Islands Trust Council special meeting, May 13, 2026

[0:00:00] Voice 7: All right, you're ready, Chair.

[0:00:02] Voice 10: All right.

[0:00:03] Voice 10: Well, good morning.

[0:00:04] Voice 10: I'm calling this Trust Council Committee of the Whole meeting to order.

[0:00:08] Voice 10: I begin by acknowledging with respect and humility that the lands and waters of the

[0:00:12] Voice 10: Trust area have been home to Indigenous people since time immemorial.

[0:00:16] Voice 10: Their deep connection to these islands continues to this day.

[0:00:20] Voice 10: We honor their enduring presence, constitutional rights, and responsibilities.

[0:00:25] Voice 10: Trustees, I want to take a moment to speak to you directly, not as Chair, but as someone

[0:00:29] Voice 10: who shares your responsibility for the decisions we're making at a pivotal time. I encourage each

[0:00:34] Voice 10: of you to read Unseated, Understanding British Columbia's Colonial Past and Why It Matters Now

[0:00:39] Voice 10: by George Abbott. On April 26, I attended Good Relations discussion with Adam Olson and George

[0:00:45] Voice 10: Abbott, and I left with renewed clarity and energy for the work ahead of us, particularly our trust

[0:00:50] Voice 10: policy statement. George spoke candidly, even humorously, about how timing had rarely been on

[0:00:56] Voice 10: his side in his public life. Yet he was clear that this moment in British Columbia is different.

[0:01:02] Voice 10: We're living through a genuine period of transition. His book lays out plainly and convincingly

[0:01:08] Voice 10: that Indigenous title was never extinguished in this province. That reality is not new,

[0:01:15] Voice 10: but our collective willingness to engage with it and act on it is. I know some of you are hearing

[0:01:21] Voice 10: the same message as I am, calls to slow down, to wait, to see what happens with legislation like

[0:01:26] Voice 10: like the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.

[0:01:29] Voice 10: There is uncertainty, and in cases, fear being amplified in public discourse,

[0:01:33] Voice 10: particularly around land ownership and rights.

[0:01:36] Voice 10: But our role is not guided by fear or speculation.

[0:01:39] Voice 10: Our role is to lead with integrity, grounded in facts,

[0:01:43] Voice 10: and aligned with the commitments we've already made.

[0:01:45] Voice 10: We did not adopt our reconciliation declaration lightly,

[0:01:50] Voice 10: and we did not do it in response to shifting political winds.

[0:01:53] Voice 10: we did it because it was and remains the right thing to do that commitment stands regardless

[0:02:00] Voice 10: of the broader political climate this is one of those moments where leadership matters most

[0:02:05] Voice 10: we have an opportunity to demonstrate consistency courage and respect to show that our work is not

[0:02:11] Voice 10: reactive but principled and to ensure that the islands trust continues to move forward in a way

[0:02:16] Voice 10: that reflects both our mandate and our values being on the right side of history is not about

[0:02:21] Voice 10: hindsight it's about the choices we make now so let's stay focused support one another and

[0:02:27] Voice 10: continue this work with the seriousness and determination it deserves trustees we have an

[0:02:33] Voice 10: agenda before us are there any additions or changes to the agenda not seeing any can we

[0:02:41] Voice 10: approve the agenda through general consent all right all

[0:02:45] Voice 10: right thank you uh trustees i'm going

[0:02:48] Voice 10: to hold off on introductions because we're going to have an alphabet round table a little bit and

[0:02:51] Voice 10: i'll ask you to introduce yourself at the time of the round table but i would like to turn over

[0:02:55] Voice 10: over to CAO Brony to introduce all the staff that are with us to support the meeting today.

[0:03:00] Voice 4: Thank you, Chair, and good morning, everybody. Joining us on the staff side today, we have

[0:03:06] Voice 4: Director of Trust Area Services, Claire Frater, Senior Policy Advisor, Jason Yeomans,

[0:03:12] Voice 4: Executive Coordinator, Alexandra Trifonitis, our Meeting Administrator, Lisa Millard,

[0:03:18] Voice 4: Director of Planning Services, Stefan Cermak, and Director of Legislative and Information Services,

[0:03:23] Voice 4: services David Marler and I think I have captured everybody there thank you all

[0:03:29] Voice 10: right well thank you

[0:03:30] Voice 10: so much to the staff for being here to support us today so trustees we have at item 4.1 on the

[0:03:37] Voice 10: agenda page three of the agenda package the draft committee the whole special meeting minutes from

[0:03:42] Voice 10: February 18th are there any additions or corrections to these minutes not seeing any can we approve

[0:03:52] Voice 10: approve that through general consent? Yes. Thank you. Next item we have is the follow-up action

[0:04:00] Voice 10: list on page 13, item 5.1. Are there any questions from trustees or any staff that wish to bring our

[0:04:09] Voice 10: attention to any of the follow-up action items? Not seeing any. I think we want to get right to

[0:04:18] Voice 10: the meat of this meeting, which I appreciate, which is item 6 of the agenda presentation.

[0:04:26] Voice 10: presentation, I'm going to turn the floor over to our senior policy advisor, Jason Yeomans,

[0:04:30] Voice 10: to introduce our speaker today. So over to you, Jason.

[0:04:35] Voice 22: Thank you, Chair. Before introducing our

[0:04:38] Voice 22: colleagues from the research firm Be the Change Group, I just wanted to touch briefly on how it

[0:04:43] Voice 22: is that this firm came to be involved in this section of the project. Trustees will recall

[0:04:48] Voice 22: that a major component of phase four of public engagement on the policy statement was a survey

[0:04:53] Voice 22: that was available to the public online and in hard copy.

[0:04:56] Voice 22: Initially, staff had planned to code the results of this survey ourselves.

[0:05:00] Voice 22: And by code, I mean to identify the different themes that emerged from the survey responses

[0:05:04] Voice 22: and sort those responses accordingly, with Be The Change providing some training for

[0:05:10] Voice 22: us in good coding methodology and to sharpen our skills.

[0:05:13] Voice 22: However, due to the overwhelming number of valid survey responses, which in the end totaled

[0:05:17] Voice 22: almost 2,000, we realized that it was going to take longer and use more in-house resources

[0:05:22] Voice 22: than we had available to do this in a timely way.

[0:05:25] Voice 22: And so we contracted Be the Change not just to provide advisory services to staff,

[0:05:29] Voice 22: but rather to undertake the work themselves.

[0:05:33] Voice 22: And since they were going to be coding the survey results,

[0:05:35] Voice 22: we also asked them to code the correspondence that Trust Council had received

[0:05:39] Voice 22: during the Phase 4 public engagement window over the course of the summer and the fall of 2025.

