Gabriola Island Local Trust Committee special meeting, February 27, 2025

[0:00:00] Voice 6: Attempt to fill in the blanks.

[0:00:04] Voice 6: Thank you.

[0:00:07] Voice 6: All right, I think we're ready to start the meeting.

[0:00:10] Voice 6: I will attempt to chair this meeting.

[0:00:12] Voice 6: So it is a meeting of the Gabriel Island Local Trust Committee.

[0:00:16] Voice 6: It's a special meeting, and I will call the meeting to order.

[0:00:21] Voice 6: I would like to acknowledge that we are meeting here on Snenemach territory,

[0:00:26] Voice 6: and I feel very, very fortunate to live here and to work here.

[0:00:33] Voice 6: And I would like to introduce my fellow trustee, Toby Elliott.

[0:00:37] Voice 6: Morning.

[0:00:38] Voice 6: And planner, Norissa Chadwick, who's come up from the Victoria office to help us with this meeting.

[0:00:45] Voice 6: And William Choba, our freshwater specialist.

[0:00:49] Voice 6: Would you like to say anything?

[0:00:54] Voice 3: You'll hear a lot from me.

[0:00:56] Voice 3: I'll give Len an opportunity to introduce himself, but you can carry on.

[0:01:02] Voice 3: Okay.

[0:01:03] Voice 3: Yeah.

[0:01:03] Voice 6: Thank you, William.

[0:01:04] Voice 6: And Landon, I don't think I have met you.

[0:01:07] Voice 6: I don't know who's met Landon before, but I have not met you before.

[0:01:10] Voice 6: And I'd be very happy if you could introduce yourself.

[0:01:13] Voice 1: Yes, thank you.

[0:01:15] Voice 1: My name is Landon Matichuk.

[0:01:18] Voice 1: I'm a GIS consultant, GIS researcher.

[0:01:24] Voice 1: And I've worked on various projects with the Islands Trust for the last four to five years,

[0:01:31] Voice 1: focusing mostly on ecosystem resilience and of course working on this tool here the suitable

[0:01:38] Voice 1: land analysis in addition to that i've had my consulting company and worked on that for

[0:01:45] Voice 1: worked with that for four years and also conducting research at ubc oh

[0:01:52] Voice 6: very good we're

[0:01:54] Voice 6: very happy to have you with us today. Thank you, Landon. No problem. So approval of agenda. Is

[0:02:00] Voice 6: there anything to add to the agenda? No. Okay. All right. I assume that we approve by consensus.

[0:02:10] Voice 6: Yes. And the business items we will be dealing with today. The first one is the suitable land

[0:02:16] Voice 6: analysis review presentation, which we've all been looking forward to. All

[0:02:23] Trustee Elliott: right. And who's

[0:02:26] Trustee Elliott: leading that off that

[0:02:28] Voice 3: would be me okay great so um yeah thank you to the local trust committee

[0:02:35] Voice 3: for having us and presenting um the suitable analysis tool um i yeah this is a actually a

[0:02:45] Voice 3: really interesting time for the gabriola local trust committee um of course you have major

[0:02:50] Voice 3: projects going on and as well as major freshwater project going on so uh behind the scenes just a

[0:02:57] Voice 3: not attending but watching the webinar is our freshwater footprint team so it's going to be

[0:03:03] Voice 3: really great for them to get the consultants to get a view of how we are approaching using

[0:03:12] Voice 3: freshwater data and inland use planning and how we can advance that with the freshwater footprint

[0:03:18] Voice 3: project so yeah it's it's really great we are going to be going through a presentation today

[0:03:25] Voice 3: day, there's going to be two types of presenting. We'll be going through a typical PowerPoint slide

[0:03:33] Voice 3: presentation, and then we will be breaking out into a demonstration of the suitable analysis tool

[0:03:39] Voice 3: in a layered GIS PDF. So I'll just switch to that. So yeah, need not fret, we will be looking at the

[0:03:49] Voice 3: data, even though I'll just be briefly touching upon it through the presentation.

[0:03:56] Voice 3: Okay. And another just point of, I don't know if it's a point of order, but I'm in the throes of an illness right now. So if you see me mute, that's why. Okay, let's, I'm going to share my screen.

[0:04:13] Voice 3: Okay, so let's start. So this is our last of a four-island tour of presenting the suitable

[0:04:24] Voice 3: land analysis. And I'm sure it's known by the trustees, local trust committee, and especially

[0:04:35] Voice 3: the project team that out of all the islands we worked on, Gabriel is probably the most data-rich

[0:04:41] Voice 3: Rich Island. And so this, we're excited to present the suitable land analysis because of the data

[0:04:50] Voice 3: integrity that was used to develop it. Let's see, is this work? A little bit of a lag. Yeah, there

[0:05:00] Voice 3: we go. Okay, sweet. So not to belabor the point, but I often start my presentations with the object

[0:05:07] Voice 3: of the trust. And I think for this presentation, it's really fitting. The suitable land analysis

[0:05:14] Voice 3: tool is trying to engage the mandate of the Amish trust by preserving and protecting the

[0:05:23] Voice 3: trust area and its unique amenities and environment. And really, it does focus on the

[0:05:31] Voice 3: latter part of our object as well that's in cooperation with with other agencies and we use

[0:05:37] Voice 3: data that was generated and and and sourced from from the provincial government and through the

[0:05:48] Voice 3: freshwater footprint project we're working really closely with the regional district of Nanaimo so

[0:05:52] Voice 3: that's not included here I should say that but in in the future that that information and data

[0:06:01] Voice 3: can be included in in the suitable analysis and we're hoping that this presentation is a first

[0:06:09] Voice 3: step into presenting on the methodology of the tool as well as showing the data but it's it's

[0:06:19] Voice 3: not it's not set in stone so it's it's possible that we can work with other interest groups like

[0:06:28] Voice 3: like conservation groups to get conservation data

[0:06:32] Voice 3: or work with First Nation to get other types of information,

[0:06:38] Voice 3: like culturally sensitive areas.

[0:06:40] Voice 3: And those types of data can be worked into the suitable land analysis,

[0:06:45] Voice 3: not in this current project.

[0:06:47] Voice 3: This current project had a very limited scope and budget.

[0:06:49] Voice 3: But to go forward, the methodology is flexible enough

[0:06:54] Voice 3: to accept those types of data to be an information.

[0:06:58] Voice 3: to be

[0:06:58] Voice 3: included in it and um another like point of order and sorry who's the chair i'm sharing yeah

[0:07:05] Voice 3: trustee evans yeah so i i'm open to to um having questions um throughout the presentation it worked

[0:07:13] Voice 3: another one so if you have a a question uh feel free to just interrupt me and we can we can uh

[0:07:20] Voice 3: handle the questions as they come that's

[0:07:22] Voice 6: great thank you william you're

[0:07:24] Voice 3: welcome okay so the uh

[0:07:26] Voice 3: So the purpose of the suitable land analysis tool, or SLA, is designed to evaluate and prioritize areas across the island trust area for sustainable and suitable development, while emphasizing the information and data we have relating to environmental conservation and freshwater sustainability and community resilience.

[0:07:51] Voice 3: The tool integrates data on ecological sensitivity, freshwater, transportation, infrastructure, and slope stability to inform land use decisions.

[0:08:02] Voice 3: So a lot of this data information is information that the planners have historically been using to adjudicate, say, rezoning applications or projects of the local trust committee to address areas of perhaps of increasing density in areas or just involving in updates to official community plans or land use bylaws.

[0:08:32] Voice 3: that these data have been accessible from planners and now we're just engaging it in in this

[0:08:39] Voice 3: methodology. So the objectives of the SLA are to identify areas suitable for additional residential

[0:08:49] Voice 3: residential density. So we can, it may be apparent that if we're finding, if we're mapping areas of

[0:09:05] Voice 3: land of suitability, that perhaps the unsuitable lands are lands that can be identified for

[0:09:15] Voice 3: conservation and and that that that may hold true for for certain lands but really this is a the the

[0:09:24] Voice 3: the layers and the values and and the process the methodology is leaning towards finding areas of

[0:09:30] Voice 3: suitable land not areas to identify for conservation the island stress conservancy has

[0:09:36] Voice 3: the regional conservation plan their methodology is is quite similar to ours it uses and i'll get

[0:09:43] Voice 3: get to the methodology in a moment but this this tool is to identify suitable lands rather than

[0:09:49] Voice 3: identify its objective is not to identify non-suitable lands for conservation yeah i've

[0:09:57] Voice 3: said all those things already uh so again we're we're looking at uh environmental uh values and

[0:10:07] Voice 3: and freshwater values including groundwater vulnerability and landon will speak later on

[0:10:14] Voice 3: about his watershed resiliency mapping methodology that we're using within the methodology and then

[0:10:22] Voice 3: some community infrastructure stuff so i'm just kind of saying that over again and this project

[0:10:28] Voice 3: so how am i involved i guess i didn't say that uh i was brought into this project midstream to

[0:10:34] Voice 3: steward the freshwater information and data into the into the methodology and ensure that

[0:10:40] Voice 3: it was making sense. And when we were having issues with GIS resourcing, that's when I took

[0:10:49] Voice 3: more of a lead role in the project. And then I've been managing Landon's contract to engage this

[0:10:59] Voice 3: work. So the use of the ARC Pro suitability modeler tool was that method was already provided

[0:11:07] Voice 3: it to me before I came into this project. That was a decision from our outgoing GIS coordinator,

[0:11:15] Voice 3: Mark VanVekel. It uses a multi-criteria decision analysis in MCDA

[0:11:21] Voice 3: for prioritization. And this is a standard spatial analyst tool. It's what we use for

[0:11:29] Voice 3: groundwater recharge mapping. It's what Landon is, a similar type of work that Landon's done for

[0:11:35] Voice 3: watershed resiliency mapping. And then beyond that we are overlaying other data sets to assess

[0:11:43] Voice 3: suitability for residential expansion. So one of the overlays would be parks and protected areas,

[0:11:49] Voice 3: of course we're not going to there for that, agricultural land reserve. These weren't

[0:11:54] Voice 3: included into the analysis because they're either a go or no go. So we just have those as an

[0:12:00] Voice 3: an external layer just to show you where even though a parcel of land like a park will show

[0:12:06] Voice 3: that it might be suitable for under the suitable land analysis tool it's it's not available for

[0:12:13] Voice 3: for this use so then we just have an overlay layer on that to to demonstrate that

[0:12:20] Voice 8: that's helpful yeah

[0:12:22] Voice 3: so again just to like drive it home these are the three main i'm we're calling

[0:12:26] Voice 3: and these values like the community values and and staff have done uh our best with the

[0:12:33] Voice 3: information available to us without engaging with the community let's say that on on um what uh

[0:12:41] Voice 3: data sets we can um look at and process within these values to get a suitable land analysis

[0:12:50] Voice 3: and that's what this page is so again this is the environmental side the freshwater side and

[0:12:57] Voice 3: the sustainable infrastructure side and and each um each uh value is weighted for an overall

[0:13:08] Voice 3: suitability uh rating and and then each layer within the the the theme uh so if we just jump

[0:13:18] Voice 3: to fresh water we have groundwater recharge potential watershed resiliency groundwater

[0:13:23] Voice 3: water well density and risk of saltwater intrusion all of those are provided equal weighting for their

[0:13:28] Voice 3: importance for um for suitable land analysis and and that's across the board and so this was

[0:13:35] Voice 3: staff's first um recommendation just to equally weight all of these layers within the values

[0:13:43] Voice 3: and um and and just process the suitable land analysis that way uh the opportunity for the

[0:13:52] Voice 3: the local trust committee and for the community is to perhaps engage in a discussion of values.

[0:14:01] Voice 3: And I know that you've been doing that through your land use byline official community plan

[0:14:06] Voice 3: update project and perhaps determine that there are values that have greater weight

[0:14:14] Voice 3: than other ones.

[0:14:15] Voice 3: So in this case, groundwater recharge potential, like protecting groundwater recharge is

[0:14:21] Voice 3: is weighted the same value as an adjacency to a road.

[0:14:27] Voice 3: And that might be true,

[0:14:28] Voice 3: or that may not reflect the values of the community

[0:14:34] Voice 3: when looking at increasing residential density.

[0:14:38] Voice 3: Where these layers came from, like I said,

[0:14:42] Voice 3: they're either primary data sets from island stress,

[0:14:45] Voice 3: so the groundwater recharge potential

[0:14:48] Voice 3: was from one of our major projects,

[0:14:50] Voice 3: same with groundwater resiliency groundwater well density came from the province and then we just

[0:14:55] Voice 3: processed it to get the density and risk of saltwater intrusion came from the province as

[0:15:00] Voice 3: well the the majority of the layers of well all the layers oh no sorry three these three layers

[0:15:07] Voice 3: have been provided by the stress conservancy so we're insurgency sense of ecosystems and at risk

[0:15:14] Voice 3: ecological communities and um and then dominant age was provided by the vegetation resource

[0:15:22] Voice 3: inventory which land in process to to determine um in in areas what are the ages of tree stands

[0:15:30] Voice 3: so this is not the ages of ecosystems this is the ages of particular tree stands and on gabriel

[0:15:36] Voice 3: that's kind of unique it's it's unique because the dominant age of tree stands in in densely

[0:15:44] Voice 3: populated areas can be quite old it's just the way that gabriela has has um has developed some

[0:15:52] Voice 3: of the most dense areas where some dominant trees have been um preserved and so uh we'll see that

[0:16:00] Voice 3: when we get into the data um so just to i think i made my point clearer that um that there there

[0:16:11] Voice 3: There is an opportunity for the LTC and the community and, you know, with staff to discuss waiting and change it if need be, or even swap out layers or add new ones.

[0:16:24] Voice 3: So maybe multimodal transportation for sustainable infrastructure, or maybe there can be proximity to village.

[0:16:33] Voice 3: I don't know.

[0:16:34] Voice 3: That's something that, you know, that's more on the planning side.

[0:16:36] Voice 3: uh for sensitive ecosystems uh this is from i think it's it's a it's a good data set and and

[0:16:46] Voice 3: i think that it it really uh does well on on gabriola perhaps um at-risk ecological communities

[0:16:53] Voice 3: and sensitive ecosystems are quite similar um and the way that we handle sensitive ecosystems

[0:16:58] Voice 3: is only looking at the primary ecosystem so when you have smaller sensitive ecosystems like

[0:17:04] Voice 3: wetlands they may be overlooked so if there was mapping from um a concert conservancy group on

[0:17:13] Voice 3: on cabriola that that looks like it has value to to be balanced as a as a layer within the

[0:17:23] Voice 3: environmental section and then that can either be swapped out or added and and so there's flexibility

[0:17:28] Voice 3: there uh what's not flexible is going under the hood of each layer and changing um what the

[0:17:38] Voice 3: suitability is of a particular classification of in the layer so an easy one to talk about is

[0:17:45] Voice 3: groundwater well density so a very high groundwater density is 30 wells per kilometer squared

[0:17:52] Voice 3: and and then that results to a very low suitability factor so how do we know that 30 wells per square

[0:18:00] Voice 3: kilometer or greater is very high that's comes from research from existing documentation from

[0:18:06] Voice 3: the province from from academic research and and this was done by a specialist which is me

[0:18:12] Voice 3: the resiliency was done by Landon and the the suitability factor assigned to it was provided

[0:18:22] Voice 3: provided by that specialist. Another example is for sensitive ecosystems. This was provided to

[0:18:31] Voice 3: us by the Island Stress Conservancy. And the sensitive ecosystem one is pretty easy. If

[0:18:35] Voice 3: there's a sensitive ecosystem, it has

[0:18:37] Voice 3: very low suitability. If there's no sensitive ecosystem

[0:18:40] Voice 3: map, it has a very high suitability. Obviously, just for that sensitive ecosystem layer doesn't

[0:18:48] Voice 3: Doesn't mean it's high, just because there's no sense of ecosystem, doesn't mean it's very high suitability across the board.

[0:18:55] Voice 3: It's just for that particular layer.

[0:18:57] Voice 3: And at-risk ecological communities, it's a pretty simplistic data set.

[0:19:01] Voice 3: You have, this is from the province, so they have defined these as yellow, blue, and red.

[0:19:06] Voice 3: And then the Islands Trust Conservancy just equated those to a very high to high moderate and low suitability.

[0:19:13] Voice 3: so if it's a red red listed ecological community of course it's low suitability and then um same

[0:19:22] Voice 3: with uh dominant age is really interesting one so if it of course if it's old growth we're

[0:19:26] Voice 3: suggesting that it's very low suitability and if it's cleared it can be a high suitability

[0:19:31] Voice 3: and then that's pretty obvious and then road adjacency is pretty easy if it's it's near it's

[0:19:40] Voice 3: high if it's far it's low and and for slopes it's really difficult to build on a steep slope

[0:19:45] Voice 3: and and so that's very low suitability and then if it is a if it's a low line slope or no slope

[0:19:51] Voice 3: it's flat land it's easier to um to develop on that so then it's a higher suitability

[0:19:59] Voice 3: and um yeah so so these results were put together this isn't the pdf so you don't have to strain

[0:20:05] Voice 3: in your eyes um but they were put into this layered pdf style and we'll we'll flip over and

[0:20:11] Voice 3: look at that tool this is a static tool so we we just did we we did the the analysis um the tool

[0:20:20] Voice 3: is quite finicky it's crashed on landon several times in the last week and and the presentation

[0:20:26] Voice 3: of this information uh using a layer pdf system uh has equity issues um you need a professional

[0:20:35] Voice 3: professional pdf web uh sorry professional pdf browser to to view these uh just simple

[0:20:43] Voice 3: acrobat reader you can't open up uh gis layers so so landon and i have discussed many times uh

[0:20:51] Voice 3: about having a more dynamic tool where it could be an an online tool where anybody can go in and

[0:20:57] Voice 3: turn layers on and off and zoom in out of parcels uh and it could go so as far that we can have a

[0:21:04] Voice 3: tool that um we can slide uh the importance of layers back and forth or at least present

[0:21:10] Voice 3: scenarios if if you value ecosystems more than fresh water and and and um planners the ltc or

[0:21:19] Voice 3: or just the public can can go in and um explore that and now that would need a a um a project

[0:21:27] Voice 3: beyond this one and so I see

[0:21:29] Voice 7: trustee

[0:21:30] Voice 3: and and so just to finish what I was going to just to finish

[0:21:35] Voice 3: the slide because this is a good break to to ask a bunch of questions before we go into the pdf

[0:21:39] Voice 3: and so that was it your timing is really good trustee Elliot for asking questions and we'll

[0:21:45] Voice 3: like kind of pause right now for for as many as we want thank you

[0:21:49] Trustee Elliott: question well this is great

[0:21:52] Trustee Elliott: Great. So, thanks for pointing out the equity piece about PDFs. The question has been raised about the users of the maps with the potential concern that, well, how wide do you want to open it?

[0:22:13] Trustee Elliott: Do you want potential, and let's just use the worst case scenario, speculative developers accessing a map and drilling down to the lot level and going, that's a great place to put my giant house, right?

