Islands Trust Council regular meeting, May 6, 2025

[0:00:00] Voice 1: live streaming is just starting right now, and I will share the agenda. Okay, we're good to go.

[0:00:12] Trustee Patrick: All right, well, good evening, everyone. I'd like to call this

[0:00:17] Trustee Patrick: Trust Council Committee of the Whole meeting to order. Before I begin, we always acknowledge

[0:00:25] Trustee Patrick: the lands and waters of the many Coast Salish First Nations on whose unceded ancestral land

[0:00:31] Trustee Patrick: that the Islands Trust is located is where we're meeting today and we value the opportunity to

[0:00:37] Trustee Patrick: learn, share, serve our community on these unceded lands. Yesterday was Red Dress Day. This is a

[0:00:45] Trustee Patrick: National Day of Awareness and Remembrance for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls

[0:00:50] Trustee Patrick: and the two SLGBTQI plus people. It's a call to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

[0:00:59] Trustee Patrick: mission and calls to justice of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous

[0:01:03] Trustee Patrick: Women and Girls, and we must stand in solidarity with the families and communities who continue

[0:01:08] Trustee Patrick: in their pursuit of justice, healing, and change. Before we start today, I'd like to respectfully

[0:01:16] Trustee Patrick: acknowledge and thank Elder Kim Rekalma Pletisi. Her name is pronounced, her Indigenous name,

[0:01:26] Trustee Patrick: She's a former chief of the Qualicum First Nation, and her presence and powerful words

[0:01:31] Trustee Patrick: she shared during the celebration and mural unveiling at Huete, which we know as Laskiti,

[0:01:38] Trustee Patrick: for the Laskiti Archaeology Project.

[0:01:42] Trustee Patrick: This weekend, a number of us went up there to see this beautiful mural that was unveiled

[0:01:49] Trustee Patrick: and that will be welcoming people to Huete.

[0:01:51] Trustee Patrick: I would like to share some of the words, and I have Kim's permission.

[0:01:57] Trustee Patrick: She explained that when Indigenous people gather, they look for the common threads that

[0:02:02] Trustee Patrick: connect them.

[0:02:03] Trustee Patrick: They look for the connections to family or place.

[0:02:07] Trustee Patrick: She also spoke of the future and the importance of working together and to focus on solutions.

[0:02:13] Trustee Patrick: She is an incredible woman whose softly spoken words have such profound meaning.

[0:02:17] Trustee Patrick: So today, as we embark on our discussions on the mandate of the Islands Trust, I ask that we each look and listen to the common threads that connect us to each other and to these islands that make up what we call the Islands Trust area.

[0:02:32] Trustee Patrick: I ask that we focus our discussions on solutions, avoid tantrums, as Kim referred to them as.

[0:02:39] Trustee Patrick: Let's put our work and energy towards solutions.

[0:02:45] Trustee Patrick: So trustees, we have an agenda before us.

[0:02:49] Trustee Patrick: are there any changes that can need to be made to the agenda none oops i um i just noticed somebody

[0:03:00] Trustee Patrick: had their hands up on the attendees list and but i don't see that's not someone's uh not a trustee

[0:03:08] Trustee Patrick: okay um so can we approve the agenda through general consent thank you i

[0:03:16] Voice 10: was gonna so we

[0:03:17] Trustee Patrick: have i

[0:03:17] Voice 10: can't get my hand up can we ask the meeting host why she had her hand up just in case there

[0:03:22] Voice 10: there was somebody trying to get through uh

[0:03:24] Trustee Patrick: it's it's an attendee it's not a trustee so

[0:03:26] Trustee Patrick: we don't have a public um speaking session this evening the meeting host had their hand up no

[0:03:33] Trustee Patrick: the meeting host does not have their hand up now you did

[0:03:36] Trustee Patrick: oh i'm sorry now

[0:03:38] Voice 1: i was only raising the

[0:03:40] Voice 1: um the point that yes there was an attendee with their hand up that's now lowered their hand

[0:03:44] Voice 1: there

[0:03:44] Trustee Patrick: we go thank you so much so we're going to stick to the agenda and we're going to move

[0:03:49] Trustee Patrick: forward here we've got um minutes from the february 6th meeting um that's here for your um

[0:03:55] Trustee Patrick: i guess for your for your general consent is there any changes or corrections to those minutes

[0:04:01] Trustee Patrick: if not we'll approve that through general consent uh there's also the minutes from the february

[0:04:07] Trustee Patrick: 21st meeting on page nine of the agenda package are there any changes to these minutes we'll

[0:04:14] Trustee Patrick: approve those can we approve those through general consent yes go

[0:04:19] Voice 4: ahead trustee boulder

[0:04:20] Voice 4: is it worth just saying that those minutes are all about the trust policy statement amendments

[0:04:26] Voice 4: and that's now moved back to trust programs so although we are approving these minutes

[0:04:34] Voice 4: um that trust policy statement amendment discussion will no longer take place in the

[0:04:42] Voice 4: committee of the whole by and large is that correct or is

[0:04:46] Trustee Patrick: it worth highlighting to people

[0:04:48] Trustee Patrick: generally that's yes the business is right now transferred over to the trust programs committee

[0:04:54] Trustee Patrick: trustee evans just

[0:04:57] Voice 9: going to clarify it will be coming back to committee of the whole once

[0:05:01] Voice 9: trust programs has completed their review prior to going to trust council for first reading

[0:05:06] Voice 9: thank

[0:05:07] Trustee Patrick: you for that clarification okay moving on um we have on page uh 14 is um was the regional

[0:05:16] Trustee Patrick: plan uh the resolution without meeting on the meeting schedule for the um committee of the

[0:05:22] Trustee Patrick: holes and there are also two additional uh resolutions without meetings that are here

[0:05:28] Trustee Patrick: for your information. So let's get to the business at hand. So trustees, I think today, this was

[0:05:39] Trustee Patrick: our opportunity, this meeting, this conversation that we're having today follows a resolution that

[0:05:45] Trustee Patrick: was made, I believe, in our December Trust Council to talk about the Section 3 of the mandate. And

[0:05:58] Trustee Patrick: And for some background information, I just put together here on page 17 is really just some framing of the questions as to or the conversation that when we do have our conversations, we're really talking about how we make decisions as trustees, how we look at the mandate.

[0:06:17] Trustee Patrick: mandate and how we look at it as a mandate, that both it's something that shifts through time

[0:06:24] Trustee Patrick: and as well that we look at the words in their entire context. I also provided a number of

[0:06:33] Trustee Patrick: resolutions here that came from the previous Trust Council in 2021, just to give you some

[0:06:40] Trustee Patrick: some um background of where where we were having some conversations and it was a an interesting

[0:06:48] Trustee Patrick: when i was looking at the motions and pulled them together there was something that jumped out to me

[0:06:51] Trustee Patrick: there were times when we were talking about just unique amenities and then there were times we were

[0:06:56] Trustee Patrick: talking about the mandate as a whole and i thought that was interesting um that we kind of mixed up

[0:07:03] Trustee Patrick: our conversations to me in some ways that are we just talking about unique amenities or are we

[0:07:08] Trustee Patrick: talking about the mandate as a whole um so that was just some information there for you for the

[0:07:16] Trustee Patrick: background of our conversation today and um and now i wanted an opportunity for um

[0:07:26] Trustee Patrick: trustees getty and bernardo to talk a little bit about the september 23 statement that is in your

[0:07:33] Trustee Patrick: agenda package here as well for your information and i'll look to oops sorry trustee fast did you

[0:07:40] Trustee Patrick: you have a question yes

[0:07:41] Voice 14: um thank you for clarifying who was the author of um page 17

[0:07:46] Voice 14: and uh i wondered um uh if you could i was curious about the interpretation of the the bit about

[0:07:56] Voice 14: interpretation of the mandate evolves through time um can you tell me where you um uh where

[0:08:04] Voice 14: did that come from actually

[0:08:06] Trustee Patrick: i pulled that back from my history of especially last term i recall

[0:08:09] Trustee Patrick: call being on bowen island and we had a um go around the room to talk about unique amenities

[0:08:15] Trustee Patrick: and the mandate uh there and uh it was trustee stamford that spoke of that and i recalled the

[0:08:21] Trustee Patrick: importance of that conversation so that's what i just i pulled forward that's just from uh regular

[0:08:27] Trustee Patrick: interpretations of acts and so forth so that's

[0:08:30] Voice 9: whoever's got

[0:08:32] Voice 9: whoever's got a conversation going

[0:08:34] Voice 9: on in the background could they mute their machine please? I

[0:08:39] Trustee Patrick: don't know if Alex if you

[0:08:41] Trustee Patrick: can figure out or mute some of the open microphones that would be appreciated.

[0:08:45] Trustee Patrick: There we go. Thank you. So that's where that came from. Any other questions on that page 17?

[0:08:59] Trustee Patrick: Okay so I'm going to turn over to Trustee Getty and Bernardo for a moment to talk about the

[0:09:06] Trustee Patrick: the December, September 23 statement.

[0:09:11] Trustee Patrick: Who'd like to go first?

[0:09:12] Voice 6: I'll

[0:09:12] Trustee Patrick: leave it to you.

[0:09:13] Trustee Patrick: I'm

[0:09:13] Voice 6: happy to lead off since I kind of helped provoke the whole business back in the day.

[0:09:17] Voice 6: So if that's already all right with Trustee Getty.

[0:09:21] Voice 11: I'm a little surprised as you had indicated in an email that you didn't want to, but go

[0:09:26] Voice 11: ahead.

[0:09:28] Voice 6: No, what I indicated in that email that I thought it was pretty straightforward and

[0:09:31] Voice 6: pretty much anybody could do it.

[0:09:32] Voice 6: But, you know, anyhow, let's just not waste time.

[0:09:35] Voice 6: We'll get into it.

[0:09:36] Voice 6: But the starting point for this is the orientation of the governance committee, I think, at the beginning of the term.

[0:09:42] Voice 6: Things have changed since then.

[0:09:44] Voice 6: But at that time, we were given to understand that our mission, our primary mission, was to assess and prioritize the recommendations in the governance report and then possibly bring forward implementation proposals for the trust council to consider.

[0:09:59] Voice 6: consider. Overarching issue was the governance report was pretty clear in stating that last

[0:10:06] Voice 6: term, among the trustees of last term, there was a pretty clear consensus that operationally the

[0:10:12] Voice 6: trust wasn't efficient or effective. The report identified the lack of an agreed upon interpretation

[0:10:21] Voice 6: of the Section 3 mandate as one of the core problems. In this regard, the report stated

[0:10:29] Voice 6: essentially that Trust Council was hamstrung in its ability to set meaningful policy direction

[0:10:35] Voice 6: because trustees had competing conceptions of the mandate. Personally, I found that pretty

[0:10:43] Voice 6: strange because the mandate is actually the heart and soul of the Trust, obviously. And

[0:10:47] Voice 6: given the crucial importance of Section 3, I thought, well, at some point over the past 50

[0:10:53] Voice 6: years, the Trust must have asked our legal counsel at some point about how the provision

[0:10:58] Voice 6: should be interpreted or understood or examined the issue. I also was a little puzzled about the

[0:11:09] Voice 6: controversy because coming into it as a new trustee and also as a lawyer, I thought that

[0:11:14] Voice 6: I didn't know what the problem was because I thought the language was pretty clear

[0:11:18] Voice 6: and that as an exercise of statutory interpretation, I kind of assumed it would

[0:11:23] Voice 6: have been pretty straightforward to define the meaning and purpose of Section 3.

[0:11:27] Voice 6: so at a governance committee meeting fairly early on i asked the staff to go through our archives to

[0:11:32] Voice 6: find any past legal opinions that addressed section three's interpretation and in the event

[0:11:38] Voice 6: that turned out that there indeed were a couple of relevant opinions there are a few of them

[0:11:42] Voice 6: actually but two that were particularly prominent one of them was in fact very much on point this

[0:11:48] Voice 6: is the opinion young anderson prepared at trust council's request in response to another opinion

[0:11:56] Voice 6: that had been prepared by the law firm Mendel Pinder

[0:11:59] Voice 6: at the request of a private party.

[0:12:04] Voice 6: And that opinion, the Young-Anderson opinion,

[0:12:07] Voice 6: the one that I just referred to that I thought was very much on point,

[0:12:10] Voice 6: was also something like 16 years old,

[0:12:13] Voice 6: at least when we first saw it at governance committee,

[0:12:18] Voice 6: which raised the question...

[0:12:20] Voice 6: Christy Bernardo,

[0:12:21] Voice 6: can you pause for a moment?

[0:12:22] Trustee Patrick: There's some hands up.

[0:12:23] Trustee Patrick: Yeah, sorry, I'm just observing.

[0:12:24] Trustee Patrick: There's a number of people who have raised their hands.

[0:12:27] Trustee Patrick: I think Trustee Morrison, I think you're...

[0:12:34] Trustee Patrick: I

[0:12:34] Voice 20: don't think that it's appropriate to interfere in what Trustee Bernardo is saying right now.

[0:12:39] Voice 20: I'm happy to wait until he's finished.

[0:12:41] Voice 9: Mine's a point of privilege.

[0:12:43] Voice 9: I'd like us, can we put the agenda down to the section that he's speaking about so we can see it, please?

[0:12:47] Voice 9: Thank you.

[0:12:49] Trustee Patrick: This is the place.

[0:12:52] Trustee Patrick: No,

[0:12:52] Voice 9: I think it's page 19.

[0:12:54] Voice 9: if we can move the agenda to page 19 because right now it was just showing the agenda versus

[0:13:00] Voice 9: material okay thank you so much that's fine thank you uh carry

[0:13:05] Trustee Patrick: on trustee bernard yeah

[0:13:08] Voice 6: well i'll uh

[0:13:10] Voice 6: i'll try to avoid any further controversy um anyhow uh like i said um it was pretty old

[0:13:19] Voice 6: and it certainly raised a separate question a separate governance question which is namely why

[0:13:24] Voice 6: why that opinion hadn't surfaced the previous term when apparently there had been a fair bit

[0:13:29] Voice 6: of wrangling over the mandate. And apparently that's also happened in previous terms. In any

[0:13:34] Voice 6: case, that remains unanswered. And that's a question to be dealt with another time,

[0:13:39] Voice 6: another place, not now. Anyhow, after discussing the opinions, Governor's Committee decided that

[0:13:44] Voice 6: there was actually nothing particularly obscure or difficult about what the young Anderson opinion

[0:13:51] Voice 6: opinion said. On the contrary to the committee, they seemed unambiguous about the nature of the

[0:13:56] Voice 6: mandate and the scope of Trust Council's discretion in applying it. And one of the

[0:14:01] Voice 6: subsequent opinions is pretty clear about that, that Trust Council has a fair bit of discretion

[0:14:04] Voice 6: in that regard. So we concluded at the committee that the way to deal with Section 3 issue was to

[0:14:11] Voice 6: bring the opinions, basically, because they were part of our historical record, to Trust Council's

[0:14:16] Voice 6: attention and point out that the guidance Trust Council needed to address this point in the

[0:14:21] Voice 6: the governor's report was already in hand.

[0:14:25] Voice 6: We also recognized that it would be easier for trustees

[0:14:27] Voice 6: to read the opinions if we provided an accompanying summary

[0:14:30] Voice 6: of their key points and the issues.

[0:14:32] Voice 6: I volunteered to do this, I prepared a summary,

[0:14:34] Voice 6: I submitted it to the governance committee.

[0:14:37] Voice 6: Trustee Getty then made some changes

[0:14:39] Voice 6: and her revised version became the basis

[0:14:41] Voice 6: for the subsequent discussion

[0:14:45] Voice 6: and in camera at the in-camera meeting that we had

[0:14:49] Voice 6: in the subsequent resolution.

[0:14:52] Voice 6: And that's basically what I've got to say about the background.

[0:14:55] Voice 6: And over to Trustee Getty to fill out the storage.

[0:14:59] Voice 6: Thank you.

[0:15:02] Trustee Patrick: Go ahead, Trustee Getty, if you.

[0:15:06] Voice 11: So I've divided my comments up into two sections,

[0:15:13] Voice 11: one on the process and one on the content.

[0:15:17] Voice 11: And with the process in terms of the governance review being tabled a little

[0:15:23] Voice 11: over three years ago in March of 22. And then there was the workshop that the Trust Council had

[0:15:29] Voice 11: in September of 22 on the report of the governance review. Then came the elections. Then there was

[0:15:39] Voice 11: the first meeting of the Trust in the election of the existing governance committee. There's a few

[0:15:45] Voice 11: changes since January 23 was our first meeting, and we divided up, or we just, all of us took

[0:15:54] Voice 11: the governance review and went through it in detail and summarized, and we came back

[0:16:00] Voice 11: to our February meeting and decided that we would look at Section 3 that was described

[0:16:06] Voice 11: in the governance report as an existential problem, and that there was difficulty agreeing,

[0:16:13] Voice 11: And they had divided it up into whether or not we're a land-use planning with some ecological viewpoint or we were an ecological group with some land-use planning powers.

[0:16:24] Voice 11: So we tackled that first.

[0:16:27] Voice 11: And I think when we asked for legal opinions, my comments on that was that I think that we limited ourselves.

[0:16:40] Voice 11: Obviously, things that have come up since, what Chair Patrick, what you've included in section or page 17, this agenda is the first time that I've seen those resolutions, for instance.

[0:16:53] Voice 11: And we had asked for legal opinions and that's all we received.

[0:16:59] Voice 11: And it was later in correspondence that we got from the community that we got mention of the agreement between the province and the Islands Trust from 1986.

[0:17:08] Voice 11: 86. So I think in hindsight, I'm not sure that we've got a good archive. I'm not sure that we've

[0:17:18] Voice 11: got a library or that anything is organized and that we have trouble with respect to doing the

[0:17:25] Voice 11: kind of research that would have been better in terms of going through this topic. So we had a

[0:17:33] Voice 11: A new governance committee, new trustees, two lawyers, and we just jumped into legal opinions and quite comfortable with that.

[0:17:43] Voice 11: And we worked for four subsequent meetings, April, May, July, and August, until we worked through specifically half of our meetings were enclosed so that we could go through these legal opinions until we came to an agreement of what we could present to trust counsel.

[0:18:03] Voice 11: So in August, we agreed and we put it on the agenda for Trust Council in September.

[0:18:08] Voice 11: Again, in hindsight, once we came to an agreement, we didn't then pass it off to staff for their comments and possibly their recommendation that we get an update on the legal opinion that we were presenting in terms of our summary of the other legal opinions.

[0:18:27] Voice 11: And that might have helped us.