[0:05:46] Voice 22: So Be the Change group is here to tell you what was learned from the survey and correspondence,

[0:05:51] Voice 22: But just a reminder that they're not here to provide advice about what you should do about what you heard from the survey and the correspondence. That's for you to come to your determination. With that, I will turn it over to Ange Cullen, a senior researcher and project manager from Be the Change Group, to talk about their survey analysis and correspondence analysis methodology and what they learned from it. Thank you.

[0:06:16] Voice 24: Thank you, Jason. Good morning, everyone. As Jason said, my name is Ange Cullen. I am a senior

[0:06:22] Voice 24: researcher and a project manager with Be the Change Group. I'd love my colleague, Dr. Natalie

[0:06:28] Voice 24: Chan, to introduce herself as well, just so you get to hear her voice.

[0:06:33] Voice 17: Hello, everyone. I am Natalie. I'm the president, co-founder, and research director of Be the

[0:06:37] Voice 17: Change Group. Thanks, Ange.

[0:06:39] Voice 24: Thanks, Natalie. And Natalie, if you don't mind sharing your screen,

[0:06:42] Voice 24: Natalie has a bit of a presentation that we'll walk through just to start our morning with you.

[0:06:48] Voice 24: Just as Jason said, this is really intended to be an overview of what was heard in the phase four public engagements that our team was contracted to provide some coding and analysis of.

[0:07:00] Voice 24: also just at the very start of this want to acknowledge that our office is located on the

[0:07:05] Voice 24: unsurrendered land of the musqueam squamish and salewa tooth nations which have been here since

[0:07:10] Voice 24: time immemorial and in our journey to reconciliation our team is working towards

[0:07:14] Voice 24: understanding and allyship with these nations and decolonizing the systems of which we are part of

[0:07:20] Voice 24: so as jason said we're a research and creative agency um we're also very proud members of

[0:07:26] Voice 24: Vancouver's downtown east side where Natalie is a practicing physician down here. So in today's

[0:07:31] Voice 24: session we are going to share the findings from the phase four public engagement survey responses

[0:07:36] Voice 24: as well as the public correspondence submissions that were received during the phase four public

[0:07:40] Voice 24: engagement window. In this process we'll identify some areas of where there were alignment with

[0:07:45] Voice 24: public respondents in terms of where they see agreement with the policies and them being able

[0:07:51] Voice 24: able to support Islands Trust in carrying out its object and meeting the various goals as stated in

[0:07:58] Voice 24: the draft policy report or draft policy statement and then also invite an opportunity for questions

[0:08:04] Voice 24: and just in particular that the feedback that we're discussing is related to the draft policy

[0:08:09] Voice 24: statement that Islands Trust Council gave first reading to on July 29th, 2025. So we have about

[0:08:16] Voice 24: a 20-minute presentation which is a high-level summary of what's covered in more detail in the

[0:08:20] Voice 24: report that we've recently submitted and then we'll uh hopefully have an opportunity to invite

[0:08:25] Voice 24: some questions from council members so natalie if you don't mind going to the next slide just

[0:08:30] Voice 24: starting a quick overview of how our team conducted this work and so a survey was as jason said

[0:08:37] Voice 24: designed by be the change group with islands trust the survey asked respondents to indicate

[0:08:43] Voice 24: the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with various sections of the draft policy

[0:08:47] Voice 24: policy statement. Thanks, Trustee Evans, for your comment, just being on the road to understand how

[0:08:53] Voice 24: it is sometimes in the morning or anytime, really. And so they were asked to indicate the extent to

[0:08:58] Voice 24: which they agreed or disagreed that the draft policy statements policies would help Islands

[0:09:02] Voice 24: Trust achieve its guiding principles and overarching goals. In the survey, there was also a question

[0:09:08] Voice 24: that asked for perceptions on the overall effectiveness of the draft policy statement

[0:09:12] Voice 24: to meet the islands trust object and so with our report in the appendices there is a full copy of

[0:09:17] Voice 24: the survey available that survey was hosted online with our team using a software platform called

[0:09:23] Voice 24: Qualtrics and it was supplemented with paper copies that were available in local libraries

[0:09:27] Voice 24: throughout the islands trust area the responses were collected early in August 2025 shortly after

[0:09:34] Voice 24: that first reading of the draft policy statement and into February 2026 and so in total we had

[0:09:41] Voice 24: just under 2000 survey responses that were included in our analysis and in addition there

[0:09:47] Voice 24: were 186 pieces of public correspondence that were received in that same window that were included in

[0:09:52] Voice 24: our analysis just an acknowledgement that when we looked at the survey responses in particular

[0:09:59] Voice 24: we as part of just standard cleaning removed any empty or incomplete response submission so

[0:10:05] Voice 24: these would have included responses where the survey was opened and closed before any data

[0:10:10] Voice 24: data were entered just with an online software that's fairly typical to get counted but no

[0:10:16] Voice 24: information was entered so it's an entirely empty survey and then responses where the final submit

[0:10:21] Voice 24: button was not hit before data collection was closed so someone may have started a survey but

[0:10:25] Voice 24: didn't declare that they wanted their survey to be included in the analysis moving forward

[0:10:29] Voice 24: so that's how we land a total of 1889 survey responses for our analysis of both engagements

[0:10:37] Voice 24: Our team used quantitative and qualitative methods.

[0:10:40] Voice 24: So for the closed-ended survey questions, these were analyzed using descriptive statistics

[0:10:46] Voice 24: frequencies, while nearly in total, there were about 4,900 open coded responses across

[0:10:52] Voice 24: the eight items of the survey.

[0:10:54] Voice 24: So not every survey respondent provided open-ended feedback, but roughly one in four respondents

[0:11:02] Voice 24: did.

[0:11:02] Voice 24: did. And researchers grouped, we basically coded the responses using what we would describe as an

[0:11:09] Voice 24: inductive thematic approach. So that means that we grouped comments into recurring themes. And

[0:11:14] Voice 24: I'll show you what those themes were in a moment. It's important to note also just that this was a

[0:11:19] Voice 24: self-selected engagement process for respondents and for members of the public. So it's just

[0:11:24] Voice 24: admittedly unclear the extent to which the findings are statistically representative of

[0:11:28] Voice 24: all islands trust residents these are folks who chose to take part in the survey or chose to

[0:11:33] Voice 24: provide and submit public correspondence um also just an acknowledgement that fewer than half of

[0:11:39] Voice 24: survey respondents who answered the closed ended do you agree or disagree with the section of

[0:11:44] Voice 24: policies in this part of the statement the draft policy statement ended up providing open-ended

[0:11:49] Voice 24: feedback so the open-ended feedback does reflect a subset of the survey respondents and we also

[0:11:55] Voice 24: understand that there were other phase for public engagements that we did not include as part of

