24:16] Voice 7: that the local trust committee gets PDF copy

[1:24:21] Voice 7: of the presentation.

[1:24:22] Voice 7: And the recording will be available as well.

[1:24:25] Voice 7: Really

[1:24:35] Voice 3: interesting. I think there's a lot to, from my perspective, there's a lot to delve into and it'll be really interesting to sort of have that access and time to sort of do a bit of this perusal at our leisure.

[1:24:50] Voice 3: And I just wanted to check and see if there's anything further that anyone wants to say or any further questions.

[1:25:00] Voice 3: Well,

[1:25:07] Voice 7: I would just like to thank the local trust committee for having us.

[1:25:11] Voice 7: This was our first presentation for the suitable analysis and it's almost been two years in

[1:25:15] Voice 7: the making.

[1:25:16] Voice 7: So this is a real exciting time and yeah, open to hard and soft feedback from local

[1:25:23] Voice 7: trust committee with respect to the suitable analysis.

[1:25:26] Voice 7: Feel free to send me an email or send Sonia and Nerissa an email and yeah, just thank

[1:25:34] Voice 7: you chair.

[1:25:35] Voice 7: it's always wonderful to meet with the good folks of Hornby Island so yeah

[1:25:43] Trustee Allen (probable): I just want to thank

[1:25:44] Trustee Allen (probable): trustee

[1:25:45] Voice 3: Allen yeah

[1:25:46] Trustee Allen (probable): I just want to thank William and Landon for their presentation and stuff as

[1:25:50] Trustee Allen (probable): usual their knowledge and um yeah there's a lot to unpack here so but it's it's it's encouraging

[1:25:58] Trustee Allen (probable): because it's it's really good I like visuals where you can actually see things and sort of

[1:26:02] Trustee Allen (probable): reports all the time so i'm glad you showed us those colors you promised and um yeah and thanks

[1:26:08] Trustee Allen (probable): and next time you come to the island william give me a call i'm for a complimentary cup of coffee

[1:26:13] Voice 7: yeah i will for sure i'll come stop stop by the co-op and do i'm due for a mountain bike on

[1:26:19] Voice 7: hornby okay

[1:26:20] Trustee Allen (probable): well i'll take you for a tour in a car okay

[1:26:23] Voice 7: that's fine thank

[1:26:26] Trustee Allen (probable): you thank you thanks

[1:26:28] Voice 3: Thanks again to William and Landon and Nerissa and Sonia and all of our backup support staff for making this happen for us today.

[1:26:40] Voice 3: I think this is exciting.

[1:26:41] Voice 3: I think it'll be really exciting when the public gets a chance to interface with this.

[1:26:46] Voice 3: My experience is people love maps, so I always love these kind of tools myself, but I really appreciate the work, and I'll call for adjournment.

[1:27:02] Trustee Allen (probable): enjoy your weekend great

[1:27:08] Voice 5: thank you thanks everyone hopefully

[1:27:11] Voice 3: hopefully it melts for you

[1:27:13] Voice 3: alex

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February 7, 2025  
 
Hornby Island Local Trust Committee 
Minutes of Special Meeting 
 
Date:  
Location:  
February 7, 2025 
Electronic Meeting 
 
Members Present: Timothy Peterson, Chair 
 Alex Allen, Local Trustee 
 Grant Scott, Local Trustee 
  
Staff Present: Sonja Zupanec, Planner 
Narissa Chadwick, Planner 
William Shulba, Senior Freshwater Specialist 
Landen Matechuk, GIS Consultant and Researcher 
Lisa Millard, Meeting Administrator  
Carly Bilney, Recorder  
  
Others Present: There was 1 member of the public in attendance  
 
1. CALL TO ORDER 
Chair Peterson called the meeting to order at 10:35 a.m. 
2. TERRITORIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 
Chair Peterson acknowledged that the meeting was being held on the territory of the 
Coast Salish First Nations.    
3. APPROVAL OF AGENDA 
The following addition to the agenda was presented for consideration: 
 Add 4.2 Discussion of Next Steps  
By general consent the agenda was adopted as amended. 
4. BUSINESS ITEMS 
4.1 Suitable Land Analysis Review Presentation 
The Senior Freshwater Specialist presented the Suitable Land Analysis – the 
first presentation of the tool made to a Local Trust Committee. Landen Matechuk 
introduced himself as the GIS Consultant and Researcher contributing to the 
work. 
The Senior Freshwater Specialist made the following comments: 
 The Suitable Land Analysis is a preserve and protect tool that aims to: 
▪ Identify suitable lands as a tool in the Islands Trust Housing 
Toolkit; 

 
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▪ Balance the preserve and protect mandate of the Islands Trust; 
▪ Consider unique amenities and the environment; 
▪ Be used with other agencies as a cooperative tool;  
▪ Prioritize areas across the Islands Trust for sustainable 
development while emphasizing conservation and a resilient 
community; 
▪ Identify areas for additional residential density, support land use 
decision-making, and integrate ecological, social and economic 
themes; and 
▪ Integrate several themes – ecological sensitivity, freshwater 
sustainability, transportation and infrastructure – to inform land 
use decisions and address opportunities for suitable development. 
 The Suitable Land Analysis uses third-party information as well as 
primary data created by the Islands Trust 
 There is a lot more work we can do around this by collaborating with First 
Nations and local interest groups  
 