[0:18:29] Voice 11: It's hard to know in hindsight, but in September 26th, in that closed meeting, we spent a great deal of time trying as hard as we could, I think, with immense sincerity and good intentions to explain those legal opinions.

[0:18:46] Voice 11: So, the mandate had been changed since the last time this had been looked at, adding on that in cooperation with the list of other interested parties, but the rest is basically the same.

[0:19:03] Voice 11: And the opinion that, is it Bullhauser talks about in terms of the July 2007 opinion, addressing a legal opinion prepared by another law firm, Joe's referred to that as Mandel Pinder.

[0:19:20] Voice 11: And that was one that the people on the committee, the governance committee, didn't remember having seen before, and it came as a bit of a surprise.

[0:19:32] Voice 11: And that was the Mandel Pinder opinion was one that had been presented to us at every meeting of the Trust Council from the very first.

[0:19:41] Voice 11: The Friends of the Gulf Islands had been presenting that to us and mentioning it in terms of that being very influential and very important.

[0:19:54] Voice 11: And so the legal opinion from 2007 from Young-Anderson was very important for people to understand and to go through.

[0:20:05] Voice 11: And that's where we started off with part of the consensus was looking at the three elements and how the statutory interpretation was pivotal on that and in the phrase.

[0:20:21] Voice 11: so that there were three distinct elements that all had to be taken into consideration

[0:20:25] Voice 11: and we could not and should not consider ourselves bound to one.

[0:20:31] Voice 11: If we did decide that it was going to be paramount in a decision,

[0:20:35] Voice 11: we had to make sure that we were clear in terms of why there was that,

[0:20:41] Voice 11: not an imbalance, but why there was more emphasis on one as opposed to another.

[0:20:45] Voice 11: The other legal opinions came up from time to time

[0:20:50] Voice 11: as the trust was dealing with some pretty significant problems,

[0:20:56] Voice 11: housing, how to be partners with First Nations,

[0:21:01] Voice 11: how to work with the reconciliation and the UNDRIP,

[0:21:05] Voice 11: and UNDRIP came even later, but from the opinions, I believe,

[0:21:10] Voice 11: and then figuring out does that fit with special amenities

[0:21:14] Voice 11: and the definition and the mandate, and the opinion was yes,

[0:21:18] Voice 11: and that it would fall within, I suppose, a broad interpretation

[0:21:25] Voice 11: of the trust area and the communities and unique amenities.

[0:21:31] Voice 11: So that's where all of the legal opinions came from.

[0:21:35] Voice 11: When we finished the September meeting and agreed to that consensus

[0:21:40] Voice 11: and came out of that meeting, it was another month,

[0:21:45] Voice 11: September 26th until October 11th when there was a rise in report and that was

[0:21:51] Voice 11: an edited version of what we have here in front of us now which was difficult

[0:21:59] Voice 11: to find and then the link was removed then we started to get in January we

[0:22:05] Voice 11: started to get correspondence and concerns about the closed meeting not

[0:22:11] Voice 11: not having as detailed a discussion in open meeting, the removal of the link.

[0:22:17] Voice 11: And that's when I first saw the 1986 agreement, which I don't think if we wanted to get into that

[0:22:25] Voice 11: and we haven't had it attached to any of this material, but I'd be very, very surprised if this council

[0:22:30] Voice 11: or any other council would be in disagreement with that, the fundamentals and all the details that are in that 1986 agreement.

[0:22:39] Voice 11: It needs to be updated, and things have changed, but the basics, I think, are something that this council could also agree with.

[0:22:48] Voice 11: So then, that was January of 24, we started to get all the letters to the editor and correspondence to the trust.

[0:22:57] Voice 11: In December of 24, we decided by motion that we needed to work on this and clarify it, and today we've got this Committee of the Whole.

[0:23:07] Voice 11: So that's the process. I don't back away at all from the interpretation of the legal opinions. And I think that it may have been some fine points in terms of how we use language in that, which is too much legalese maybe.

[0:23:27] Voice 11: be. But, you know, I think that the information that we shared and that we agreed to is still

[0:23:35] Voice 11: the same. And I think that there's more that can be added, but I don't think we were wrong in any

[0:23:39] Voice 11: way. And I stand to be corrected, but I think there's been quite a bit of good, solid work

[0:23:47] Voice 11: that's gone into this in terms of everybody understanding. But I say that, and still,

[0:23:52] Voice 11: when the Ryzen report came out in October,

[0:23:57] Voice 11: it did not seem to have the same understanding

[0:24:00] Voice 11: of the importance of some of the words

[0:24:02] Voice 11: that were in our consensus.

[0:24:03] Voice 11: So, you know, that is either a problem

[0:24:08] Voice 11: with respect to editing to get it down

[0:24:09] Voice 11: into some sort of a package that would fit on the website.

[0:24:14] Voice 11: I'm not sure why it was edited so much,

[0:24:16] Voice 11: but there wasn't any kind of a request

[0:24:21] Voice 11: in terms of whether or not the edited version fit.

[0:24:24] Voice 11: And I think that that was a big part of the problem

[0:24:28] Voice 11: in terms of how people heard it and read it and understood it.

[0:24:33] Voice 11: So we can go back over the content of that

[0:24:39] Voice 11: if we want to spend the time on that.

[0:24:42] Voice 11: But that's my understanding of the process.

[0:24:45] Voice 11: all right

[0:24:47] Trustee Patrick: well thanks thanks to both of you uh for um sharing that background information that's

[0:24:57] Trustee Patrick: helpful to to understand um i'm going to keep moving forward the the the legal opinion that

[0:25:05] Trustee Patrick: we directed to have publicly released is here at 6122 on page 21 of the agenda package

[0:25:11] Trustee Patrick: package. We've seen this before, so it's here primarily to make sure that it's out to the

[0:25:18] Trustee Patrick: public. I think what I'd like to do next is that we ask each of you to speak about sort of how you

[0:25:28] Trustee Patrick: feel about the September 23 statement. If you believe there's any further action recommended,

[0:25:34] Trustee Patrick: I ask you to propose a solution. So I'm looking for a path forward. What do you propose needs to

[0:25:40] Trustee Patrick: to be done. At the conclusion of the roundtable, once we get around, let's see if any themes come

[0:25:47] Trustee Patrick: up. We can then take another round or talk about any themes or try to clarify with an aim to

[0:25:53] Trustee Patrick: identify any next steps if there are any at the end of the meeting, if that's okay with everyone.

[0:25:59] Trustee Patrick: I see Trustee Bernardo, your hand's up.

[0:26:02] Voice 6: Yes, I'll be brief. I just want to say that I agree

[0:26:06] Voice 6: I agree with Trustee, what I consider to be Trustee Getty's, one of her essential points, which is, yes, there was unfortunate and unnecessary controversy and confusion as a result of communication following the decision.

[0:26:24] Voice 6: But I think the decision and the interpretation we settled on, I agree with Trustee Getty, it's still straightforward.

[0:26:33] Voice 6: forward it's um i don't i don't think uh to use her language you know no walking it back it

[0:26:42] Voice 6: it's still accurate it still makes sense i think it's still sound um what's unfortunate is

[0:26:50] Voice 6: this vexing issue about how how we communicated it i don't think any of us either trustees or

[0:26:56] Voice 6: staff appreciated uh how some segments of the community would react the gravity with which

[0:27:04] Voice 6: they treated the thing um but that's all i've got to say about it which i i you know i think we've

[0:27:10] Voice 6: got work to do in terms of explaining it i think we still haven't done a good enough job on that

[0:27:17] Voice 6: but you know i don't think there's really any arguing with the substance of the opinion

[0:27:21] Voice 6: uh and procedurally if some of us want to argue with it i i think that leads us to the path of

[0:27:30] Voice 6: having to get more lawyers involved because then you're going to have to get another lawyer to

[0:27:33] Voice 6: come up and disagree with it. And then there's no end to that. But that's really what this

[0:27:39] Voice 6: discussion is all about. So I'll just leave it at that. Thank you, everybody.

[0:27:42] Trustee Patrick: Trustee Bernardo, you would have been first on my alphabetical list here to speak tonight.

[0:27:47] Trustee Patrick: From what you just said, do you have a solution that you propose?

[0:27:53] Voice 6: Um, I think probably in consultation with legal counsel, it would be good

[0:28:00] Voice 6: uh to publish a thoughtful and not necessarily concise to publish you know a piece on the

[0:28:12] Voice 6: website that explains the mandate uh much more fully than what we did before and that it becomes

[0:28:20] Voice 6: a permanent part of the website because the mandate is the heart and soul of the organization

[0:28:25] Voice 6: organization and our interpretation of it is crucial and as i mentioned before you know and

[0:28:32] Voice 6: we did have meetings about this at governance committee and it came up when we discussed it

[0:28:36] Voice 6: at trust council that the relative balance of those three elements in in the um in the mandate

[0:28:45] Voice 6: in in section three it is the trust council's discretion to decide how much to emphasize

[0:28:50] Voice 6: emphasize at any given time or on any given issue for example if you if we have a particular

[0:28:57] Voice 6: conception of what includes unique amenities uh and it is different than protecting the environment

[0:29:04] Voice 6: then depending on what a trust council its views at any given time or its judgment at a particular

[0:29:11] Voice 6: given time it may wish to put more emphasis on the environmental side of it as opposed to the

[0:29:22] Voice 6: Trust Council has to go through that balancing exercise. It has to identify why a thing has to be more important in a particular issue. Why, say, for example, if we decided that a unique amenity needed to be given priority in a particular situation over the environment, it would be incumbent on us, I think, to explain that.

[0:29:43] Voice 6: And I think if we could have a piece on the website that in plain language comprehensively explained that whole process of trust counsel's discretion and the limits on that discretion, but also.

[0:30:00] Voice 6: the scope of what the mandate is, I think that'd be very helpful. And we really don't have that

[0:30:04] Voice 6: right now. What we had before was this kind of incomplete communication about what we had

[0:30:09] Voice 6: decided, but we didn't do a very good job of explaining the substance of it. And I think

[0:30:13] Voice 6: that's the space that we need to fill in. Thank you.

[0:30:16] Trustee Patrick: All right. Thank you very much. I'm going

[0:30:18] Trustee Patrick: to proceed alphabetically if that's okay. And I think Trustee Boland is next, if you'd like to

[0:30:25] Trustee Patrick: speak oops

[0:30:31] Voice 4: you're muted yeah yeah the microphone sorted out uh thank you i uh support everything

[0:30:38] Voice 4: that uh trustee getty and bernardo have said i think what we arrived at was perfectly good

[0:30:46] Voice 4: and the explanation of the multiple multiple legal opinions the fact that we had two lawyers

[0:30:55] Voice 4: who actually worked through those and every other resolution I think you know what we've got

[0:31:02] Voice 4: really basically how are we going to make it better and I actually really like and support

[0:31:11] Voice 4: that interpretation and I feel that the constant and repeated way you know waste of resources in

[0:31:21] Voice 4: my mind debating this despite all of these costly legal opinions to me it's the strongest piece of

[0:31:28] Voice 4: supporting evidence that we can present to the province as in the need for the review

[0:31:35] Voice 4: because this has gone on for years i mean 1986 every single report i i mean if we counted the

[0:31:44] Voice 4: the man hours and the legal opinion hours and the dissent that persists.

[0:31:51] Voice 4: No other local government is in a constant existential crisis about why they're there and what they're supposed to be doing.

[0:32:00] Voice 4: They're just not. They just get on with it.

[0:32:03] Voice 4: I mean, we can't come up with a strategic plan because we don't have a vision, because we don't understand our mandates.

[0:32:09] Voice 4: So we constantly spin our wheels. So that's my main point.

[0:32:12] Voice 4: Having said that, I like the one we have. Let's use it.

[0:32:16] Voice 4: I did go and quickly look at, I looked at the BC government website.

[0:32:23] Voice 4: It's a bit succinct. All it does is repeat what's in the Act.

[0:32:27] Voice 4: We need to protect the unique nature and amenities.

[0:32:31] Voice 4: I then went to the Ireland's Trust Conservancy, which is a favourite of mine.

[0:32:35] Voice 4: The Islands Trust Conservancy refers to a vibrant tapestry of culture and ecology where humans live and work in harmony with the natural world.

[0:32:47] Voice 4: They also talk about viable ecosystems flourishing alongside healthy island communities.

[0:32:54] Voice 4: They're never challenged with that vision. Why are we challenged in the way that we are?

[0:32:59] Voice 4: The Islands Trust Conservancy, which is the heart of the preservation of ecosystems, species at risk, you name it, talks about healthy island communities and a vibrant tapestry with humans who live and work.

[0:33:15] Voice 4: And yet nobody says, hang on a second here, that's not what we want you to do.

[0:33:21] Voice 4: Then I wonder if anybody's actually read their regional plan.

[0:33:25] Voice 4: I like their their vision I think it's it's very fitting and we maybe we should adopt that and we

[0:33:31] Voice 4: wouldn't have the trouble we have so then um I went to the current uh you know one that's on

[0:33:39] Voice 4: the website the trust policy statement for 1998 it has a very nice section to the islands trust

[0:33:46] Voice 4: object and its meaning it's very valid it is remarkably similar to the one that we have now

[0:33:52] Voice 4: The word balance is there, which I really, really like.

[0:33:57] Voice 4: And it talks about a balance must be established between the needs of all stakeholders.

[0:34:04] Voice 4: It goes through each part of the wording, you know, the act, the cooperation, the amenities, much as we are trying to do right now.

[0:34:16] Voice 4: So then I went to the most recent draft of the amended TPS, and to my surprise, this explanation has disappeared.

[0:34:27] Voice 4: So I went to do a bit of a tailspin and I tracked it back to May 2024.

[0:34:34] Voice 4: I went to that amended redlined version and in that version staff removed what was there.

[0:34:42] Voice 4: And it was not the 1998 version. It was a very, to be honest, very long winded and unclear and, you know, long explanation.

[0:34:55] Voice 4: So that was all removed. And the explanation given by staff was that it wasn't of value.

[0:35:02] Voice 4: you. I would argue that putting back in the version that we are now creating, which is very,

[0:35:10] Voice 4: very similar to 1998, should happen. And I'm prepared to make a motion for that later.

[0:35:17] Voice 4: And it kind of builds on the back of what Joe said, which is we need to get it out there in

[0:35:24] Voice 4: the web, in the trust policy statement. Every opportunity we have, we need to put the meaning

[0:35:31] Voice 4: and the meaning out there and just, you know, lay it to rest

[0:35:36] Voice 4: and let's get on with doing some other work and let's go back

[0:35:42] Voice 4: to the province and say, you really need to give us a review.

[0:35:47] Voice 4: How does this make sense?

[0:35:49] Voice 4: So thank you.

[0:35:51] Trustee Patrick: So your solution is you're recommending that a version

[0:35:56] Trustee Patrick: or this version be put into the trust policy statement.

[0:35:59] Trustee Patrick: email.

[0:36:00] Voice 4: Absolutely. And I support what Trustee Bernardo and Getty said as well. Okay. Well,

[0:36:06] Trustee Patrick: thank

[0:36:06] Voice 4: you. So

[0:36:07] Trustee Patrick: we're going to go to Sam Borthwick.

[0:36:11] Voice 21: Hello. Yeah, I will preface this by saying that I

[0:36:17] Voice 21: am not a lawyer, but I do have tremendous amount of respect for the legal minds that have devoted

[0:36:27] Voice 21: devoted themselves to this and the benefit that we have in having, um, trustee Bernardo and trustee

[0:36:32] Voice 21: Getty, uh, on trust council to help us sort of, you know, walk through bits and pieces. Um,

[0:36:37] Voice 21: the mandate is a really core part of, of the trust is it is as trustee Bernardo was saying,

[0:36:44] Voice 21: really the heart of the matter. And I think, um, coming from that, I really do appreciate, um,

[0:36:52] Voice 21: um, why people were concerned. And I think, I think trustee Bernardo was correct in saying that

[0:36:57] Voice 21: I think none of us anticipated, uh, the, the, the concern that came from, uh, from this discussion

[0:37:06] Voice 21: that we had, I think it was a long in camera session. Um, and, and I think when there's a

[0:37:14] Voice 21: long period of time that trustees are debating in a, in a black box, I understand why that raises

[0:37:18] Voice 21: is concerned. That said, you know, and I, you know, this has been the bit that I have, you know,

[0:37:25] Voice 21: this is how I've tried to relay things to people when I've spoken to people here and other places

[0:37:30] Voice 21: is that really it's, you know, we did a thorough dive through those legal opinions and we had a,

[0:37:36] Voice 21: you know, a long and thoughtful conversation, but I, it was not an acrimonious conversation.

[0:37:42] Voice 21: There was not, you know, there wasn't a lot of disagreement around the table in my

[0:37:47] Voice 21: recollection of that meeting. Um, I think people possibly, uh, you know, the, the, the word

[0:37:55] Voice 21: consensus in the communication out, uh, you know, may have led to the implication that we made some

[0:38:02] Voice 21: sort of decision. Uh, and I don't, I don't feel that that was the case. Um, I feel that we, we

[0:38:07] Voice 21: got a, a pretty thorough discussion of, of the matter and we, you know, we, we talked around it,

[0:38:15] Voice 21: um but there wasn't we weren't coming up with anything new there was nothing invented out of

[0:38:20] Voice 21: whole cloth in that conversation um but i do really understand why that would be concerning

[0:38:26] Voice 21: for people because this is a a you know a part of our um part of this body that is

[0:38:33] Voice 21: very important and very core to the values of of this body um i think and you know and and as as

[0:38:44] Voice 21: as I think Trustee Bernardo was saying, maybe it was Trustee Getty, you know, through this

[0:38:50] Voice 21: conversation, you know, I had never seen the 1986 position piece. I have to say, I've read it

[0:38:57] Voice 21: several times now. I think it's very good. And I think it presents a really excellent

[0:39:05] Voice 21: leaping off point for us to create an updated version of that that sort of walks through this

[0:39:11] Voice 21: process and explains, you know, what the components mean. Um, and I think, I think a lot of what's

[0:39:17] Voice 21: said there really reflects pretty accurately the values of, of certainly the community that I live

[0:39:22] Voice 21: in. Um, uh, and I, you know, I, one of the parts that, that was not, um, you know, is coming

[0:39:35] Voice 21: through this controversy. And I, I had never, it had not particularly occurred to me that I had

[0:39:39] Voice 21: a misinterpretation of, of the, the mandate. It doesn't, it likewise didn't seem to me to be

[0:39:44] Voice 21: something that was complex or difficult to understand. And the legal opinion that there

[0:39:52] Voice 21: is a duty to balance the needs and the elements of the mandate in context and with relation to

[0:40:02] Voice 21: the situation at hand was never particularly controversial to me. That seemed to flow very

[0:40:09] Voice 21: very easily from the language. So I, I have not particularly struggled to define the mandate

[0:40:15] Voice 21: in any, at any point. Um, so yeah, I, I, I think, uh, I'm, I don't have like a specific

[0:40:25] Voice 21: suggestions. My, I think one of the things that is important is actually this meeting

[0:40:30] Voice 21: in some ways, in terms of being a, a, a, a, you know, a venue for us to show our work,

[0:40:35] Voice 21: uh, to some degree or not even our work, but to, to sort of explain our, our process

[0:40:39] Voice 21: process and what that conversation was. And I, I really do understand why people were concerned.