[0:11:59] Voice 24: this current review including a town hall in September 2025 and we understand that as Jason

[0:12:06] Voice 24: said that those will be summarized in some upcoming reporting from Islands Trust and will

[0:12:10] Voice 24: include some reflections and recommendations on what we what we discovered in our in our work

[0:12:16] Voice 24: itself so yeah not necessarily recommendations of what to do but presenting what we heard in

[0:12:22] Voice 24: the survey and public correspondence. Natalie, you can go to the next slide. So just a quick

[0:12:28] Voice 24: elaboration. So our approach to open-ended coding of survey fields and public correspondence meant

[0:12:34] Voice 24: that we first reviewed all of the responses and coded the feedback without any predefined

[0:12:39] Voice 24: category. So these are themes that truly emerged from respondents' feedback. And this allows us to

[0:12:45] Voice 24: identify patterns and insights. In the process, we identified 14 distinct themes that capture

[0:12:52] Voice 24: what we would describe as key experiences, perspectives, and priorities that were reflected

[0:12:57] Voice 24: across all of the survey responses, as well as the public engagement, the public correspondence.

[0:13:03] Voice 24: So there are 14 themes in total. Most of them were framed as various concerns about how

[0:13:11] Voice 24: how the policies would be enacted and concerns around implementation of those policies.

[0:13:17] Voice 24: But they do provide a structured overview of the most common ideas.

[0:13:21] Voice 24: And just for the time that we have with you today, we're going to spend our time focused

[0:13:25] Voice 24: on things that were most common for each of the sections of the draft policy statement

[0:13:29] Voice 24: that we'll walk through next.

[0:13:31] Voice 24: But our report does provide a full breakdown of how often these themes emerge throughout

[0:13:36] Voice 24: each section of the survey and public correspondence.

[0:13:39] Voice 24: So there's more detail in the report we're going to provide some high level summary of the findings today.

[0:13:47] Voice 24: Natalie, you can go to the next slide.

[0:13:50] Voice 24: So overall, just also a reflection on the characteristics, the demographic characteristics of who took part in these engagements.

[0:13:57] Voice 24: So the survey respondents were primarily full time residents over just under two thirds live in the region for more than six months of the year.

[0:14:06] Voice 24: One-fifth of respondents reported living adjacent to the region, which means that they live either on Vancouver Island or in mainland BC, and a similar percentage identified as part-time residents.

[0:14:17] Voice 24: Smaller proportions identified themselves as visitors to the area, non-resident property owners, or as an Indigenous person with relationship to the area.

[0:14:27] Voice 24: So those categories come in at under 10% of respondents.

[0:14:31] Voice 24: respondents and respondents could select more than one option. So if they identified with more

[0:14:36] Voice 24: than one category, they could pick more than one. In terms of the geographic representation,

[0:14:41] Voice 24: respondents most commonly identified Salt Spring Island as the local trust area that they felt

[0:14:45] Voice 24: most connected with. This was a quarter of respondents in total, followed by Gabriola

[0:14:50] Voice 24: Island, Gambier Island, North Pender Island and Galliano. All those all clock in or come in between

[0:14:57] Voice 24: between 11 and 17 percent of respondents, but we do see representation across all of the island's

[0:15:02] Voice 24: trust areas, as well as the local trust areas, as well as Bowen Island municipality, all were

[0:15:07] Voice 24: represented. And I would say that really what we see is that there's higher representation from

[0:15:12] Voice 24: several of the larger and more populated islands. And as for public correspondence, the responses

[0:15:17] Voice 24: were received. We had 186 responses from 159 different authors. Their geographic location

[0:15:25] Voice 24: was not always specified and authors were both individuals who represented themselves as well

[0:15:30] Voice 24: as authors who were writing on behalf of an organization or an agency. So we're going to

[0:15:36] Voice 24: start with our survey findings and before we present these our team also just wants to acknowledge

[0:15:43] Voice 24: echoing some of the opening remarks from Chair Patrick that our team you know I think this survey

[0:15:49] Voice 24: finds itself at a time of big of transition in the province and that includes for many folks in

[0:15:54] Voice 24: the islands trust area um perspectives that were in that we find in the survey findings can be

[0:16:00] Voice 24: harmful or distressing to hear for some folks in particular some of the feedback does contain

[0:16:05] Voice 24: anti-indigenous racism and anti-indigenous sentiments and while we do not endorse or support these

[0:16:11] Voice 24: perspectives that be the change group they are discussed as

[0:16:13] Voice 24: part of our obligation of reporting

[0:16:15] Voice 24: what was shared and so we'll start with the guiding principles so these overall feedback

[0:16:22] Voice 24: indicates a range of perspectives on whether or not the guiding principles

[0:16:25] Voice 24: will be helpful in helping Islands Trust Council make decisions that support the

[0:16:31] Voice 24: Islands Trust object. So of the three guiding principle areas the cooperation

[0:16:37] Voice 24: principles receive the strongest support with nearly half of respondents agreeing

[0:16:41] Voice 24: that they would help Islands Trust make decisions that support the object, the

[0:16:45] Voice 24: Islands Trust object. In contrast both the general guiding principles and the

[0:16:50] Voice 24: reconciliation principles tend to lean more towards disagreement than agreement overall.

[0:16:55] Voice 24: There was an open feedback form for these three principles, and across the open-ended feedback,

[0:17:02] Voice 24: respondents most frequently do discuss the reconciliation principles. In particular,

[0:17:08] Voice 24: around 42% of respondents expressed concern at this point that the draft principles place too

[0:17:14] Voice 24: much emphasis on reconciliation and the involvement of Indigenous governing bodies in

[0:17:19] Voice 24: land use planning decisions. So the responses here often reflected skepticism and concerns

[0:17:24] Voice 24: about fairness, representation, and the authority of islands of Indigenous governing bodies in

[0:17:30] Voice 24: making decisions that affect residents across the Islands Trust area. Where more specific feedback

[0:17:37] Voice 24: was provided, the responses were often reflective of broader anti-Indigenous sentiments and racism.

[0:17:43] Voice 24: Some included derogatory language, dismissal of Indigenous rights, or sentiments that asserted

[0:17:48] Voice 24: that the draft involvement of Indigenous governing bodies is inappropriate or harmful.