[0:22:28] Trustee Elliott: Or whatever development they want to do.

[0:22:32] Trustee Elliott: um so what's the balance of holding this information sort of um at the level of use

[0:22:40] Trustee Elliott: for professionals who can distill it for users um versus making it fully open to

[0:22:47] Trustee Elliott: anyone to access and use like are we developing a tool that will be fully public and uh and we

[0:22:55] Trustee Elliott: can't really control the end result what's the balance that is achieved and is that a political

[0:23:00] Trustee Elliott: decision so many questions yeah

[0:23:02] Voice 3: great great great question and um i i i i'm under the belief that

[0:23:10] Voice 3: anything we do should be fully transparent and public to whoever um so all of the data that we

[0:23:18] Voice 3: have we assume that we have used here there's no um data sharing agreement that restricts us from

[0:23:25] Voice 3: sharing it with the public like we're not using archaeological sites for that very purpose or

[0:23:30] Voice 3: or for this first edition of this we're not using uh you know uh map locations from

[0:23:38] Voice 3: cultural knowledge holders that you know that may not want us to share it so um i think that it it

[0:23:46] Voice 3: should be an online tool and and i think that the risk would be is that if someone

[0:23:53] Voice 3: someone yeah like uses this tool to then say i'm gonna put like lay down a 10,000 square foot house

[0:24:00] Voice 3: here and perhaps that uh engagement doesn't involve an island stress planner an island planner

[0:24:07] Voice 3: then that's yeah that's a more of a i i don't know but if if there is you know like when i first

[0:24:16] Voice 3: first show this to uh staff uh like the conservancy folks are really hung up on

[0:24:25] Voice 3: on like parks showing as suitability and it's it's or or or agricultural land reserve

[0:24:32] Voice 3: and sure the tool might show suitability for those areas but of course there's it's not going

[0:24:39] Voice 3: anywhere because you know through through the planning process we know we

[0:24:44] Voice 3: can't go into those

[0:24:45] Voice 3: areas right and and then like none of this like um uh supersedes the the the real detailed work

[0:24:55] Voice 3: that needs to be done through a rezoning application proof of water and and community

[0:25:00] Voice 3: engagement and all that stuff right so um this is a high level tool except it does work on a

[0:25:06] Voice 3: parcel level and we'll zoom into a few parcels and look at it um but this isn't uh you know this

[0:25:12] Voice 3: isn't an ai planner right this this is a tool that can be used by planning staff but i think it's also

[0:25:18] Voice 3: great to have this data accessible to the public to to demonstrate to the public what

[0:25:26] Voice 3: planners are using to to make evidence-based landed land use decision making right so

[0:25:35] Voice 3: heart you know hard to say i i don't want to like like i want to caution on the side of

[0:25:41] Voice 3: of you know this is the LTC's project and if they don't wish it to be online then that's

[0:25:46] Voice 3: you know that's the wish of the LTC but from a technical standpoint I think that there's value

[0:25:54] Voice 3: in in having it online wrapped into a more educational engagement you know rather than it

[0:26:02] Voice 3: be a tool that's being used and perhaps PDFs been printed in staff reports and then nobody

[0:26:10] Voice 3: really knows where it comes from i think that's that's really difficult to

[0:26:14] Voice 11: to

[0:26:15] Voice 3: um you know on

[0:26:17] Voice 3: maybe politically because it's the transparency is low for for that so but maybe narissa has a

[0:26:24] Voice 3: better um perspective on that on

[0:26:29] Voice 4: this the sharing yeah

[0:26:31] Voice 3: and

[0:26:32] Voice 4: how we share yeah

[0:26:34] Voice 3: yeah

[0:26:35] Voice 4: well i mean i

[0:26:36] Voice 4: think i think that's that's something that we need to kind of talk about that's a that's a

[0:26:39] Voice 4: sort of next in this project generally and i think in in the context of specific projects we can

[0:26:47] Voice 4: you know um be as transparent as as as as we're able to um and being able to have this to refer

[0:26:55] Voice 4: to and i think the the other i think key piece of this conversation is that um i mean essentially

[0:27:02] Voice 4: this this model just helps us to bring all the data that we would otherwise be using anyways

[0:27:07] Voice 4: ways together in one place so um that's i think something that's important to understand

[0:27:19] Voice 8: yeah that's great um

[0:27:25] Voice 3: any other questions before i move to the pdf so

[0:27:29] Trustee Elliott: just looking at the second

[0:27:31] Trustee Elliott: bullet point the static tool desired change in the suitability weighting cannot um so for the

[0:27:37] Trustee Elliott: purposes of a specific project you know we're in our

[0:27:40] Trustee Elliott: ocp review um we're going to sort of

[0:27:47] Trustee Elliott: maybe a specific question about timeline like we would set the suitability waiting for the project

[0:27:55] Trustee Elliott: of the ocp review and i wish that's you know spits out a map and here's all the suitable places to

[0:28:03] Trustee Elliott: to develop um there has to be a point at which that map is sort of final this is what we're

[0:28:09] Trustee Elliott: looking upon at and here's the agreed upon values that we're basing our decisions on right so

[0:28:16] Trustee Elliott: and then for future projects there'll be perhaps different weighting different considerations go

[0:28:21] Trustee Elliott: into it um and then the methodology or i guess the project needs to describe what goes into that

[0:28:29] Trustee Elliott: waiting and why yeah i guess i'm just trying to anticipate yeah i'm trying to work out the

[0:28:36] Trustee Elliott: timeline in my head for that because it's

[0:28:41] Voice 3: dynamic and then it

[0:28:41] Trustee Elliott: becomes static yeah

[0:28:44] Voice 3: it's it's a that's

[0:28:46] Voice 3: a great um perspective because um it was always my understanding that that this presentation to

[0:28:52] Voice 3: the ltcs would introduce the methodology and and the tool and then the data that was used

[0:28:57] Voice 3: And then there will be some type of engagement with the LTC and perhaps the community to identify suitable weighting and if so, replace or add data sets.

[0:29:16] Voice 3: that's the what i mean by it's a static tool is that we we we've taken this weighting and we

[0:29:24] Voice 3: processed it and then we provided this pdf map and there's many steps in there and and and it

[0:29:31] Voice 3: takes time and some frustrating stuff like crashing of the model and things like that because it's

[0:29:37] Voice 3: um and and so that that's where i was getting to that the turnaround time to likely add new layers

[0:29:45] Voice 3: is beyond landon's current contract you know but because he's done by the end of march and

[0:29:52] Voice 3: and and really he's he's running out of hours on this project um so so that that's a consider

[0:30:00] Voice 3: if if there were new layers to to be considered then that would have to move the project along

[0:30:08] Voice 3: forward definitely to create an online tool is is beyond the scope of this project um to

[0:30:15] Voice 3: change some like suitability weighting numbers and to process like to reprocess the the model

[0:30:24] Voice 3: or the tool as um using the layers provided um that's possible um and

[0:30:33] Voice 11: turn

[0:30:35] Voice 3: around time on that

[0:30:36] Voice 3: is is you know not not not hours or days but but it can be turned around um it's it you know the

[0:30:44] Voice 3: the reason why i said it's a static um process is because it we can't dynamically change those

[0:30:51] Voice 3: values and just have the map automatically update. But if we gave in a future project that

[0:30:58] Voice 3: if there was a need for that, like say changing values so we can see on a parcel-to-parcel layer

[0:31:04] Voice 3: or project-to-project layer just for interest sake, that's possible. That's something that

[0:31:11] Voice 3: Landon and I can present a business case on and have a very dynamic tool with sliders and

[0:31:16] Voice 3: and it would update the sla in real time things like that

[0:31:19] Voice 6: so william um narissa has a question

[0:31:22] Voice 6: and then i think toby and then i have a question sure

[0:31:25] Voice 11: um

[0:31:26] Voice 4: so i was so if we so if if the ltc decided

[0:31:31] Voice 4: that they wanted to create a map that weighted um you know the ecological sensitivity higher or what

[0:31:38] Voice 4: have you could we essentially have like two like so we would we would still have the one that was

[0:31:43] Voice 4: 10 10 and then we'd have another one that would be like whatever 20 or you know change it up like

[0:31:51] Voice 4: could we have different versions of the maps yeah that we can maintain that

[0:31:56] Voice 4: yeah and

[0:31:57] Trustee Elliott: based on like

[0:31:59] Trustee Elliott: integrity of the data like some of the data if it's not strong enough or it's it's quite old like

[0:32:05] Trustee Elliott: say the forest stand age or something oh

[0:32:09] Voice 3: it's actually a better one i would say that the sense

[0:32:11] Voice 3: ecosystem at risk ecological communities is probably some of the weaker data sets because

[0:32:16] Voice 3: they are so yeah i mean dominant age can like that vri is like like the recharge mapping potential is

[0:32:24] Voice 3: our newest data set right so and and i agree with you like if there is some data integrity

[0:32:30] Voice 3: or like we're not too it it's it's a difficult conversation right because because we should

[0:32:38] Voice 3: value sensitive ecosystems at equal weighting or greater but the layer itself that data integrity

[0:32:45] Voice 3: like some of our confidence of it is lower so then we want to say okay well let's lower that layer

[0:32:51] Voice 3: because we're not so confident with that with that actual data set but but we want to value

[0:32:57] Voice 3: sensitive ecosystems right so

[0:33:00] Voice 3: that's that's like you know there's a balance there on

[0:33:02] Voice 3: um question right so and that's and that's an exciting part of of this work right is to

[0:33:10] Voice 3: is to um you know talk you know get those values and and understand and understand that

[0:33:18] Voice 3: so

[0:33:19] Voice 6: and william i have a question too so we have focused discussion groups coming up

[0:33:23] Voice 6: and i know one of them i don't think the date has been set yet but one of them will be

[0:33:29] Voice 6: environmental protection and development permit areas so uh whoever you know whoever the people

[0:33:39] Voice 6: in that group are that focus group they will definitely want access to this information

[0:33:46] Voice 6: and will that be made available to them when they meet as a focus discussion group

[0:33:50] Voice 6: um

[0:33:52] Voice 3: so all the information like all the data is publicly available uh this this um presentation

[0:34:01] Voice 3: will be available right as a pdf and then the layered pdf i'll have to kind of defer to

[0:34:10] Voice 3: narissa on that on how they on how we want to share that um but you know like the the sense

[0:34:16] Voice 3: of ecosystem mapping a sense of ecosystem i mean it's on our tapas i mean it's that's

[0:34:21] Voice 3: everything's publicly available so i'm not sure uh trustee evans if you're if you're

[0:34:29] Voice 3: referencing like like the actual data or if you're talking about the suitable line analysis

[0:34:33] Voice 3: uh

[0:34:34] Voice 6: well both actually yeah because i think all of the focus discussion groups probably want

[0:34:39] Voice 6: access to this all the layers of this

[0:34:42] Voice 4: over

[0:34:44] Voice 6: to planner chadwick yeah

[0:34:46] Voice 4: yeah so it's easy enough

[0:34:48] Voice 4: like so it's easy enough for me to bring in the information for discussion um i'm limited when it

[0:34:55] Voice 4: gets down to the nitty-gritty details but this is the the third presentation i've now seen so

[0:35:00] Voice 4: i have a general sense of it so if william is not available um i think i can speak to

[0:35:06] Voice 4: I can speak to the data on a broader level.

[0:35:10] Voice 4: That'd be really helpful.

[0:35:11] Voice 6: And also,

[0:35:11] Voice 4: I've got access to the maps and such.

[0:35:15] Voice 4: Yeah,

[0:35:15] Voice 6: because they're going to want to see those maps.

[0:35:18] Voice 6: Yeah.

[0:35:19] Voice 6: Good.

[0:35:20] Voice 3: Well, let's use that as a good segue,

[0:35:24] Voice 3: because I'll show you what that means, right?

[0:35:29] Voice 7: Yeah.

[0:35:31] Voice 3: Okay.

[0:35:36] Trustee Elliott: And we can promote this

[0:35:38] Trustee Elliott: widely as well.

[0:35:40] Trustee Elliott: We'll promote this presentation.

[0:35:43] Voice 3: Okay, so here's your beautiful

[0:35:46] Voice 3: island.

[0:35:49] Voice 3: Red as roads and gray as parcels.

[0:35:52] Voice 3: I'm going to turn off the world imagery just because I find it really distracting.

[0:35:55] Voice 3: So I hope that

[0:35:57] Voice 3: um that you can orient yourself to your island enough by the parcel of words which is pretty

[0:36:05] Voice 3: good okay great so i apologize that again this is quite a clunky way of presenting map data

[0:36:14] Voice 3: layered pdfs um like there's way more elegant ways of doing it like just online map viewer

[0:36:21] Voice 3: it could be a really easy way to present this data um so fear not that you probably can't read

[0:36:31] Voice 3: our legend over here uh i'll i'll be describing the layers that i'm turning on and off

[0:36:37] Voice 3: um so i've been just putting on the suitable line analysis layer first like the resulting layer and

[0:36:45] Voice 3: and then going through each layer suitability,

[0:36:48] Voice 3: like each attribute at each layer following that.

[0:36:52] Voice 3: And then we can just open up the discussion.

[0:36:54] Voice 3: And if you want, we can zoom into a few parcels.

[0:36:58] Voice 3: So here is the, I'm going to turn off roads if I'm distracting.

[0:37:04] Voice 3: So here is the suitable land analysis.

[0:37:07] Voice 3: So green is more suitable.

[0:37:10] Voice 3: This yellowy color is moderate and red is unsuitable lands.

[0:37:16] Voice 3: and i know that our eyes want to draw to big parcels with suitability but as

[0:37:24] Voice 3: as we know

[0:37:25] Voice 7: those

[0:37:27] Voice 3: aren't available so

[0:37:29] Voice 7: that's

[0:37:30] Voice 3: parks and protected areas and then we also have

[0:37:33] Voice 3: covenants on here um apologize that what the colors are they should have been like just grayed

[0:37:39] Voice 11: out

[0:37:39] Voice 3: but that's fine we'll just run with it for right now so you can see that there's areas with

[0:37:44] Voice 3: covenant so we just are just graying those out and then and then here's a big one the agricultural

[0:37:50] Voice 3: land reserve um so the yellow so there's like a lot of area zoom in a bit so this area here

[0:38:01] Voice 3: these parcels looking good but it's agricultural land reserve

[0:38:05] Voice 11: so

[0:38:07] Voice 3: you can see after turning on the

[0:38:09] Voice 3: the um the parcel uh the egg called the lunch reserve covenants protected areas and running

[0:38:15] Voice 3: the suitable land analysis the way that we did that there are certain parcels that that have

[0:38:22] Voice 3: um quite high suitability and and other areas that don't ignore that lakes are suitable we

[0:38:30] Voice 3: should put a lakes layer on there um and and some other areas that don't right like and and

[0:38:38] Voice 3: And need I remind you that water quantity is not a consideration here, right?

[0:38:44] Voice 3: We don't, even though a parcel is showing suitable for the intrinsic suitability of

[0:38:54] Voice 3: environment and freshwater and proximity to roads and things, we haven't put in, say,

[0:39:01] Voice 3: a water balance layer.

[0:39:03] Voice 3: And that can be a potential layer from the freshwater footprint where we have a gridded

[0:39:08] Voice 3: water balance and so that can actually go in there or it could be an overlay layer where it's like

[0:39:13] Voice 3: there's no water here and that's it no go zone we're not sure yet right because we're still

[0:39:18] Voice 3: working through that project uh these white zones here just please just ignore that that's from

[0:39:24] Voice 3: a data issue with one of our layers showing no data so that's that's not real let's fix that

[0:39:32] Voice 3: so

[0:39:33] Voice 6: i have another quick comment um the water balance is really important as far as you know

[0:39:42] Voice 6: as as far as many people like abuela are concerned about well is is there and can there be enough

[0:39:50] Voice 6: water for certain kinds of densities so that would seem a really important layer to yeah it

[0:39:58] Voice 3: It, you know, I mean, of course, you're asking the freshwater specialists if freshwater balance is important.

[0:40:08] Voice 3: And of course it

[0:40:09] Voice 3: is. On a regional context, it can be, right?

[0:40:13] Voice 3: Like we're doing a regional groundwater balance model, you know,

[0:40:20] Voice 3: but that the hazard to that is is if say a particular parcel is showing a favorable water

[0:40:28] Voice 3: balance and then that is going to then drive development there like there still needs to be

[0:40:37] Voice 3: like parcel level investigation of groundwater resources of

[0:40:44] Voice 7: course yeah yeah

[0:40:46] Voice 3: so but but i agree

[0:40:47] Voice 3: with you like i think we're using well the well density right now is a proxy for for

[0:40:55] Voice 3: basically water use which is a very coarse one but we we wanted to make a methodology that um

[0:41:03] Voice 3: that had was using similar data from across the five islands that we've started on with this

[0:41:11] Voice 3: analysis um and i could see that it when we go to the gridded water balance that the gridded

[0:41:17] Voice 3: water balance could just swipe out for well density because we use well density of course

[0:41:23] Voice 3: in in looking at water balance so that could be the next update to um to the suitable land

[0:41:29] Voice 3: analysis for gabriel and it could show that that we need um that we need uh gridded water balance

[0:41:37] Voice 3: rather than um just like taking the wells wells um data from from from the registry because

[0:41:46] Voice 3: there is there is challenges with that data um sorry

[0:41:51] Trustee Elliott: we were just having problems yeah there's

[0:41:55] Voice 3: a technical difficulty i see yeah

[0:41:57] Trustee Elliott: let's focus

[0:41:57] Voice 3: on that yeah

[0:41:58] Trustee Elliott: um i think it's she just turned on and

[0:42:01] Trustee Elliott: off the streaming service it looks like it's working now how

[0:42:05] Voice 3: long did we lose the whole time

[0:42:07] Trustee Elliott: it wasn't streaming it looks like but the whole time

[0:42:10] Trustee Elliott: it's being recorded but the live stream was

[0:42:14] Trustee Elliott: is not working until now it looks like that's that's why is that why

[0:42:18] Trustee Elliott: you're here oh we had a

[0:42:21] Trustee Elliott: very committed member of the public who walked here to because it wasn't streaming well then

[0:42:26] Voice 3: that's unfortunate because then someone if someone wants to watch this they'd have to like refresh

[0:42:31] Voice 3: their screen like right now for it to work because it doesn't auto refresh so we probably have very

[0:42:37] Voice 3: little public participation right now and

[0:42:40] Trustee Elliott: we put it i'll ask michelle to put a note out or to

[0:42:43] Trustee Elliott: to subscribers no oh no

[0:42:45] Voice 3: we'll have to send them the meeting um yeah recording because

[0:42:51] Voice 7: we're kind

[0:42:53] Voice 3: of like mid the

[0:42:54] Voice 7: recording

[0:42:56] Voice 5: yeah okay

[0:42:58] Voice 3: yeah because you know this is the intention here

[0:43:02] Voice 3: is to is to have a special meeting in the ltc so

[0:43:05] Voice 11: yes i want

[0:43:06] Voice 3: to make sure that uh that you know

[0:43:08] Voice 3: know that the ltc gets the information and then yeah we can we can share the meeting with um