[0:40:45] Voice 21: And I, I, you know, I, I sympathize with that tremendously. Uh, and I think that, yes, you know,

[0:40:51] Voice 21: in terms of communicating out, um, you know, it's important for us to be really clear, especially

[0:40:56] Voice 21: when we're speaking about things that are, are important to this body. Um, and all I can say is

[0:41:02] Voice 21: is that I don't think that there was ever an attempt to redefine this.

[0:41:09] Voice 21: And it is, it's felt pretty cohesive and consistent to me.

[0:41:14] Voice 21: And I think, you know, as I just said, I think we're, we're not,

[0:41:18] Voice 21: we haven't strayed, you know, from, from this purpose.

[0:41:22] Voice 21: I think we're, we're pretty close to where we were.

[0:41:25] Voice 21: So my hope is that by having this meeting, we sort of,

[0:41:28] Voice 21: this will be part of that communication. And yeah,

[0:41:30] Voice 21: Yeah, I think Trustee Bernardo's suggestion that maybe there's a, you know, a more fulsome, you know, statement of position, similar to the 1986 paper, is definitely an idea with merit.

[0:41:50] Trustee Patrick: Thank you. So moving on, Janine Dobbs, are you in a position to speak?

[0:41:56] Voice 3: I'm here. I don't know why my video is not on, but I am here. And I want to say that the previous speakers are all right on point with what they have to say.

[0:42:06] Voice 3: I do want to say my community is not one of the, to my knowledge, people who were upset about the decision.

[0:42:13] Voice 3: I think where I live and within my community, the average person, everyone that I talk to understands the balance between the environment and the people.

[0:42:23] Voice 3: We are not existing here without people.

[0:42:27] Voice 3: And from going to Time Memorial, we have always had people as part of our mandate.

[0:42:32] Voice 3: I've always felt that way when I was making decisions.

[0:42:35] Voice 3: decisions I think trustee Boland's suggestion about adding the the version into the trust

[0:42:41] Voice 3: policy statement is a good one I think you've had a number of really good suggestions of how to move

[0:42:47] Voice 3: forward I think it's unfortunate that you know there is a perception somehow that the island's

[0:42:53] Voice 3: trust and I was here long before there was an island's trust act and you know I think it's a

[0:42:58] Voice 3: misunderstanding and we need to be clear on exactly I remember Bill Buholzer saying to us

[0:43:04] Voice 3: you are a land use planning agency that's our job we have a environmental mandate but we are

[0:43:11] Voice 3: land use planning agency and I think we need to really hang on to that because over time it is

[0:43:16] Voice 3: going to become much more challenging to as our communities are growing and changing to hang on

[0:43:23] Voice 3: to that and to maintain that so I think that's key is that our commitment as a trust council is that

[0:43:28] Voice 3: that the environment is a huge importance within our communities.

[0:43:33] Voice 3: And we will always be planning with that in mind and in our hearts.

[0:43:37] Voice 3: But the fact is that things are changing and we have to do the best we can to make those changes within the context of the special places we live.

[0:43:46] Voice 3: As soon as we decide there's no more changes coming, nothing's going to change.

[0:43:51] Voice 3: Communities will fall apart very quickly as whole, complete communities.

[0:43:55] Voice 3: and that's what we want communities that encompass everyone who's willing and wanting and able to

[0:44:01] Voice 3: live in these islands thank you and say i

[0:44:05] Voice 3: don't know where my video i've got it on but

[0:44:07] Voice 3: i am here so i'm just kidding with it thank you thank you

[0:44:12] Trustee Patrick: trustee elliot thank

[0:44:17] Voice 12: you um

[0:44:19] Voice 12: agree with much of what i've heard um but i'd like to take a little bit of a different tack

[0:44:25] Voice 12: with my roundtable offering. And I'd like to read part of a submission that I made to Trust Council

[0:44:33] Voice 12: in March 2020. So this is back before I was a trustee. Council was debating its strategic plan

[0:44:42] Voice 12: for the new term, and they were on Gabriel Island. And I was doing two interesting things at the

[0:44:50] Voice 12: the time. I was in school for a master's in leadership course. And we were, I was studying

[0:45:00] Voice 12: systems thinking. So understanding a system as the whole of all the units and the relationship

[0:45:06] Voice 12: between them. And I was editing a series of episodes from video taken around the world of

[0:45:15] Voice 12: interviews with people indigenous and non-indigenous and tourism folks in

[0:45:25] Voice 12: protected parks that were significant because of their cultural values and the

[0:45:32] Voice 12: question was what is the meaning of wild so had all this information about

[0:45:36] Voice 12: wilderness spaces thumbs and and and people and the people who have been

[0:45:42] Voice 12: displaced for um the protection of a park so this was the context and i if i could indulge

[0:45:52] Voice 12: um i guess i'll just say that yeah i'll read selections if it gets too long chair cut me off

[0:45:59] Voice 12: um and i can submit parts that are relevant so i heard your challenges today as you wrestled to

[0:46:06] Voice 12: to elect trust council priorities particularly the struggle between prioritizing human habitation

[0:46:12] Voice 12: and socioeconomic community needs versus protecting ecological systems and enhancing

[0:46:18] Voice 12: natural habitats. That's a significant challenge in allocating resources, but if this council is

[0:46:24] Voice 12: forced to continually choose between activities that prioritize social, economic, and community

[0:46:29] Voice 12: planning, or activities that focus on conserving and protecting the natural resources and ecosystems

[0:46:36] Voice 12: systems of land and water, we will never reconcile these two. I would argue that by

[0:46:41] Voice 12: positing the trust mandate to support and encourage sustainable, healthy communities

[0:46:49] Voice 12: as separate from the mandate to enhance and protect the natural ecosystems, we will fail

[0:46:55] Voice 12: to serve either of them. I believe this is a false dichotomy. And further, I believe that

[0:47:01] Voice 12: thinking of land and water and people as separate entities and prioritizing one over the other

[0:47:07] Voice 12: comes from a colonial mindset. The colonial settler mindset thinks of itself as separate

[0:47:14] Voice 12: from the land. There were no humans here before we came. We cleared. We built houses. We separate

[0:47:21] Voice 12: ourselves from the parts of the land that are undesirable, from features that offend our sense

[0:47:26] Voice 12: sense of aesthetic or interfere with our patterns of habitation. We control and enhance growth that

[0:47:32] Voice 12: serves us, the human inhabitant. Acting this way, we become like parasites or aliens in the landscape.

[0:47:41] Voice 12: But there is another way, and it begins with understanding that people have never been

[0:47:46] Voice 12: separate from the lands and water, but interdependent. Land, water, ecosystems, and human presence

[0:47:53] Voice 12: were never mutually exclusive realities for Indigenous communities.

[0:47:58] Voice 12: Nearly all traditional First Nations communities understand their culture,

[0:48:02] Voice 12: practices, and their very lives within the context of the life of the land and water.

[0:48:09] Voice 12: This land-based knowledge recognizes that what we consider wild spaces and human presence

[0:48:15] Voice 12: are not mutually exclusive and never have been.

[0:48:19] Voice 12: We recent settlers in the islands have learned to think of ourselves this way, but a colonial mindset sets up this dichotomy of opposing needs between natural and human ecosystems.

[0:48:33] Voice 12: Healthy communities emerge from healthy landscapes, and healthy land and water ecosystems are intimately dependent upon the communities that live within them.

[0:48:42] Voice 12: The health of one promotes the health of the other.

[0:48:45] Voice 12: So the spirit of reconciliation today compels us, I believe, to consider land and land use planning with eyes that hold more than the settler gaze.

[0:48:58] Voice 12: The settler gaze has exploited and stripped not only ecological values and integrity from the land, but has riven the relationship of the peoples who have occupied these lands for 10,000 years and more.

[0:49:09] Voice 12: We have to admit that the colonial powers that preempted land from the rightful stewards, the Coast Salish peoples, and extracted resources for commercial gain, essentially degraded these landscapes for the last 150 years.

[0:49:24] Voice 12: But that legacy of poor decision-making does not mean that the presence of people, the communities that developed and evolved since then, are something that is outside of the current policy-making and decision-making authorities that were granted to the island's trust.

[0:49:41] Voice 12: I support an interpretation of the mandate that looks backward, but only if it looks

[0:49:48] Voice 12: back to the way human communities and ecosystems were regarded by Indigenous peoples before

[0:49:52] Voice 12: colonization as interconnected and interdependent systems.

[0:49:57] Voice 12: And I support an interpretation of the mandate that looks into the future, where Indigenous

[0:50:02] Voice 12: people's knowledge, stewardship, and relationship to the land is honored and included.

[0:50:07] Voice 12: I support an interpretation that includes reconciliation.

[0:50:12] Voice 12: Reconciliation should mean exercising a systems perspective as we evaluate our overall goals

[0:50:18] Voice 12: and priorities, learning to value land and water planning and practices and social planning

[0:50:26] Voice 12: as intersectional and equally imperative mandates, and by incorporating practices that satisfy

[0:50:33] Voice 12: a mandate of being for the greater good of both our communities and the natural

[0:50:37] Voice 12: systems of which we are a part. A reconciliatory approach recognizes that

[0:50:44] Voice 12: humans, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, have always been part of the landscape

[0:50:49] Voice 12: and that we do not have to be aliens or parasites to live in harmony within

[0:50:54] Voice 12: these ecosystems. We can and must create policies that embrace both realities and

[0:51:00] Voice 12: reconcile the duality of human societies and natural ecosystems in order to benefit them both.

[0:51:06] Voice 12: And that's why interpreting the mandate will always be tricky, because it's about balancing

[0:51:11] Voice 12: the needs and drives of humans and non-humans in a historically very imperfect system,

[0:51:17] Voice 12: and why we'll have to continually interpret and reinterpret it as long as the Island Stress Act

[0:51:24] Voice 12: is a reality. So I was appreciative of the work that the governance committee had done

[0:51:36] Voice 12: to go through these legal opinions and analyze them and come up with something that I thought

[0:51:45] Voice 12: was a very constructive and creative approach. This balancing of the three elements of the trust

[0:51:53] Voice 12: area, none of which can be abandoned, one prioritized over the other. I thought this was

[0:52:01] Voice 12: a really suitable way of looking at it. And each local trust committee has jurisdiction and autonomy

[0:52:09] Voice 12: to interpret those in the way that is suitable for their communities. Some communities have

[0:52:14] Voice 12: developed and, you know, are struggling with fallow deer. And so you're going to need policies

[0:52:20] Voice 12: policies to repair and restore the ecosystem. So I don't think it's fruitful to continually debate and re-debate. I want to go forward into what can we do with this mandate? How can we innovate and work with First Nations peoples to reinterpret it into the future in the way that it will serve all of our communities?

[0:52:52] Voice 12: and the ecosystems i don't have any easy answers but um i thought i was thinking this way in 2020

[0:53:01] Voice 12: and i think it supports the the um the balancing um approach that um this council has adopted so

[0:53:16] Voice 12: thank you

[0:53:19] Trustee Patrick: toby i think the documentary was the the was that when you were working on the

[0:53:27] Trustee Patrick: documentary the wild or what is wild yeah

[0:53:30] Voice 12: it was called in the name of wild in

[0:53:32] Trustee Patrick: the name of wild

[0:53:32] Voice 12: yeah they went to every continent and 10 unesco places in canada actually there's three documentaries

[0:53:41] Voice 12: and uh one's online so i edited over 300 interviews with people all over the world

[0:53:46] Voice 12: examining this question of wild and cultural uh significance and people in place it was amazing

[0:53:54] Voice 14: thank

[0:53:55] Trustee Patrick: you okay we're gonna move on to christina evans thank you um

[0:54:02] Voice 9: i really appreciated all the

[0:54:03] Voice 9: comments so far and i'm in agreement with everything that everyone has said and i really

[0:54:09] Voice 9: appreciate um the letter that you read out trustee elliott that was um really on point and it was on

[0:54:15] Voice 9: point with a lot of the comments that i'm also um likely going to make as well um my uh solutions i

[0:54:25] Voice 9: I guess. I did like the idea of having that trustee Bernardo having a write-up on the website

[0:54:32] Voice 9: regarding the process and why we have in-camera sessions when it comes to legal opinions. I think

[0:54:39] Voice 9: it's also really important to clarify when we have in-camera sessions, it is because it's client

[0:54:46] Voice 9: privileged and it cannot be done in a public space. That's all there is to it. We will have

[0:54:53] Voice 9: them they will come up and it needs to be done that way it's it's the way that it's it's set up

[0:55:00] Voice 9: and we will do rise and reports with the information that we can put out publicly

[0:55:04] Voice 9: afterwards but that is that that is the system that is in place and that we work within

[0:55:11] Voice 9: part of our our job is good communications afterwards so as was mentioned earlier by a

[0:55:19] Voice 9: few others um we did fail in that area but we are looking to rectify the communications portion of

[0:55:25] Voice 9: it um to piggyback of what trustee boland had mentioned as well the current interpretation

[0:55:35] Voice 9: of the mandate in the current trust policy statement i think is still valid with the

[0:55:42] Voice 9: exception that we are missing the updated portion regarding first nations that um where they where

[0:55:48] Voice 9: where the act got updated to include First Nations that is not included in the policy statement.

[0:55:53] Voice 9: If that portion gets updated, the language that is in there, I think, is still valid.

[0:55:59] Voice 9: And it has been in there for decades and hasn't been challenged.

[0:56:05] Voice 9: So rather than trying to rewrite something, I would support taking what we currently have and updating it to include the elements that are missing,

[0:56:16] Voice 9: rather than stripping it out into its entirety

[0:56:18] Voice 9: or writing something completely new.

[0:56:22] Voice 9: The other piece that I was going to talk about

[0:56:26] Voice 9: was in part three of the current trust policy statement

[0:56:30] Voice 9: regarding the ecosystem preservation and protection.

[0:56:34] Voice 9: In there is included the principle of sustainability.

[0:56:38] Voice 9: This is now in the glossary

[0:56:41] Voice 9: of the current trust policy statement.

[0:56:43] Voice 9: So it's in there in exactly the same words,

[0:56:46] Voice 9: but this is also an important part to to remember and it says protective measures are varied and can

[0:56:53] Voice 9: include actions ranging from preservation of natural areas in the forms of parks and ecological

[0:56:58] Voice 9: reserves to increasing public awareness and understanding of the need for sustainable use

[0:57:05] Voice 9: and stewardship by all landowners and i think that this is is an important element that we remember

[0:57:14] Voice 9: that stewardship by residents, by people who are coming to visit, these are done on a volunteer

[0:57:23] Voice 9: basis. People opt into doing it. Our job is to educate and provide resources and provide

[0:57:32] Voice 9: information as to the benefits of doing this to encourage everyone to partake and do their portion

[0:57:40] Voice 9: for preserving and protecting our islands um it has been mentioned a few times that we are not

[0:57:46] Voice 9: um any that the islands trust is not it was not developed or created as an ecological reserve

[0:57:53] Voice 9: this does include human habitation it does include um uh economic uh functions as well

[0:58:02] Voice 9: and we are a land use planning body with an environmental consideration all of our decisions

[0:58:12] Voice 9: so to include within the unique amenities housing it's how that housing is unique within

[0:58:23] Voice 9: the islands trust it's how our economy is unique within the islands trust these elements are still

[0:58:30] Voice 9: unique within the islands trust because of how we live how our communities are comprised of

[0:58:39] Voice 9: different people how we um how we go about our day-to-day living is very different to how it's

[0:58:48] Voice 9: done in an urban setting and that's the piece that we're trying to preserve as well as the environment

[0:58:56] Voice 9: And it's through working in partnership, and it's through working with other outside agencies and not just with ourselves, that we're able to keep this, the word I'm looking for, I can't quite find it, but it's that the protections that we keep it going, that it doesn't get drowned out, that it doesn't get lost, I think is really important.

[0:59:26] Voice 9: important um i know that i have a couple of other comments but um i'm gonna i'm

[0:59:33] Voice 16: gonna hold off and

[0:59:37] Voice 16: good

[0:59:38] Trustee Patrick: timing because you just froze

[0:59:39] Voice 9: what we came out with sorry i still stand behind what we came

[0:59:44] Voice 9: out with uh from that that september meeting um and yeah

[0:59:53] Trustee Patrick: i'll leave it there thank you all right

[0:59:54] Trustee Patrick: thank you you just froze at the very end but uh that was perfect okay uh

[0:59:59] Trustee Patrick: Bye-bye.

[1:00:00] Trustee Patrick: trustee fast okay

[1:00:03] Voice 14: thanks and uh hello everybody thank you um chair patrick for answering my

[1:00:08] Voice 14: question at the beginning um because i was just uh thinking about how the idea of conservation

[1:00:17] Voice 14: changes over time and uh i um that's why i asked that question and uh i um also thank the governance

[1:00:28] Voice 14: committee who put their minds to this and and did the thorough review uh and came up with um

[1:00:35] Voice 14: uh it's a useful discussion and it's good to review these things review is good

[1:00:41] Voice 14: i think um and remembering that this was in the uh uh time that we were trying to come up with

[1:00:49] Voice 14: a strategic plan diverse trustees from all across the islands uh had been recently elected

[1:00:56] Voice 14: we were also discussing a vision statement you might remember at that same meeting

[1:01:04] Voice 14: there were strong opinions different directions and at the time I didn't think of this as a

[1:01:14] Voice 14: consensus I thought of it as sort of a summary statement and somehow it came to be called the

[1:01:21] Voice 14: consensus. I see it there as was in our report, but that's how we all seem to refer to it now.