[0:17:54] Voice 24: Broadly, we would say that the responses to the draft guiding principles do reflect a range of

[0:17:59] Voice 24: perspectives on the values and directions that underpin the policy statement. And so while some

[0:18:04] Voice 24: respondents do use this opportunity to express support for the principles emphasis on

[0:18:10] Voice 24: reconciliation, cooperation and informed decision making a larger share do raise concerns related

[0:18:16] Voice 24: to governance, the clarity and definitions of some of the key terms that are used throughout

[0:18:21] Voice 24: the principles, and how informed decision-making would be enacted. There were larger concerns

[0:18:28] Voice 24: around governance, clarity, the jurisdiction of Islands Trust in enacting some of these principles,

[0:18:33] Voice 24: if they're acting within their jurisdiction or not, or how they would be cooperating with other

[0:18:39] Voice 24: jurisdictions, and the practical application of the principles. So there was a call for

[0:18:44] Voice 24: clearer definitions such as cumulative effects and how the precautionary principle would be applied

[0:18:49] Voice 24: as specific examples and some responses do show that the cooperation principles highlight

[0:18:55] Voice 24: uncertainty about how collaborate how collaboration would incur in practice so just some more specific

[0:19:01] Voice 24: examples from these guiding principles so Natalie you can go to this next slide so then we're going

[0:19:07] Voice 24: to go through each of the goals and what the respondents shared in terms of feedback on these

[0:19:12] Voice 24: So first, we have goal one. We're going to go in order of the goals one through five. So responses to goal one, first off, indicate an overall tendency towards disagreement that the policies in this section will help violence trust advance reconciliation. A majority of respondents do report either disagreement or strong disagreement. So that's the 55%. And 29 report agreement or strong agreement. And for the folks doing some quick math and seeing that that doesn't add up to 100%, you are correct.

[0:19:40] Voice 24: there are some folks who provided a neither agree nor disagree so that you know would get you to the

[0:19:46] Voice 24: round you know get you to the 100 in total and so primarily the most prominent theme that we saw

[0:19:52] Voice 24: expressed in open feedback to goal one was again concerns about the draft policy's emphasis on

[0:19:58] Voice 24: reconciliation and involvement of indigenous governing bodies in land use planning this was

[0:20:03] Voice 24: a theme that we identified in 71 percent of the response of the open-ended feedback to this goal

[0:20:09] Voice 24: so as seen in some of the other sections responses were skeptical of reconciliation efforts and how

[0:20:15] Voice 24: they had been drafted they were often reflective of anti-indigenous sentiments a portion of the

[0:20:20] Voice 24: responses questioned indigenous rights or title including challenges to the legal or historical

[0:20:25] Voice 24: basis for indigenous governance when applied to fee simple land some respondents also do suggest

[0:20:31] Voice 24: that the proposed levels of indigenous governing bodies involvement in decision making may create

[0:20:36] Voice 24: inequity relative to other residents or property owners and so these responses then also typically

[0:20:42] Voice 24: included opposition to co-governance models and resistance to incorporating indigenous knowledge

[0:20:47] Voice 24: into policy in a formal manner so at the same time we did see that 14 percent of respondents

[0:20:54] Voice 24: do express support for the draft policies approach to reconciliation and working

[0:20:58] Voice 24: collaboratively with indigenous governing bodies as outlined in goal one so these responses

[0:21:02] Voice 24: emphasized the importance of recognizing Indigenous rights and title, incorporating

[0:21:07] Voice 24: Indigenous knowledge, and strengthening the commitments to reconciliation within the policy

[0:21:11] Voice 24: statement. Some respondents also highlight a need for improved public education and communication

[0:21:17] Voice 24: about reconciliation and the intent of the policies in this section. So I would take together

[0:21:23] Voice 24: the findings in this section, highlight broader governance tensions that shape how the principles

[0:21:28] Voice 24: and various goals are understood and received in the context of section 35 and the constitutional

[0:21:34] Voice 24: rights of indigenous people and islands trust obligation to engage with indigenous governing

[0:21:38] Voice 24: bodies and you can go to the next slide thank you so goal two shows a similar pattern here

[0:21:45] Voice 24: so responses in this section of the surveys again suggest overall disagreement that the draft

[0:21:49] Voice 24: polis will help islands trust achieve goal two which was preserving and protecting indigenous

[0:21:55] Voice 24: indigenous cultural heritage, and culturally significant area, sites, and species.

[0:21:58] Voice 24: So just over half of respondents here reported disagreement or strong disagreement compared to

[0:22:03] Voice 24: 32% who report agreement that the policies in this section will help Islands Trust achieve this

[0:22:09] Voice 24: particular goal. So while negative sentiment was again more prevalent than positive sentiment,

[0:22:15] Voice 24: a meaningful share of respondents do express agreement. So just showing that there is

[0:22:19] Voice 24: is polarization around this particular goal

[0:22:22] Voice 24: as there was with goal one.

[0:22:24] Voice 24: So as with the guiding principles and goal one,

[0:22:27] Voice 24: the most prominent theme expressed in this section

[0:22:29] Voice 24: was again, concerns about the draft policies

[0:22:31] Voice 24: emphasis on reconciliation

[0:22:33] Voice 24: with respect to indigenous cultural heritage

[0:22:35] Voice 24: and the role of indigenous governing bodies.

[0:22:37] Voice 24: So this was reported by 63% of respondents.

[0:22:41] Voice 24: At the same time,

[0:22:42] Voice 24: a smaller but similar proportion of respondents

[0:22:44] Voice 24: as in goal one expressed support

[0:22:46] Voice 24: support for the drafted approach to protecting Indigenous cultural heritage and for working

[0:22:52] Voice 24: collaboratively with Indigenous governing bodies. So this was expressed explicitly in just over 10%

[0:22:57] Voice 24: of the responses in this goal. So in addition to the themes already discussed, the respondents

[0:23:03] Voice 24: raised several concerns in Goal 2 around practical concerns related to implementing the policies in

[0:23:09] Voice 24: this section or related to this goal. The most common concern was whether Islands Trust had

[0:23:13] Voice 24: significant staffing funding and enforcement capacity to effectively carry out these policies

[0:23:19] Voice 24: others worried about potential impact on private property rights and increased regulation

[0:23:23] Voice 24: while some felt the policies lacked clarity or very clear definitions of what some of the terms

[0:23:28] Voice 24: meant and how they would be operationalized and particularly this was around how culturally

[0:23:33] Voice 24: significant areas would be identified and managed the responses also highlight tensions between

[0:23:39] Voice 24: cultural heritage protection and housing or economic needs. Some

[0:23:44] Voice 24: responses questioned the jurisdictional authority and governance roles of

[0:23:47] Voice 24: Islands Trust and how these would be enacted with other jurisdictional

[0:23:50] Voice 24: partners and in some cases there were calls for stronger environmental

[0:23:53] Voice 24: protections and clearer decision-making processes. We'll move to goal three. So we

[0:24:00] Voice 24: start to see a tendency closer to agreement with this goal that the draft

[0:24:04] Voice 24: directive and advisory policies will help Islands Trust achieve which was