[0:43:15] Voice 3: the recording after i

[0:43:18] Trustee Elliott: was wondering why there was no attendees well

[0:43:20] Voice 3: there's no there won't

[0:43:21] Voice 3: be attendees right it's only on the website so we won't see

[0:43:24] Voice 3: these right it's only you just you

[0:43:27] Voice 3: don't attend right you just watch the website got it

[0:43:31] Voice 3: that's how all of them have been yeah

[0:43:32] Voice 3: okay

[0:43:33] Voice 6: okay okay

[0:43:35] Voice 3: so sorry and

[0:43:36] Voice 6: regard

[0:43:38] Trustee Elliott: to william's presentation um so we're relying mostly on well

[0:43:44] Trustee Elliott: density and you know sensitive ecosystems like what goes into just it's all the all the the

[0:43:51] Trustee Elliott: weighting of values that you showed us at the beginning yeah

[0:43:54] Voice 3: let's go into those uh let's go

[0:43:57] Voice 3: into the into the data uh this is like uh just before we do that this is a cool layer this is

[0:44:02] Voice 3: um uh this is suitable land analysis that that is only like from moderate to very high

[0:44:10] Voice 3: and and all of the white is like non-suitable lands let's say that way so this is actually a

[0:44:17] Voice 3: cool way to look at it and again we can put on the covenants protected areas and things like that

[0:44:21] Voice 3: and so just your if your mind if your eyes snap to anything green then that would be uh areas that

[0:44:29] Voice 3: have been identified as as suitable land okay

[0:44:33] Voice 8: yeah that's great yeah

[0:44:35] Voice 3: yeah i like that one

[0:44:37] Voice 3: that was a good idea okay cool uh let's just go through the layers uh marine shore adjacency is

[0:44:44] Voice 3: quite simple um so there's different classes of marine shore and there's a 100 meter buffer

[0:44:50] Voice 3: buffer around it. And so with all of these, these are not the raw data. This is the suitability

[0:45:01] Voice 3: weighting of these data sets. So red is non-suitable and yellow is moderate and then

[0:45:08] Voice 3: green is suitable for each layer. This is a layer that likely can be worked on, right? It's just

[0:45:15] Voice 3: a line that has a buffer on it uh we're not looking at topography which can you know if you

[0:45:21] Voice 3: have an estuary that that's you know that probably should be considered greater than than a a rock

[0:45:29] Voice 3: bluff um also this layer can be either uh enhanced or replaced by by you know coastal cultural zones

[0:45:41] Voice 3: zones of importance um you know there's there's a lot of conversation they can go into um the

[0:45:49] Voice 3: suitability of developing it on the marine shore um this is just the data that we're they were

[0:45:54] Voice 3: provided uh sense of ecosystem so here red is non-suitable so there's a sense of ecosystem there

[0:46:03] Voice 3: and green is uh suitable because there's uh not a primary second uh um sense of ecosystem

[0:46:10] Voice 3: system uh there and so it's interesting that the parks have that right but the parks likely have

[0:46:17] Voice 3: like secondary and tertiary uh sense of ecosystems that are embedded within these primary ones right

[0:46:24] Voice 3: so this is likely like this is just na like there's just no no primary ecosystem sense of

[0:46:32] Voice 3: ecosystem here but there's likely secondary and tertiary and when we did do secondary and tertiary

[0:46:40] Voice 3: ecosystems the whole island was red right and and

[0:46:44] Voice 11: so

[0:46:45] Voice 3: that didn't work and so like we said the

[0:46:48] Voice 3: confidence level like the data set is really good and we can look at particular you know like a map

[0:46:55] Voice 3: so like um you know there can be like this is probably like i don't you guys know your island

[0:47:01] Voice 3: but this is like

[0:47:02] Voice 8: oh it's like yeah this

[0:47:03] Voice 3: is a lake right so it like the fidelity of the of the grid

[0:47:09] Voice 3: is there and the fidelity of the polygons it's just how do we like handle the data

[0:47:15] Voice 3: beyond just looking at the primary ecosystem class because if we do use the primary secondary

[0:47:22] Voice 3: tertiary it it it actually makes no difference to the sla because they'll just show the entire

[0:47:28] Voice 3: island red and and really you need the the the um the i guess the importance here is the contrast

[0:47:36] Voice 3: between suitable and non-suitable and you

[0:47:39] Voice 3: can see these two holes here that was our issue with the

[0:47:42] Voice 3: data there so just ignore those two

[0:47:44] Voice 6: what's happening with those two white patches yeah we

[0:47:48] Voice 3: don't know it's just for some reason like na is these ones like there's just no ecosystem and here

[0:47:55] Voice 3: it has a zero value so we we don't know what that is and if there's a zero value that that this tool

[0:48:02] Voice 3: that we're using within the mapper can't handle that so it just doesn't compute the SLA so we'll

[0:48:09] Voice 3: have to figure that out it's just kind of a weird quirk of that data set. This is at-risk ecological

[0:48:16] Voice 3: communities so the majority of the island doesn't have like listed at-risk ecological communities

[0:48:23] Voice 3: except for these zones in red.

[0:48:29] Trustee Elliott: That's the bluffs up there, it's interesting.

[0:48:36] Voice 4: And a reminder, where does the data set come from

[0:48:39] Voice 4: on that one?

[0:48:41] Voice 3: Sorry, sorry.

[0:48:44] Voice 3: At-risk ecological communities comes from the province.

[0:48:49] Voice 3: Yeah, okay.

[0:48:50] Voice 3: And then we have dominant age.

[0:48:53] Voice 3: So this is what I was saying,

[0:48:55] Voice 3: this is interesting like if you look in town uh this uh so the deep red is greater than 100 years

[0:49:01] Voice 3: and this like burnt orange is is i think 70 to 100 when it could correct me on that one but um

[0:49:10] Voice 11: you can

[0:49:11] Voice 3: see like in in highly developed areas like well how how can it be an old dominant age

[0:49:17] Voice 3: but if there is like one or two tree stands within that section that have that age then they then

[0:49:22] Voice 3: and the the that polygon is listed as that dominant age or I

[0:49:27] Voice 3: shouldn't say one or two but

[0:49:29] Voice 3: it's the dominant trees dominant age of the that area is uh all the growth so um I mean you guys

[0:49:37] Voice 3: know your island better than I do but to me it looks like the parks have been logged but

[0:49:41] Voice 3: so there you go and you can see like other zones where there's obviously been clearing for

[0:49:49] Voice 3: subdivision and and then so the clearing like the dominant age will then push that to more of a

[0:49:57] Voice 3: suitable uh area and especially like these i think that's that's probably agricultural land

[0:50:03] Voice 3: yeah see this so obviously the agricultural lands have a cleared uh um classification from

[0:50:12] Voice 3: from dominant age so then so then it's showing highly suitable uh but of course they're in the

[0:50:18] Voice 3: agricultural land reserve so then so then they're not it's it's kind of a moot point so just a

[0:50:24] Voice 6: comment on that william i mean one of the things that we've done since colonialism on on these

[0:50:30] Voice 6: islands and the reason for the islands just in the first place is that developers know that if

[0:50:36] Voice 6: they come in and clear cut then the land is far more suitable for development yeah

[0:50:39] Voice 3: you know it's

[0:50:41] Voice 3: trustee like evans we were sorry trustee yates um we were uh talking about that very thing like

[0:50:48] Voice 3: uh because especially with the vri data here i was like well yeah of course if you just keep

[0:50:54] Voice 3: developing the land it gets more and more suitable but if you had if you had a raw island it would be

[0:51:01] Voice 3: either or because you have sensitive ecosystems so that would that would be unsuitable but then

[0:51:06] Voice 3: there's not a lot of wells so i think if you had a like a we just did valdez or something or

[0:51:11] Voice 3: or some other island that doesn't have a lot of development on it it'd probably be moderately

[0:51:16] Voice 3: suitable um but yeah for areas that are clear-cut and then um and sense of ecosystems removed and

[0:51:25] Voice 3: perhaps like not a lot of wells like a lot of the alr land is showing highly suitable because it's

[0:51:31] Voice 3: just the perfect storm of of all the um high suitable layers so yeah so

[0:51:38] Trustee Elliott: question about dominant

[0:51:40] Trustee Elliott: age um i don't know how like how recent is that data and how much can it be ground truthed as we

[0:51:51] Trustee Elliott: you know we don't have a lot of time in this project but if something's showing um unsuitable

[0:51:57] Trustee Elliott: and there's old growth and yet the local trust committee or local residents know that that was

[0:52:02] Trustee Elliott: you know it's just cut down or it's not it's not old growth then we can manually revise that based

[0:52:10] Trustee Elliott: on local knowledge like what's the level of ground truthing and how does that work yeah

[0:52:15] Voice 3: that's that's

[0:52:16] Voice 3: the most difficult ask of this project is to is to like go in and and create data right like that

[0:52:23] Voice 3: I would say that's creating data if we're modifying it, right?

[0:52:27] Voice 3: Because what we're doing is we're just taking the vegetation resource inventory.

[0:52:31] Voice 3: We're just taking groundwater wells from the province.

[0:52:33] Voice 3: We're just taking groundwater recharge mapping and then processing it.

[0:52:39] Voice 3: So if we were to go in and say if the Conservancy, Gabriela Conservancy, I think that's the name.

[0:52:47] Voice 6: It's the Gabriela Lands and Trails.

[0:52:50] Voice 3: Yeah, that's why I was like, that's not what it is.

[0:52:52] Voice 3: but yeah yeah gabriel lens and the trust um if they provided say uh like an awesome wetland layer

[0:53:02] Voice 3: where all the wetlands had polygons and it was and it was a gis layer then we can bring that in

[0:53:09] Voice 3: and and that that can be used uh in a much easier way than saying we don't agree with the provincial

[0:53:17] Voice 3: data set so we want to change it that's that's a huge ask and we i don't even know if we have the

[0:53:21] Voice 3: uh like you know do we don't have the ownership over that layer to do that um maybe landon you

[0:53:28] Voice 3: can chime in do you know when the vri i think it was like 2014 they did the islands i can't remember

[0:53:35] Voice 3: and

[0:53:35] Voice 1: um it's it's updated regularly so if there if there is a lot of stuff going on that island

[0:53:41] Voice 1: then they're going to updating that and there's uh dates associated in the layer for uh each of

[0:53:49] Voice 1: the stands as well so it'd be a stand-by-stand basis where they'd have uh the dates for when it

[0:53:54] Voice 1: was um when it was last assessed yeah

[0:53:58] Voice 3: the vri is a great data set we we used it for um the ground

[0:54:03] Voice 3: water recharge mapping methodology um and and not using the terrestrial ecosystem mapping tim

[0:54:10] Voice 3: which is static and i don't think they update that one um so that's why we we are using the

[0:54:18] Voice 3: vegetation resource inventory so and and i think kind of maybe you know this process or not but

[0:54:25] Voice 3: it's similar to the groundwater wells registry if um you know if residents or a group uh sees

[0:54:32] Voice 3: issues with the um with the data set they can provide that feedback back to the province and

[0:54:38] Voice 3: then they'll look into that stand or that group of wells and and try to make corrections

[0:54:44] Voice 1: Yeah, that's correct.

[0:54:45] Voice 1: Yeah.

[0:54:48] Voice 3: Great. Any more questions on the environment side?

[0:54:51] Voice 6: Just a general

[0:54:52] Voice 6: question. One of the things that I look at occasionally is a publication that was put out for a number of the islands called State of the Islands Report, and they were done in 2018 for the most part.

[0:55:05] Voice 6: And on those reports, it already shows, Gabriel, as being at the cusp of the ecological balance, as like, any more development than this, and we've lost our balance of ecology.

[0:55:22] Voice 6: And that was like in 2018.

[0:55:24] Voice 6: So is any of that data, was any of that incorporated into any of the work that you've done on this?

[0:55:31] Voice 6: uh

[0:55:33] Voice 3: well definitely we have better freshwater data since then um and and i think you know i'm

[0:55:41] Voice 3: that

[0:55:42] Voice 4: would be the conservancy's data yeah that was used so i would imagine that the sensitive

[0:55:47] Voice 4: ecosystem and the uh uh the threatened uh species species at risk that's all that would have been

[0:55:56] Voice 4: some of the data that would

[0:55:57] Voice 3: have been yeah they kind of went like they used a lot of census data

[0:56:01] Voice 3: and and then they had a uh like a bio uh biodiversity layer that is likely something

[0:56:10] Voice 3: similar to what we're doing here for the suitable analysis like they took multiple data layers and

[0:56:15] Voice 3: did a biodiversity layer and thanks for triggering my memory on that because i forgot about that

[0:56:21] Voice 3: report um and i we lennon and i can go back in there and and look at that and look at biodiversity

[0:56:30] Voice 3: diversity layer and see like how dissimilar it is to the sense of ecosystem layer i imagine it's

[0:56:35] Voice 3: going to be really similar that would

[0:56:37] Voice 10: be helpful and it was it

[0:56:38] Voice 6: was done for gabriel as well as i

[0:56:41] Voice 6: think about all most of the most

[0:56:43] Voice 10: of the other i think

[0:56:44] Voice 3: it's done for the entire island's trust

[0:56:47] Voice 3: area the biodiversity layer anyway i'm looking at it right now on the yeah on the on their report

[0:56:56] Voice 3: i

[0:56:57] Voice 6: know i mean i i hate to reference that all the time but every time i look at it i feel like i

[0:57:02] Voice 6: feel some despair because that was a long time ago and even then we were already at the place

[0:57:09] Voice 6: where the human impact on the environment was tipping it asked redemption i

[0:57:17] Voice 3: mean yeah

[0:57:19] Voice 3: Yeah. I mean, I'm going to, I should, I'll reserve my comment on that because

[0:57:28] Voice 3: just because we're looking deeper doesn't mean it's going to make it look better.

[0:57:32] Voice 11: But, um,

[0:57:33] Voice 3: and, and, you know, to, to that point, um, uh, trustee Yates is that looking at,

[0:57:40] Voice 3: at groundwater recharge potential here, uh, there, there's a little bit of red tucked in here,

[0:57:46] Voice 3: but this is that like right there there's there's this is kind of burnt orange so this is high

[0:57:51] Voice 3: recharge or moderate to high and and the green is is discharge areas like here's the lake and stuff

[0:57:58] Voice 3: and these are all probably wetlands um so you know the perspective here is that any development

[0:58:04] Voice 3: any development on the island is going to have an impact to groundwater recharge period like like

[0:58:10] Voice 3: majority of the island is unsuitable for development with respect to groundwater recharge

[0:58:15] Voice 3: charge so that's just a perspective um uh landon i feel that my voice is wavering so do you just

[0:58:26] Voice 3: want to talk about um watershed resiliency

[0:58:28] Voice 8: that'd be good yes

[0:58:32] Voice 1: so uh watershed resiliency was uh

[0:58:36] Voice 1: developed when i was doing a research project for uh the city of victoria um they were um

[0:58:44] Voice 1: want an analysis of the watersheds that contributed to their water supply in the

[0:58:51] Voice 1: Souk Reservoir. So they want an understanding of the forests and how they would respond to

[0:58:57] Voice 1: different disturbances. So we define resiliency as a system's ability to respond to natural

[0:59:06] Voice 1: disturbances and also anthropogenic disturbances. So that can be drought, wildfire, windstorm,

[0:59:14] Voice 1: pine beetle infestation, fungus, anything like that. And that's what goes into that metric is

[0:59:23] Voice 1: a diversity of responses. So species diversity, and also structural variability. So when we think

[0:59:32] Voice 1: of species diversity, if we have one stand, it's just all pine trees, and then there's a pine

[0:59:37] Voice 1: beetle infestation, the resilience is going to be low, because there's not a lot of responses

[0:59:42] Voice 1: to that but if there's a variety of species there's a different there's a even proportion

[0:59:51] Voice 1: of species then that's going to have a that varied response and then if we think of

[0:59:57] Voice 1: structural variability as well

[1:00:00] Voice 1: size, age, the different types of land cover, canopy closure. Those are all included in

[1:00:10] Voice 1: measuring of the resiliency for a specific stand. But then also this, the resiliency

[1:00:21] Voice 1: includes how different is that forest stand to its neighbor as well. So if something's affecting

[1:00:29] Voice 1: the the the neighbor and uh that's um impacting it well then the stand next to it might be very

[1:00:37] Voice 1: different and therefore it's more resilient and that's calculated on all of the stands

[1:00:42] Voice 1: that are neighboring it so here we've categorized um the high resiliency as not suitable so the

[1:00:52] Voice 1: The more resilient the stand, the less suitable it is for development.

[1:00:57] Voice 1: So

[1:00:58] Trustee Elliott: just a quick question.

[1:01:00] Trustee Elliott: So I'm just looking at the high resiliency would be the dark green?

[1:01:05] Voice 1: High resiliency is red because the high resiliency.

[1:01:10] Voice 1: So if we're to use an example of a system that's not resilient,

[1:01:15] Voice 1: it could be completely cleared and it will be right next to a,

[1:01:20] Voice 1: a uh its neighbors are also completely cleared or if it just like i said like if we're thinking of

[1:01:27] Voice 1: like uh like monocrop or just like a uh particular forest stand that they're just harvesting pine

[1:01:35] Voice 1: trees so they'll all be planted at the same time they'll all be this around the same age they'll

[1:01:40] Voice 1: all be around the same height um and they'll all be the same species and if it's a uh if it's a um

[1:01:48] Voice 1: And it would also be very similar to its neighbors.

[1:01:51] Voice 1: So therefore, that would be low resiliency.

[1:01:55] Voice 6: Okay, I

[1:01:56] Voice 6: have a quick question too.

[1:01:57] Voice 6: I'm thinking about the Sioux Hills area and the Sioux Reservoir, which I know fairly well.

[1:02:04] Voice 6: And I understand that most of that area, because it is a reservoir for the city of Victoria, is not being logged.