[1:01:30] Voice 14: And yet consensus to lots of people, I think means unanimous, or we're all thinking exactly

[1:01:37] Voice 14: the same thing. And maybe a different word would be useful. So I'll try and return to that

[1:01:44] Voice 14: at the end of this like a summary statement or a review of past discussions or something

[1:01:52] Voice 14: but anyway I wanted to say now we have just adopted a strategic plan right so maybe we can

[1:02:02] Voice 14: start moving forward I mean the framing of conservation used to be one second I think

[1:02:08] Voice 14: somebody's coming for their stuff from the printer it's right behind you Will on top of that there it

[1:02:12] Voice 14: it is okay sorry music being printed off behind me um now framing of conservation

[1:02:21] Voice 14: back you see we we're in past our 50 year anniversary right so let's let's look back

[1:02:28] Voice 14: too at what conservation means or meant uh key ideas used to be nature for itself back in the

[1:02:35] Voice 14: the 60s to the 70s. Species, wild wilderness, the idea of wild protected areas. And then nature

[1:02:44] Voice 14: despite people, 1980s to 1990s. Extinction, threats, threatened species, habitat loss,

[1:02:50] Voice 14: pollution, overexploitation. And around the 2000s, we started thinking about,

[1:02:55] Voice 14: or these were just key ideas. Nature for people. These are the ecological benefits. These are the

[1:03:05] Voice 14: natural asset kind of approach. This is the ecosystems and ecosystem approach. We need

[1:03:10] Voice 14: healthy ecosystems, ecosystem functions, environmental economics, that kind of thing.

[1:03:17] Voice 14: And then getting up towards 2020, it was people and nature. And this brings me around to some of

[1:03:26] Voice 14: the other discussion I've heard here. If you think about the and, all in capital letters,

[1:03:30] Voice 14: um this is where the uh interconnection and the interdependent um the um uh recognition that uh

[1:03:42] Voice 14: people were shaping the landscapes for millennia here they just weren't necessarily the settler

[1:03:49] Voice 14: people and uh so i you know the the idea of people and nature uh what is um uh there's different

[1:04:00] Voice 14: terms for it, uh, gentle density, um, other kinds of ways of developing so that nature is also

[1:04:10] Voice 14: thriving. Like, can we thrive together? That's where I'd like to start heading from now. Um,

[1:04:16] Voice 14: I think the, uh, um, yeah, I think I've checked off all the things on my list except one.

[1:04:23] Voice 14: One, and that is this idea of Islands Trust as a land use planning agency or a land use planning body.

[1:04:33] Voice 14: Well, as a member of Bowen Island Municipality, I don't see it that way.

[1:04:39] Voice 14: Some trustees have mentioned Islands Trust Conservancy.

[1:04:42] Voice 14: I see that as one arm. That's a protection arm, not really land use planning.

[1:04:47] Voice 14: I see the Federation of Islands, the advocacy that we do together about everything from freighter anchorages to ferries and in the past and and different kinds of pollution.

[1:05:03] Voice 14: Those are that's the Federation side of it, you know, and and Islands Trust Conservancy.

[1:05:11] Voice 14: and then there's land use planning which is one function that bowen island municipality does

[1:05:18] Voice 14: within the islands trust we're a member so i don't see the islands trust as just a land use

[1:05:27] Voice 14: planning agency that's only one i think of its identities and uh yes it's got a trust policy

[1:05:35] Voice 14: statement and the um island municipalities like bowen island municipality will be within that

[1:05:41] Voice 14: but it's not only land use and uh it's voluntary it's stewardship it's people and nature i'd love

[1:05:49] Voice 14: to sort of find a leadership role and how can we um uh move forward for the next 50 years towards

[1:05:59] Voice 14: uh uh nature and people thriving together in a sustainable way that's what i see maybe as a bit

[1:06:08] Voice 14: of a vision to work towards and uh now um i'm going to turn it over to the next speaker thanks

[1:06:13] Voice 14: everybody thank

[1:06:15] Trustee Patrick: you very much and we're trustee getty you didn't have a chance to finish and

[1:06:21] Trustee Patrick: provide our talk now as a trustee in your solutions okay

[1:06:26] Voice 11: um i suppose the the controversy

[1:06:32] Voice 11: that has arisen out of all of the um correspondence that we received and everything is um um and some

[1:06:39] Voice 11: Some of the information that is still going around as a result of our discussions about Section 3,

[1:06:48] Voice 11: I think that it would be, from my perspective, what I think is important in terms of the Islands Trust

[1:06:57] Voice 11: is that I live on an island that is the closest to the biggest city that we've got in this province.

[1:07:02] Voice 11: And we have possibly the greatest pressures in terms of trying to keep rural space in a place that is valued by people in terms of being rural, but overrun in terms of a lot of the demands of people that are visiting.

[1:07:23] Voice 11: I want to live in a place where I can hear the birds and I can breathe the air and I can put as much effort as I can into having a happy community and a healthy community.

[1:07:37] Voice 11: And that's, I think, the benefit and the preciousness of the Islands Trust.

[1:07:44] Voice 11: Trust. When Rita Johnson went through her review of the Island Trust, I was new to Bowen at that

[1:07:51] Voice 11: point. And I was really very pleasantly surprised in terms of the people that stood up and said,

[1:07:57] Voice 11: this is a jewel. This is a green emerald in the middle of the ocean that needs everybody's

[1:08:05] Voice 11: efforts to control it and protect it. So I don't really believe that there's much controversy in

[1:08:13] Voice 11: in terms of everybody that supports the trust

[1:08:17] Voice 11: believes in the same sorts of things,

[1:08:19] Voice 11: that, yes, we may have to make adjustments

[1:08:22] Voice 11: in terms of finding housing that's affordable for workers

[1:08:26] Voice 11: and people that are retired

[1:08:28] Voice 11: and may not have the same income

[1:08:31] Voice 11: so that we don't become a Martha's Vineyard

[1:08:34] Voice 11: but only have big houses and expensive homes

[1:08:38] Voice 11: and people that are coming to work

[1:08:41] Voice 11: commute onto the island. I don't want that. I want the community. I want the people that can

[1:08:47] Voice 11: take the bit parts in the theater and to become friends in the pub and all the rest of it. So

[1:08:54] Voice 11: it's very much a community as opposed to an enclave. In terms of the issue that we're facing

[1:09:02] Voice 11: now is the trust in this Section 3 controversy that has come up since our work on it. I would

[1:09:08] Voice 11: like us to put in some principles that we seriously consider whether or not we

[1:09:15] Voice 11: need to have a budget item with respect to research and possibly librarian or

[1:09:22] Voice 11: archivist so that we can find material when we need it. I think we need to take

[1:09:29] Voice 11: some time with respect to this 1986 agreement between the trust and the

[1:09:35] Voice 11: province and see whether or not that is something that we still agree with. I believe we will, but

[1:09:40] Voice 11: I think that we need to put some time into that. I think we need to expand on this public-facing

[1:09:51] Voice 11: opinion that we've got from young Anderson and focus on the July 2007 opinion specifically,

[1:10:00] Voice 11: specifically, because that's in response to the Mandel Pinder. And I think that that's a

[1:10:06] Voice 11: misunderstood section of the legalese that needs to be clarified with people, because we're getting

[1:10:13] Voice 11: that given to us and referred to us all the time. And I think we need to be helpful in terms of

[1:10:20] Voice 11: trying to expand. When I think of Rob Botterill's stuff that he's just written, he needs to read

[1:10:29] Voice 11: our opinion on the contrary to the Mandel Pinder opinion. So I think that we need to get permission

[1:10:36] Voice 11: to publicize that more than this one little paragraph that's in this public facing. And I

[1:10:43] Voice 11: think we need to have a process where when a committee comes to, and I think we're doing it

[1:10:50] Voice 11: more and more now in terms of a request for a decision. Once a committee comes up with a position

[1:10:56] Voice 11: that they want the trust council to look at and adopt that we go through a process in terms of

[1:11:02] Voice 11: getting a staff reaction to it so that i think that if director marler and cao brony had had a

[1:11:12] Voice 11: chance to look at our consensus and maybe change the title and looked at the content that they

[1:11:18] Voice 11: might have had some really good helpful feedback for us before we actually open it up to trust

[1:11:24] Voice 11: Council. So I think we need to put that feedback loop to our good staff into play and formalize

[1:11:33] Voice 11: that. So those would be my recommendations with respect to this specific conundrum or whatever

[1:11:40] Voice 11: that we've found ourselves in. Thanks.

[1:11:43] Trustee Patrick: Thank you very much. David Graham, there you are.

[1:11:48] Trustee Patrick: There

[1:11:49] Voice 17: I am. Such eloquent speakers. This is a tough crowd. Certainly agree with everything

[1:11:59] Voice 17: that I've heard. Thank you, Trustee Elliott. That was a beautiful letter, and I'm impressed

[1:12:04] Voice 17: that you wrote that in 2020. The trust is only 50 years old. I wish we had started in 1874.

[1:12:12] Voice 17: for, you know, a lot of the tools that we were given came too late to the table.

[1:12:18] Voice 17: And I think we've all experienced frustration in trying to preserve and protect our islands

[1:12:24] Voice 17: with the past that we had to deal with.

[1:12:29] Voice 17: But what about the next 50 years?

[1:12:31] Voice 17: I mean, I'm a fiend when it comes to climate watch.

[1:12:36] Voice 17: I watch all of these great experts tell me how dire it's going to be.

[1:12:41] Voice 17: And I'm wondering, what focus can we publish and live by that will give us an opportunity on these islands to perhaps survive?

[1:12:52] Voice 17: I mean, thrive, that's an optimistic position.

[1:12:55] Voice 17: But how about we just survive?

[1:12:57] Voice 17: We're on islands.

[1:12:58] Voice 17: I mean, if we're going to lose 20 feet of the foreshore, that's going to make really small islands for some of us.

[1:13:05] Voice 17: And that's not that far away from the reality, according to the latest public or scientific publications on the melting of the Arctic ice.

[1:13:16] Voice 17: I don't think we need to. Sure, we walked into this problem ourselves.

[1:13:21] Voice 17: We did a lousy job of a Verizon report and it was rushed, perhaps.

[1:13:26] Voice 17: I don't know the reason for it, but we are living the results of that inadequate Verizon report.

[1:13:33] Voice 17: And we left the people that watch us so carefully, our community groups, and they watch us very carefully because they rely on us to do the work that they are also doing.

[1:13:44] Voice 17: We left them with the impression that we didn't put the preservation and protection of the natural environment as a priority.

[1:13:53] Voice 17: And this is my 13th year as a trustee, and I have always sat at that decision table with the idea that nature was sitting beside me.

[1:14:03] Voice 17: as opposed to the municipal councils where it's a regional growth strategy that's sitting beside

[1:14:08] Voice 17: you and the constituents who have told you that they want a new swimming pool or they want

[1:14:12] Voice 17: wider sidewalks or brighter streetlights. But we don't have that. We have a unique perspective.

[1:14:18] Voice 17: Nature is there. And that lens that we look through on every land use decision is a unique

[1:14:25] Voice 17: lens. We're the only land use planning government in Canada with a mandate to preserve and protect.

[1:14:31] Voice 17: and that's important so for the next 50 years i don't think we should shy away from making the

[1:14:37] Voice 17: preservation and protection of the natural environment and its processes the natural

[1:14:42] Voice 17: processes as a priority because we will all benefit nature will benefit and we the communities

[1:14:49] Voice 17: will benefit and we might just make it out of this next the future thank you

[1:15:00] Trustee Patrick: i'd like to make

[1:15:01] Trustee Patrick: make it out of the future that way see it'll be a good future okay um who's next sorry dump down

[1:15:09] Trustee Patrick: david maude are you here now i

[1:15:12] Trustee Maude: am here now my apologies

[1:15:13] Trustee Maude: for my tardiness but bc ferries is

[1:15:15] Trustee Maude: very good at conspiring to keep me out of meetings so um i'm saddened that i've missed

[1:15:22] Trustee Maude: some of the conversation um but part of what i want to reflect back is to our roots because you

[1:15:29] Trustee Maude: You know, we get a lot of criticism, and sometimes that can emerge over to abuse from people

[1:15:36] Trustee Maude: who say that we stray from the mandate, we stray from the original intent.

[1:15:41] Trustee Maude: I've just forwarded to trustees the original policy statement of 1975, and, you know, there's

[1:15:49] Trustee Maude: a lot in there that I think shows where the thought process of where we started from.

[1:15:55] Trustee Maude: But it also, I think, is eye-opening to how far we have changed our thought process, our policy statement, and our interpretation of the mandate since then.

[1:16:06] Trustee Maude: it um and like one paragraph that i'd like to to sort of highlight on page 14 um uh subtext in f

[1:16:14] Trustee Maude: it says recognition of the islands are first of all an existing community of people and the welfare

[1:16:20] Trustee Maude: of those people and those who join them and come after them must always be a primary concern of

[1:16:25] Trustee Maude: the trust and you know when people say that we're not sticking to the original mandate

[1:16:33] Trustee Maude: date with what we do today i think those words speak volumes as to what the intent was of the

[1:16:40] Trustee Maude: founders of the trust the whole document i think um shows what an original intent was and that

[1:16:47] Trustee Maude: certainly isn't what our interpretation are or the um the way that we structure our trust policy

[1:16:53] Trustee Maude: statement is today that we are always evolving we are always changing um um i've never had a

[1:17:02] Trustee Maude: problem with my interpretation of the mandate it was it always seemed clear to me is is that it uh

[1:17:11] Trustee Maude: the words the preserve and protect the environment the environment and the unique amenities

[1:17:18] Trustee Maude: shows that there are two parallel paths that we work on not one and i and i think the trust

[1:17:25] Trustee Maude: has a long history of doing the right thing and respecting the mandate and working within the

[1:17:33] Trustee Maude: mandate, and also changing to reflect the changing times and then changing interpretations.

[1:17:40] Trustee Maude: We will always change. Five years from now, we'll get another interpretation, and it won't

[1:17:47] Trustee Maude: be the same as today's, and it certainly won't be the same as 1975. But I'm troubled by those

[1:17:55] Trustee Maude: who wish to criticize the trust for what they what they interpret as being

[1:18:03] Trustee Maude: incorrect whereas I I work hard to respect the trust to respect the mandate

[1:18:12] Trustee Maude: to work with the trust the trust policy statement and you know I think we do a

[1:18:18] Trustee Maude: very good job and I think that every trustee sitting around the table today

[1:18:23] Trustee Maude: is there for honourable reasons

[1:18:25] Trustee Maude: and those who've sat around the table before us

[1:18:29] Trustee Maude: have been there for honourable reasons.

[1:18:32] Trustee Maude: Nobody is there with ulterior motives

[1:18:35] Trustee Maude: trying to manipulate things,

[1:18:37] Trustee Maude: trying to change things

[1:18:38] Trustee Maude: or trying to do anything

[1:18:40] Trustee Maude: other than what's in the best interest

[1:18:42] Trustee Maude: of the honest trust area,

[1:18:44] Trustee Maude: the mandate and what we've been given.

[1:18:47] Trustee Maude: So I'm proud to say that I'm happy where we are

[1:18:50] Trustee Maude: and I'm happy where we're going

[1:18:52] Trustee Maude: And I think that, you know, go back to 1975. I hope everybody reads that policy statement. And I hope it gets prominently put on our website. So those who criticize us and say that we're straying from the original intent of the trust can actually see where we were and where we are today. And I think that we're stronger and better today than we were in 1975. Thank you.

[1:19:16] Trustee Patrick: Thank you. As a solution, I assume you're giving some support there to the idea of a researcher or archivist to keep some of this material present.

[1:19:25] Trustee Patrick: As

[1:19:26] Trustee Maude: one who's tried to dig it out? Absolutely.

[1:19:28] Trustee Maude: All

[1:19:29] Trustee Patrick: right. Trustee Middleton. Trustee Middleton? Maybe he stepped away for a moment. We'll keep going and see if he comes back to being available or there's a ship coming between us and Saturna at the moment.

[1:19:54] Trustee Patrick: okay trustee morrison thank

[1:19:59] Voice 20: you um okay so first i think i'd like to just say that

[1:20:05] Voice 20: i'd like to thank the governance committee for their work and in particular um trustee getty

[1:20:12] Voice 20: and trustee bernardo i think it's really frustrating in many ways to see the brunt

[1:20:22] Voice 20: of the the sort of kickback from the september meeting that hit them and so i just think we all

[1:20:29] Voice 20: need to recognize that and we are a council of 26 trustees we own our decisions at council

[1:20:36] Voice 20: as a collective even if we don't agree with them so um and i've had to do that plenty trust me

[1:20:43] Voice 20: so I think we we have to really speak as one voice in community when when decisions are made

[1:20:53] Voice 20: at council and not say oh that was something that trustee Getty said no it was something that was

[1:20:59] Voice 20: put on the table and it was agreed to at some level in the council so now it is our collective

[1:21:04] Voice 20: decision and so I just want to name that and I thank trustee Graham for also saying that really

[1:21:10] Voice 20: clearly and some others have named that too so as elected officials you know lawyers are not

[1:21:16] Voice 20: we are all elected officials and that is actually the common ground we have here so we need to agree

[1:21:24] Voice 20: argue make our work better collectively and take responsibility for the decisions that we're making

[1:21:30] Voice 20: as we go I think I'm going to use trustee Getty's framing of process and content because I think

[1:21:40] Voice 20: that's helpful to differentiate a couple things that I still have issues with, frankly. I don't

[1:21:47] Voice 20: really want to debate them. I just want to name them yet again. I've named them, I think, at every

[1:21:51] Voice 20: time this has come up. I like Trustee Borthwick, I think, and several other trustees. I think

[1:21:59] Voice 20: Trustee Fast might have a similar interpretation to me. I do not think that the process that we

[1:22:07] Voice 20: did in CAMRA was a decision-making process about the mandate. I think it was a decision-making

[1:22:12] Voice 20: process about the legal interpretation of the mandate, which is appropriate in a closed meeting.

[1:22:18] Voice 20: It is not appropriate in a closed meeting for us to come to a consensus decision or any decision,

[1:22:24] Voice 20: frankly, on our collective interpretation of the mandate. It is appropriate to come to a legal

[1:22:31] Voice 20: decision like a summary of illegal decisions so that is continue has been always and continues to

[1:22:37] Voice 20: be my interpretation of what happened um sorry trustee middleton did you want to go ahead i'm

[1:22:44] Voice 20: taking your spot at the moment or we'll jump

[1:22:46] Trustee Patrick: back to trustee middleton next your

[1:22:49] Trustee Middleton: eloquence is a

[1:22:50] Trustee Middleton: a refreshing antidote to my recent...

[1:22:54] Trustee Middleton: Your

[1:22:55] Voice 20: Saturnus issues.