[0:24:08] Voice 24: with goal three preserve and protect healthy and biodiverse ecosystems so nearly half of respondents

[0:24:13] Voice 24: report agreement here while 38 percent shared disagreement so although there's more positive

[0:24:20] Voice 24: sentiment in this than in the previous goals and with the guiding principles the distribution of

[0:24:25] Voice 24: views remains you know rather mixed rather than strongly one-sided one way or the other

[0:24:29] Voice 24: as with goals one and two again we saw that the most prominent theme was expressed in this section

[0:24:36] Voice 24: was particularly related to the advisory policies 3 3 10 and 3 3 11 which explicitly do discuss

[0:24:44] Voice 24: indigenous ecosystem management and indigenous protected and conserved areas so similar concerns

[0:24:49] Voice 24: and sentiments expressed in the feedback to the goals one and two and the guiding principles were

[0:24:54] Voice 24: echoed here and reflect a contentious discourse regarding indigenous governing bodies involvement

[0:24:59] Voice 24: in ecosystem governance decisions and in the islands trust area so where respondents identified

[0:25:04] Voice 24: other concerns with the policies. Feedback reflected both support for stronger ecosystem

[0:25:09] Voice 24: protection and concerns about how policies would work in practice. So respondents most commonly

[0:25:15] Voice 24: raised issues and concerns around policy clarity and implementation capacity, including concerns

[0:25:21] Voice 24: that some of the policies were too broad, lacked measurable targets, and would be difficult to

[0:25:27] Voice 24: enforce with current staffing and resources. Some felt that policies do not go far enough to protect

[0:25:32] Voice 24: ecosystems, while some worried about the protection's impact on housing, forestry,

[0:25:38] Voice 24: agriculture, tourism, and the impacts on private landowners. Ms. Bunnins also provided several

[0:25:45] Voice 24: recommendations, including stronger policy language, measurable environmental standards,

[0:25:51] Voice 24: improved enforcement tools, and clearer governance and implementation processes.

[0:25:56] Voice 24: So we can go to the next goal, Natalie. Thank you. So as most of you, or as you will be familiar,

[0:26:03] Voice 24: There are several sections of policies with Goals 4 and 5, so we'll go over each one of those.

[0:26:09] Voice 24: But the responses in general for Goal 4 tend to lean towards agreement that these draft policies will help Islands Trust achieve Goal 4, which is to foster sustainable, inclusive, and resilient communities.

[0:26:21] Voice 24: So in sum, the recreation, waste, emission, and pollutant, and transportation policies do receive more agreement than disagreement, as you can see.

[0:26:31] Voice 24: we lean between 58 to 64 percent of agreement with these policies meanwhile the managing growth and

[0:26:39] Voice 24: development policies saw more agreement than disagreement but sentiment is more mixed and

[0:26:44] Voice 24: also the housing policies were very closely divided so we saw 42 percent in agreement and

[0:26:49] Voice 24: 43 percent in disagreement for housing policies looking at the most common themes discussed in

[0:26:54] Voice 24: this section concerns are raised in goal four about island trust capacity to implement and

[0:26:59] Voice 24: enforce the proposed policies this was observed in 24 percent of the responses in this to this

[0:27:06] Voice 24: section feedback on housing policies in particular questioned how priorities for affordable special

[0:27:12] Voice 24: needs or clustered housing would be operationalized while comments on managing growth and development

[0:27:17] Voice 24: policies pointed to a perceived lack of measurable standards accountability mechanisms and follow

[0:27:22] Voice 24: through additional responses referenced challenges in addressing transportation and waste emission

[0:27:27] Voice 24: and pollutant policies. This included questions around infrastructure limitations and service

[0:27:33] Voice 24: delivery constraints. Concerns were also more frequently expressed that the current levels

[0:27:37] Voice 24: of development in the island's trust area are already excessive and require stronger limits

[0:27:42] Voice 24: or controls. This was identified in 17% of the open-ended feedback in Goal 4. Feedback on managing

[0:27:49] Voice 24: growth and development policies emphasized limiting further growth, reducing sprawl,

[0:27:53] Voice 24: and preserving rural character, while comments on housing policies raised concerns that increasing

[0:27:58] Voice 24: density or clustered housing could intensify population pressures and strain limited

[0:28:03] Voice 24: island resources. So additional responses linked to transportation pressures, tourism,

[0:28:08] Voice 24: and ferry dependence to broader concerns about overdevelopment in the region.

[0:28:13] Voice 24: As in other sections, some respondents identified that the policies were unclear,

[0:28:18] Voice 24: inconsistent, or lacked sufficient definition. So this was identified in 14% of the responses.

[0:28:23] Voice 24: So this included feedback in the managing growth and development policies to better clarify or be more specific about what terms such as consider and manage would entail.

[0:28:36] Voice 24: And also housing policies highlighted uncertainty around suitable locations, appropriate density, and what would be attainable housing.

[0:28:44] Voice 24: comments on transportation and waste emissions and pollutant policies meanwhile also pointed

[0:28:49] Voice 24: to ambiguity around terms such as zero emission transportation pollutants and wastewater

[0:28:54] Voice 24: requirements and just finally some of the more common feedback on these policies

[0:28:59] Voice 24: shared fall within the responsibility in what respondents felt were other jurisdictions

[0:29:04] Voice 24: responsibilities so there was questions around how operationalization would overlap with existing

[0:29:11] Voice 24: existing regulations and some folks felt that the policies are beyond the Island Trust objects

[0:29:19] Voice 24: intended scope. So our overreach of Island Trust mandate. All right. So then we go to goal five.

[0:29:29] Voice 24: So finally, the policies for goal five received the highest levels of agreement across the

[0:29:34] Voice 24: different goal areas, as well as when considering the guiding principles. So we saw majorities

[0:29:39] Voice 24: agree that the policies for freshwater, forest, and agricultural land policies would help Islands

[0:29:45] Voice 24: Trust meet the goal of fostering sustainable stewardship of land and waters, while agreement

[0:29:50] Voice 24: was lower on policies related to both soil and fill as well as the marine shorelands. So

[0:29:55] Voice 24: the agreement in these ranged between 42 and 51 percent. Following

[0:30:00] Voice 24: similar pattern as in goal four, open-ended feedback most commonly was specific to the

[0:30:07] Voice 24: areas of the policies that received the more mixed sentiments. So open-ended feedback was

[0:30:12] Voice 24: more often focused on the marine shoreland policies and the soil and fill policies.