[1:02:12] Voice 6: however if we have an area on the map currently that it looks fairly highly resilient um that

[1:02:20] Voice 6: doesn't mean that it won't be clear-cut tomorrow so

[1:02:24] Voice 1: what

[1:02:25] Voice 6: is that how do we reconcile that yeah so

[1:02:29] Voice 1: that that's why um yeah this is a value of metric because it's identifying those um those intrinsic

[1:02:37] Voice 1: intrinsic uh intrinsic uh factors right so um and then going into it like if it's uh

[1:02:46] Voice 1: if it's been protected then you're gonna have a variety of different species and there's gonna be

[1:02:52] Voice 1: um different types of uh like forest uh ground cover vegetation that has been able to mature

[1:03:00] Voice 1: and take root and be a part of the system as well and that's calculated in so um the longer the

[1:03:06] Voice 1: system's been around the longer it's been able to build up these uh variabilities in responses

[1:03:14] Voice 1: to the disturbances

[1:03:16] Trustee Elliott: okay wow so a lot of this is green so that um although my eye is

[1:03:24] Trustee Elliott: tending towards the brighter ones the beige and the red so the low suitability and the beige is

[1:03:31] Trustee Elliott: lowest or low resiliency so

[1:03:34] Voice 1: this is inverted because we've identified that something with

[1:03:39] Voice 1: high resiliency is not going to be suitable yes so

[1:03:43] Voice 1: here the red would be at the higher end so

[1:03:47] Voice 1: let's think of the red as like one

[1:03:49] Voice 10: yeah

[1:03:51] Voice 1: yeah 10 out of 10 resiliency and then the very dark green

[1:03:55] Voice 1: would be low so you can see in the more developed areas you have that dark dark green lower

[1:04:01] Voice 1: resiliency okay

[1:04:03] Voice 8: thanks yeah

[1:04:07] Voice 3: oh sorry

[1:04:09] Voice 6: what what are we willing to sacrifice yeah that's what it is

[1:04:15] Voice 6: but compromise yeah yeah

[1:04:17] Voice 3: yeah i i think that the the statement of of what we want to like what are

[1:04:23] Voice 3: are we willing to sacrifice is more on the sensitive ecosystem side i think what what this

[1:04:28] Voice 3: is showing is is how the island is repairing itself so

[1:04:34] Voice 11: in

[1:04:35] Voice 3: in in the parks area like we showed

[1:04:38] Voice 3: that they're the the map primary ecosystems like there's no primary mapped sensitive ecosystems it

[1:04:46] Voice 3: was all green but as lennon was saying that now that this area after it's been clear-cut has been

[1:04:52] Voice 3: given a chance to have some sort of species diversity that that it's on its way to repairing

[1:04:59] Voice 3: itself its resiliency to repair is very high like it's it's it's a resilient um ecosystem where

[1:05:06] Voice 3: in town there's a lot of like and like here right like it's there that's why that's showing green or

[1:05:13] Voice 3: low resiliency um like i i wonder uh oh i can't zoom in there we go what's going on here landon

[1:05:21] Voice 3: where you have that

[1:05:22] Voice 8: property so

[1:05:24] Voice 3: you have you have a bunch of like low like high resiliency

[1:05:29] Voice 3: and then and then surrounded by uh low resiliency or highly suitable so

[1:05:35] Trustee Elliott: i can so that this is really

[1:05:36] Trustee Elliott: accurate actually this is showing something really interesting because this is the um so

[1:05:42] Trustee Elliott: it's a three-phase subdivision um the first phase was approved in 95 and it was logged before that

[1:05:52] Trustee Elliott: i believe and so the lower parts parcels those 14 are all the first phase or is that the second

[1:06:02] Trustee Elliott: phase to be subdivided and that

[1:06:06] Trustee Elliott: ridge i think is is a clearing is that lock and bar lane yeah so

[1:06:11] Voice 3: So this, yeah, it's interesting because this is all cleared and see this area, this is

[1:06:14] Voice 3: a bad imagery, of course, but this is all not cleared and that's showing high resiliency

[1:06:21] Voice 3: is that area.

[1:06:22] Trustee Elliott: Yeah.

[1:06:23] Trustee Elliott: Because that's still, that's still subject to subdivision right now.

[1:06:27] Trustee Elliott: And those four parcels above were in the original package that I think, I'm not sure what's

[1:06:33] Trustee Elliott: going on, but there's, yeah, definitely two phases of development going on there.

[1:06:37] Trustee Elliott: And there's quotes.

[1:06:38] Trustee Elliott: you know

[1:06:40] Voice 3: after this discussion you we you can almost sense from us what what data sets we value

[1:06:47] Voice 3: over others or what we're more confident on right like this watershed resiliency versus the other

[1:06:53] Voice 3: ones uh we can look at so you can see here this is the high to our moderate to high uh suitability

[1:07:03] Voice 3: and this this section here is showing non-suitable um because it's having many factors and this is

[1:07:12] Voice 3: the cool thing about this we can see what's shining through so it's a sensitive ecosystem

[1:07:17] Voice 3: uh let's see there's at-risk ecological community there there's the dominant age is high

[1:07:25] Voice 3: groundwater recharge is high watershed resiliency well density is high

[1:07:31] Voice 3: salt water intrusion is not there and then yeah

[1:07:34] Voice 8: yeah so

[1:07:38] Voice 3: it's it's very high well density of course

[1:07:40] Voice 3: in here right like let's just turn off this layer this is the well density we haven't got there yet

[1:07:44] Voice 3: but

[1:07:45] Voice 8: whoa yeah

[1:07:46] Voice 3: oh yeah oh yeah

[1:07:48] Voice 8: definitely

[1:07:51] Voice 3: gabriela has the highest density of wells that that i know

[1:07:55] Voice 3: trust area we have

[1:07:57] Voice 8: no community water systems yeah

[1:07:59] Voice 3: exactly if this was maine this would be

[1:08:02] Voice 3: you just get these little hot spots right because they have community water systems

[1:08:07] Voice 3: and and you know like like not to derail a suitable analysis but definitely as we move

[1:08:13] Voice 3: into a few into the future of sustainability over the next hundreds of years on these islands that

[1:08:18] Voice 3: a lot of these well per lots will go to community water systems there's just no doubt

[1:08:23] Voice 3: that that's the only way to sustain well

[1:08:25] Voice 6: we had that opportunity in the 1990s but we lost it well

[1:08:30] Voice 6: sadly and of course this map doesn't even show cultural sensitivity no

[1:08:35] Voice 4: it doesn't yeah and

[1:08:36] Voice 4: that's another layer

[1:08:37] Voice 6: that's going to be a whole separate conversation and

[1:08:40] Voice 3: then yeah saltwater

[1:08:41] Voice 3: intrusion it's uh one of my uh least or favorite data sets i think we there's a lot of work we need

[1:08:49] Voice 3: to do on saltwater intrusion in my opinion um and then and then road adjacency is quite obvious

[1:08:56] Voice 3: roads and and this is just scheduled roads so of course like like on on salt spring uh the

[1:09:04] Voice 3: fulford ganges highway there's like sections of it that aren't mapped because they're not

[1:09:09] Voice 3: scheduled 39 roads or whatever from modi so but it looks like it's pretty good here it looks

[1:09:15] Voice 4: well and i'm guessing you could add like um the the gurney bus route and that could be a

[1:09:21] Voice 4: a layer right like proximity to yeah

[1:09:24] Voice 3: yeah that i think that would go under yeah more infrastructure

[1:09:27] Voice 3: stuff yeah yeah like multimodal transportation i think is really important so

[1:09:32] Voice 6: yeah on that you

[1:09:33] Voice 6: know um years and years ago when we talked about other village nodes like not the main village

[1:09:39] Voice 6: but other possible no's in whalebone silver bay of course and twin beaches area it was really

[1:09:49] Voice 6: important that we were this was even before the dirty bus was developed but we were thinking even

[1:09:53] Voice 6: then of oh we think of these as possible satellite commercial areas they need to be on a public

[1:10:01] Voice 6: transit route

[1:10:02] Voice 5: yeah

[1:10:03] Trustee Elliott: there's going to definitely be a conversation about proximity to amenities

[1:10:07] Trustee Elliott: and services versus um suitable water areas um because yeah my sense is we've we've really maxed

[1:10:18] Trustee Elliott: out on um putting housing and and development close to the village um and really they just

[1:10:26] Trustee Elliott: there isn't a great i i totally a layman but i keep hearing that there isn't a lot of groundwater

[1:10:33] Trustee Elliott: water availability in that area and so figuring out that balance as to um how close do we want

[1:10:42] Trustee Elliott: to drive development to to existing amenities versus areas where there actually is um good

[1:10:50] Trustee Elliott: water recharge yeah

[1:10:54] Voice 8: yeah well

[1:10:55] Voice 6: there's not there's nowhere on gabriel that's super far from the bus

[1:10:59] Voice 6: route for example no i

[1:11:00] Trustee Elliott: mean right in the interior is the only like the big the spine right in the

[1:11:04] Trustee Elliott: middle right because it's all the the gertie bus goes right around on all the main roads in a loop

[1:11:10] Trustee Elliott: so really anywhere between that north and south road and the ocean um is on a community bus route

[1:11:23] Trustee Elliott: yeah

[1:11:25] Voice 6: well and can you show us the saltwater intrusion later again sure

[1:11:30] Voice 3: i just just for

[1:11:31] Voice 3: interesting you can see that this road the road here is not dedicated yet right it doesn't have

[1:11:37] Voice 3: its own pid yeah it just goes down really but yes we can look at that um actually

[1:11:46] Trustee Elliott: good question so

[1:11:47] Trustee Elliott: i don't think the treaty forest or i don't know what to call it kensington lands a thousand acres

[1:11:54] Trustee Elliott: right where you indicated that non-serviced road yeah um

[1:11:58] Trustee Elliott: that wouldn't be it's mapped as crown

[1:12:01] Trustee Elliott: crown lands and that should be blocked off as a

[1:12:05] Voice 3: tree yeah yeah it's under protected areas we're

[1:12:08] Voice 3: calling it so parks and protected areas yeah that

[1:12:13] Trustee Elliott: whole block so the nature reserve would be the

[1:12:15] Trustee Elliott: elder cedar would be the dark red in the top left corner like

[1:12:19] Voice 3: here it's

[1:12:21] Trustee Elliott: no top left that just we had

[1:12:23] Trustee Elliott: a dark red just turn whatever you turn oh

[1:12:25] Voice 3: just because i turned off saltwater intrusion yeah

[1:12:29] Voice 3: Yeah, because it's see-through. Oh, so that area there is...

[1:12:32] Voice 7: I think that's the nature reserve. Susan?

[1:12:34] Voice 7: So

[1:12:34] Voice 3: it's just all part of that same parcel, right? It's not subdivided, right?

[1:12:39] Voice 3: Yeah.

[1:12:39] Voice 3: Yeah. So this is your parks and protected areas without, you know, having layers to obfuscate it.

[1:12:47] Voice 3: it so uh the the yellow uh is uh alr the uh orangey stuff is covenants yeah covenants and

[1:12:57] Voice 3: then the red is uh parks and protected areas and probably crown land if you have any i don't think

[1:13:03] Voice 3: there's much crown land on gabriela that's very

[1:13:06] Voice 8: good okay

[1:13:08] Voice 6: yeah so back to the saltwater infusion

[1:13:11] Voice 6: i'm thinking about a study that was done by i think simon fraser university students yeah diana

[1:13:16] Voice 3: and then her student they so they did um gabriella was there a case study yeah uh for that was back

[1:13:24] Voice 3: in 2016 and then they advanced that to the southern gulf islands and then this uh this

[1:13:33] Voice 3: project superseded that data and that was the regional planning committee was on that last term

[1:13:40] Voice 3: they put they put ten thousand dollars towards the project and um so I was an external on that

[1:13:46] Voice 3: provincial project and they did saltwater intrusion from uh yeah from the south coast all the way up

[1:13:53] Voice 3: to Haida Gwaii and um I have been and was throughout critical of of its um I think it's

[1:14:03] Voice 3: under-representing saltwater intrusion in the islands trust area uh and and i'm i there there

[1:14:11] Voice 3: was some agreement with that and so there i i think that we have kind of come to the limit of

[1:14:19] Voice 3: determining saltwater intrusion risk by mapping it i think

[1:14:24] Voice 3: i think we need to really get into

[1:14:26] Voice 3: either modeling it or or going down to the social science

[1:14:30] Voice 3: level and just finding out where it's

[1:14:33] Voice 3: happening um by either lived experience or monitoring but um by just by just using data

[1:14:40] Voice 3: i think we've come to the like the maximum of what we can do with just looking at the maps so

[1:14:47] Voice 3: there's a lot of work to do in saltwater intrusion that's for sure i

[1:14:50] Voice 6: think so too because i think

[1:14:52] Voice 6: especially the silver bay yeah well

[1:14:54] Voice 3: silver bay is exactly the point right this is silver bay down

[1:14:57] Voice 3: here i

[1:14:58] Voice 6: know that the maps i saw in the 1990s there was another study done by students i think at ubc

[1:15:06] Voice 6: and it showed the entire silva bay area as being under threat of saltwater intrusion and

[1:15:13] Voice 8: yeah it's

[1:15:17] Voice 3: interesting because like as you go deeper and dissect deeper than what happens is

[1:15:22] Voice 3: is that like the way that they did the solid intrusion mapping that it's it's it's somewhat

[1:15:29] Voice 3: similar of the challenges with suitable land analysis that you have data stepping on data

[1:15:33] Voice 3: right like when we're talking about the parks you have sense of ecosystem which is green and then

[1:15:37] Voice 3: you have then you have resiliency which is red and it's like when you mash those together it

[1:15:42] Voice 3: creates an average of medium right and i think uh and and i think we've handled that well enough

[1:15:50] Voice 3: with the suitable analysis by having as many data layers as we as we have with with the saltwater

[1:15:56] Voice 3: intrusion mapping there's only certain amount of layers that can go into like topography well

[1:16:02] Voice 3: density um and you know there's a few others of course um but uh yeah it's it's it's hard to be

[1:16:11] Voice 3: confident with this data set when you have yeah when when when there's saltwater intrusion risk

[1:16:17] Voice 3: inland and then you have like very low along the coast but this makes sense here because there's

[1:16:24] Voice 3: there's no wells to be under risk of saltwater intrusion or very low so well density plays a

[1:16:28] Voice 3: huge role in this and they did this work using well density really before the province did a lot

[1:16:37] Voice 3: of work on that data set to to fix mistakes so it's it's worthwhile just to revisit it but i

[1:16:44] Voice 3: think when we revisit saltwater intrusion we're gonna we're gonna like it's gonna be a holistic

[1:16:50] Voice 3: project perhaps there could be modeling involved but hard to say thank you

[1:16:56] Voice 3: yeah um so that is all

[1:17:01] Voice 3: of the data layers do we want to look at any more parcels or pdf can

[1:17:09] Voice 7: you show the whole um

[1:17:10] Voice 7: suitable land analysis with all the letters and that's

[1:17:14] Voice 3: you bet so this is the suitable land

[1:17:18] Voice 3: analysis with parcels that's on the roads i find roads are really distracting we know where the

[1:17:24] Voice 3: roads are um and then agricultural land reserve covenants and protected areas so you can and then

[1:17:34] Voice 3: also i could just do this one if you want which just takes out the the low suitability so just

[1:17:40] Voice 3: just the green and this kind of weird yellowy green thing.

[1:17:45] Voice 8: If you

[1:17:50] Voice 3: want me to zoom into a section of the island,

[1:17:52] Voice 3: let me know.

[1:17:53] Trustee Elliott: Is it close to Haagen-Dazs?

[1:17:55] Trustee Elliott: Is it C-Metal Lane?

[1:17:56] Trustee Elliott: I'm trying to think of what the-

[1:17:58] Trustee Elliott: This one is?

[1:17:59] Trustee Elliott: Haagen-Dazs brought up C-Metal View

[1:18:02] Trustee Elliott: or something very specific.

[1:18:04] Voice 4: Yeah, I didn't go there specifically.

[1:18:08] Voice 5: Yeah,

[1:18:09] Voice 6: one, two, three, four, five,

[1:18:10] Voice 6: and then there's a yellow piece right yeah

[1:18:15] Trustee Elliott: so is that a cut

[1:18:18] Voice 3: where's the new multifamily uh developed

[1:18:22] Voice 3: by the school here

[1:18:24] Trustee Elliott: oh yeah that does look like a covenant so we're trying to figure out the green

[1:18:31] Trustee Elliott: and the bottom left uh yeah long properties yeah next

[1:18:38] Trustee Elliott: to a covenant property this

[1:18:40] Voice 3: one these ones

[1:18:41] Voice 3: in here those ones are we talking about

[1:18:45] Trustee Elliott: yeah yes i'm trying to figure out what those are it might

[1:18:48] Trustee Elliott: be sea meadow lane no

[1:18:50] Voice 3: it's um it's

[1:18:52] Trustee Elliott: dole oh right oh yeah yeah

[1:18:56] Voice 3: i um i could bring up

[1:18:58] Trustee Elliott: oh that's where

[1:18:59] Trustee Elliott: mining is is there a mine lease there on the end of dempsey

[1:19:06] Trustee Elliott: oh yeah there's a drop the gravel pit well mining

[1:19:10] Trustee Elliott: lease gravel yeah

[1:19:11] Trustee Elliott: um

[1:19:12] Voice 8: yeah it would take me a long time to study this and go okay well that's it

[1:19:19] Voice 3: yeah yeah exactly

[1:19:20] Voice 3: exactly um that's why i like i i think that having a a web viewer would be a lot it might be

[1:19:29] Voice 3: more helpful yeah uh

[1:19:31] Voice 3: but yeah that's right there i'm just looking at that's dale road

[1:19:34] Voice 3: there or dole dole dole road dole road and then this is dempsey down here

[1:19:43] Voice 3: yeah so

[1:19:45] Trustee Elliott: is that hoban like in the bottom it must be the golf course like the golf course

[1:19:50] Trustee Elliott: yeah so that big green swath is a golf course uh the golf club

[1:19:56] Voice 3: this is the golf club in here this

[1:19:59] Voice 3: it's an

[1:20:00] Voice 3: alr right yeah the golf club is an alr on the lake right

[1:20:10] Voice 3: i'm just i'm looking well we can look at the world imagery which is

[1:20:14] Voice 3: kind of bad but um i'm looking on orthophoto right now so yeah this is this is golf course in here

[1:20:21] Voice 3: right yeah

[1:20:23] Voice 3: um

[1:20:24] Voice 7: we should consider

[1:20:26] Voice 3: the time if you want oh

[1:20:27] Voice 6: right yeah yes um so

[1:20:30] Voice 6: So I'm supposed to be chairing this meeting, everybody,

[1:20:33] Voice 11: so

[1:20:34] Voice 6: that we can get on to the actual major project, which is the housing section discussion with our planner, Chadwick, here.

[1:20:46] Voice 6: So I'm wondering, Landon, did you have anything that you wanted to add before we close this section off?

[1:20:53] Voice 1: No, just thank you for the opportunity to present this.