[1:22:58] Voice 20: So I think that, like, whether we all agree with that

[1:23:04] Voice 20: at the time when it was or not,

[1:23:07] Voice 20: we have a statement that was released to the public,

[1:23:10] Voice 20: and I agree with what some others have said here,

[1:23:13] Voice 20: that it really, there's two sentences in that statement

[1:23:17] Voice 20: that I think really triggered some responses

[1:23:20] Voice 20: for our community because they are really out of rhythm with the preserve and protect framing of

[1:23:28] Voice 20: the our mandate and it doesn't matter that they're accurate according to the legal decisions

[1:23:35] Voice 20: they pulling those specific things out I think caused some kickback around understanding and

[1:23:44] Voice 20: And in particular, I think it was the sentences around, oh, sorry, let me just go back to

[1:23:51] Voice 20: process for a minute before I get into content.

[1:23:55] Voice 20: So, you know, I do think we have to be extremely careful when we go into closed meetings going

[1:24:01] Voice 20: forward.

[1:24:02] Voice 20: So as a sort of action step going forward, I think we need to be extremely careful about

[1:24:06] Voice 20: what is in closed meeting and what is not.

[1:24:09] Voice 20: Because what brought us into closed meeting was a conversation around legal decisions.

[1:24:14] Voice 20: And I missed it, too, but there was a sentence in that that's rising report statement that said this report is to make public the results of our discussions and share with our constituents how the current trust council intends to interpret our mandate, which in turn will help inform our strategic planning.

[1:24:34] Voice 20: That's where we went wildly astray, I think, for for the rising report move.

[1:24:39] Voice 20: move um so i think just understanding what is and is not appropriate to be doing in a public

[1:24:47] Voice 20: or a private or a game camera meeting going forward and making sure that we stick to that

[1:24:53] Voice 20: very clearly and that our rise and report communications also stick to that very clearly

[1:24:58] Voice 20: um so that would be one thing um so but on content i think i actually have no like huge issues with

[1:25:07] Voice 20: what the rise and report statement was with the exception of the two sentences so the two sentences

[1:25:15] Voice 20: are that there was there has been some debate in the past about the meaning of unique amenities

[1:25:20] Voice 20: trust council's view is that unique amenities are broad ranging and may include issues such as but

[1:25:26] Voice 20: not limited to housing livelihoods infrastructure and tourism i don't know if i radically disagree

[1:25:32] Voice 20: agree with that i just think that those specific things being called out whereas there wasn't an

[1:25:39] Voice 20: emphasis put on like socioecological systems or holistic systems thinking like trustee elliott's

[1:25:44] Voice 20: framing that's where we go we go sideways so i would have removed those two state statements

[1:25:50] Voice 20: and just left the rest of it in the trust policy statement if it moves into the trust policy

[1:25:56] Voice 20: statement. So that would be an action step too. I think that those are problematic statements.

[1:26:02] Voice 20: And the reason that I think that is because the trust policy statement is our interpretation of

[1:26:08] Voice 20: the mandate. We don't actually have to come up with an interpretation mandate. We just have to

[1:26:13] Voice 20: finish the trust policy statement because it is our interpretation of the mandate. So I think we

[1:26:19] Voice 20: just need to say what the sort of pieces of the mandate are like the government's committee did,

[1:26:23] Voice 20: and then move on and finish the trust policy statement because when we do that we actually

[1:26:28] Voice 20: have a document that we've agreed to that is our interpretation of the mandate um i do think as we

[1:26:36] Voice 20: do that we need to be extremely careful because i don't really want to see things like voluntary

[1:26:42] Voice 20: stewardship in a trust policy statement you can throw that into your own local trust policy stuff

[1:26:48] Voice 20: in your official community plan but i think the trust policy statement needs to be a higher sort

[1:26:53] Voice 20: of bar of like what is required. And then on the

[1:26:59] Voice 20: conversation around land use planning,

[1:27:01] Voice 20: we are a land use planning agency and we are a conservancy agency and we're a local space for

[1:27:07] Voice 20: our communities to be in conversation with other agencies, to be in coordination. We do all those

[1:27:12] Voice 20: things. We do some of those at Trust Council. We do some of those at LTCs. Those are all actually

[1:27:17] Voice 20: part of our work. In the trust policy statement, we don't necessarily need to have every little

[1:27:23] Voice 20: little detail because the local government act kind of enables us at the LTCs to do some of

[1:27:28] Voice 20: those pieces, right? So we also need to kind of ask ourselves what is, what has to be in the trust

[1:27:34] Voice 20: policy statement and what can just be in our OCPs, right? So I think there's some differences there.

[1:27:42] Voice 20: Last things to just state, words matter a lot. I feel like I got trustee Borthwick on my team on

[1:27:50] Voice 20: on that one um and they matter a lot um words are cultural and their interpretation moves across

[1:27:59] Voice 20: cultural communities and so when we use words like consensus that have been brought up here

[1:28:04] Voice 20: today it's you get a radically different interpretation i had the media on the phone

[1:28:09] Voice 20: like two seconds after that statement went public asking me if i agreed because there wasn't they

[1:28:13] Voice 20: wanted to have a count of how many and they could believe i agreed with that statement

[1:28:17] Voice 20: right but I can't talk about the in-camera meeting because I actually believe that we

[1:28:23] Voice 20: should abide by in-camera rules so what am I supposed to say to that right so it leaves us

[1:28:29] Voice 20: in awkward positions when we use statements like consensus even though the definition is general

[1:28:35] Voice 20: agreement okay consensus is not a great word public interpretation is everyone agrees so

[1:28:43] Voice 20: So, and I can tell you, I did not fully agree to this.

[1:28:48] Voice 20: Also, I want to echo some other sentiments that have been said here.

[1:28:52] Voice 20: We have to be very careful in our communications about false binaries.

[1:28:58] Voice 20: So people versus the environment, you know, economics versus conservation, those are false binaries.

[1:29:07] Voice 20: raise we as a human society are doomed unless we can get control of living equitably in a balanced

[1:29:14] Voice 20: environment like that's just a reality and we're starting to come up against it as things get tight

[1:29:20] Voice 20: um i like the framing of socio-ecological systems because it really talks about how

[1:29:26] Voice 20: we're not it's not the environment over here and humans over here we're deeply entwined in a

[1:29:34] Voice 20: a systems way um yeah and then I think I think we just need really a lot more clarity on our

[1:29:46] Voice 20: communications I know I've talked with many of you about this I feel like we we get into some

[1:29:52] Voice 20: rush moments and we may not even understand what's what the I mean we had from my

[1:29:58] Voice 20: Bye.

[1:30:00] Voice 20: survey of trustees over the last year and a half as we've gone through all this,

[1:30:04] Voice 20: people have wildly different interpretations of what happened inside a closed meeting,

[1:30:09] Voice 20: outside a closed meeting, legal interpretations. So we need to have clarity and statements that

[1:30:15] Voice 20: we can come to super clear, universal agreement that that's what we're saying out in the public.

[1:30:23] Voice 20: Even if we don't agree with that decision that was made, that this decision, when we communicated

[1:30:29] Voice 20: to the public really is the same thing because i've seen a number of communications and talked

[1:30:34] Voice 20: to chair luckham about a number of communications that were just super frustrating to just like see

[1:30:40] Voice 20: go out into community we have to battle be great to have speaker notes that would be one of my

[1:30:44] Voice 20: action steps is to actually have like detailed speaker notes um maybe that's to trustee getty's

[1:30:50] Voice 20: kind of research issue um but to have some kind of notes the trustees could have in this packet

[1:30:55] Voice 20: So when we're talking about different things, we actually have a quick reference because like going back through like eight meetings worth of notes to try and find the page is really frustrating.

[1:31:06] Voice 20: So, all right. I think that's it for now.

[1:31:10] Trustee Patrick: Thank you. Back to Trustee Middleton.

[1:31:17] Trustee Middleton: Yes, thanks all. Sorry to miss a couple of comments there with the need to step away.

[1:31:23] Trustee Middleton: way and um advantage is coming after trustee morrison the professional ecologist i can just

[1:31:29] Trustee Middleton: summarize a couple of her points and we can all move on because uh i think she uh talked about

[1:31:35] Trustee Middleton: the socioeconomic systems and uh she very clearly i don't think this statement is particularly uh

[1:31:44] Trustee Middleton: i think generally we would probably all say that we're in agreement despite perhaps the choice of

[1:31:52] Trustee Middleton: wording we might come down with in terms of uh unique amenities and their their human nature

[1:31:59] Trustee Middleton: versus their um their um natural or environmental nature um i'm not sure that wordsmithing that

[1:32:08] Trustee Middleton: statement you know there may be somebody amongst us who says nope it needs to very simply and

[1:32:14] Trustee Middleton: clearly say preeminent regard for the environment above all else i'm fair enough um if that's that's

[1:32:22] Trustee Middleton: person's um view of the mandate but i think generally it's not so much the wording that

[1:32:29] Trustee Middleton: came out of that meeting it's just it was kind of charged a bit beyond what it needed to be by

[1:32:33] Trustee Middleton: the fact it took place in a closed meeting which i've heard several of you say we should be very

[1:32:38] Trustee Middleton: careful about the work we tried to do in closed meetings because they they lend a level of charge

[1:32:43] Trustee Middleton: to the topic that perhaps isn't warranted or perhaps wasn't intended and there's really

[1:32:50] Trustee Middleton: nothing ultimately sacrosanct about the legal opinion. You'll beg my pardon, Trustee Giddey,

[1:32:55] Trustee Middleton: for being so bold as to say so. It's our choice whether we want to publicize it or not. We bought

[1:33:01] Trustee Middleton: it. I know there was some concern about the opinion being politicized. I think it's a small

[1:33:06] Trustee Middleton: chance to pay. I think it's far better to be transparent and show the public the opinions

[1:33:11] Trustee Middleton: word for word that they actually paid for. So I think the pickle we found ourselves in there a

[1:33:18] Trustee Middleton: a little bit was a little bit of our own doing but totally unintentional nobody intended for

[1:33:22] Trustee Middleton: that to happen and so I guess what I would come back to is our chair is talking about what do we

[1:33:27] Trustee Middleton: want to do I don't I don't see a problem I mean maybe I would choose different words maybe some

[1:33:32] Trustee Middleton: of you would choose different words but I think generally it's it's an accurate statement of what

[1:33:36] Trustee Middleton: our role is um balancing factors when we come to a decision but ultimately that's a conversation

[1:33:45] Trustee Middleton: that I think it seems we are on governance matters

[1:33:49] Trustee Middleton: that the governance consultants said

[1:33:53] Trustee Middleton: we fundamentally lack the tools to talk across our values.

[1:33:58] Trustee Middleton: We go into, you know,

[1:34:01] Trustee Middleton: the conversation spins into a dichotomy very quickly

[1:34:04] Trustee Middleton: because we literally don't have the sophisticated guidance

[1:34:08] Trustee Middleton: with a large decision-making body

[1:34:11] Trustee Middleton: to be able to discuss charged and different values

[1:34:15] Trustee Middleton: values, but then to arrive at sort of an acceptable or a meaningful policy direction out of those

[1:34:22] Trustee Middleton: values. And to a degree, I think that's what the report was trying to do, was to create a culture

[1:34:27] Trustee Middleton: at the council table where we could talk across those values. We could, on behalf of our

[1:34:32] Trustee Middleton: constituents, break down those dichotomies and move forward. It's not a simple task, and I'm not

[1:34:39] Trustee Middleton: pointing the finger at anyone here at all. Everybody's doing their best and trying to

[1:34:43] Trustee Middleton: to protect and cherish this beautiful area we all call home.

[1:34:50] Trustee Middleton: But I do think we need to focus on some tools that will allow us to speak.

[1:34:58] Trustee Middleton: You know, I go back earlier in the term where there was the tree-cutting authority

[1:35:04] Trustee Middleton: versus forests are healthy on the islands and they should be completely non-interpreted.

[1:35:10] Trustee Middleton: Human activity should not be fettered.

[1:35:12] Trustee Middleton: we clearly didn't have the tools to come to a cannabis a middle position or a functional

[1:35:20] Trustee Middleton: position from either ecological or a human perspective there again nobody at fault it's

[1:35:25] Trustee Middleton: just that that's kind of where i'd like to see us go i i do believe the governance report pointed

[1:35:30] Trustee Middleton: to some tools uh you may you may not believe that they may not be compelling enough i respect that

[1:35:37] Trustee Middleton: But I think that, you know, lesson learned in terms of the closed meeting stuff, lesson learned in terms of the use of words.

[1:35:47] Trustee Middleton: I'm willing to just see what we can do now to affect that mandate, however we described it, given the time we have available to us.

[1:35:56] Trustee Middleton: And so, you know, I don't have a precise prescription, but hopefully that's a general enough sentiment to perhaps get us going, if anyone agrees.

[1:36:06] Trustee Middleton: agrees. But yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Thank

[1:36:10] Trustee Patrick: you very much. Believe it or not, I'm next

[1:36:13] Trustee Patrick: on the list. And for me, I looked at this statement as just guidance on as we face any

[1:36:24] Trustee Patrick: decision, whether it's at trust council or at our local trust committee, sort of these factors that

[1:36:29] Trustee Patrick: we have to look at, that we have to look at the three distinct pieces of the mandate. And we have

[1:36:39] Trustee Patrick: have to have clear reasons.

[1:36:41] Trustee Patrick: We must reason them, all three of them.

[1:36:43] Trustee Patrick: And as we go through our decision-making processing.

[1:36:50] Trustee Patrick: And I look back on sort of the history

[1:36:52] Trustee Patrick: of how we got some of this frustration here

[1:36:55] Trustee Patrick: and a lot of our older materials on our website

[1:36:57] Trustee Patrick: and in our written materials that were out in the public

[1:37:00] Trustee Patrick: just said that we preserved and protect unique amenities

[1:37:03] Trustee Patrick: in the environment.

[1:37:05] Trustee Patrick: Whereas in the statement that we produced here,

[1:37:07] Trustee Patrick: we made it very clear there are three things.

[1:37:09] Trustee Patrick: We preserve and protect the trust area and the unique amenities and the environment, three distinct areas, which, as we have learned in our detailed reviews of the legal opinions, have broad meaning, as well as many of the things that we had gone through in the previous term, saying the mandate means complete communities or sustainable communities, housing, all of that.

[1:37:36] Trustee Patrick: I think back last term, former Trustee Rogers had written a piece, and I really like some of the wording that he came. He said what really sets us apart from other forms of local government is that the environment is a constituent.

[1:37:56] Trustee Patrick: People are as well, but the environment is, and that really sets us apart. It's not a choice. We must always consider the environment in every decision that we make.

[1:38:07] Trustee Patrick: And I just liked his framing and putting that forward as that really landed with me.

[1:38:16] Trustee Patrick: I think going forward, I think the decisions are how to make this clear.

[1:38:22] Trustee Patrick: I absolutely agree.

[1:38:26] Trustee Patrick: We don't have some clear information.

[1:38:28] Trustee Patrick: And I know that from talking.

[1:38:29] Trustee Patrick: You talk to people that live here and move here, and they don't understand what the Islands Trust is, never mind this paragraph, the mandate.

[1:38:36] Trustee Patrick: And I think we do need to get very clear in our communications as to what we are, be proud of it, own it, be able to explain it. And I think the trust policy statement is a good place to do that. I think that's our opportunity that we have at hand in front of us in the near term here is to be able to get that clear.

[1:38:58] Trustee Patrick: and so that it's understood and can be read by in plain language from someone living in this area

[1:39:06] Trustee Patrick: what that mandate means and how it how it shows up in the trust policy statement as well

[1:39:13] Trustee Patrick: um and that's really i think all i'm going to talk about for right now okay um who's next

[1:39:22] Trustee Patrick: frosty peterson oh

[1:39:31] Voice 22: thank you chair and uh thanks everybody for your thoughts so far this evening

[1:39:38] Voice 22: um so the interpretation is the key point uh i want to um thank chair patrick for pulling

[1:39:50] Voice 22: together some of the previous discussions uh from previous terms and certainly on page 19

[1:39:57] Voice 22: Tina, from the statement, talking about the mandate,

[1:40:01] Voice 22: it may be interpreted and such interpretation may be challenged,

[1:40:04] Voice 22: but it can only be changed by the Legislative Assembly.

[1:40:08] Voice 22: That's the key here.

[1:40:10] Voice 22: My understanding is that the mandate has been interpreted

[1:40:16] Voice 22: variously by trust councils over time,

[1:40:18] Voice 22: and my expectation is that it will continue to be.

[1:40:21] Voice 22: um some trust councils may have spent more or less time uh delving into uh looking for

[1:40:31] Voice 22: consensus on on on a specific interpretation or not um and that's okay and that's normal and

[1:40:38] Voice 22: expected that different councils comprised of different people will will will put more or less

[1:40:45] Voice 22: effort into working through this. Certainly in discussion that I was party to with ministry

[1:40:52] Voice 22: staff, reinforcing the view that the open to interpretation part is on purpose and it

[1:41:04] Voice 22: is there to permit and allow Trust Council to work within those words. A couple of people

[1:41:14] Voice 22: mentioned the the current policy statement and it's section on the

[1:41:20] Voice 22: mandate which I also agree is good we did discuss it at Trust Programs

[1:41:25] Voice 22: Committee a little at our last discussion around pardon me around the

[1:41:30] Voice 22: policy statement certainly certainly worthy of of some further thought there

[1:41:38] Voice 22: as we do that work I think that the interpretation this council came up with

[1:41:46] Voice 22: is balanced it's my personal view um and i agree that uh our failure was communication

[1:41:59] Voice 22: um not in not in the work that we did but in in the way we uh we brought it to the public

[1:42:07] Voice 22: specifically i think it was trustee graham who mentioned our rise and report

[1:42:12] Voice 22: um perhaps ought to have been more robust i think and and in failing that then at least

[1:42:19] Voice 22: our communication could have been more timely and a little bit more detailed why were we in camera

[1:42:27] Voice 22: and how did we come to this interpretation and those are the questions that i think that the

[1:42:31] Voice 22: public um felt strongly about and felt that there needed to be answers to we were not

[1:42:38] Voice 22: uh i don't think we prepared ourselves well for that and uh exactly lesson learned um

[1:42:46] Voice 22: Um, but, uh, I think the lesson learned is, is when we're doing work that feels to the

[1:42:55] Voice 22: public, like it's a consequential that spending a little bit more time on those elements is

[1:43:01] Voice 22: probably a really good idea.

[1:43:03] Voice 22: Um, all that said, as I say, I think this council's interpretation is balanced.

[1:43:08] Voice 22: I think there'll be other interpretations in the future.

[1:43:12] Voice 22: As far as solutions go, I think maybe we could put together a little summary of this meeting for public release.