[0:30:17] Voice 24: Overall though, responses to goal five's draft policies reflect a range of perspectives on the

[0:30:22] Voice 24: role of Islands Trust in managing land and water resources, while some respondents expressed

[0:30:27] Voice 24: support for strengthening environmental stewardship and long-term sustainability

[0:30:31] Voice 24: a larger share rates concerns related to governance capacity property rights jurisdiction

[0:30:37] Voice 24: and implementation across the perspective shared related to goal five in the open-ended feedback

[0:30:43] Voice 24: there was a call for greater clarity specificity and coordination between different jurisdictions

[0:30:49] Voice 24: that oversee land and water in the island's trust area particularly regarding how policies

[0:30:56] Voice 24: would be applied across the marine, freshwater, and land-based systems, and how responsibilities

[0:31:02] Voice 24: would be shared between governing bodies. All right, so then moving to overall effectiveness

[0:31:08] Voice 24: of the draft policy statement. So responses do indicate an overall tendency towards disagreement

[0:31:14] Voice 24: that the draft Islands Trust Policy Statement will be effective in helping advance the Islands Trust

[0:31:19] Voice 24: object. So just over half of respondents report disagreement or strong disagreement,

[0:31:24] Voice 24: agreement, while less than one-third reported agreement or strong agreement.

[0:31:28] Voice 24: Across all sections, and reiterated in this final section open-ended field of the survey,

[0:31:35] Voice 24: consistent themes emerged.

[0:31:37] Voice 24: So respondents are calling for clearer, more specific, and more actionable policies with

[0:31:41] Voice 24: concerns about policy clarity and structure appearing across a wide range of the responses.

[0:31:46] Voice 24: There were concerns about implementation capacity and enforcement that were also common, alongside

[0:31:52] Voice 24: Alongside questions around how jurisdiction, mandate, and governance roles would actually be operationalized and if these were overreaches of the current island's trust, object, and mandate.

[0:32:02] Voice 24: So many respondents also highlighted tensions between environmental protection and housing and meeting those interests with considerations for affordability, housing, and economic considerations.

[0:32:13] Voice 24: considerations. So we'll also then go into a summary of our review of the public correspondence

[0:32:20] Voice 24: that was submitted during the phase four public engagement window. So a reminder that we had 186

[0:32:26] Voice 24: submissions received from 159 authors. So Natalie, you can go to the next slide. Thank you. So when

[0:32:33] Voice 24: referring to specific sections of the draft for policy statement, goal four was discussed most

[0:32:38] Voice 24: frequently in the public correspondence. So this was followed by discussions of goals three and

[0:32:43] Voice 24: and goal five. And the other sections of the draft policy were discussed less often.

[0:32:48] Voice 24: And the most common concern was related to policy clarity and specificity. So correspondence felt

[0:32:56] Voice 24: the draft policies, these correspondence felt that the draft policies at times lacked clear

[0:33:01] Voice 24: definitions, measurable standards, and sufficient guidance around how policies would actually

[0:33:05] Voice 24: be interpreted and applied with existing regulatory and government frameworks. This

[0:33:10] Voice 24: This was especially true in the public correspondence for topics like shoreline development,

[0:33:14] Voice 24: housing, environmental protection, and land use planning. So implementation capacity was another

[0:33:20] Voice 24: major theme. Respondents questioned whether Island Trust has the staffing, funding, monitoring,

[0:33:25] Voice 24: and enforcement resources needed to effectively carry out the proposed policies across the region.

[0:33:30] Voice 24: Environmental protection and development pressures were central concerns in public

[0:33:34] Voice 24: correspondence feedback. Many submissions called for stronger protections for aquifers,

[0:33:39] Voice 24: forests, shorelines, and sensitive ecosystems, along with stricter limits on development and

[0:33:44] Voice 24: subdivisions. At the same time, some respondents raised concerns about regulatory burdens for

[0:33:49] Voice 24: property owners, impacts on property rights, and the balance between conservation objectives and

[0:33:54] Voice 24: community needs. So compared to the survey results, reconciliation-related feedback was

[0:34:00] Voice 24: less prominent in the public correspondence, and where it was demonstrated, it tended to reflect

[0:34:07] Voice 24: a somewhat more balanced range of perspectives regarding the role of Indigenous governing

[0:34:11] Voice 24: bodies in land use planning and collaboration. So in comparison in comparing the two engagement

[0:34:17] Voice 24: streams we found the two streams do differ in emphasis. So first the public correspondence

[0:34:23] Voice 24: places greater focus on technical issues and often it was a place to provide more

[0:34:28] Voice 24: detailed and technical feedback around policy clarity and specific policies for folks.

[0:34:33] Voice 24: Some folks even mentioned that they had opted to provide public correspondence after completing the survey because they wanted to provide more detailed feedback.

[0:34:41] Voice 24: Meanwhile, the survey responses highlight areas of polarization among respondents, and particularly these are around reconciliation and Islands Trust governance and jurisdiction.

[0:34:51] Voice 24: So the survey data tend to show a broader range of perspectives than the public correspondence and better highlight where Islands Trust residents and members of the public may be divided more broadly.

[0:35:03] Voice 24: So, some combined insights then. So, throughout the survey and public correspondence,

[0:35:08] Voice 24: a few practical messages were heard repeatedly. Natalie, you can go to the next slide.

[0:35:12] Voice 24: So, the messages reflect competing public priorities of wanting strong environmental

[0:35:18] Voice 24: protections while balancing housing affordability, local autonomy, and economic considerations.

[0:35:23] Voice 24: Across both the survey responses and public correspondence, there's broad support and overall

[0:35:29] Voice 24: overall, a sense of optimism towards preserving and protecting the island's trust area,

[0:35:34] Voice 24: including ecosystems, water, and land protection. At the same time, there's just less consensus on

[0:35:39] Voice 24: reconciliation-related policies, which tend to generate more polarized responses.

[0:35:45] Voice 24: So importantly, the findings also reveal a fundamental tension in public expectation,

[0:35:50] Voice 24: at least of those who completed and responded to these engagements. While some respondents

[0:35:55] Voice 24: Respondents expressed concern about regulatory burden and island stress scope.

[0:35:58] Voice 24: Others call for stronger environmental protections and stricter limitations on development in the area.

[0:36:04] Voice 24: Overall, we would say the findings indicate that while many respondents are aligned with the intent of the draft policy statement,

[0:36:11] Voice 24: there is a clear expectation for greater clarity, specificity, and transparency,

[0:36:17] Voice 24: particularly regarding how policies will be applied in practice and how they'll be implemented within legislative and institutional frameworks.

[0:36:24] Voice 24: So there was definitely a sense that folks are looking for more understanding and specificity into understanding how these policies would be operationalized and implemented moving forward.

[0:36:36] Voice 24: I have done a lot of talking. I would love to invite questions. And Chair Patrick, I see you've come off mute.

[0:36:43] Voice 10: Yes, I just want to remind trustees, I did send out there is going to be three opportunities for you to speak today. This is your first.