[1:20:56] Voice 1: um my grandmother lives on gabriola and i grew up there and

[1:21:01] Voice 1: uh just have yeah uh such a such a

[1:21:05] Voice 1: great memories of uh going to all the beaches everything so getting to work on this and

[1:21:10] Voice 1: present it to you guys is a truly honor so thank you very much

[1:21:14] Voice 5: well that's very special to know

[1:21:16] Voice 5: that thank you for telling us it's great to know you you have roots roots in the island

[1:21:21] Trustee Elliott: that's great yeah so when you spit out a the map sorry spitting terrible word but um we can then

[1:21:30] Trustee Elliott: present this in to the different focus groups as they're talking

[1:21:35] Trustee Elliott: or we

[1:21:36] Voice 4: can have some conversation

[1:21:38] Voice 4: about how you'd like it to be presented that's great okay

[1:21:40] Voice 4: okay

[1:21:42] Voice 6: well thank you so much landon

[1:21:44] Voice 6: and william it was a really helpful presentation yeah

[1:21:48] Voice 3: thank you and yeah the pdf for the presentation

[1:21:50] Voice 3: will be available as well as the layered pdf and i if you have an island trust issued laptop you'll

[1:21:56] Voice 3: be able to turn the layers on and off you'll be able to look at the layered pdf so i'm sure staff

[1:22:01] Voice 3: can give you a hand with that uh in the northern office if needed or i can help um yeah so thank

[1:22:08] Voice 3: you so much local trust committee this has been a great meeting very encouraging and um yeah looking

[1:22:15] Voice 3: forward to next steps and and I'm also looking forward to engaging with the LTC a little bit

[1:22:20] Voice 3: more on the freshwater footprint project as and and that's getting some traction there and that's

[1:22:26] Voice 3: really exciting and be some community engagement and um I just wanted to let the LTC know that the

[1:22:33] Voice 3: regional district in Nanaimo has been a super help yes and

[1:22:36] Voice 3: they are doing a like a groundwater

[1:22:40] Voice 3: water uh like like conservation mail out thing and they are allowing our project to piggyback

[1:22:47] Voice 3: on that to have a water use survey uh just for gabriel island so that's wow

[1:22:53] Voice 7: awesome because

[1:22:55] Voice 3: that would have

[1:22:55] Voice 3: been a lot of money and and maybe more interest from the rdn side because they've

[1:23:02] Voice 3: you know they've developed that relationship through their drinking water and watershed

[1:23:05] Voice 3: protection program so yeah really great i'm i'm really encouraged by um our partnership with with

[1:23:13] Voice 3: them so yeah

[1:23:14] Trustee Elliott: so are we and can you just remind us when the um the water footprint project will

[1:23:19] Trustee Elliott: wrap up and results be available yeah

[1:23:22] Voice 3: so we we extended uh the contract to the end of june

[1:23:26] Voice 3: so we'll have like there'll be deliverables between then and now and um but but we're

[1:23:33] Voice 3: hoping to have the entire project wrapped up by then and then we will see like fingers crossed we

[1:23:39] Voice 3: have um uh our our application for the watershed security strategy and fund to continue on the

[1:23:48] Voice 3: freshwater footprint work and you know if we're successful in that then that'll just enrich the

[1:23:53] Voice 3: work we're doing on for gabriola because of course using a case study in the methodology there's you

[1:23:59] Voice 3: you know, we're kind of, our minds are a little bit split to doing the methodology and doing the

[1:24:04] Voice 3: case study. And then if we continue on forward, we're focusing on the northern part of the

[1:24:09] Voice 3: Island Trust area. So that will continuously include Gabriel. So yeah, it's exciting. But

[1:24:16] Voice 3: we'll provide a feedback or an update back to the LTC. I'll talk with the Island Planner when,

[1:24:23] Voice 3: or actually with Narissa, when would be a good time to do that.

[1:24:27] Voice 6: great thank you um come back to gabrielle alandon we would love to see you here

[1:24:33] Voice 1: yes yes i'm due for a visit so i'll be back soon thank

[1:24:37] Voice 6: you both okay thank you

[1:24:39] Voice 1: thank you we

[1:24:41] Voice 6: need a five minute break before we move to

[1:24:43] Voice 2: the next section

[1:24:44] Voice 6: let's take a five minute break and then we will move to the housing that's just a question i'll

[1:24:51] Voice 10: what are we excuse me cherry you're both muted still oh and we're muted there we go

[1:25:23] Voice 10: okay

[1:25:24] Voice 6: can you start that again susan oh sure can you hear us now yes

[1:25:30] Voice 5: thanks oh

[1:25:32] Voice 6: thank you very much

[1:25:32] Voice 6: okay we will start the second part of this uh gabrielle on the local test committee special

[1:25:37] Voice 6: meeting the first part we talked about the suitable land analysis um with william

[1:25:45] Voice 6: and Landon Matichak and the second part we will be asking Island Planner Narissa Chadwick

[1:25:52] Voice 6: to lead us through the bylaw review housing section the discussion thank

[1:26:00] Voice 4: you trustee Yates

[1:26:01] Voice 4: um yeah so just a bit I'll just sort of take you down memory lane a little bit before we

[1:26:08] Voice 4: we were entering at the next the next stage of our conversation um related to the ocp so our

[1:26:18] Voice 4: the conversation on the ocp began with the with our gabriella visioning um 2050 process um where

[1:26:26] Voice 4: we were um we were sort of just put it out there for the community to to to think about what they

[1:26:33] Voice 4: they want the future of Gabriela to look like. And we gathered a

[1:26:37] Voice 4: lot of feedback in a number of different areas. While we did

[1:26:41] Voice 4: that, the trustees, you passed a resolution for housing to be a

[1:26:48] Voice 4: priority. And so we had the housing, the housing APC spend

[1:26:54] Voice 4: some time identifying, having some conversations and

[1:26:58] Voice 4: identifying some recommendations so that is so that so those are the two two pieces of significant

[1:27:05] Voice 4: community input um it includes the survey work that we did for the visioning um process and all

[1:27:13] Voice 4: of the outreach there um was also all of that was considered in the the draft policies that have

[1:27:20] Voice 4: been provided um the other process that um that needs to be uh understood too is that staff had

[1:27:27] Voice 4: gone through the existing ocp line by line word by word um was that fun yes oh well um i mean it's

[1:27:38] Voice 4: a it is an interesting exercise to dig right

[1:27:40] Voice 1: in there right

[1:27:41] Voice 4: um and so that's sort of the you know

[1:27:45] Voice 4: the technical review piece too and um and and so what uh what is a what what these what is resulted

[1:27:53] Voice 4: it is suggestions about how we move forward with the existing OCP in a clearer way. There's a lot

[1:28:02] Voice 4: of redundancy in the existing. There's stuff in the existing. And this is all parts of the existing

[1:28:08] Voice 4: OCP. You know, there's things that should be in other places. There's

[1:28:12] Voice 6: things that should be in

[1:28:13] Voice 6: the land use bylaw and not the OCP.

[1:28:16] Voice 4: Yeah. Or in a DAI bylaw, for example. And all of that is part

[1:28:21] Voice 4: part of this process. I'll remind you this is the OCP and land use by-law review and

[1:28:26] Voice 4: DAI is an important piece of all of that. So we're not losing any of that. It's just

[1:28:32] Voice 4: going to be put in a better place. And this, including definitions. I actually got an email

[1:28:38] Voice 4: from Nancy, Heatherine Pierce, early this morning. She's ill, unfortunately. She was

[1:28:44] Voice 4: was going to

[1:28:44] Voice 4: provide um and she was part of our housing uh uh discussion

[1:28:49] Voice 5: group and

[1:28:50] Voice 4: um uh and uh

[1:28:52] Voice 4: contributed quite significantly to that and was going to provide some more um uh uh information

[1:28:58] Voice 4: but hasn't been able to because she hasn't been well but she did send a an email this morning and

[1:29:04] Voice 4: she and it was particularly focusing on the definition of housing and the location of that

[1:29:09] Voice 4: definition what what's interesting and she's maybe listening now is that um

[1:29:14] Voice 4: there was this process with the with the rezoning for the housing affordable

[1:29:19] Voice 4: housing yeah and

[1:29:21] Voice 1: there was a

[1:29:21] Voice 4: huge discussion about actually what the

[1:29:23] Voice 4: definition of housing should be and then there was a definition that was in the

[1:29:27] Voice 4: in the housing agreement and then that definition found its way in it into a

[1:29:33] Voice 4: part of the OCP but there's actually another definition of affordable housing

[1:29:37] Voice 4: which is in there as well and they're they're not the same so

[1:29:41] Voice 4: um so just to let let Nancy know

[1:29:44] Voice 4: like we need to think about one the definition and and and in terms of the location of definitions

[1:29:51] Voice 4: they need to be in the land use bylaw the fact that they're in the OCP is weird

[1:29:55] Voice 4: yeah

[1:29:56] Voice 6: and it just makes

[1:29:57] Voice 4: for more work it's not um and and

[1:30:00] Voice 4: we should only have them in the land use file so that we don't have this this problem of um like

[1:30:05] Voice 4: there being different definitions but where it makes sense to have a definition like in a in a

[1:30:11] Voice 4: housing agreement absolutely um you know to repeat the the definition where where it makes sense to

[1:30:18] Voice 4: for clarity's sake is really important so i just wanted to um acknowledge uh nancy's contribution

[1:30:25] Voice 4: contribution um and uh her recent uh you

[1:30:27] Voice 6: know there thank you she's i'm really glad she picked

[1:30:30] Voice 6: up on that because i sewed it off and definitely have to fix that yeah yeah yeah

[1:30:35] Voice 4: um yeah so on this

[1:30:37] Voice 4: on this little journey we are moving into this next phase the the the the focus on um um so

[1:30:47] Voice 4: myself and um and planner bao who just had a lovely little baby which is why he's not with

[1:30:54] with

[1:30:54] Voice 4: us today. We have spent quite some time drafting policies that reflect the input that

[1:31:07] Voice 4: we have already gathered. So with housing, it's a little bit more because we did have

[1:31:11] Voice 4: the input from the housing APC as well. And so that's what you've got before you. And

[1:31:19] Voice 4: so before engaging in this discussion, we have had these focus groups, we're having

[1:31:24] Voice 4: these focus groups on different topics this is with our first one housing we're having our second

[1:31:28] Voice 4: one tonight on connectivity and so what you so what i've tried what i've done in the um staff

[1:31:34] Voice 4: report is so sorry let me just back up one um the focus groups were provided with a package

[1:31:41] Voice 4: of information so i've provided you in the appendix of the um of the uh report is all the

[1:31:47] Voice 4: information that they were provided with and all the information that they commented on

[1:31:52] Voice 10: so there is

[1:31:53] Voice 4: one of those attachments is the policies that we can have a have a look at

[1:31:57] Voice 4: specifically so that would be attachment five will be the one that I'll draw your

[1:32:00] Voice 4: attention to later I've also included the feedback directly from the focus

[1:32:09] Voice 4: groups and the feedback that we got in the housing APC and so what I've done in

[1:32:15] Voice 4: the report is I've sort of provided a summary of the suggested changes from

[1:32:23] Voice 4: the existing OCB. I mean really we're creating a whole new approach and that's why I've also got

[1:32:30] Voice 4: the contents page as just an example and that's the way that can change over time. And I've also

[1:32:38] Voice 4: got a printout of some of the survey results so if you're interested in asking about where that's

[1:32:44] Voice 4: at I also have that. It

[1:32:46] Trustee Elliott: reminds me that people fill out the survey at the library so general

[1:32:50] Trustee Elliott: reminder people can come to the library there's physical copies it's actually really effective

[1:32:55] Trustee Elliott: to just grab people and then

[1:32:56] Trustee Elliott: you fill out the survey and they're like oh I better do that right

[1:32:59] Trustee Elliott: now because I'll

[1:32:59] Trustee Elliott: forget yeah and

[1:33:00] Voice 4: so that's that

[1:33:01] Trustee Elliott: is still ongoing great

[1:33:02] Voice 4: yeah yeah so the way that

[1:33:06] Voice 4: I thought we could go through this is first of all I'll go I'll go through and just give you

[1:33:09] Voice 4: an overview of how what's being suggested is different from what currently exists yeah and

[1:33:16] Voice 4: And so within that discussion, as the way that I presented it to you, I identified where the focus groups have had particular interest and there was quite some conversation in specific areas.

[1:33:27] Voice 4: So we can have some discussion around those pieces. And then, like I said, I'd like to draw your attention specifically to Appendix 5, which is the actual draft policies.

[1:33:39] Voice 4: policies and um we've organized these draft policies in a way that they relate to the

[1:33:45] Voice 4: objectives um and again you know this is all draft right so it's all there for conversation

[1:33:53] Voice 4: we have to start with something um the way that it'll appear in the actual ocp will be different

[1:34:00] Voice 4: and we're going to design the ocp in a way that it's easy to use um but this is more easy to

[1:34:07] Voice 4: to understand in terms of goals and objectives i see that

[1:34:10] Voice 4: already good yes good at least we were

[1:34:14] Voice 4: trying like i said we're trying to make it more easy to understand whether we achieved it that's

[1:34:18] Voice 4: that's good that's good though you think we did

[1:34:21] Voice 4: okay so um yeah so there you go let's so let's

[1:34:26] Voice 4: go back to the page three um page three please page three please vanna it's actually emily isn't

[1:34:36] Voice 4: it behind there okay she's tracking very well thank you Emily um oh wait you know it's actually

[1:34:43] Voice 4: page three is that page three

[1:34:44] Voice 6: oh

[1:34:45] Voice 4: yeah actually page four yeah because it would be page four of

[1:34:48] Voice 4: hers yeah there we go okay yeah oh yeah oh that's right because I've got it printed out okay so um

[1:34:54] Voice 4: I'll just go through and then like if you stop me at any time if you have questions I'll I'll ask

[1:35:00] Voice 4: you questions so um and I've organized them by administrative changes overarching perspective

[1:35:06] Voice 4: perspective policies and uh detailed changes and as you can imagine the it's the it's about when

[1:35:12] Voice 4: we get into the details is where there's there was um much engagement and discussion i like how

[1:35:18] Voice 6: you put rationale and focus group comments especially the part where it says no discussion

[1:35:22] Voice 6: yeah

[1:35:23] Voice 4: yeah because there's some things are kind of basic right we need to dwell on them so those

[1:35:27] Voice 4: things were these administrative changes so that things like you know changing residential land

[1:35:32] Voice 4: use to housing actually having a housing section which is also and i will note that steven and i

[1:35:38] Voice 4: have combed through many many many ocps from other local governments to to kind of get a sense of

[1:35:44] Voice 4: how they're organized what what makes sense and what doesn't make sense so this is the way that

[1:35:49] Voice 4: we're approaching this is informed by like quite quite a look at some other things and um and all

[1:35:56] Voice 4: that to say like because housing is a predominant issue that's what we're seeing is we're seeing

[1:36:01] Voice 4: this this this trend towards uh housing sections as opposed to organizing um by like residential

[1:36:09] Voice 4: yeah uh by by um zone okay

[1:36:12] Voice 10: um

[1:36:13] Voice 4: and it makes sense i think so uh yeah references that require

[1:36:19] Voice 4: references to requirements that fall under other jurisdictions that's kind of redundant

[1:36:25] Voice 4: it so we're interesting

[1:36:27] Voice 6: comment about um zones residential zones looking back on that now it

[1:36:34] Voice 6: almost seems as though that's like almost a classist way of describing housing yeah well

[1:36:42] Voice 4: i think it kind of dates back to like the the whole like zones came in to separate the the

[1:36:48] Voice 4: industrial from the from the where people were living so that people weren't weren't breathing

[1:36:53] Voice 4: and all the fumes of the industrial waste etc right and the noise and all that stuff so there

[1:36:57] Voice 4: was this separation so now if we move into thinking about housing then you think you're not

[1:37:02] Voice 4: limiting it to like a residential zone because yeah yeah so you're right um so yeah so taking

[1:37:09] Voice 4: those references out i don't i think no questions there um so reference to provisions that are more

[1:37:15] Voice 4: appropriate in the land that you smile at will not exist in the ocp and we're tracking it so we're

[1:37:21] Voice 4: we're tracking as we go through all of these things we're tracking um things that we need

[1:37:26] Voice 4: to change in the languages bylaw

[1:37:27] Voice 8: perfect other

[1:37:29] Voice 4: things that aren't need to be moved over um

[1:37:31] Voice 4: policies better suited in other sections of the ocp so that that's um there's a few of those

[1:37:37] Voice 4: um again we're not losing them they're just moving policies better suited to a development

[1:37:42] Voice 4: improvement information bylaw um like i said that is part of this project don't worry

[1:37:47] Voice 4: but

[1:37:48] Voice 6: it will be where it belongs

[1:37:52] Voice 4: um yeah sustainability of freshwater resources

[1:37:55] Voice 4: to emphasize so there's there's this is over overarching focus and that's something that

[1:38:00] Voice 4: um was really clear with our community engagement and that was something that

[1:38:05] Voice 4: these these three topics uh freshwater uh resources climate change and indigenous cultural

[1:38:12] Voice 4: heritage those are all sort of just overarching perspectives that we

[1:38:16] Trustee Elliott: right so when we go back to

[1:38:18] Trustee Elliott: i'm just remembering from the uh visioning and what we heard documents these were identified as

[1:38:26] Trustee Elliott: is this the lenses that we sort of are viewing all of london's planning it's there's a climate

[1:38:32] Trustee Elliott: change lens there's reconciliation and fresh water yeah preservation or okay so

[1:38:39] Voice 4: so those are

[1:38:39] Voice 4: So if you recall, and I apologize, I don't have the documents in front of me, I should

[1:38:45] Voice 4: plan to, but in our What We Hear report, we did...

[1:38:48] Trustee Elliott: Oh,

[1:38:49] Voice 4: actually, I think we put it in...

[1:38:50] Trustee Elliott: Yeah, I think it's in there, actually, in one of the attachments.

[1:38:54] Voice 4: Well, no, this is our...

[1:38:55] Voice 4: We've got, yeah, so we've got our behavioral revisioning, so we have natural environment

[1:39:01] Voice 4: community, the climate lens and first nations lens were the sort of key lenses that we were

[1:39:07] Voice 4: um

[1:39:08] Voice 11: but

[1:39:10] Voice 4: we had our um our goals and principles so those yes those clearly identify those perspectives

[1:39:16] Voice 4: now

[1:39:17] Trustee Elliott: i remember okay thanks and

[1:39:18] Voice 4: so here i'm reading like one of the comments that we got back from

[1:39:21] Voice 4: focus group was that um there's interest in knowing how we're engaging with cinema first

[1:39:26] Voice 4: nations um and so i can i can provide an update that that we we have had a very um another very

[1:39:33] Voice 4: a great meeting with their staff just this week and uh and so we've got um a draft list of of what

[1:39:40] Voice 4: their interests are and so we'll work with them to see what their process is on their side to

[1:39:45] Voice 4: connect with their leadership to ensure uh that the the staff kind of nailed it and then um so

[1:39:52] Voice 4: once i understand what that process is um you know i said we're working towards including that in a

[1:39:57] Voice 4: staff report the next meeting is april i'm not sure if they'll be there yet so i'll keep you

[1:40:02] Voice 11: guys

[1:40:02] Voice 4: updated but i can tell you it was a really great um really successful meeting so so that was

[1:40:09] Voice 4: that was yeah yeah um okay so then we moved into sort of detailed changes so objectives um were

[1:40:19] Voice 4: changed to focus on supporting a range of housing types to ensure affordability and attainability

[1:40:24] Voice 4: of housing while ensuring uh environmental protection fresh water sustainability protected

[1:40:29] Voice 4: of indigenous cultural heritage so this is where that diversity of housing was not that clear in

[1:40:39] Voice 4: the previous work and I'm just actually going to look at my I'm also going to just open up the

[1:40:48] Voice 4: other because that's where we provide yeah so that in terms of conversation you can see there

[1:40:55] Voice 4: um that that there was some uh discussion around using the word attainable uh and so the intention

[1:41:04] Voice 4: from the staff perspective was that we we were not just the conversation hasn't just been around

[1:41:11] Voice 4: affordable as in affordable for people who are making low incomes but it's it's low middle

[1:41:17] Voice 4: and middle income people that are having a hard time so um so the word we use um

[1:41:25] Voice 4: We can have some debate.