[1:43:25] Voice 22: That might not be a bad idea for those that either weren't able to or weren't willing to sit through this discussion of ours.

[1:43:37] Voice 22: And I think this meeting, that we're having this meeting in public, is also part of the solution.

[1:43:44] Voice 22: for those that are willing, because we didn't really get a chance to say all the things that

[1:43:53] Voice 22: have been said tonight. And I think that it helps to explain where we're all coming from

[1:44:01] Voice 22: individually. And I think, as Chair Patrick mentioned at the beginning, there are common

[1:44:06] Voice 22: threads. There's a lot of intersection between what we're all saying here. No one's saying

[1:44:13] Voice 22: something radically different than anyone else for the most part um and yeah so those those

[1:44:21] Voice 22: lessons around when we go in camera for for something that's so big it's a big piece the

[1:44:27] Voice 22: interpretation of the object um yeah that that initial rise and report how we communicate after

[1:44:36] Voice 22: and those specific pieces so i'm going to leave it there because i don't want to repeat uh

[1:44:42] Voice 22: everything that's already been said but really appreciate the conversation here everyone

[1:44:46] Voice 22: uh lots of great thoughtful points and uh i appreciate all of you my colleagues and i'll

[1:44:52] Voice 22: turn it back over to the chair thank

[1:44:55] Voice 14: you very much and we have

[1:44:56] Voice 19: trustee yates thank you chair

[1:45:01] Voice 19: patrick and thank you for asking us right at the beginning if we have any solutions

[1:45:06] Voice 19: um i'm not sure if i do myself but i certainly have been very grateful to hear every single

[1:45:11] Voice 19: go one of your comments. I think there are solutions inherent in what everyone has been

[1:45:17] Voice 19: saying, including just Trustee Peterson, who mentioned, of course, that in our release on

[1:45:25] Voice 19: September 26th, it says quite clearly that the Islands Trust was created by provincial legislation,

[1:45:32] Voice 19: the mandate is an enacted law, and can only be changed by the Legislative Assembly. So that's

[1:45:40] Voice 19: always a good reminder um i think too many of you have commented on we kind of got ourselves into

[1:45:46] Voice 19: this mess simply because of how we followed up with communication and um i agree we we probably

[1:45:56] Voice 19: will never make that mistake again we will probably be more careful about what we do in camera and

[1:46:02] Voice 19: what we do in public, because the more in public, the better off we will definitely be.

[1:46:08] Voice 19: So I'd like to follow up a bit on that. Trustee Morrison, Trustee Borthwick, Trustee Fast,

[1:46:17] Voice 19: all mention the fact that in one part of the release that we did on September 26,

[1:46:24] Voice 19: it says consensus in bold capital letters. And the consensus is the object of the Islands Trust

[1:46:31] Voice 19: trust is to preserve and protect three specific elements the trust area its unique amenities and

[1:46:38] Voice 19: environment great for the benefit of the residents of the trust area and british columbia generally

[1:46:44] Voice 19: in cooperation with and you all know the rest that's great we probably did have consensus on

[1:46:49] Voice 19: that later on it says um and i think trustee one of the trustees brought this up trust council's

[1:46:57] Voice 19: view is that unique amenities are broad ranging etc etc that was a view that we were all discussing

[1:47:04] Voice 19: I know myself personally I didn't exactly agree with that however and it was definitely not

[1:47:13] Voice 19: consensus but I think it came out as everything we released was somehow consensus but it wasn't

[1:47:21] Voice 19: It was just a good discussion with some of us agreeing and some of us not.

[1:47:26] Voice 19: And I think it was Trustee Peterson who just said, if we'd had more time and we weren't so rushed, because that was a very rushed meeting, we probably would have come to a better sense of agreement as we seem to be doing this evening.

[1:47:42] Voice 19: So I really appreciate that.

[1:47:43] Voice 19: that. Just want to follow up on Trustee Maud's mention of all those trust policy statements

[1:47:50] Voice 19: going right back to 1975. Well, I have all of those in my trust policy statement binder,

[1:47:58] Voice 19: which I actually do look at fairly often. I have 1975, 1983, 1986, 1990, and of course,

[1:48:05] Voice 19: the Consolidated 2003. And I was a trustee for 83, 86, and 1990. And I really did pay attention.

[1:48:14] Voice 19: And there just wasn't the kerfuffle that there is now. And I think it's because we might be mixing

[1:48:22] Voice 19: up the trust mandate and the thing that we do as local government in our local communities.

[1:48:30] Voice 19: We are required by the Local Government Act to include housing policies, affordable housing in our official community plans. No one could be more concerned about that than me. I truly am.

[1:48:44] Voice 19: But when it comes to, and the same with livelihood and transportation infrastructure, I'm sure Trustee Borthwick and I would totally agree.

[1:48:53] Voice 19: Transportation infrastructure, our buses are so important.

[1:48:57] Voice 19: Things like tourism.

[1:48:59] Voice 19: However, those are not unique, but they're definitely something we must deal with in our OCPs and, of course, our zoning bylaws.

[1:49:07] Voice 19: And we do.

[1:49:08] Voice 19: What is unique?

[1:49:10] Voice 19: And this, I know this is true because I ran, I campaigned on this four times. What is unique

[1:49:18] Voice 19: is the biogeoclimatic zone that we live in, which is under extreme pressure from human impact. So

[1:49:27] Voice 19: what we need to do without going into binaries, as Trustee Morrison so rightly pointed out,

[1:49:34] Voice 19: it's not this and that and black and white and you know humans and environment we just need to

[1:49:41] Voice 19: and i think we do i think every single one of us when we when we make our decisions

[1:49:48] Voice 19: well not just our decisions when we work as a council when we work as a local trust committee

[1:49:55] Voice 19: i don't think any of us doesn't put the environment first and so that just needs to

[1:50:03] Voice 19: come out in whatever statements we make as far as the trust policy statement and we are working on

[1:50:09] Voice 19: the trust policy statement and so far so good it seems to be like we seem to be coming to some

[1:50:15] Voice 19: pretty good agreements as we hop along so um i think that's i think that's all i need to say

[1:50:24] Voice 19: um thank you all for hanging in there for the last letter almost of the alphabet

[1:50:29] Voice 19: bit okay thank you and thank you really and truly thank you everyone for such wonderful comments

[1:50:37] Trustee Patrick: thank

[1:50:38] Voice 19: you uh

[1:50:39] Trustee Patrick: trustee yates and yes i think we reached the end of the alphabet here uh did

[1:50:43] Trustee Patrick: anyone sneak in that got missed just in case um anyone knew upton while we were going through

[1:50:50] Trustee Patrick: so it looks like everyone's had a chance to speak and i really appreciate everyone today i think yes

[1:50:55] Trustee Patrick: Yes, there were deep common threads that came out.

[1:51:01] Trustee Patrick: And I think that is from when you live in these places,

[1:51:04] Trustee Patrick: that's why we live here.

[1:51:05] Trustee Patrick: I always think people, we climb onto a BC ferry

[1:51:09] Trustee Patrick: and add this extra stress into our lives.

[1:51:13] Trustee Patrick: And we do it because we love the areas that we're coming to.

[1:51:16] Trustee Patrick: Trustee Getty, senior fundraiser.

[1:51:21] Voice 11: Got one sentence in the RISEN report.

[1:51:25] Voice 11: report. Trust Council's view is that unique amenities are broad ranging and may include

[1:51:29] Voice 11: issues such as, but not limited to, housing, livelihoods, infrastructure, and tourism.

[1:51:35] Voice 11: My recollection is that that was trying to explain the opinion that we got, the first one in the

[1:51:45] Voice 11: September 2020, in terms of just how, and I think the question that was asked was just how broad

[1:51:52] Voice 11: can it get because there's a whole lot of issues that are coming up that don't

[1:51:56] Voice 11: look specifically within the mandate and so we got that opinion in terms of the

[1:52:04] Voice 11: policy statement may contain policies regarding housing and sustainable

[1:52:07] Voice 11: communities for example for example this is one sentence and it was a three or

[1:52:13] Voice 11: four page opinion so I think that is that has been identified here and it

[1:52:20] Voice 11: It certainly was the crux of a lot of the comments and the commentary

[1:52:25] Voice 11: and the criticism that we had limited ourselves to some things

[1:52:30] Voice 11: that were not unique.

[1:52:33] Voice 11: And I think that my recollection now is that that's very, very unfortunate

[1:52:39] Voice 11: because we were emphasizing the opinion that we got in that one decision.

[1:52:43] Voice 11: And if we're going to change anything, it's, you know, that it is much broader and that this is something that we may have jurisdiction over to contend with and try and sort out a solution.

[1:52:59] Voice 11: But we're not immune to those kinds of pressures, but that's not limiting.

[1:53:06] Voice 11: I think it's been interpreted as us trying to limit the mandate, the unique amenities.

[1:53:14] Voice 11: So I think that if that's helpful in terms of an explanation, that's my rough recollection of where that and how that came up.

[1:53:23] Voice 11: Not that it helps, not that it's a good, ultimately a sentence to include, but I think that's how we got there.

[1:53:31] Trustee Patrick: I just wanted to make sure we're moving on to next steps.

[1:53:34] Trustee Patrick: But Trustee Evans, I

[1:53:37] Voice 9: just wanted to say I really appreciated hearing everybody's comments.

[1:53:40] Voice 9: and it's uh really nice that uh we are pretty much all saying very similar things using different

[1:53:48] Voice 9: words that we understand the mandate to mean something that is balanced that the environment

[1:53:55] Voice 9: is um just as important as the other aspects that that we are here doing as part of our work

[1:54:02] Voice 9: and it is central and uh to to every to every decision that we make um and i i think it's it's

[1:54:11] Voice 9: important that we are all on the same page that we are looking forward with a balanced view with

[1:54:17] Voice 9: regards to us decision making versus um some of the public opinions that we sometimes see that um

[1:54:25] Voice 9: Um,

[1:54:30] Trustee Patrick: well, trustee Evans, you, uh, we lost trustee Evans again, have

[1:54:41] Voice 9: to be taken into account.

[1:54:42] Voice 9: So I just appreciated everybody's view and it was just really heartwarming to hear everybody.

[1:54:46] Voice 9: So thank you. Thank you. Trustee Yates.

[1:54:50] Voice 19: Yes. On the, on the same point, I, I, I made notes to

[1:54:54] Voice 19: myself that when we did that public release, I agreed with everything until I got to that

[1:54:58] Voice 19: that one sentence that says trust council's view is that unique amenities are broad ranging.

[1:55:06] Voice 19: I would just get rid of that word unique because amenities are definitely broad ranging. That's

[1:55:12] Voice 19: why we go visit each other. We want to see our different fairies and our different villages and

[1:55:17] Voice 19: our different artists and our wonderful different preserved areas. But what is unique, unquestionably

[1:55:24] Voice 19: is unique, is the, as I mentioned earlier, the biogeoclimatic zone that we live in,

[1:55:31] Voice 19: which the government did consider in 1973 and 1974. And that is unique, and it is under extreme

[1:55:39] Voice 19: pressure from human impact. But everything else is just as important. It just isn't unique.

[1:55:47] Trustee Patrick: Thank you. So moving on, I don't know, I tried to jot down sort of some of the,

[1:55:54] Trustee Patrick: While there were lots of ideas of things, and I think we could capture some of the, like, communications and speaker notes and things, of those recommendations, I think we can capture and summarize and bring back in.

[1:56:08] Trustee Patrick: Whoops, there we go.

[1:56:11] Trustee Patrick: But I heard a few things, and I wanted to spend a little bit of time to clarify some of the themes that we heard.

[1:56:18] Trustee Patrick: One was about sort of let's just publish a very thoughtful and plain language, clear of what the mandate means.

[1:56:30] Trustee Patrick: Also heard sort of similar about having that statement in the trust policy statement that we have a very clear version of the interpretation of the mandate in the trust policy statement.

[1:56:48] Trustee Patrick: there's also a piece about just as we go forward and I don't know if that's also sort of the trust

[1:56:52] Trustee Patrick: policy statement as we the continuation journey of the reinterpretation and to work more in

[1:56:59] Trustee Patrick: partnership with First Nations as we go forward in in you know how we strive to work together

[1:57:10] Trustee Patrick: in this region. I'm trying to see are there others I mean a lot of these other ideas were really

[1:57:21] Trustee Patrick: about there was another one of Tim was a sort of a summary of this meeting a sort of a conversation

[1:57:27] Trustee Patrick: and summary of this meeting. I'm trying to focus on the themes there are a lot of other suggestions

[1:57:32] Trustee Patrick: but I mean I'm moving forward with this you know particular issue. Trustee Boland I see your hand

[1:57:37] Trustee Patrick: raised? And then, sorry, Trustee Morrison next. Actually, I think Trustee Maude had his hand up.

[1:57:44] Trustee Patrick: Trustee Maude's over there, yes, I see that. And then me.

[1:57:47] Trustee Patrick: Okay, sorry, there's too many things on my screen. Trustee Maude.

[1:57:51] Trustee Maude: Yeah, I was just identifying, I believe Trustee Morrison in the chat was indicating that she

[1:57:55] Trustee Maude: wanted to speak.

[1:57:56] Trustee Patrick: Okay, nope, thank you. I see her hand up now too. So Trustee Boland,

[1:58:01] Trustee Patrick: and then Trustee Morrison.

[1:58:04] Voice 4: Yeah, I'm just thinking, so I heard,

[1:58:06] Voice 4: like you said you know do we need a motion or something to say it was um you know created a

[1:58:13] Voice 4: digested version of the discussion tonight and put a better laid out version of what happened

[1:58:24] Voice 4: leading up to 2023 on the web and you know put you know reinsert that um similar to the 1998

[1:58:34] Voice 4: 98 breakdown of it's not it's not really an interpretation it's kind of an explanation of

[1:58:42] Voice 4: the different elements put that back into the trust policy statement they were the three key

[1:58:47] Voice 4: things that i think i heard and i just wonder should we have a motion to say that or is it okay

[1:58:54] Voice 4: that um it's going to happen well

[1:58:59] Trustee Patrick: let's for now let's do a little bit of conversation around some

[1:59:02] Trustee Patrick: of these themes and see if we can develop it into a nice theme and then we we may need to make a

[1:59:08] Trustee Patrick: motion for next steps if there is a clear action so trustee morrison yes

[1:59:14] Voice 20: thank you um first i i

[1:59:17] Voice 20: agree that many we have many commonalities i don't agree that we all really feel the same

[1:59:25] Voice 20: necessarily i would there are some subtle differences that are important and and i think

[1:59:30] Voice 20: that those differences are potentially where we we will come to decisions that may not sit as full

[1:59:37] Voice 20: like unanimous consent for everyone and that's we'll just have to live with it like but we have

[1:59:42] Voice 20: to voice it still so for instance um you know the balanced approach on the mandate and like how we

[1:59:50] Voice 20: figure out how to name that into the world right um that balanced approach i still feel like

[2:00:00] Voice 20: the trust is a unique area and the environment is paramount to some degree in that space. And

[2:00:06] Voice 20: that is not a uniform belief on this trust council. And so, but I don't need to make that

[2:00:12] Voice 20: statement because that's just a lightning rod, right? So like, and it's meaningless in the

[2:00:20] Voice 20: implementation until we actually understand what it looks like in trust policy statement.

[2:00:25] Voice 20: So, I think it's much better to not actually make a statement about our, like, any other statements around Section 3 at the moment. That would be my action step, is actually be cautious about making broad statements.

[2:00:40] Voice 20: um and instead like take the the conversation that we've had here the concern that several

[2:00:50] Voice 20: trustees have raised about specifying things that were in legal decisions but that may not be full

[2:00:57] Voice 20: sort of agreement here in the description of what the mandate does if we're putting that into the

[2:01:03] Voice 20: trust policy statement there used to be a section in the trust policy statement that was about this

[2:01:07] Voice 20: sort of object and I feel like much of the text that's in this release is helpful to be in that

[2:01:13] Voice 20: space or as helpful as an ancillary document to just give some history and keep it attached in

[2:01:18] Voice 20: some way but really the details of what we really mean are in the trust policy statement so I would

[2:01:27] Voice 20: ask that we just get on with that and like and we have like I know we are so but I just think if we

[2:01:34] Voice 20: we do another statement related to this, it just stirs up the water again around because like,

[2:01:40] Voice 20: it's not going to be please everyone here. And it's not a consensus document or an agreed to

[2:01:45] Voice 20: document necessarily, unless we bring it back to Trust Council. So I don't know, I feel very

[2:01:50] Voice 20: reluctant to make broad statements as a committee that aren't the trust policy statement, frankly.

[2:01:58] Trustee Patrick: Well, I wasn't preparing to make any statements. It was more what next steps are. And I think if

[2:02:03] Trustee Patrick: the trust policy statement is a direction it's just that that clarity just that's the next step

[2:02:08] Trustee Patrick: is it so yeah

[2:02:11] Voice 20: no just just oh and the last one was just to work with staff to maybe beef up some

[2:02:15] Voice 20: of the web resources like this this summary that you provided here be great if this summary was up

[2:02:21] Voice 20: on the web like as a history of the you know that'd be helpful uh

[2:02:27] Trustee Patrick: trustee borthwick you had

[2:02:28] Trustee Patrick: your hand raised for a moment or uh

[2:02:35] Voice 21: yeah i mean i was just going to say that i think that um

[2:02:39] Voice 21: um you know those differences in in particular weight and balance are you know that's that's

[2:02:45] Voice 21: why we have humans doing this job and we don't just have a policy statement that and we are

[2:02:50] Voice 21: that's that's where democracy is as a key component of our role um and that yeah we we

[2:02:56] Voice 21: should define things uh you know generally through the policy statement but but yeah that actually

[2:03:01] Voice 21: the the the human element of of uh um of this work is is the the the lens through which this

[2:03:10] Voice 21: this work is done by us um and that's yeah that was it really no

[2:03:15] Trustee Patrick: thank you and i think that was

[2:03:16] Trustee Patrick: the essence of really what this agreement said is there's three parts and you as a decision maker

[2:03:21] Trustee Patrick: need to weigh all three of those parts and you need to give reasons you need to state them that's

[2:03:26] Trustee Patrick: That's our job as we make our decisions.

[2:03:31] Trustee Patrick: Okay, so I'm hearing the trust policy statement

[2:03:34] Trustee Patrick: is the place to focus our work.

[2:03:40] Trustee Patrick: We're hearing, get that clarity,

[2:03:42] Trustee Patrick: the archives and researcher pulling all this information

[2:03:46] Trustee Patrick: into nice, putting it together is of value.