[0:36:49] Voice 10: I really want to hear questions. This is not your time to comment on sort of the what you heard.

[0:36:56] Voice 10: This is to understand the methodology, what was behind it to get to that.

[0:37:00] Voice 10: So if you stray from a question, I will interrupt you. I'm just giving you a heads up.

[0:37:04] Voice 10: And I see Trustee Boland first, then Trustee Getty.

[0:37:09] Voice 16: Thank you. Thank you for that. It was really interesting to see it digested and analyzed so well.

[0:37:15] Voice 16: Well, earlier in your presentation, you talked about whether or not this could be considered representative.

[0:37:26] Voice 16: And you basically said, you know, it wasn't possible or I can't actually remember, but I was kind of surprised.

[0:37:35] Voice 16: So how would you, first of all, why do you think it's not representative?

[0:37:40] Voice 16: I mean, this is round four of public engagement and we have heard more or less the same thing, probably from the same people over and over and over.

[0:37:51] Voice 16: So how would you have designed, if you think it's not representative, what would have made it representative?

[0:37:59] Voice 16: Because I feel like we're being slightly led to believe that we can basically go, la, la, la, I can't hear you.

[0:38:08] Voice 16: Thank you.

[0:38:10] Voice 24: Thank you, Trustee Boland. I'll clarify that it's unclear the extent to which the findings are representative. So we don't, they very well could be of all Islands Trust, like these, you know, when proportioned out to all residents and members, you know, it wasn't only a resident also of Islands Trust area who provided feedback.

[0:38:28] Voice 24: And it was also folks who identified as adjacent to the region. And so with more scope and resourcing, a fully, you know, a sampling approach could be developed that would allow folks to, you know, similar to like a census format where folks are randomly selected to provide feedback.

[0:38:46] Voice 24: So there's just always, you know, from a scientific perspective, we want to acknowledge that there's a potential bias in receiving feedback from folks who choose to provide feedback.

[0:38:57] Voice 24: That means that folks have to be aware that the survey exists, access the survey, whether that's at their local library or online, and as well choose to provide public correspondence.

[0:39:06] Voice 24: So we just don't know the extent to which we don't, what we don't know from

[0:39:11] Voice 24: folks who aren't providing feedback and what they might be feeling.

[0:39:14] Voice 24: sampling. So that would be why we just say we just don't know. But what's encouraging to hear

[0:39:20] Voice 24: is that perhaps in your previous rounds of feedback that you're hearing similar themes or

[0:39:24] Voice 24: that none of this is, or, you know, sorry, I don't know if this is what you're saying, but that maybe

[0:39:28] Voice 24: some of this isn't new. So at least it would reflect that perhaps you're hearing recurring

[0:39:32] Voice 24: themes among those who are providing feedback. Natalie, I don't know if you want to add anything

[0:39:38] Voice 24: thing to sampling approach no

[0:39:40] Voice 17: i i think that um what you said is essentially like from a research

[0:39:46] Voice 17: perspective it's very difficult for us to say definitively it's representative it doesn't

[0:39:50] Voice 17: necessarily mean that it's not but um it is just part of um us understanding the biases

[0:39:57] Voice 17: um from a scientific and research applied research uh perspective but i i agree with

[0:40:04] Voice 17: what Ash said and the fact that you've gone through multiple rounds, I think that would be for

[0:40:09] Voice 17: everything that you've collected to date would be for all of you to interpret and apply.

[0:40:17] Voice 10: So just

[0:40:17] Voice 10: a thought. Trustee Boland, I'm going to keep, we only have limited time, so I'll have

[0:40:23] Voice 10: you come back for a follow-up. That's okay. We have a number. Trustee Getty, then Borthwick.

[0:40:27] Voice 10: Thank

[0:40:31] Voice 5: you. I have two or three questions. So you mentioned bias. So I'll start off by saying I was surprised in terms of the low number of people that filled in the survey on Bowen and that we should have campaigned more in terms of getting more people to. But if there had been a campaign, then there would have been a bias built in that we would never be able to know, right? There's no way of detecting that in any of the responses?

[0:40:57] Voice 5: responses?

[0:41:00] Voice 24: You know in future rounds if this was something that was of interest a question could

[0:41:03] Voice 24: be added of how did you come to the survey and then you would be able to you know or in future

[0:41:08] Voice 24: public engagements identify how folks like come to the survey and you can you know then identify

[0:41:13] Voice 24: if it was that they heard through a particular. All

[0:41:16] Voice 5: right so at this

[0:41:17] Voice 5: point there's no way of

[0:41:18] Voice 5: knowing. All right so then you mentioned that the number of letters was 186 but I believe you

[0:41:25] Voice 5: you mentioned that there were 159 writers, so some of them sent more than one letter?

[0:41:30] Voice 24: That's correct. Yeah, we received multiple or multiple letters were received, for example,

[0:41:34] Voice 24: from different organizations and agencies. So those were counted as one author. We don't know

[0:41:42] Voice 24: without specification if those are different individuals within the agency or organization.

[0:41:47] Voice 24: And some individuals also provided more than one letter.

[0:41:50] Voice 24: Would

[0:41:50] Voice 5: it be more accurate to say that we had 159 letters or 159 writers?

[0:41:58] Voice 24: We do say we have 159 authors, yes.

[0:42:02] Voice 24: It's 186 letters that were analyzed.

[0:42:05] Voice 24: So a different date is how we, if something was sent on a different date, that defines a different letter.

[0:42:10] Voice 5: Similarly, I think you mentioned someplace, not in today's presentation, but in the written part,

[0:42:15] Voice 5: that there were some IPS addresses that were duplicated. So of the survey, which was anonymous,

[0:42:23] Voice 5: there were multiple entries from some computers. Okay.

[0:42:27] Voice 24: Yeah, that's correct. So we did do a review of IP addresses to just have a sense of how often

[0:42:34] Voice 24: an IP address was duplicated. I mean, folks who live in the same household are going to have the

[0:42:38] Voice 24: the same IP address. And so we always recommend towards keeping data wherever there's a

[0:42:44] Voice 24: possibility that it could be a different person. There were, I think, 251 duplicated IP addresses

[0:42:51] Voice 24: in total. We opted to keep all responses. When we looked at the patterns, there wasn't enough

[0:42:58] Voice 24: that would tell us definitively that these were repeated. We look at, for example, response times

[0:43:03] Voice 24: and if responses are being sent closely in succession to one another. And there was nothing

[0:43:07] Voice 24: and the 251 responses that led us to believe that with Dfinity

[0:43:12] Voice 5: that we

[0:43:12] Voice 24: would feel comfortable removing it.

[0:43:14] Voice 24: Were

[0:43:14] Voice 5: they analyzed in terms of duplication of the responses?