[1:41:27] Voice 4: I don't think we should get into it in detail here,

[1:41:29] Voice 4: but for now I can use that word as a placeholder.

[1:41:33] Voice 4: I did change it for, I'm working on three,

[1:41:37] Voice 4: two other housing projects.

[1:41:41] Voice 4: So I introduced the word moderate income housing.

[1:41:46] Voice 4: They're sort of the same.

[1:41:47] Voice 4: At some point we can decide which word to use.

[1:41:51] Voice 4: okay um and

[1:41:53] Voice 6: and for me attainable doesn't mean anything um well i mean i don't know

[1:42:00] Voice 6: well i didn't say that for me affordable means affordable for everyone so

[1:42:06] Voice 4: well and this is what

[1:42:07] Voice 4: we're sort of up against is

[1:42:09] Voice 6: like just think of below market value for affordable i think of

[1:42:12] Voice 6: all levels of being affordable and i don't actually care what the definition is mostly

[1:42:18] Voice 6: what I care is equity that's what I care yeah

[1:42:21] Voice 4: well I'm gonna write equity down because the

[1:42:24] Voice 4: challenge here is that we're we're trying to um with housing being such a hot topic these days

[1:42:30] Voice 4: we're trying to align definitions with the provincial definitions and federal definitions

[1:42:35] Voice 4: as well so when you look at affordable that's that's sort of like the sort of subsidized

[1:42:40] Voice 4: affordable um and the value of maintaining that perspective is that you can get grants you can

[1:42:46] Voice 4: can get grants and we're we're not going to have to um we know what we're talking about we're

[1:42:52] Voice 4: talking about it you know it's aligned with that so that middle ground is still up for discussion

[1:42:57] Voice 4: and i think it's a good continuing conversation it

[1:43:00] Voice 6: doesn't hurt to have

[1:43:00] Voice 4: all of these whatever

[1:43:01] Voice 6: whatever

[1:43:02] Voice 4: and the

[1:43:03] Voice 6: fact is islands trust cannot provide housing islands trust can make it possible

[1:43:08] Voice 6: to provide housing well that's exactly you know so

[1:43:11] Voice 6: whatever works that that groups can get the

[1:43:14] Voice 6: the money they need from the higher levels of government

[1:43:16] Voice 6: to actually provide real, attainable, affordable housing.

[1:43:21] Voice 4: Exactly, yeah.

[1:43:22] Voice 6: Put them all in there if we need to.

[1:43:24] Voice 4: Yeah, and so the challenge with the existing OCP

[1:43:26] Voice 4: is that it really just specifies special needs seniors

[1:43:29] Voice 4: and affordable housing for multi-dwelling.

[1:43:35] Voice 4: So it's just opening that up

[1:43:38] Voice 4: so that you are including this other level of need.

[1:43:41] Voice 4: um so yeah so that like i said i think there was a general consensus you were there weren't you yeah

[1:43:50] Voice 4: you're you're all of

[1:43:52] Voice 4: them who knows everything about that

[1:43:55] Voice 4: i mean i

[1:43:58] Voice 6: bet you feel the same way whatever definition gets um

[1:44:01] Voice 4: and if i miss misrepresenting

[1:44:03] Voice 4: anything please feel free um um but yeah so anyways like the focus group was was was supportive of

[1:44:10] Voice 4: the general uh intent of the yeah um so the density bank has been removed yes uh and that's

[1:44:20] Voice 4: just because i mean because that is the thing is it was never used and when they did create the

[1:44:26] Voice 4: multi-family they they sort of there's a policy that that that was designed to kind of go around

[1:44:32] Voice 4: it so it's just kind of like yeah

[1:44:34] Trustee Elliott: for me it was just a distraction and if it wasn't a potentially

[1:44:38] Trustee Elliott: It's a potentially innovative tool at the time and it didn't work out, that's all.

[1:44:40] Trustee Elliott: And we really need bigger tools.

[1:44:42] Trustee Elliott: Wait, can we keep moving?

[1:44:43] Trustee Elliott: I really

[1:44:43] Voice 4: want to get to the politics.

[1:44:45] Voice 4: Yeah, yeah.

[1:44:45] Voice 4: Okay.

[1:44:45] Voice 4: Sorry.

[1:44:45] Voice 4: Okay, so here we go.

[1:44:48] Voice 4: Okay, thank you.

[1:44:49] Voice 4: Okay, so policies supporting what we're identifying as small clustered housing development have

[1:44:58] Voice 4: been included.

[1:44:59] Voice 4: and so these um this is so this is this because there's a lot of discussion around um um you know

[1:45:07] Voice 4: trailer panic parks tiny hill parks blah blah so really what that is is just adding more units

[1:45:13] Voice 4: of housing to an area so really um we can define these it's not it's not a multi-family

[1:45:21] Voice 4: dwelling where everything's together but it's these separate units but the impact

[1:45:25] Voice 4: well i mean what you're doing is just introducing more people onto the land

[1:45:28] Voice 4: And so the idea here is that we can really address that in a similar way that we address the multi-unit housing.

[1:45:39] Voice 4: So if you're looking at the Superland analysis, for example, like we're still looking for green areas for this type of housing, that type of housing.

[1:45:50] Voice 4: It's just another, it's defining that diversity of housing.

[1:45:55] Voice 4: And so, again, there was general support for this concept and, you know, considerations that it not necessarily be clustered around the village, that there are other nodes of opportunity.

[1:46:17] Voice 4: Exceptions related to minimum parcel size to facilitate subdivision for First Nations.

[1:46:22] Voice 4: Again, there was no specific discussion on this.

[1:46:25] Voice 4: This is about helping to facilitate the donation of land, specifically for affordable housing, nonprofit housing, and nonprofit housing and First Nations and government agencies providing affordable housing.

[1:46:38] Voice 4: So that's where, like allowing for a smaller parcel size, if somebody wants to carve off a small piece and then gear it to where those restrictions exist for just a regular subdivision.

[1:46:50] Voice 4: um supporting secondary uh suites or accessory dwelling units on smaller lots

[1:46:57] Voice 4: um so this is responding to housing apc a number of these are responding to housing apc um feedback

[1:47:03] Voice 4: um and uh general support from the focus group on that um and only

[1:47:10] Voice 6: if they're closer to the village

[1:47:11] Voice 6: no

[1:47:11] Voice 4: no not not necessarily um yeah so there's this

[1:47:16] Trustee Elliott: question so so i'm just let's pause here

[1:47:20] Trustee Elliott: for a minute so it's on smaller lots if they're closer to the village and this is where that's

[1:47:24] Voice 4: sorry yes on smaller lots if they're close i

[1:47:26] Trustee Elliott: want to pause here because there was strong support

[1:47:29] Trustee Elliott: for i'm thinking about the housing uh engagement that the housing advisory planning commission did

[1:47:37] Trustee Elliott: in 2020 um there was strong support for additional density on smaller lots but not whether it's

[1:47:45] Trustee Elliott: closer to the village it's whether the groundwater was adequate to supply and so this is the the

[1:47:52] Trustee Elliott: question of balance that i really want to have if we're driving how how much we wait

[1:47:59] Trustee Elliott: uh pushing development close to the village and nodes of amenities and stuff versus um

[1:48:08] Trustee Elliott: where there might be more suitable land

[1:48:11] Voice 4: and water

[1:48:12] Trustee Elliott: yeah

[1:48:12] Voice 4: so that's so we can be looking at it from

[1:48:16] Voice 4: that perspective well

[1:48:17] Trustee Elliott: i think both those perspectives you know smaller lots closer

[1:48:20] Trustee Elliott: to the village and what smaller lots you know have available groundwater and according to

[1:48:24] Trustee Elliott: suitable land because every place is close to the bus route yeah

[1:48:28] Voice 8: yeah and

[1:48:30] Voice 2: yeah yeah um yeah

[1:48:34] Voice 2: what we know and my love just yeah i

[1:48:38] Voice 2: mean it's up to the chair

[1:48:40] Voice 6: of course of course

[1:48:42] Voice 2: i really think

[1:48:43] Voice 2: it's important to be close to the village i mean susan and i are both on the bus committee right

[1:48:48] Voice 2: and we both know that that bus doesn't run every day and it doesn't run all day every day and

[1:48:52] Voice 2: and it's great, it's wonderful, the bus is great, but it does not.

[1:48:59] Voice 6: And I totally

[1:49:00] Voice 2: acknowledge that.

[1:49:01] Voice 6: The only reason I think that we might consider other nodes for possible density

[1:49:08] Voice 6: is that the actual land that could be available for people to try co-housing

[1:49:15] Voice 6: or group homes or whatever, whatever works, might not be close to the village.

[1:49:22] Voice 6: the village is

[1:49:23] Voice 6: already pretty dense

[1:49:24] Voice 6: so I think

[1:49:26] Voice 6: what would happen in the long run

[1:49:28] Voice 6: is if there were a rezoning

[1:49:29] Voice 6: for something that we really want to see

[1:49:32] Voice 6: on the island

[1:49:33] Voice 6: it would probably be a balance

[1:49:35] Voice 6: if it's not right on the bus route

[1:49:39] Voice 6: but it does

[1:49:40] Voice 6: have this opportunity for

[1:49:42] Voice 6: really good water catchment and maybe

[1:49:44] Voice 6: a little community water supply

[1:49:45] Voice 6: which is easily done

[1:49:46] Voice 6: then we'd have to consider that

[1:49:50] Trustee Elliott: so I have a

[1:49:51] Trustee Elliott: a suggestion for a couple of policies that might be helpful um in addition to uh closer to the

[1:50:02] Trustee Elliott: village it would and this is kind of this came out through work on the policy statement and this is

[1:50:07] Trustee Elliott: where i'm trying to make to see how things can

[1:50:10] Trustee Elliott: flow through and so we were working on policies

[1:50:13] Trustee Elliott: for low impact and clustered housing um to identify appropriate locations on land

[1:50:20] Trustee Elliott: and zoned for residential use to permit clustered, compact, or low-impact forms of housing

[1:50:26] Trustee Elliott: and direct these to areas where the least negative impact on the natural environment would result.

[1:50:32] Trustee Elliott: So that could be an option where if you're going to cluster,

[1:50:37] Trustee Elliott: it's not necessarily dependent on lot size or proximity to the village,

[1:50:42] Trustee Elliott: but those would be directed to areas where the

[1:50:46] Trustee Elliott: least negative impact on the natural environment

[1:50:49] Trustee Elliott: um and and so that would be useful with because then you'd use a suitable land analysis

[1:50:54] Trustee Elliott: um and to determine well if this is already you know degraded forest it's already cleared it's

[1:51:04] Trustee Elliott: not alr um you can direct that development to those areas so i could see policies that

[1:51:15] Trustee Elliott: allow some flexibility um i don't know if that's appropriate right

[1:51:23] Voice 4: yes no this is exactly the kind

[1:51:26] Voice 4: of discussion i mean

[1:51:27] Voice 6: preferably they'd be on the gritty bus route but they might not be because

[1:51:31] Voice 6: there might be something other determining factors that make

[1:51:35] Voice 6: it ideal of course the real

[1:51:37] Voice 6: thing would be to have a cycling path all along the entire north and south roads

[1:51:45] Voice 6: where you could

[1:51:45] Voice 6: safely cycle into the village of course

[1:51:48] Voice 6: that's not possible yeah

[1:51:51] Voice 4: well this is this is an important

[1:51:53] Voice 4: discussion because this is what the the OCP policies if they're not flexible enough then

[1:51:58] Voice 4: then you force people to have to go into a much more detailed process with rezoning and these

[1:52:05] Voice 4: These days with the province, the legislation has been changed to allow those, anything like rezoning is having to do with housing, don't have to go through a public hearing if they adhere very, very clearly to the OCP.

[1:52:21] Voice 4: So that's where the

[1:52:22] Voice 4: OCP policies become very, very important.

[1:52:25] Voice 4: I mean, you have the choice to waive it.

[1:52:27] Voice 4: yeah um and

[1:52:29] Voice 6: of course that's interesting because the the looser or wider you make your OCP policies

[1:52:34] Voice 6: the more I would want to have a public hearing um just

[1:52:38] Voice 6: to make sure that you know there were

[1:52:40] Voice 6: so

[1:52:41] Trustee Elliott: back back to the types and forms of houses sort of we've got I actually don't see much in

[1:52:49] Trustee Elliott: these policy options for support for different types and forms so when I go back to again the

[1:52:57] Trustee Elliott: policy statement project or the suggested advisory policy that ocp should support a range of housing

[1:53:05] Trustee Elliott: types and tenures including rentals cooperatives and other alternatives to fee simple ownership

[1:53:11] Trustee Elliott: so

[1:53:12] Voice 4: so this is where if i have my my my main island um presentation here is it okay yeah so so so i

[1:53:20] Voice 4: think what's important to think about is that um there are like four different aspects to that

[1:53:27] Voice 4: contribute to affordable housing what is

[1:53:29] Voice 4: the land use and that's allowing the the the number the

[1:53:35] Voice 4: type of housing to exist

[1:53:36] Voice 11: then

[1:53:37] Voice 4: there's the ownership piece yeah then there's the uh bringing the money

[1:53:42] Voice 4: in piece yeah um and then there's a fourth one will come to me i know there's there was four i

[1:53:49] Voice 4: had four but anyways you know what i mean so so so what you're talking about so the the purpose of

[1:53:54] Voice 4: the land use piece is to be flexible enough to facilitate that

[1:53:59] Voice 5: other

[1:54:00] Voice 4: ownership piece right so

[1:54:01] Voice 4: if your land use bylaw and your ocp if you if it's so strict on type of housing like one single

[1:54:09] Voice 4: family dwelling in one cottage or what have you then you don't have that flexibility to allow

[1:54:16] Voice 4: five people to live on the land and you know in a cooperative ownership arrangement kind of thing

[1:54:22] Voice 4: right so that's i think an important perspective to kind of keep in mind yeah yeah

[1:54:27] Voice 4: so all of those

[1:54:29] Voice 4: kind of cooperative ownership models that's in the realm of of ownership um which is which is

[1:54:36] Voice 4: you know it's a sidestep from the actual land use piece but if you don't

[1:54:41] Voice 4: think about that in

[1:54:41] Voice 4: this context then you might you might not be supporting yeah options okay yeah that's great

[1:54:49] Trustee Elliott: great thanks um

[1:54:50] Voice 4: yeah so and i think um and i think this is a good conversation this is really

[1:54:55] Voice 4: very good because um this conversation around location right so we've just seen the super

[1:55:00] Voice 4: so you see what what some of the opportunities and challenges can be with with some decisions

[1:55:06] Voice 4: um and we can keep that we can continue to keep that conversation open in in in the policies make

[1:55:13] Voice 4: sure that we're not restricting like what i'm hearing is like don't restrict to the village

[1:55:18] Voice 4: is what I'm

[1:55:19] Voice 4: hearing this is what

[1:55:20] Voice 4: it's not what I'm saying well you didn't

[1:55:22] Voice 4: say that but no but

[1:55:23] Voice 4: ideally

[1:55:23] Voice 6: they might be close to the village well and this is and ideally they would be on the bus

[1:55:31] Voice 6: route but there may become an opportunity that you know some land may be donated somewhere

[1:55:39] Voice 6: where

[1:55:39] Voice 4: yeah well there

[1:55:41] Trustee Elliott: needs to be the ability to draw down a zone that the the landowner is

[1:55:49] Trustee Elliott: willing to permit more residential use in exchange for potentially a conservation covenant or whatever

[1:55:56] Voice 5: the

[1:55:56] Trustee Elliott: the policy trade-off might be so i do look again at the tool three in the policy options

[1:56:03] Trustee Elliott: options table where um the conservation um what is it called a conservation amenity or contribution

[1:56:12] Trustee Elliott: um so if you're going to add more density to a parcel or to an area that's zoned for say that

[1:56:19] Trustee Elliott: flexible more density that there are a covenant or some kind of an

[1:56:26] Trustee Elliott: offset to to to allow that so

[1:56:28] Trustee Elliott: So I just am not supportive of limiting everything to the village

[1:56:32] Trustee Elliott: because there are going to be special circumstances.

[1:56:35] Trustee Elliott: I'm not going to say you're going to pre-zone all, you know,

[1:56:40] Trustee Elliott: five acre lots for a certain extra density.

[1:56:42] Trustee Elliott: But what are the qualifiers that would say this piece is suitable

[1:56:48] Trustee Elliott: for these reasons?

[1:56:49] Voice 6: That's why I like amenity zoning better than the density bank.

[1:56:53] Voice 6: because

[1:56:54] Voice 4: so and this is

[1:56:55] Voice 6: a allows you different kinds of amenities and at the same time the

[1:57:01] Voice 6: community agrees on are those amenities going to be swimming pools no there will be green space

[1:57:06] Voice 6: whatever whatever the community wants we might want who knows what yeah

[1:57:10] Voice 4: so that and that's you

[1:57:12] Voice 4: raise a really good point that isn't addressed yet here is having an amenity zoning or like a

[1:57:19] Voice 4: policy for amenity zoning absolutely um because that's been quite effective on me we've just seen

[1:57:24] Voice 4: how it's been used in the context of affordable housing

[1:57:26] Voice 6: it has been effective here too we've had

[1:57:29] Voice 6: a number of developments with amenity zoning and yeah but

[1:57:32] Voice 4: you don't have an amenity zoning

[1:57:34] Voice 4: specific policy so that's something

[1:57:36] Trustee Elliott: we could have a look at which could address

[1:57:38] Trustee Elliott: so the density

[1:57:39] Trustee Elliott: transfer i think is what you're that

[1:57:41] Voice 4: provides the opportunity for that discussion

[1:57:43] Trustee Elliott: exactly yeah but

[1:57:44] Voice 4: it's not like for example that wouldn't necessarily address what you're saying which is like if you

[1:57:48] Voice 4: donate uh you know half of your land to conservation you can have some additional

[1:57:52] Voice 4: density that's something that we could that we can look at that i can draft out

[1:57:58] Voice 4: for to i can explore that a little bit to see what it could look like for gabriella

[1:58:02] Voice 4: so would you like to do that can i ask

[1:58:05] Trustee Elliott: yeah they can't this i'll look up the tools in the toolkit

[1:58:08] Trustee Elliott: because um

[1:58:09] Trustee Elliott: there was some that and they don't see that and

[1:58:11] Voice 6: that's interesting because i think of

[1:58:13] Voice 6: those as just different kinds of amenity zonings but

[1:58:15] Voice 4: if they're not

[1:58:16] Voice 6: technically then yeah we need

[1:58:17] Voice 6: them in there yeah because

[1:58:20] Voice 4: usually that that conversation will will happen within the context

[1:58:23] Voice 4: of a rezoning yeah um but um if you've got it more explicitly i think it it makes the process

[1:58:29] Voice 4: easier yeah

[1:58:31] Voice 6: and if you don't have it in your ocp then you know you can't say to a developer well

[1:58:36] Voice 6: we're looking for this yeah

[1:58:40] Voice 4: yeah and so like i say what what what you're presented with here is

[1:58:44] Voice 4: is really, it's building on what's currently in the OCP

[1:58:48] Voice 4: and what the feedback has been.