[2:03:53] Trustee Patrick: When you think of the hours that have been spent

[2:03:56] Trustee Patrick: having these conversations over the years,

[2:03:59] Trustee Patrick: Yes. And I think it is important to show so that we're not circling back every term that that history doesn't get lost.

[2:04:12] Trustee Patrick: So looking for suggestions on next steps or just policy statement, is that a general agreement that I mean, I think we I think we generally agree the trust policy statement needs to be a bit,

[2:04:25] Trustee Patrick: maybe a little bit of clarity in the front there as to what the mandate and getting it that connection piece, the glue between that.

[2:04:33] Trustee Patrick: here's the object paragraph and then here's all these policies how that links together all right

[2:04:42] Trustee Patrick: um trustee evans sorry i

[2:04:47] Voice 9: couldn't find my hand um yes so if we want to just do a quick check-in

[2:04:54] Voice 9: with everyone and see how we sit there that the mandate with its meaning expanded is what we're

[2:05:04] Voice 9: discussing putting in there currently just the mandate is in there um that would be that would

[2:05:09] Voice 9: be helpful for clarification not not sure if my question came across clear there nope i already

[2:05:18] Trustee Patrick: heard you yep i'm just uh i'm thinking i think i think it's also getting late at night and our

[2:05:24] Trustee Patrick: thinking is slowing down here um so i think we have general agreement on something in the trust

[2:05:32] Trustee Patrick: policy statement and the overall trust policy statement just to get that a bit clearer is there

[2:05:39] Trustee Patrick: Is there anyone that disagrees?

[2:05:40] Trustee Patrick: I guess, how about that?

[2:05:42] Trustee Patrick: Oh, so Ellen, trusty fast.

[2:05:45] Voice 14: Yeah, thank you.

[2:05:46] Voice 14: I think that the trust policy statement should be concise

[2:05:52] Voice 14: and just relate to what it is.

[2:05:55] Voice 14: And people can go for other information,

[2:06:01] Voice 14: other places on the website.

[2:06:03] Voice 14: If it's going to go anywhere, I think it should be in an appendix.

[2:06:06] Voice 14: If it's expanding on the mandate,

[2:06:08] Voice 14: mandate because the mandate is very clear, unless it's something that the province wants to put in

[2:06:14] Voice 14: there and says, but basically the mandate is from the province. It should be theirs. What I mean

[2:06:21] Voice 14: about moving forward with the trust policy statement is to get it to first reading and out

[2:06:26] Voice 14: to the public and get the process going so that we can update the trust policy statement, which

[2:06:31] Voice 14: which needs to be done.

[2:06:33] Voice 14: Thank you.

[2:06:36] Voice 14: Okay.

[2:06:38] Voice 14: Posty Peterson.

[2:06:42] Voice 22: Yeah, I've put a proposed motion in the chat

[2:06:49] Voice 22: relating to what I was saying earlier,

[2:06:52] Voice 22: which would be that Committee of the Whole recommend

[2:06:56] Voice 22: that Executive Committee direct staff to produce

[2:06:58] Voice 22: a short summary of tonight's meeting for public release.

[2:07:02] Voice 22: And just by way of explanation,

[2:07:04] Voice 22: nation uh executive committee will be meeting sooner than any of the larger um full trust bodies

[2:07:15] Voice 22: um so that that's that's my thought and i'm happy to hear from other folks before i go ahead and try

[2:07:22] Voice 22: to advance that thank you all

[2:07:24] Trustee Patrick: right thanks for putting that on the table for people to think

[2:07:27] Trustee Patrick: about trustee boland

[2:07:30] Voice 4: i'll just wait i'll take my hand down i have a different thing so i'm happy to

[2:07:36] Voice 4: go ahead

[2:07:37] Trustee Patrick: he hasn't put it on yet he's got it here to percolate for a few minutes so go ahead and

[2:07:41] Trustee Patrick: what's your okay i

[2:07:44] Voice 4: i'm prepared to make a motion that we uh just to speak to uh what uh trustee

[2:07:50] Voice 4: first said what was in the 1998 trust policy statement was a very simple one page it wasn't

[2:07:58] Voice 4: all the history of the islands trust blah blah blah so this section that i'm joking about

[2:08:02] Voice 4: was one page and it was very very similar to what we've created and I think the one that's

[2:08:13] Voice 4: in here which breaks out the different elements of the act you know the trust area

[2:08:19] Voice 4: and the amenities and the environment so it's very similar so I would propose that we take

[2:08:27] Voice 4: the 1998 version um and the one that we have here and at least make an attempt at creating something

[2:08:37] Voice 4: to put back into the trust policy statement and i'll make a motion to that effect um after uh

[2:08:46] Voice 4: we've dealt with tim's thanks

[2:08:49] Trustee Patrick: all right are there any other big theme proposals that we think

[2:08:56] Trustee Patrick: for next steps anything else that needs to be the whole list of things that we

[2:09:02] Trustee Patrick: have identified tonight that I will will not get lost I think these are important

[2:09:06] Trustee Patrick: points that we've created this evening many of them I think we're I think Tim I

[2:09:18] Trustee Patrick: think that was the time to proceed with your motion we're we're fading okay

[2:09:24] Voice 22: well

[2:09:26] Voice 22: in that case I move that committee of the whole recommend to recommend that

[2:09:31] Voice 22: that executive committee direct staff

[2:09:32] Voice 22: to produce a short summary of the committee,

[2:09:38] Voice 22: the whole meeting of May 6th for public release.

[2:09:44] Trustee Patrick: Before we second it, let's make sure we're happy.

[2:09:51] Trustee Patrick: I think what would be probably helpful

[2:09:53] Trustee Patrick: is to be clear as to the audience.

[2:09:54] Trustee Patrick: This is our, can you speak a little bit

[2:09:56] Trustee Patrick: about the audience intent of what you'd like to see?

[2:09:59] Trustee Patrick: Because I think we just want to make sure

[2:10:00] Trustee Patrick: we're very clear in the motion.

[2:10:03] Voice 22: Sure, and I didn't want to get too wordy in the motion.

[2:10:08] Trustee Patrick: No, I'm

[2:10:08] Voice 22: just asking you.

[2:10:10] Voice 22: Yeah, no, but my intent, what I'm thinking would be useful

[2:10:15] Voice 22: is basically what did we meet here for tonight?

[2:10:20] Voice 22: What was the purpose of tonight's meeting?

[2:10:24] Voice 22: And essentially what, I mean, I know you've taken down

[2:10:29] Voice 22: a number of points, but sort of what our reflections are

[2:10:34] Voice 22: based on the previous thing.

[2:10:37] Voice 22: We're not rescinding anything.

[2:10:40] Voice 22: I mean, I think we all sort of agreed here tonight,

[2:10:44] Voice 22: basically, that our biggest problem

[2:10:48] Voice 22: was communicating to the public out of the last round.

[2:10:51] Voice 22: So, yeah, that's basically my intent would be,

[2:10:58] Voice 22: why did we meet tonight?

[2:10:59] Voice 22: Well, we met to address public concern

[2:11:03] Voice 22: over our previous process.

[2:11:06] Voice 22: and and what it what came out of it well we the common threads uh that we all seem to share of

[2:11:14] Voice 22: interpretation of of the object that would sort of be i don't think it needs to be a long statement

[2:11:22] Voice 22: um but that would be sort of my intent is to just address those really just those two items

[2:11:29] Trustee Patrick: that's great i'll look to trustees for language here does this motion make sense to

[2:11:33] Trustee Patrick: everyone is there any just before we get it seconded so we don't not seeing any

[2:11:42] Trustee Patrick: disagreements is there someone who'd like to second this motion

[2:11:44] Trustee Patrick: i want

[2:11:46] Voice 23: to say for public for public release oh

[2:11:50] Trustee Patrick: meeting for public release just under the

[2:11:52] Trustee Patrick: wire before i said trustee yates has seconded it so it's been seconded by trustee yates

[2:11:57] Trustee Patrick: and it's open for discussion oh is there discussion trustee past oh you're muted

[2:12:11] Voice 14: Thank you. Just that I hope that the wording is carefully looked at and before staff put it out, just so that staff aren't on the firing line for whatever they come up with.

[2:12:33] Voice 14: it um uh hoping that you mean that executive committee will uh approve this text or debate

[2:12:42] Voice 14: it and change it or um or just get staff to write something put it out there again and

[2:12:49] Voice 14: i don't want them to be uh taking pot shots again thank you thank

[2:12:56] Trustee Patrick: you very much and i think

[2:12:57] Trustee Patrick: as i would understand the motion that ec would that this has to come to ec to either make this

[2:13:04] Trustee Patrick: motion so i think that that clarity could be made any other discussion your trusty fast your hand

[2:13:13] Trustee Patrick: is still up just there we go then i'll call the vote to all those in favor please raise your

[2:13:19] Trustee Patrick: digital hand or wave vehemently at me i see you all right that is carried okay uh trusty boland

[2:13:34] Trustee Patrick: Oh, sorry, I thought I was, did Trustee Boland for your idea?

[2:13:44] Trustee Patrick: Or for, I guess it was, oh, you're muted now.

[2:13:47] Voice 4: Yeah, so I was thinking about the conversation we had.

[2:13:51] Voice 4: And, you know, on the one hand, you know, Trustee Morrison said we should, you know, try and just complete the policy statement without dwelling on our, you know, whether we have consensus or not.

[2:14:08] Voice 4: But I thought really what Trustee Bernardo and the Governance Committee eloquently put on the table was the need for balance and the need to, in every decision, be prepared to consider all the elements and be confident that you have balanced.

[2:14:32] Voice 4: So each person gets to choose every time what that balance is.

[2:14:36] Voice 4: And so that makes complete sense to me. And so with that in mind, I think I would propose that Section 2 of the Trust Policy Statement from 1998, which was after the last update of the Act.

[2:14:59] Voice 4: But so it is pretty good and it's short and it's structured very similarly to what we've discussed.

[2:15:08] Voice 4: I would suggest that that is, okay, I'll do that.

[2:15:15] Voice 4: I would suggest that that is taken as a kind of a model

[2:15:20] Voice 4: and updated with the new content by the Trust Programs Committee

[2:15:27] Voice 4: and that that page is reinserted into the Trust Policy Statement.

[2:15:34] Voice 4: And we all get to vote later anyway.

[2:15:36] Voice 4: anyway.

[2:15:38] Trustee Patrick: I think I just see a note from the staff

[2:15:42] Voice 4: that the

[2:15:43] Trustee Patrick: motion is working tonight, motion

[2:15:46] Trustee Patrick: email. While we're working on this, I'll look to Trustee Giddey next.

[2:15:52] Voice 4: I'm just sending to that email, yeah. I hope that works.

[2:15:58] Voice 11: Before I can make a decision, I would like to have a chance to look at that section from

[2:16:05] Voice 11: from 1998 and figure out what you're referring to so possibly if we could um table this or i'm not

[2:16:12] Voice 11: sure what the correct phraseology is in terms of bringing up later once we've had a chance to

[2:16:17] Voice 11: get that information and consider this i'll

[2:16:23] Voice 4: defer to trustee evans because she's running

[2:16:25] Voice 4: trust programs committee and she has her hand up so i'll mute myself and leave it at that for the

[2:16:30] Voice 4: moment yeah trustee

[2:16:32] Voice 9: evans i was just going to say it's the current trust policy statement that's up

[2:16:37] Voice 9: on the website the current one not the draft so um i'm sure that you've had a look at the current

[2:16:45] Voice 9: trust policy statement um and it's on page five so maybe maybe we can pause on this um if you like

[2:16:58] Voice 9: i can just copy the wording and email it to you and we can see if there's any other discussion

[2:17:02] Voice 9: Well,

[2:17:03] Trustee Patrick: what I'm hearing is you're looking at just using what's currently there as a model, not necessarily saying it has to be that language. Is that correct, Trustee Boland?

[2:17:13] Trustee Patrick: So what you're trying to say is that structuring something similar to, maybe that's the words that are to what was in section two and consider that in the new version.

[2:17:33] Trustee Patrick: Is that generally?

[2:17:35] Trustee Patrick: Yes,

[2:17:36] Voice 4: it needs tweaking, but, you know, and it needs everybody to look at it.

[2:17:42] Voice 4: but you know maybe i can i don't know how to word it i take your point uh trustee getty

[2:17:50] Voice 4: um but uh i'm not sure how to how to move it forward but leave it so that people have time

[2:18:00] Voice 4: to read it i mean tomorrow you're meeting so you probably won't want to do it tomorrow for instance

[2:18:05] Voice 4: i suggest but um maybe put it on the agenda of the next um trust programs committee when you're

[2:18:16] Voice 4: addressing uh the trust policy statement i could rephrase it okay uh trustee fast

[2:18:24] Trustee Patrick: yeah

[2:18:24] Voice 14: um i wonder if uh trustee boland would um send a briefing with the recommendation or a

[2:18:34] Voice 14: uh like just a even if it's just one page with the link so we know exactly what you're uh referring

[2:18:41] Voice 14: to and what you are suggesting uh we should do with it where in the draft you want it to go

[2:18:48] Voice 14: anyway just uh um suggesting that you send that to um i don't know i guess it would be

[2:18:56] Voice 14: claire and the chair evans of the trust programs committee for the next trust programs committee

[2:19:03] Voice 14: committee meeting where we're talking about trust policy statement I don't know maybe that's a

[2:19:09] Voice 14: suggestion but I don't have that wording in front of me either I would have trouble voting on

[2:19:14] Voice 14: to include something in the trust policy draft trust policy statement that I don't know what it

[2:19:19] Voice 14: is thank you I'll

[2:19:22] Trustee Patrick: look to trustee Evans I know they're meeting tomorrow on this and I maybe

[2:19:26] Trustee Patrick: staff could jump in if this is inappropriate but if the trust policy statement is being discussed

[2:19:31] Trustee Patrick: tomorrow at this committee I think there's probably a number of people here on this call

[2:19:35] Trustee Patrick: that are also uh in the meeting tomorrow could this be an item that we discuss as tomorrow

[2:19:43] Trustee Patrick: look to the chair of that committee uh trustee evans uh

[2:19:48] Voice 9: yep this can this is definitely something

[2:19:50] Voice 9: we've um already had a discussion we started a discussion on the last meeting so um I know that

[2:19:57] Voice 9: staff are coming back with some more information um specifically why it was removed from the trust

[2:20:04] Voice 9: policy statement um so there will be a discussion um and yeah we can take it from there well i guess

[2:20:12] Trustee Patrick: i look i see uh uh ceo bronies but is his camera on would we not need a motion then if the committee

[2:20:19] Trustee Patrick: is considering this tomorrow um

[2:20:22] Voice 5: i'll defer to director marler on the the mechanics of it i but

[2:20:25] Voice 5: But I think if particularly if it's already a topic for discussion, then maybe that's not necessary.

[2:20:30] Voice 5: I was just going to flag that at this time, and Director Frater can correct me if I'm wrong,

[2:20:35] Voice 5: but tomorrow's meeting was currently scheduled to be the last TPC meeting to look at policy statement.

[2:20:43] Voice 5: Doesn't mean that that can't change, but on the current schedule, that was the plan to be able to advance the draft as originally planned.

[2:20:52] Voice 5: Thanks.

[2:20:53] Trustee Patrick: I was going to say, well, just wait

[2:20:55] Voice 7: a minute, Trustee Boland.

[2:20:56] Trustee Patrick: I see some other staff hands that have come up.

[2:20:58] Trustee Patrick: I'm going to just let Director Frater go.

[2:21:02] Voice 7: Certainly, yes.

[2:21:03] Voice 7: At this topic of revisiting more and having more interpretation in the introduction was brought up at Trust Programs Committee.

[2:21:09] Voice 7: One of the things I will be advising the committee is that it would be prudent to look at all the feedback from First Nations around the language that was in an original draft.

[2:21:17] Voice 7: draft because certainly it was we did receive substantive feedback both verbally and either

[2:21:21] Voice 7: some in the on the 2050 webpage I would encourage people to look at as we look at that original

[2:21:26] Voice 7: drafted language in addition yeah certainly this could be on for tomorrow and I'm also going to be

[2:21:34] Voice 7: recommending to the committee tomorrow that in fact we probably schedule another meeting of

[2:21:37] Voice 7: trust programs committee to further discuss additional edits to the draft I don't think

[2:21:42] Voice 7: we're quite there yet so I'll be recommending another meeting prior to heading into committee

[2:21:46] Voice 7: of the whole with the draft policy statement thank you so that would give them more space

[2:21:50] Voice 7: to have this conversation all

[2:21:53] Trustee Patrick: right thank you and i see director marler's hand up then we'll go back

[2:21:55] Trustee Patrick: to trustees yeah

[2:21:57] Voice 2: i just maybe wanted to remind you that as committee of the whole you're not

[2:22:01] Voice 2: in a position to provide direction you're you're just there to recommend to council so

[2:22:07] Voice 2: um you might just want to do this more of an informal approach is that um you know let the

[2:22:14] Voice 2: the Trust Programs Committee know this is something of consideration

[2:22:19] Voice 2: that council might want to deal with down the road

[2:22:22] Voice 2: and let that committee determine the best way

[2:22:26] Voice 2: to provide recommendations to council as to advances forward.

[2:22:31] Voice 2: So I hope that helps.

[2:22:32] Voice 2: And just want to remind you that we are now at quorum,

[2:22:36] Voice 2: 13 trustees, so if one more leaves, we'll lose quorum.

[2:22:39] Voice 2: All

[2:22:40] Voice 8: right, thank you for that, Trustee Evans.

[2:22:43] Voice 8: um i just wanted to ask staff bray to a clarifying

[2:22:47] Voice 9: question with regards to the um

[2:22:49] Voice 9: the common spectrum first nation regarding the expanded language on the mandate was that the

[2:22:56] Voice 9: original 1998 language or was that the updated version that was provided to them that was

[2:23:01] Voice 9: included originally in the previous draft of the um policy statement because i believe it was the

[2:23:10] Voice 9: updated draft and not the original language that's

[2:23:13] Voice 7: right it would have been language around the

[2:23:14] Voice 7: updated various versions of the updated draft and those are posted to the 2050 web page for review

[2:23:19] Voice 7: staff also have notes from staff to staff engagements that we can refer to all right

[2:23:25] Voice 7: i would just note there was no first nation engagement on the 1990 draft all right trustee

[2:23:32] Voice 7: boland i

[2:23:34] Voice 4: wanted to say just much the same because i did go back and look at this and

[2:23:39] Voice 4: And the language that I believe the feedback was on

[2:23:46] Voice 4: was probably the 2021 draft, you know, the first draft.

[2:23:52] Voice 4: And I believe that that went to First Nations twice, I think.