The following comments were made about the Suitable Land Analysis 
methodology: 
 The analysis involved collating and processing datasets (e.g. data on 
saltwater intrusion from the Province) and using existing maps and 
spatial information (no data was generated specifically for the project) 
 The tool looks at two main themes of freshwater and environment, and 
how they align with sustainable infrastructure to find areas suitable for 
potential increased density 
 The analysis uses ArcGIS Pro’s Suitability Modeler Tool to weigh values 
using a multiple-criteria decision analysis 
 Layers used in the mapping were chosen as the most applicable to the 
five islands currently engaged in projects that seek increased housing 
opportunities 
 The layers include: Marine Shore Adjacency, Sensitive Ecosystems, At 
Risk Ecological Communities, Dominant Age of Forests, Groundwater 
Recharge, Groundwater Well Density, Watershed Resiliency, Saltwater 
Intrusion Risk, Road Access, and Steep Slopes and Geohazards 
 Each layer has been weighted equally, but the weighting of each value 
can be changed 
 Local Trust Committees can work with planning staff and communities to 
adjudicate the weighting and determine whether these are appropriate 
layers for the suitability analysis 
 The tool was created primarily to focus on areas of high suitability for 
increased density rather than low suitability; information based on lived 
experience is needed to better understand areas of vulnerability 
A question was raised about the expansion of vulnerable aquifer stations and 
how people feel there is a lack of related data that speaks to situations where 
residents are running out of water. The Senior Freshwater Specialist commented 
that the information in this meeting can likely be used in that discussion. He 
referred to a case study on Gabriola, Freshwater Footprint, that aims to blend 
the technical aspects of existing data with social sciences (e.g. survey, 

 
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community engagement, etc.), and added that while the Suitable Land Analysis 
provides scientific, technical data, it is not informed by qualitative, on-the-ground 
information.  
A map was shared to show attendees the various colour-coded layers 
encompassed by the Suitable Land Analysis, and where areas of high, low and 
moderate suitability exist on the island. The following comments were made: 
 The Agricultural Land Reserve is a big hindrance to a lot of the suitability; 
 A hazard of the mapping is that you may have a property that shows very 
high suitability adjacent to a property that has low suitability; 
 The shoreline is mostly unsuitable for development; 
 When development happens in the Islands Trust area there is going to be 
an impact to groundwater resources in some way; 
 The map shows registered wells that have active status; there is a 
limitation to the data in that there may be wells that are registered and 
have active status but are not active; and, 
 Since well registry became regulated under the Water Sustainability Act, 
the Province continues to refine the data. 
  
The GIS Consultant spoke to a mapping layer called Watershed Resiliency and 
made the following comments: 
 The Capital Regional District is acquiring a new watershed and possibly 
using it to contribute to the freshwater supply; they wanted to quantify the 
resilience of their system (the ecosystem’s ability to withstand, recover 
and respond to natural and human-caused disturbances); 
 This has been included in the mapping through various characteristics 
(e.g. amount and diversity of species in an area, structural diversity of an 
area, and the variability of one area and its characteristics compared to 
its neighbours); and, 
 This creates a mapping layer that indicates areas of high resiliency, which 
have a low suitability for development. 
 
Following the presentation, discussion ensued and the following comments were 
made: 
 There is not a layer that shows current zoning of land, but it will be 
added; 
 The planning role of the Suitable Land Analysis in policy integration is to 
support land-use planning and evidence-based decision-making; 
 By enhancing access to data and increasing transparency, the data 
presented can inform decision-making and result in greater community 
engagement; 
 There is a strong desire throughout the Trust area for science-backed 
decisions about land use; 
 Challenges with the tool include: data availability and accuracy and 
complex interactions among interdependent ecosystems; 
 The tool is a decision-making aid; communities still need to plan; 

 
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 A lot of data has been processed and can now be readily used; and, 
 The tool presents increased opportunity for collaboration with First 
Nations. 
 
4.2  Discussion of Next Steps 
Planners Chadwick and Zupanec outlined next steps and made the following 
comments: 
 Various islands are undergoing Official Community Plan and housing 
reviews and, in all of the discussions, a key question is how to create 
affordable housing that is attainable to people who are lower or middle 
income? 
 Options are limited, from a land-use perspective, to support flexibility 
within regulations that allow for additional smaller units 
 The data gives a sense of whether there are better places on each island 
for more people to be living 
 This data could inform how the Local Trust Committee interprets the 
recommendations of staff and the Advisory Planning Commission around 
permitting additional dwelling units on small lots across every residential 
zone on Hornby Island 
 K'ómoks First Nation specifically asked to review this data prior to 
completing a referral response back to the Local Trust Committee; they 
would like to see the maps before setting a date to meet with staff 
 Recommendations from the Vancouver Island Healthy Authority are quite 
specific and the Local Trust Committee needs to take them into account 
in its decision-making 
 Today’s presentation was to ensure that Trustees have access to the 
information before the March Local Trust Committee meeting at which 
staff will provide a report with recommendations regarding next steps 
 Trustees will consider additional referral responses and 
recommendations from the Advisory Planning Commission at the March 
meeting 
 The hope is to make the Suitable Land Analysis a tool that can be 
accessed by community members going forward, so they can look at a 
certain parcel or area and view the weighting given to it by the Local 
Trust Committee  
 It would be great to have the information presented today using ArcGIS 
Pro easily accessible online  
 The Local Trust Committee and the community has the opportunity to 
change the suitability weightings to balance the values of the community, 
and next steps can include community engagement 
 If a Local Trust Committee would like to change the weighting of values, 
the turnaround time to amend layers would be about 3-5 business days 
 A copy of the PowerPoint presentation will be provided to Trustees; and, 
as requested, a paper copy of the presentation will be provided to 
Trustee Scott 
 

 
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5. ADJOURNMENT 
By general consent the meeting was adjourned at 12:01 p.m. 
 
 
_________________________ 
Tim Peterson, Chair 
 
Certified Correct: 
 
 
_________________________ 
Carly Bilney, Recorder