[1:58:51] Voice 4: So things like, that's exactly what we're trying to capture

[1:58:54] Voice 4: with this conversation.

[1:58:55] Voice 4: So

[1:58:55] Trustee Elliott: yeah, the conservation density bonus

[1:58:57] Trustee Elliott: with the home plate zoning model.

[1:58:59] Trustee Elliott: So I do, I've had some conversations

[1:59:03] Trustee Elliott: with Director Cermak and I think Jason,

[1:59:06] Trustee Elliott: and he pointed me to, you know, where you've got AL,

[1:59:09] Trustee Elliott: some communities have, you know, if it's AL or land

[1:59:12] Trustee Elliott: and you're going to permit an additional number of buildings you confine it to this home plate

[1:59:19] Trustee Elliott: model so those costs absolutely and it you know that's what the clustering is meant to do but

[1:59:24] Trustee Elliott: it's meant to not distribute that development that it is confined to a home plate uh zoning

[1:59:29] Trustee Elliott: model the more green space that you can deserve it's good for

[1:59:32] Voice 6: everybody including that home plate

[1:59:34] Voice 6: model yeah

[1:59:35] Trustee Elliott: so then the eco and the eco village zoning model and the eco density bonus um those

[1:59:40] Trustee Elliott: Those three tools from the housing toolkit, I think, should be explored.

[1:59:45] Trustee Elliott: I don't know.

[1:59:46] Trustee Elliott: Do you have the numbers just so that I know?

[1:59:48] Trustee Elliott: That's page, I don't have numbers.

[1:59:50] Voice 4: I know where that is.

[1:59:52] Trustee Elliott: It's page four.

[1:59:53] Voice 4: So what's kind of cool, what's cool about me working on Denman and Maine is that

[2:00:00] Voice 4: next week for me is looking exactly at this all good for their next report so um so uh yeah so

[2:00:08] Voice 4: i'll have something modeled out um and then we can and then i can share it with you so that's

[2:00:13] Voice 6: why we're a federation well i think

[2:00:16] Voice 4: we're working as such but uh yeah so so yeah so um

[2:00:21] Voice 4: yeah i will bring something it'll be it'll it'll have gone through um those guys too

[2:00:26] Voice 4: nice that's awesome

[2:00:27] Voice 6: yeah and then the freshwater catchment oh there

[2:00:31] Voice 4: it goes yeah um that's good

[2:00:33] Voice 6: yeah

[2:00:33] Voice 4: so so what i'm hearing so what i've captured so far just based on these sort of changes that

[2:00:40] Voice 4: have been we need to we need to think about things in terms of like this location piece

[2:00:46] Voice 4: and it pees in with the amenity zoning as well i'll put my head around that a bit more

[2:00:50] Voice 4: um that flexibility but not but being being able to um it's just an outright flexibility putting

[2:01:00] Voice 4: some um there should be criteria there's got to be criteria to

[2:01:04] Voice 4: meet which is why the amenity like

[2:01:06] Voice 4: having an amenity zoning policy might be the way to go

[2:01:08] Voice 6: yeah and you

[2:01:09] Voice 4: know thinking again i'll look

[2:01:11] Voice 6: at it from different angles

[2:01:12] Voice 6: i'm going back 30 years and remembering my presentation by linda

[2:01:16] Voice 6: Adams who was before she became the CAO of the trust she was one of the senior planners

[2:01:22] Voice 6: and she was the expert on amenity zoning and so what she always recommended was you have

[2:01:29] Voice 6: a policy in your OCP but you determine in broad terms what kinds of amenities your community

[2:01:36] Voice 6: wants do they want sidewalks and lights and swimming pools probably not for the trust area

[2:01:43] Voice 6: area but what they do want is probably more conservation of green space or whatever the

[2:01:48] Voice 6: community needs and it's but it's really important to have it in there so that you can say to any

[2:01:55] Voice 6: the list yeah and say

[2:01:57] Voice 6: well we here's what we are looking at before you go ahead with this

[2:02:02] Voice 6: yeah yeah and you don't want to have an ocp without in there so that people look at it and

[2:02:10] Voice 6: say oh yeah

[2:02:11] Voice 6: they need things

[2:02:13] Voice 6: like this so where

[2:02:16] Trustee Elliott: are we at with the yeah

[2:02:18] Voice 4: so um the support for

[2:02:21] Voice 4: flexible housing um and so this is the idea of multiple units within a maximum floor area yeah

[2:02:29] Voice 8: um

[2:02:29] Voice 4: and um so this would so the draft uh what i've drafted it extends the resource zones um

[2:02:43] Voice 4: and we're only

[2:02:45] Voice 4: one resident so this is this is this is a this discussion for the ltc is

[2:02:52] Voice 4: this concept of flex housing is what maine has um adopted in a pilot area and we just

[2:02:59] Voice 4: just had discussions on monday about expanding that um they've decided and i mean maine is

[2:03:06] Voice 4: interesting because they're what comes up suitable in their super land analysis is also close to

[2:03:12] Voice 4: town so they've kind of got a nice win-win situation happening there so they're um so this

[2:03:18] Voice 4: is an opportunity yeah where this is the concept where you would have different sizes of lots would

[2:03:24] Voice 4: have have the ability to have a number however many units but within a a maximum floor area

[2:03:31] Voice 4: so that's considering a lot coverage yes um and again there was general there was general um

[2:03:39] Voice 4: support for this and conversation around the co-ownership of this and that you know that

[2:03:45] Voice 4: would all and the discussion that in in maine is if you if you're just silent on that piece

[2:03:50] Voice 4: it does allow for owners to go and apply through the land titles office for um for some kind of

[2:03:58] Voice 4: for strata well

[2:03:59] Trustee Elliott: so we've moved on to strata can i go back to the flexible zoning yeah

[2:04:03] Voice 4: yeah yeah

[2:04:05] Trustee Elliott: so that one is you know the example of a policy would be the ltc may introduce flexible housing

[2:04:13] Trustee Elliott: housing zones? Or do we have to describe what those zones...

[2:04:18] Voice 4: No, you don't have

[2:04:19] Voice 4: to describe it. No, it's just, so I think it's just allowing for, there's

[2:04:25] Voice 4: a particular policy here that just, it's open enough, the policy just does not, it says

[2:04:32] Voice 4: something like, I'm trying to find it, but it's something like that the land use bylaw

[2:04:44] Voice 4: can identify the number of units or something like that it's really open so it's not like a

[2:04:51] Voice 4: big um it's this mostly has to do with the the land use bylaw um but you want to make sure that

[2:05:00] Voice 4: the ocp supports it

[2:05:02] Trustee Elliott: yeah okay yeah and just to remind the public who's watching that everything

[2:05:09] Trustee Elliott: thing will go back out for public comment so we're not like drafting policy to be approved

[2:05:15] Trustee Elliott: uh this is all to to go through another process yeah

[2:05:18] Voice 4: and this is just giving me more direction

[2:05:22] Voice 4: on things

[2:05:23] Trustee Elliott: you want to see yeah yeah

[2:05:24] Voice 4: good um for further conference um yeah so then there's

[2:05:29] Voice 4: increased flexibility for residential use in commercial areas beyond one single dwelling

[2:05:34] Voice 4: dwelling so the the current OCP only allows one in commercial areas um and that's identified I think

[2:05:41] Voice 4: um yeah the the suggestion from the um from the focus group was that uh the residential area

[2:05:49] Voice 4: matched the commercial space and

[2:05:51] Voice 6: we sort of already tried that out yeah

[2:05:54] Voice 4: and we

[2:05:56] Voice 6: it was somewhat

[2:05:57] Voice 6: limited by water availability but we tried it out right and we're happy

[2:06:02] Trustee Elliott: and stayed within the

[2:06:04] Trustee Elliott: footprint of the commercial or the anticipated commercial yeah well and again

[2:06:09] Voice 4: i mean the the

[2:06:09] Voice 4: thing to consider here is that um uh yeah i mean it's what you want to allow outright

[2:06:16] Voice 4: and where you want to allow bucks build the flexibility and you want not one a lot so so

[2:06:23] Trustee Elliott: So what about requirements, like for workforce housing as a condition of new

[2:06:28] Trustee Elliott: amended commercial industrial institutional zoning?

[2:06:31] Trustee Elliott: So if something is going to be zoned for those three uses, you know, not just having a flexibility, but also requiring a residential development there?

[2:06:47] Trustee Elliott: Or

[2:06:48] Voice 6: another example is for, I know what some places have done

[2:06:52] Voice 6: is say they're building a seniors care facility

[2:06:55] Voice 6: with different levels of care.

[2:06:58] Voice 6: Then the actual, I'm not sure, not the housing agreement per se,

[2:07:02] Voice 6: but whatever the agreement is with the province,

[2:07:07] Voice 6: it says right in that agreement that staff,

[2:07:10] Voice 6: there must be a minimum number of staff accommodation

[2:07:14] Voice 6: within that same building.

[2:07:16] Voice 6: but it doesn't

[2:07:18] Voice 6: have to be within that so

[2:07:19] Voice 4: we could we could start with uh like a requirement for

[2:07:23] Voice 4: workforce housing so for for every so

[2:07:26] Voice 6: there's a general statement yeah

[2:07:28] Voice 4: and then we can refine it

[2:07:29] Voice 4: how yeah however you'd like to yeah yeah i don't think that's in here again i'm like

[2:07:34] Voice 4: which one is

[2:07:34] Voice 4: i

[2:07:35] Trustee Elliott: don't see it's not in here

[2:07:37] Voice 4: that was maine though maine has that i

[2:07:39] Trustee Elliott: pulled it from the

[2:07:40] Trustee Elliott: housing toolkit again perfect

[2:07:41] Voice 4: perfect that is great right again i like you know i'm i'm making

[2:07:46] Voice 4: you know this just trying to make this process as transparent as possible so i'm not pulling

[2:07:51] Voice 4: anything in that hasn't been discussed by

[2:07:53] Trustee Elliott: the public and again we're just exploring but having

[2:07:56] Trustee Elliott: the option there so that then it's

[2:07:58] Voice 6: so important because say you have a little mall for example

[2:08:01] Voice 6: and you've got like two food outlets and one retail store and one something else well how

[2:08:08] Voice 6: nice if you didn't have to have all your staff taking the ferry over from the memo every day

[2:08:13] Voice 8: like

[2:08:14] Voice 6: say the units up above those commercial things could actually house people who might

[2:08:19] Voice 6: even work there yes

[2:08:21] Trustee Elliott: so do you

[2:08:21] Voice 6: want the feed

[2:08:22] Trustee Elliott: do you want feedback on the goals and objectives

[2:08:23] Trustee Elliott: for housing or that feedback has already gone through the housing group and that's well yeah

[2:08:29] Voice 4: i'll take the food but do we want to just finish the list first and then we can jump over there

[2:08:33] Voice 4: uh so this yeah the strata um conversion of existing buildings um there was discussed

[2:08:40] Voice 4: Again, co-ownership is related to that.

[2:08:47] Voice 4: And so basically, if you don't have a policy and they're related to strata,

[2:08:51] Voice 4: it allows that to be explored by the property owners.

[2:08:55] Voice 4: That's the flexibility there.

[2:08:56] Voice 4: And

[2:08:56] Trustee Elliott: that's the strata for a building, a conversion of a building.

[2:09:01] Trustee Elliott: Of existing buildings.

[2:09:02] Trustee Elliott: Of just

[2:09:03] Trustee Elliott: the land that it's on.

[2:09:04] Trustee Elliott: It's not talking about subdividing.

[2:09:08] Trustee Elliott: I don't know.

[2:09:09] Voice 4: That's about building.

[2:09:11] Trustee Elliott: Yeah,

[2:09:11] Voice 4: but again, you can still take it unless you have a policy that explicitly says not know that you

[2:09:17] Voice 6: won't support. So

[2:09:17] Voice 4: basically, like it's a it's an application to the land title is through land titles, but LTC needs to provide their support. So if the OCP says you don't provide us more than we can pay, but yeah,

[2:09:32] Trustee Elliott: interesting. Okay. And

[2:09:34] Voice 4: then yeah, water catchment systems for all their builds.

[2:09:38] Voice 4: and detached

[2:09:39] Trustee Elliott: volume units yeah

[2:09:41] Voice 4: yeah so yeah like i said i i mean i'm looking for feedback

[2:09:47] Voice 4: all all kinds of feedback right because what's going to happen is i'm going to go back come

[2:09:50] Voice 4: back with another iteration and like these these don't reflect the what this attachment

[2:09:56] Voice 4: five doesn't reflect the focus group comments yet either so um this

[2:10:01] Trustee Elliott: is what was given to them

[2:10:02] Trustee Elliott: this

[2:10:02] Voice 4: is what was given to

[2:10:03] Trustee Elliott: discuss yeah so

[2:10:04] Voice 4: the staff will go through again looking at those

[2:10:07] Voice 4: comments looking at your comments and then come back with another iteration right

[2:10:12] Trustee Elliott: yeah so was

[2:10:13] Trustee Elliott: there no uh i'm just looking at one the removal of current lcp restrictions on mfds to just special

[2:10:20] Trustee Elliott: needs seniors and affordable housing to include attainable housing okay so that's

[2:10:24] Voice 4: what we went to

[2:10:25] Trustee Elliott: with attainable all right okay yeah so if

[2:10:29] Voice 4: you look at we can look at attachment five and then if you

[2:10:32] Voice 4: want to uh yeah any feedback you want to provide on on goal objectives or any of these policies

[2:10:38] Voice 4: they look really good yeah yeah

[2:10:41] Trustee Elliott: could you go to attachment five oh she's on there now awesome

[2:10:56] Trustee Elliott: yeah i think this yeah up to objective one yeah there you go so

[2:11:03] Trustee Elliott: so so all these will end up as changes would be made to these according to what the housing

[2:11:11] Trustee Elliott: that's right yeah and just feedback here yeah feedback here okay so if there's any other

[2:11:15] Trustee Elliott: feedback uh we should give it now or forever

[2:11:19] Voice 4: well and now or at any at any point right i i mean

[2:11:24] Voice 4: you can you can provide your feedback at uh you know if you want me to look into something in

[2:11:31] Voice 4: more detail or what have you um this is opening up the conversation with the

[2:11:35] Voice 4: focus on housing

[2:11:36] Voice 4: and this is why we're trying to kind of separate these conversations so you can kind of get your

[2:11:41] Voice 4: head into it

[2:11:41] Trustee Elliott: yeah dive in a bit and then do some thinking because

[2:11:44] Voice 4: this will all come back to you

[2:11:45] Voice 4: like you know it may all come back to you as a draft ocp yeah um

[2:11:51] Trustee Elliott: accountability and attainment

[2:11:56] Trustee Elliott: no i think they're pretty good i mean like

[2:11:58] Voice 4: if there were any red red flags for you

[2:12:00] Trustee Elliott: Well, we like how these objectives are in the subject areas.

[2:12:04] Trustee Elliott: Yeah, so going to the second bullet of that, again,

[2:12:09] Trustee Elliott: that clustered small unit affordable housing,

[2:12:11] Trustee Elliott: just because we do have the tiny homes regulatory project happening

[2:12:16] Trustee Elliott: and super exciting updates.

[2:12:19] Trustee Elliott: I wondered if you could provide a list of policy options related

[2:12:25] Trustee Elliott: to this clustered small unit and then not necessarily affordable but the modular homes

[2:12:32] Trustee Elliott: tiny homes mobile homes just provide a list of those policy options that the gabriel community

[2:12:36] Trustee Elliott: is thinking about to that discussion because as the party and building inspection are talking

[2:12:43] Trustee Elliott: with island stress planners they want to be looking at what is the future of gabriel's

[2:12:50] Trustee Elliott: policies right so it's not just one landowner who wants to have an

[2:12:55] Trustee Elliott: adu in the form of a tiny home

[2:12:57] Trustee Elliott: we are looking at the clustered small unit model yeah so the

[2:13:02] Voice 4: other piece of the pie yeah

[2:13:03] Voice 8: form form

[2:13:05] Voice 4: yeah so again um whatever you define as a dwelling is a dwelling that's right right so

[2:13:13] Voice 4: so so you're facilitating the ability for multiple units of whatever form it may

[2:13:21] Voice 4: be and it could be

[2:13:22] Voice 4: a tiny home it could be

[2:13:24] Voice 11: it

[2:13:24] Voice 4: could be an rv if that's what you want to support you know

[2:13:27] Voice 4: so again that's the perspective to kind of think about it those are all dwellings and and um and so

[2:13:33] Voice 4: what you're you what you're deciding is how many or how small like you know size location

[2:13:39] Voice 4: um number in in what area well

[2:13:44] Trustee Elliott: and configuration yeah because

[2:13:46] Voice 4: because the clustering well

[2:13:47] Trustee Elliott: configuration

[2:13:48] Voice 4: too also because so it's like where it's like what what and where pretty much right

[2:13:55] Voice 4: so

[2:13:55] Trustee Elliott: the what it goes in the definitions right so when in the ocp as we define dwellings yeah

[2:14:01] Trustee Elliott: as yeah um alternative you know cob homes that's been raised by several constituencies being

[2:14:10] Voice 4: well so this is so yeah like denman and wormy have a lot more flexibility because they don't

[2:14:16] Voice 4: have um they don't have building permit yeah but

[2:14:18] Voice 4: anything that you can get a building permit

[2:14:20] Voice 4: on with right is fair game is considered a dwelling basically

[2:14:25] Voice 4: right um um so if you can

[2:14:29] Voice 4: get a building permit for a cob home like unless you put specific restrictions in there and but

[2:14:37] Trustee Elliott: that's okay so that's where i want to explore incentivizing more ecologically and low impact

[2:14:45] Trustee Elliott: forms of housing and so that's where the trade-off i i want to see it some kind of calculation of

[2:14:52] Trustee Elliott: if you're going to put more dwellings on a lot they need to be they need to have some of that

[2:14:59] Trustee Elliott: that ecological um and that's where i'm looking at the the eco density bonus i think

[2:15:06] Trustee Elliott: maybe is it yeah

[2:15:07] Voice 4: it is though we have that in there and i have to think through like

[2:15:10] Voice 4: we need to think through a little bit more about how you incentivize that

[2:15:15] Voice 4: in your policy development and that would come yeah i mean yeah yeah because

[2:15:21] Trustee Elliott: cob structures can

[2:15:22] Trustee Elliott: i mean they can be engineered and have have building permits and they're actually cheaper

[2:15:28] Trustee Elliott: to build there the question is whether more of them can be built if they're safe from materials

[2:15:37] Trustee Elliott: that are from on island they're like passive solar or passive heating what what are those

[2:15:44] Trustee Elliott: eco trade-offs to allow for more units I

[2:15:48] Voice 6: mean with the price of lumber now and the fact that

[2:15:51] Voice 6: we don't really want to be cutting down all our forests the only thing about I know the cob that

[2:15:56] Voice 6: that was used to build my kid's home.