[2:23:57] Voice 4: So, yeah, and that's what was actually removed.

[2:24:01] Voice 4: And the reason given by staff was referring to removing that content.

[2:24:07] Voice 4: So I believe if we went back to and I would change my motion, but it's too late now.

[2:24:13] Voice 4: Basically, what I'm saying is consider what was in the 1998 version and what we have now that we could update that with.

[2:24:26] Voice 4: so consider it not use it as an absolute but use it as a kind of a template to consider

[2:24:33] Voice 4: and then consider what we've created now because they are remarkably similar in fact which is kind

[2:24:40] Voice 4: of an amazing fact we do all of this discussion and we get lots of legal opinions and we come to

[2:24:48] Voice 4: to the same conclusion again okay so anyway uh i'll send a note actually to um to the trust

[2:24:58] Voice 4: program uh committee via um christina and then i can just summarize what i've said here okay and

[2:25:06] Voice 4: i'll give you a link to the content etc thank you

[2:25:09] Voice 4: yeah

[2:25:11] Trustee Patrick: i think we can carry on this conversation

[2:25:12] Trustee Patrick: with the trust programs committee because it began there and i think i think we have a better

[2:25:16] Trustee Patrick: better understanding of what we're talking about, more of a model of what the current

[2:25:21] Trustee Patrick: active version or approved version of the trust policy statement, not the draft, that

[2:25:28] Trustee Patrick: was consulted with nations or engaged with First Nations.

[2:25:34] Trustee Patrick: Okay, so are there any other next steps in this evening other than to keep track of all

[2:25:40] Trustee Patrick: of these good suggestions of how not to have this happen again so that we can, executive,

[2:25:46] Trustee Patrick: I know we're listening carefully.

[2:25:48] Voice 8: Trustee Evans?

[2:25:50] Voice 8: I just thought the first

[2:25:52] Voice 9: item that was recommended,

[2:25:54] Voice 9: and I can't remember who brought it up,

[2:25:56] Voice 9: but was to publish plain language regarding the mandates meaning on the website.

[2:26:01] Voice 9: Is that something that executive committee would take on as a conversation

[2:26:05] Voice 9: or would you need a motion to go to executive committee regarding that aspect of it?

[2:26:16] Trustee Patrick: Well, that would be a good question.

[2:26:18] Trustee Patrick: I think we're hearing, I think there is a website piece that is this plain language.

[2:26:24] Trustee Patrick: It's reference to the older materials.

[2:26:26] Trustee Patrick: It's a complete story is what I'm generally hearing that would be a good idea.

[2:26:39] Trustee Patrick: And I guess I'd look to staff.

[2:26:40] Trustee Patrick: Do we need to or should we have a motion of recommendation along those lines?

[2:26:46] Trustee Patrick: No one's jumping up.

[2:26:53] Trustee Patrick: Who would like to go first?

[2:26:55] Trustee Patrick: who's got all right, go ahead. See, I'm running.

[2:26:59] Voice 5: Thank you. I think, given that, depending on how you scope that,

[2:27:03] Voice 5: that's going to be a significant piece of work. We would like we

[2:27:08] Voice 5: would like some direction on that. So I think similar to the

[2:27:11] Voice 5: previous motion, requesting that EC engage with staff on the

[2:27:17] Voice 5: summary, something related to this would also be good for EC

[2:27:20] Voice 5: then to consider. Thanks.

[2:27:22] Voice 5: all

[2:27:25] Trustee Patrick: right um should we attempt to build a recommendation on this then time to look at

[2:27:33] Voice 8: trustee evans um can we talk go turn over to the meeting

[2:27:36] Voice 9: host i believe we might have lost quorum

[2:27:39] Trustee Patrick: did we just lose quorum we did chair patrick oh we did all right um well we do have a number i mean

[2:27:47] Trustee Patrick: one the minutes are not going anywhere from here we do have them and i think the executive or

[2:27:51] Trustee Patrick: Presence Night and have heard this, and I think we can consider how to review these minutes and

[2:27:57] Trustee Patrick: keep actions going. But we have lost quorum. I think it was pretty clear. I think there was good

[2:28:04] Trustee Patrick: insight from many of you about the sharing of the information being one of the communications

[2:28:09] Trustee Patrick: is the overall piece, whether it's immediate or residing on our websites that are critical to

[2:28:17] Trustee Patrick: these conversations going forward so with that since we have lost quorum um they're probably

[2:28:26] Trustee Patrick: all tired it is eight o'clock um we'll wrap up this conversation and work with the minutes

[2:28:36] Trustee Patrick: and the next committee the whole is on may 13th i think i've been trying to get a lot of while i

[2:28:43] Trustee Patrick: have you here there's lots of pre-reading and preparing for that meeting so that we can have

[2:28:47] Trustee Patrick: a successful conversation on the 13th so please uh please be doing the the pre-readings so we're

[2:28:54] Trustee Patrick: ready to go i really thank everyone for being prepared and ready tonight this was wonderful

[2:28:59] Trustee Patrick: good deep conversation and um i'm happy and um uh with that i guess so we can't even have an

[2:29:07] Trustee Patrick: emotion to adjourn if we haven't if we don't have quorum uh trustee getty i'll move to adjourn the

[2:29:14] Trustee Patrick: meeting we'll give it a try one second we got trustee boland seconding so without quorum we

[2:29:21] Trustee Patrick: will agree to uh adjourn the meeting and i really appreciate that thank you to all the staff tonight

[2:29:27] Trustee Patrick: i didn't do any introductions of all the staff that were sitting in the back uh working hard

[2:29:31] Trustee Patrick: tonight and i thank you for being here this evening we just jumped in and uh got to work

[2:29:36] Trustee Patrick: and uh thank you everybody so uh have a wonderful evening this was good thank

[2:29:43] Voice 11: everybody all right

[2:29:44] Trustee Patrick: Good night.

[2:29:45] Trustee Patrick: Night.

Trust Council Committee of the Whole                             ADOPTED                                                                                       1 of 6 
Meeting Minutes 
May 6, 2025  
        Trust Council Committee of the Whole 
Minutes of a Regular Meeting 
 
 
Executive Members 
Present: 
1. Laura Patrick, Trust Council Chair, Salt Spring Trustee 
2. Tobi Elliott, Vice-Chair, Gabriola Trustee 
 
 3. David Maude, Vice-Chair, Mayne Trustee  
 4. Timothy Peterson, Vice-Chair, Lasqueti Trustee 
 
 
Members Present: 5. Sue Ellen Fast, Bowen Municipal Trustee  
 6. Judith Gedye, Bowen Municipal Trustee  
 7. Sam Borthwick, Denman Trustee  
 8. David Graham, Denman Trustee  
 9. Susan Yates, Gabriola Trustee  
 10. Joe Bernardo, Gambier Trustee  
 11. Jeanine Dodds, Mayne Trustee   
 12. Deb Morrison, North Pender Trustee  
 13. Mairead Boland, Saturna Trustee  
 14. Lee Middleton, Saturna Trustee  
 15. Kristina Evans, South Pender Trustee 
 
 
Members Regrets: 
 
Members Absent: 
16. Lisa Gauvreau, Galiano Trustee 
 
17. Ben Mabberley, Galiano Trustee 
18. Kate-Louise Stamford, Gambier Trustee 
19. Alex Allen, Hornby Trustee  
20. Grant Scott, Hornby Trustee 
21. Mikaila Lironi, Lasqueti Trustee 
22. Aaron Campbell, North Pender Trustee  
23. Jamie Harris, Salt Spring Trustee 
24. Dag Falck, South Pender Trustee 
25. Ken Hunter, Thetis Trustee 
 
 26. Peter Luckham, Thetis Trustee 
 
 
Staff Present:        Rueben Bronee, Chief Administrative Officer      
       Stefan Cermak, Director, Planning Services 
       Clare Frater, Director, Trust Area Services 
       David Marlor, Director, Legislative and Information Services 
       Julia Mobbs, Director, Finance and Employee Services 
 
        Joe Elliott, Senior Indigenous Advisor 
 
        Alexandra Trifonidis, Executive Coordinator  
        Lisa Millard, Meeting Administrator/Recorder    
 
Others Present:                                There were two members of the public in attendance. 
Date:  
Location:  
            May 6, 2025 
            Electronic Meeting 
 

 
Trust Council Committee of the Whole                             ADOPTED                                                                                       2 of 6 
Meeting Minutes 
May 6, 2025  
1. CALL TO ORDER  
Chair Patrick called the meeting to order at 5:32 p.m. 
2. TERRITORIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 
Chair Patrick acknowledged that the meeting was held on the territory of the Coast Salish 
First Nations and recognized that the previous day was Red Dress Day, a National Day of 
Awareness and remembrance for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls 
(MMIWG) and 2slgbtqi+ people.  
3. APPROVAL OF AGENDA 
By general consent the agenda was approved as presented. 
4. ADOPTION OF MINUTES / RESOLUTIONS WITHOUT MEETING 
4.1 Draft Committee of the Whole Trust Meeting Minutes of February 6, 2025 
By general consent the Committee of the Whole meeting minutes of 
February 6, 2025 were adopted as presented. 
4.2 Draft Committee of the Whole Trust Meeting Minutes of February 21, 2025 
By general consent the Committee of the Whole meeting minutes of 
February 21, 2025 were adopted as presented. 
4.3 TC COW RWM 2025-01 Schedule Meeting 
Received for information.  
4.4 TC COW RWM 2025-02 Cancel March 31, 2025 Committee of the Whole Meeting 
Received for information. 
4.5 TC COW RWM 2025-03 Cancel April 15, 2025 Committee of the Whole Meeting 
Received for information. 
5. FOLLOW UP ACTION LIST 
All previous items on the Follow Up Action List related to the draft Policy Statement 
Amendment Project have been moved to the Trust Programs Committee Follow Up Action 
List.  
6.  BUSINESS 
6.1 Islands Trust Mandate - Discussion  
6.1.1 Background 
Chair Patrick provided written background information, included in the 
agenda package, which summarized a series of resolutions made by a 
previous Trust Council in 2021 and the 2022 Governance Report outlining 
the recommendation that Trust Council interpret the Object. 
6.1.2 How did the September 2023 statement come about?  

 
Trust Council Committee of the Whole                             ADOPTED                                                                                       3 of 6 
Meeting Minutes 
May 6, 2025  
Trustees Gedye and Bernardo reviewed how the September 2023 Islands 
Trust Council Statement on the Scope and Meaning of Section 3 of the 
Islands Trust Act was prepared and highlighted the following: 
• At the beginning of the term, the Governance Committee understood its 
task was to assess and prioritize the recommendations outlined in the 
Governance Report and bring forward implementation proposals for 
Trust Council’s consideration; 
• The report identified the lack of an agreed upon interpretation of the 
Section 3 mandate resulting in challenges establishing policy direction 
due to trustees competing conceptions of its meaning; 
• The Governance Committee asked staff to go through archives to find 
any past legal opinions that addressed Section 3 interpretation; 
• Two of the legal opinions were prominent including one provided by the 
law firm Young Anderson prepared at Trust Council’s request in response 
to another prepared by the law firm Mandell Pinder requested by a third 
party; 
• The Governance Committee discussed the legal opinions and 
determined to bring them to Trust Council’s attention as part of the 
discussion on interpreting the Object of the Islands Trust; 
• The Governance Committee provided an accompanying summary of the 
key points and issues of the legal opinions and the summary became the 
basis for subsequent discussion during an in-camera meeting; 
• The Committee did not provide this information to staff for input or 
recommendations; 
• During the September 2023 in-camera meeting the Governance 
Committee explained, to the best of their ability, the legal opinions; 
• The statutory interpretation of the Object was pivotal to taking three 
distinct elements into consideration; 
• Following the in-camera meeting, the edited and published version of 
the rise and report did not have the same understanding of importance 
of items of consensus; and 
• Following the publication of the rise and report, and subsequent removal 
of the link for the website, it became apparent from feedback there were 
significant community concerns. 
6.1.2.1 Islands Trust Council Statement on the Scope and Meaning of 
Section 3 of the Islands Trust Act (Object Clause) 
Statement included in agenda package for reference. 
6.1.2.2 Publicly Released Legal Opinion  
Opinion included in agenda package for reference. 
Trustee Middleton joined the meeting at 5:55 p.m. 
6.1.3 How do we understand the mandate?  
Each trustee contributed to a roundtable discussion and the following 
common themes were heard: 

 
Trust Council Committee of the Whole                             ADOPTED                                                                                       4 of 6 
Meeting Minutes 
May 6, 2025  
Results of the in-camera session and content and release of the Islands 
Trust Council Statement on the Scope and Meaning of Section 3 of the 
Islands Trust Act 
• The controversary and confusion as a result of the in-camera session 
and communication following the discussion and decision as 
outlined in the September 2023 Statement was unfortunate and not 
anticipated; 
• The in-camera session consisted of thorough consideration of the 
various legal opinions and the term “consensus” used in the public 
communication led to the implication that a decision was made in-
camera; 
• The in-camera session was not a decision-making process about the 
mandate but a decision-making process about the legal 
interpretation of the mandate which was appropriate for a closed 
meeting; 
• The Statement was intended to be a summary statement and came 
to be called a consensus statement and many consider the term 
consensus to mean unanimous; 
• The September 2023 release stated consensus about the Object of 
the Islands Trust to preserve and protect three specific elements 
including the Trust area, its unique amenities, and the environment 
for the benefit of its residents and the people of BC and there was 
consensus on this; however, the statement that it is Trust Council’s 
view that unique amenities are broad ranging was not a consensus 
view; 
• The rise and report left the community with the impression that the 
preservation and protection of the natural environment would no 
longer be a priority; 
• The statement made to the public that Trust Council’s view is that 
unique amenities are broad ranging and may include issues such as, 
but not limited to, housing, livelihoods, infrastructure and tourism 
was problematic and not framed correctly; 
• The rise and report language ought to have been more robust, 
communication could have been timelier, and an explanation of why 
the meeting was held in-camera is important. 
 
The elements of the Islands Trust Mandate and the Trust Policy Statement 
• The 1975 Trust Policy Statement states “recognition of the islands 
are, first of all, an existing community of people, and the welfare of 
those peoples, and those who join them and come after them, must 
always be a primary concern of the Trust” and these words speak to 
the intent of the founders of Islands Trust; 
• The current Trust Policy Statement, and its meaning, remains valid 
and should be included in the amended Trust Policy Statement with 
the inclusion of First Nations reconciliation and obligations under 
the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA); 

 
Trust Council Committee of the Whole                             ADOPTED                                                                                       5 of 6 
Meeting Minutes 
May 6, 2025  
• There is a misperception that Trust Council is attempting to redefine 
the Object; 
• It is Trust Council’s discretion to decide how much emphasis to put 
on each of the three elements of the mandate at any given time, or 
on any given issue while still balancing each of them; 
• The statement reflects that a balance must be established between 
the needs of all stakeholders; 
• The words preserve and protect the environment and the unique 
amenities show that there are parallel paths; 
• Islands Trusts is a land use planning agency that must take the 
Object into consideration when making land use decisions; 
• The Trust Area was not created as an ecological reserve and includes 
human and economic functions and environmental protections 
need to consider these factors; 
• Positing the Trust mandate to support inclusive, sustainable, healthy 
communities as separate from the mandate to enhance and protect 
the natural ecosystem will fail to serve either of them as people are 
not separate from the land and the water; 
• Ministry staff have reinforced the view that the statement is open to 
interpretation intentionally to permit and allow Trust Council to work 
within the words; and 
• It would be beneficial to publish an information piece on the website 
which explains the Mandate, and Trust Council’s interpretation of it, 
more fully. 
 
The 1986 Agreement between Islands Trust and the Province of BC 
• The 1986 position piece had not been referenced in previous 
discussions and it remains relevant and could be used to create an 
updated version; and 
• Trust Council needs to take time to review and consider the 1986 
agreement between the Trust and the Province and expand on the 
public facing opinion received from Young Anderson with focus on 
the July, 2007 opinion and clarify the legalese to the public. 
 
Chair Patrick summarized the roundtable discussion as follows: 
• A thoughtful, plain language, website page summarizing what the 
mandate means should be published; 
• Include a clear version of the interpretation of the mandate within the 
Trust Policy Statement and provide clarity on how the mandate connects 
to the Statement; 
• Create summary notes of the May 6, 2025 Committee of the Whole 
meeting to release to the public; and 
• There is support for an archivist to aid in research. 
During the roundtable discussion at 6.1.3, Trustee attendance was recorded as follows: 
Trustee Maude joined the meeting at 6:12 p.m. 
Trustee Peterson left the meeting at 6:20 p.m. and returned at 6:23 p.m. 
Trustee Dodds left the meeting at 6:30 p.m. and returned at 6:40 p.m. 

 
Trust Council Committee of the Whole                             ADOPTED                                                                                       6 of 6 
Meeting Minutes 
May 6, 2025  
Trustee Bernardo left the meeting at 6:40 p.m. 
Trustee Borthwick left the meeting at 6:47 p.m. returned 6:51 p.m. 
Trustee Middleton left the meeting at an unknown time and returned at 6:54 p.m. 
Trustee Morrison left the meeting at 7:40 p.m. 
6.1.4 Next steps 
Discussion ensued regarding potential recommendations to Trust Council 
on next steps. 
TC-COW-2025-020 
It was MOVED by Trustee Peterson, and SECONDED by Trustee 
Yates, 
that Committee of the Whole recommend that Executive Committee 
direct staff to produce a short summary of the Committee of the 
Whole meeting of May 6 for public release. 
CARRIED 
A trustee requested Trust Programs Committee consider Section II of the 
Islands Trust’s Object and it’s meaning, Page 5, in the current Islands Trust 
Policy Statement, 1998 for inclusion in the current interpretation and 
reinstated in the new policy. 
 The Director of Trust Programs noted it would be prudent to look at feedback 
received from First Nations on language that was in the original Trust Policy 
Statement amendment.  
Trustee Dodds left the meeting at 8:00 p.m. 
At 8:00 p.m. quorum was lost due to a member leaving the meeting. As a result, the meeting was 
adjourned. A limited procedural action of confirming the next meeting date was taken during this 
time, but no formal voting was possible. 
7. CLOSED MEETING (If needed) - None 
8. RISE AND REPORT - None 
9. NEW BUSINESS - None 
10. NEXT MEETING 
The next scheduled Committee of the Whole meeting will take place electronically on May 
13, 2025 at 1:00 p.m. 
11. ADJOURNMENT 
 Certified Correct: 
 
_________________________ 
Laura Patrick, Chair    _________________________ 
Lisa Millard, Meeting Administrator/Recorder