[2:15:59] Voice 6: The plate was from their property.

[2:16:01] Voice 6: It was right there.

[2:16:02] Voice 6: I believe the straw came from somewhere else,

[2:16:05] Voice 4: like Alberta.

[2:16:06] Voice 4: Well, see, this is the thing.

[2:16:07] Voice 4: It's hard to measure because I've also heard,

[2:16:10] Trustee Elliott: and

[2:16:10] Voice 4: again, I'm not an expert on building materials

[2:16:12] Voice 4: or what have you.

[2:16:13] Voice 4: So that's like modular,

[2:16:17] Voice 4: like, I mean, there's all kinds of modular homes

[2:16:20] Voice 4: that are coming out.

[2:16:20] Voice 4: And the way that some of them are developed

[2:16:25] Voice 4: and the fact that you can you can you can get like a large amount of materials into a larger space

[2:16:32] Voice 4: and you know all of the um what do they call it the the embedded energy maybe if you thought about

[2:16:39] Voice 4: the embedded energy of every type of thing like we may find that the cop home isn't because maybe

[2:16:44] Voice 4: the materials are coming from somewhere else or maybe so

[2:16:47] Trustee Elliott: i think the modular homes with all the

[2:16:49] Trustee Elliott: like you know next generation engineering and plastics and all of that have far higher

[2:16:54] Trustee Elliott: yeah

[2:16:55] Voice 4: but there are people that are working on modular homes that aren't right so that that's

[2:17:00] Voice 4: where i like it it's good to think about this in a bit a

[2:17:03] Voice 4: bit of detail like because you don't want

[2:17:05] Voice 4: to restrict a good thing that you don't know exists

[2:17:08] Voice 4: i have to say that first but you want

[2:17:10] Voice 4: to be flexible about allowing all of the things first

[2:17:13] Voice 6: home i ever saw was on main island it was

[2:17:15] Voice 6: the my girls

[2:17:16] Voice 6: right

[2:17:16] Trustee Elliott: yeah yeah so yeah the the eco density bonus in the housing toolkit is the one

[2:17:21] Trustee Elliott: that refers to the ecological energy efficient water homes by allowing a provision to add

[2:17:27] Trustee Elliott: dwelling units if the owner

[2:17:28] Trustee Elliott: builds to a different

[2:17:30] Voice 4: ecological standard it could be in the amenity

[2:17:32] Voice 4: policy there's a couple of ways to look at it so that so i'll think about that from a couple

[2:17:36] Voice 4: of different perspectives that's

[2:17:38] Trustee Elliott: great awesome so that would

[2:17:41] Trustee Elliott: be wonderful thank you thanks for

[2:17:42] Trustee Elliott: coming in we'll see you later take care yeah okay

[2:17:49] Trustee Elliott: oh yeah and then how can we support different forms of tenure um like so can housing agreements

[2:18:01] Trustee Elliott: be required or negotiated if there's a cluster of of whatever tiny homes or something and it's

[2:18:12] Trustee Elliott: multi-family dwelling development um but the the tenure for those for the or the ability to develop

[2:18:23] Trustee Elliott: more homes on a lot comes at the um with the requirements they have an affordable housing

[2:18:29] Trustee Elliott: tie if there's

[2:18:31] Voice 4: yes they're going to

[2:18:32] Trustee Elliott: be for moderate rental income they're not going to be

[2:18:36] Trustee Elliott: airbnbs exactly like

[2:18:38] Voice 4: you don't you don't want somebody to have the ability to build this like

[2:18:41] Voice 4: um no you know luxury five 500 square foot little uh getaway homes right yeah yeah yeah we can do

[2:18:48] Trustee Elliott: that

[2:18:48] Voice 4: yeah yeah yeah so it's

[2:18:49] Voice 4: it's um that's all yeah that's that's about yeah restricting that's

[2:18:53] Voice 4: that's through the housing agreement but we can we can put policies

[2:18:57] Voice 4: in there that that require

[2:18:58] Voice 4: housing agreements for that particular i thought i had that in here you know um well they had that

[2:19:06] Voice 4: maybe i didn't have that in my head um yeah

[2:19:15] Trustee Elliott: i like the permitting shared amenities

[2:19:18] Trustee Elliott: 12 units per hectare and ensure

[2:19:20] Voice 4: housing agreements for multi-family housing are in

[2:19:24] Voice 4: place to maintain affordability over time and support non-market rental or ownership housing

[2:19:29] Voice 4: as an amenity during rezoning yeah so it's in there right yeah

[2:19:34] Voice 4: and so when i talk about multi-unit

[2:19:36] Voice 4: i am talking about a cluster as well as um

[2:19:38] Trustee Elliott: okay as multi-dwelling so

[2:19:40] Voice 4: this is where the definitions

[2:19:41] Voice 4: come yeah in our report under one

[2:19:44] Voice 4: roof under a bunch of debates i

[2:19:46] Voice 6: mean the main advantage is

[2:19:48] Voice 6: that infrastructure that's the

[2:19:48] Voice 4: very last policy on that gotcha housing

[2:19:54] Trustee Elliott: location considers the impact

[2:19:56] Trustee Elliott: i like the yeah i like objective five um it packs a lot of there but it does consider

[2:20:06] Trustee Elliott: all those different angles of the impacts of climate change i

[2:20:12] Voice 4: mean it's kind of our suitable

[2:20:13] Voice 4: end analysis perspective a bit

[2:20:15] Trustee Elliott: reduce vulnerability enhance community safety yeah that's um that's a

[2:20:20] Trustee Elliott: pretty the big one big one yeah how to develop new parcels or smaller an integrated stormwater

[2:20:28] Trustee Elliott: management plan did some of these come from the green bylaws toolkit or is that outdated

[2:20:33] Trustee Elliott: no i've been using green bylaws toolkit really

[2:20:36] Voice 4: too yeah so you'll see when i like with the

[2:20:39] Voice 4: environmental policies um i actually again sort of went through it like quite in detail

[2:20:46] Voice 4: and so things that were um relevant like felt very relevant

[2:20:51] Voice 4: um we're just we're still in the meeting yeah we need

[2:20:58] Voice 6: to wrap up but we'll be finishing soon

[2:20:59] Voice 6: so anything more

[2:21:02] Voice 6: anything more on

[2:21:04] Voice 6: comments on any of the objectives

[2:21:06] Voice 6: from you any direction

[2:21:07] Voice 4: I have

[2:21:08] Voice 6: some directions suggested

[2:21:09] Voice 6: because you do have a recommendation

[2:21:12] Voice 6: here and I'd

[2:21:14] Voice 6: be happy to promote that

[2:21:15] Voice 6: knowing that there'll be lots of

[2:21:17] Voice 6: more opportunity for input

[2:21:19] Voice 6: and we've had a really good discussion today

[2:21:21] Voice 6: with seeing you taking tons of notes

[2:21:24] Voice 6: that's great

[2:21:24] Voice 6: so

[2:21:25] Trustee Elliott: trustee Elliot are you

[2:21:27] Trustee Elliott: Yeah, I'm going to email you a couple of other policy options, as in alternative approaches

[2:21:33] Trustee Elliott: to housing, yeah, like supporting alternative forms of rural residential density, blah, blah, blah.

[2:21:37] Trustee Elliott: It just might be wording that's already in there, but I

[2:21:40] Voice 4: don't miss it.

[2:21:41] Voice 4: Yeah, sure.

[2:21:42] Voice 4: Yeah, please do.

[2:21:42] Voice 4: Great.

[2:21:43] Trustee Elliott: Thanks.

[2:21:44] Trustee Elliott: Great.

[2:21:45] Voice 6: Yes.

[2:21:45] Voice 6: Yeah, so are you ready?

[2:21:48] Voice 6: Ready?

[2:21:48] Voice 6: All right.

[2:21:49] Voice 6: Would you like to make the recommendation?

[2:21:51] Voice 6: recommendation.

[2:21:53] Trustee Elliott: I move that the Gabriel Island Local Trust Committee request staff draft policies

[2:21:58] Trustee Elliott: as discussed at the February 27, 2025 meeting for the housing section of the OCP. I'll second that

[2:22:07] Trustee Elliott: motion. All in favor?

[2:22:11] Voice 6: Meeting. Motion passed. You have to say yes. There you go. Perfect.

[2:22:16] Trustee Elliott: You'll be dimming out the lights.

[2:22:17] Voice 6: No, that's all good.

[2:22:19] Trustee Elliott: That's excellent.

[2:22:20] Voice 6: Thank you. By general

[2:22:21] Voice 6: consensus and I'll declare this meeting

[2:22:23] Voice 6: as adjourned. Adjourned, yes.

[2:22:25] Voice 6: Because we have others to attend to.

[2:22:27] Voice 6: Thanks everyone.

[2:22:27] Voice 6: Thank you for all the

[2:22:29] Voice 6: technological help.

ADOPTED 
Gabriola Island ADOPTED  1 
Local Trust Committee Special Meeting Minutes 
February 27, 2025 
 
Gabriola Island Local Trust Committee 
Minutes of Special Meeting 
 
Date:  
Location:  
February 27, 2025 
Electronic Meeting 
 
Members Present: Susan Yates, Chair 
 Tobi Elliott, Trustee 
  
Regrets: Peter Luckham, Trustee 
  
Staff Present: William Shulba, Senior Freshwater Specialist (electronic) 
Landen Matechuk, GIS Consultant and Researcher (electronic) 
Emily Bryant, Planning Team Assistant (electronic) 
 Narissa Chadwick, Island Planner  
 Carly Bilney, Recorder (electronic) 
  
Others Present: There was 1 member of the public in attendance. 
 
1. CALL TO ORDER 
Chair Yates called the meeting to order at 10:04 a.m.  
2. TERRITORIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 
Chair Yates acknowledged that the meeting was being held on the traditional territory of 
the Coast Salish First Nations. 
Landen Matechuk introduced himself as a GIS consultant and researcher who has 
worked with the Islands Trust for the past five years with a focus on ecosystem 
resilience and the Suitable Land Analysis. 
3. APPROVAL OF AGENDA 
By general consent the agenda was approved as presented. 
4. BUSINESS ITEMS 
4.1 Suitable Land Analysis Review Presentation 
Senior Freshwater Specialist William Shulba introduced the project, and made 
the following comments: 
 The Suitable Land Analysis aims to: 
▪ Balance the preserve and protect mandate of the Islands Trust; 
▪ Evaluate and prioritize areas across the Islands Trust for 
sustainable development while emphasizing environmental 
preservation; 
▪ Identify areas suitable for additional residential density; and, 

 ADOPTED 
Gabriola Island ADOPTED  2 
Local Trust Committee Special Meeting Minutes 
February 27, 2025 
▪ Integrate several themes – ecological sensitivity, freshwater 
sustainability, transportation and infrastructure and slope stability – 
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. 
 The Suitable Land Analysis uses data that planners have already been 
using to integrate ecological, social and economic factors into planning, 
and align with official community plans and bylaws. 
 There is a lot more work we can do around this by collaborating with First 
Nations and local interest groups. 
 This presentation is a first step in presenting the methodology of the tool 
as well as presenting the data, but it is not set in stone. 
 The objective of the tool is not to identify non-suitable lands for 
conservation. 
 Gabriola is the most data-rich island. 
 
The following comments were made about the Suitable Land Analysis 
methodology: 
 The analysis involved collating and processing datasets and using 
existing maps and spatial information. 
 The tool looks at the values 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 for prioritization. 
 The layers within each value 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 important for analyzing land 
suitability, but the weighting of each layer can be changed. 
 Local Trust Committees can work with planning staff and communities to 
adjudicate the weightings and determine whether these are appropriate 
layers for the suitability analysis. 
 The classification value of each layer and its corresponding suitability 
cannot be changed (e.g. a sensitive ecosystem results in a low suitability 
for increased housing density). 
 It is possible to make the ArcGIS tool available online for community 
members to better access the Suitable Land Analysis, though that is 
beyond the scope of this current project. 
 
Discussion ensued and the following comments were made: 
 
 It is the perspective of staff that anything done should be fully transparent 
and shared with the public as an online tool. 

 ADOPTED 
Gabriola Island ADOPTED  3 
Local Trust Committee Special Meeting Minutes 
February 27, 2025 
 The Suitable Land Analysis tool might show suitability for parkland or 
land in the Agricultural Land Reserve, but development will not occur 
there. 
 This is not an AI planner, but rather it is a high-level tool that does not 
supersede the detailed work that is necessary for a rezoning application 
(e.g. proof of water, community engagement, etc.). 
 This tool is useful in demonstrating to the public what planners use to 
make evidence-based land use decisions, and brings all the data they 
are already using together in one place. 
 Following this presentation, there could be engagement with the Local 
Trust Committee and community to identify suitable weightings for each 
value. 
 The confidence in each data set varies (some data, for example, is 
outdated). 
 There is a lot of work yet to be done on salt water intrusion data. 
 
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: 
 There are certain parcels that have quite high suitability and others that 
do not. 
 A layer that shows water balance is not included, but can potentially be 
added from the Freshwater Footprint data (and could perhaps replace the 
well density layer). 
 Groundwater balance is very important on a regional level. 
 Investigation of groundwater resources will still be needed for each 
individual parcel where development is proposed. 
 
At 10:47 a.m. it was noted that the meeting was not being live streamed due to 
technical difficulties. The presentation continued and Mr. Shulba described each 
layer of the map. The following comments were made: 
 
 Agricultural Land Reserve areas that have been clear cut and show a low 
number of wells would show high suitability though development would 
not occur in these areas. 
 The challenge in updating or amending data varies.  
 The 2019 State of the Islands Indicator Project shows Gabriola at the 
cusp of ecological balance; staff will review the report and compare the 
biodiversity layer to what is used in the Suitable Land Analysis. 
 Any development on the island is going to have an impact on 
groundwater recharge. 
 
Mr. Matechuk spoke to the Watershed Resiliency mapping layer and made the 
following comments: 
 Water resiliency data was developed when doing research for the City of 
Victoria to quantify the resilience (the ecosystem’s ability to respond to 
natural and human-caused disturbances) of the system. 
 This has been included in the mapping through various characteristics 
(e.g. amount and diversity of species in an area, structural diversity of an 

 ADOPTED 
Gabriola Island ADOPTED  4 
Local Trust Committee Special Meeting Minutes 
February 27, 2025 
area, and the variability of one area and its characteristics compared to 
its neighbours). 
 Where the mapping layer indicates areas of high resiliency would result in 
low suitability for development. 
 Gabriola has the highest density of wells of all the Islands Trust area 
(because there are no community water systems). 
 Only roads included in the Ministry of Transportation and Transit’s 
Schedule 39 appear in the Suitable Land Analysis. 
 The GERTIE bus route could be included in the Suitable Land Analysis. 
 
The meeting resumed live streaming at 11:02 a.m. Discussion continued about 
how data sets are used in the Suitable Land Analysis. Comments were made 
about the particular challenges of the salt water intrusion data and what might be 
done (e.g. modelling, seeking feedback on lived experience, etc.) to improve it. 
 
Staff commented that further discussion will be held to determine how the 
information shared today will be presented to the community. Staff also 
commented that the Regional District of Nanaimo has been a huge help with the 
Freshwater Footprint project. 
 
A break was held between 11:29 – 11:38 a.m. 
 
4.2 Major Project: Gabriola Island Comprehensive Official Community Plan and 
Land Use Bylaw Review Housing Section Discussion – Staff Report 
Planner Chadwick presented the Staff Report and compared suggested changes 
to the Official Community Plan, based on feedback received, to what currently 
exists. Discussion was held and the following comments were made: 
 Results of a recently held meeting between Islands Trust staff and 
Snuneymuxw First Nation staff will be shared in a staff report. 
 Comments were made about aligning definitions with provincial and 
federal definitions (e.g. “attainable” versus “affordable” housing) to assist 
grant applications. 
 Reference to a density bank, which has never been used, has been 
removed. 
 The focus group supported policies that encourage small clustered 
housing developments; this could be addressed in a similar way to multi-
unit housing. 
 The focus group supported secondary suites or accessory dwelling units 
on smaller lots that were closer to the village. 
 The Housing Advisory Planning Commission supported additional 
dwelling units on smaller lots that had adequate groundwater, but were 
not necessarily closer to the village; land that could be available for 
increased density may not be close to the already dense village. 
 Water sufficiency and proximity to the village and bus route should to be 
taken into account when assessing increased density on a lot. 
 If the land use bylaw and the Official Community Plan are too prescriptive 
on dwelling type, then, the flexibility to live in a cooperative ownership 
model is reduced. 
 Support was expressed for amenity zoning. 
 

 ADOPTED 
Gabriola Island ADOPTED  5 
Local Trust Committee Special Meeting Minutes 
February 27, 2025 
Trustees expressed support for flexibility in zoning, where different sizes of lots 
have the ability to have various numbers of units within a maximum floor area. 
They agreed that they would like staff to explore options for amenity policy 
options. Discussion continued and the following comments were made: 
 
 Incorporating the Conservation Density Bonus/Homeplate Zoning Model, 
Ecovillage Zoning Model and Eco-Density Bonus outlined in the Housing 
Toolkit should be explored. 
 A presentation by former Islands Trust Chief Administrative Officer Linda 
Adams was referred to in describing amenity zoning where a policy in the 
Official Community Plan describes, in broad terms, what kind of amenities 
the community would like (e.g. more conservation green space); this is 
important to include to show developers what is desired. 
 This meeting is to provide staff with direction for an updated draft of 
proposed policies that will go through another public comment process. 
 It would be good to include a requirement for staff housing – a general 
statement that can later be refined. 
 The policy regarding strata conversion of existing buildings needs further 
consideration. 
 A requirement for water catchment systems for all new builds has been 
added. 
 Whatever is defined as a dwelling is a dwelling, and anything one can get 
a building permit for is fair game. 
 We can include policies that require housing agreements for tiny home 
clusters. 
 For environmental policies, staff has turned to the Green Bylaws Toolkit. 
 
Planner Chadwick commented that all kinds of feedback is welcome as staff 
creates another iteration of the draft objectives and policies. Comments were 
made that there will be more opportunity for discussion. 
 
GB-2025-014 
It was Moved and Seconded, 
that the Gabriola Island Local Trust Committee request staff draft policies 
as discussed at the Feb 27, 2025 meeting for the housing section of the 
Official Community Plan. 
CARRIED 
5. ADJOURNMENT 
 
By general consent the meeting was adjourned at 12:34 p.m. 
 
_________________________ 
Susan Yates, Chair 
 
Certified Correct: 
_________________________ 
Carly Bilney, Recorder