[0:43:17] Voice 5: Yes.

[0:43:18] Voice 5: Okay, so it was the same sentiments that were,

[0:43:21] Voice 5: or the same reactions from the same addresses?

[0:43:26] Voice 24: So at times, so we look at both the closed-ended

[0:43:28] Voice 24: and the open-ended responses.

[0:43:30] Voice 24: So there was no instance where the closed and open-ended

[0:43:35] Voice 24: were exactly the same across an IP address.

[0:43:38] Voice 24: That would be the only case without having more detailed information on,

[0:43:42] Voice 24: you know, like names, for example,

[0:43:44] Voice 24: where we would feel comfortable excluding a response.

[0:43:47] Voice 24: So because

[0:43:47] Voice 24: there was that variation, we opted towards keeping responses.

[0:43:51] Voice 24: All right.

[0:43:52] Voice 5: So the other question was there seems to be two questions

[0:43:57] Voice 5: that end up in the responses to the goals.

[0:44:01] Voice 5: One is jurisdiction and one is mandate.

[0:44:03] Voice 5: mandate um was it were you able to determine a distinction in terms of what the people meant

[0:44:09] Voice 5: it seems to me it's similar they

[0:44:11] Voice 24: are similar yeah jurisdiction for us in our coding and we

[0:44:14] Voice 24: worked closely with our islands trust project team on this to make sure that we were feeling

[0:44:19] Voice 24: comfortable around when we were delineating between one and the other for us in the coding

[0:44:23] Voice 24: process mandate meant someone explicitly explicitly mentions that islands trust is acting beyond the

[0:44:29] Voice 24: intended of its object what it's you know the scope of what it's intended to do and overreach

[0:44:35] Voice 24: of jurisdiction was where respondents mentioned specifically that the policies are meant to be

[0:44:41] Voice 24: enforced by other agencies or other governments so often provincial government uh local governments

[0:44:47] Voice 24: in place um and where it was unclear because admittedly sometimes in folks responses it's

[0:44:52] Voice 24: not always clear if they're saying it's an overreach of mandate or an overreach of

[0:44:56] Voice 24: jurisdiction. We code to both.

[0:44:58] Voice 5: Okay. Thank you very much. Of

[0:45:00] Voice 10: course. Thank you, Trustee Borthwick

[0:45:02] Voice 10: and Luckham.

[0:45:06] Voice 23: Yeah. Thank you very much for all of this analysis. It's great. I love statistics.

[0:45:12] Voice 23: It's very cool. I was just sort of a simple or a relatively sort of simple question. I'm curious

[0:45:22] Voice 23: I'm curious if, so there was a slight difference in sort of tone between written submissions and survey results. I'm curious if there was a, there was a trend as to origin of those submissions. Were they, did they tend to be more, because I know we have a relatively small percentage of people responding from off island.

[0:45:50] Voice 23: but was there a trend one way or the other between those two broad categories?

[0:45:58] Voice 24: I don't know if I'm answering your question so let me know if not. So in the public correspondence

[0:46:04] Voice 24: folks didn't always necessarily identify where they were coming from and so it's difficult to

[0:46:09] Voice 24: know if there was a difference but certainly I would say that there was a more balanced approach

[0:46:14] Voice 24: overall like you noted in the public correspondence and definitely more technical and an opportunity

[0:46:19] Voice 24: to really elaborate on provide very specific feedback on very specific policies folks did do

[0:46:26] Voice 24: that in the survey um the open-ended survey as feedback as well they would provide specific

[0:46:31] Voice 24: policies as well that they had feedback for um but it was yeah just without having a clear

[0:46:39] Voice 24: and i think when folks were representing an agency or an organization there was certainly

[0:46:43] Voice 24: more of an intent of providing good faith sort of balanced perspective

[0:46:47] Voice 24: of or you know yeah yeah the

[0:46:50] Voice 23: nature of the the the medium is the message um and yeah you wouldn't

[0:46:55] Voice 23: self-identify necessarily your location i understand anyways no thank you that's very

[0:46:59] Voice 23: interesting

[0:47:00] Trustee Luckham: trustee luckham uh good morning i hope you can hear me um my question is around

[0:47:08] Trustee Luckham: the leichert survey and i hope i pronounced that right i actually found this to be the most

[0:47:15] Trustee Luckham: most informative of everything that I looked at.

[0:47:17] Trustee Luckham: My question is around the 95% CI measurement.

[0:47:22] Trustee Luckham: And it strikes me that those are very low and narrow numbers,

[0:47:29] Voice 6: from

[0:47:30] Trustee Luckham: 2.4 to 3.6, I think.

[0:47:35] Trustee Luckham: And then maybe I'll just tack on to that,

[0:47:38] Trustee Luckham: because you mentioned population and the descriptor of what CI meant,

[0:47:42] Trustee Luckham: is I'm sort of have the impression that the response is less than 10% of the population

[0:47:47] Trustee Luckham: in the Island's Trust area. And I might be tend to move towards that this number here

[0:47:54] Trustee Luckham: represents some kind of a measurement on that, that is even less. So if you could comment on

[0:48:01] Trustee Luckham: that, that'd be great.

[0:48:02] Voice 24: Sure. So Trustee Luckin is referring to an Appendix B of our report. We do

[0:48:07] Voice 24: provide 95 percent confidence intervals for each of the Likert scale ratings you nailed at least

[0:48:12] Voice 24: what I also would say I would say Likert as well as well um so for those how how much do you agree

[0:48:18] Voice 24: or disagree that the sex the draft policies in the section will help achieve the goal or islands

[0:48:23] Voice 24: trust object um and we provide those just it's um it's a measure of sort of if we were to repeat

[0:48:28] Voice 24: the sampling this particular sampling approach 100 times in 95 of those instances we have a range of

[0:48:35] Voice 24: sort of what would be the expected level of agreement with each particular set of policies.

[0:48:40] Voice 24: And so the fact that they're fairly narrow does indicate that we're sort of leaning towards there

[0:48:46] Voice 24: isn't probably, at least within this current sample and the sampling approach, it looks like

[0:48:50] Voice 24: there is, you know, we don't have wide windows, which tells you that we're probably getting to

[0:48:54] Voice 24: around these same levels of sentiment repeatedly if you were to use, you know, the same sampling

[0:48:59] Voice 24: approach. The thing that we just acknowledge is that those confidence intervals could widen

[0:49:04] Voice 24: in or no even further if we were using a more random sampling approach i don't know if that

[0:49:10] Voice 24: answered your question trustee luckham it

[0:49:12] Trustee Luckham: does thank you very much all

[0:49:15] Voice 10: right trustee hunter and

[0:49:16] Voice 10: then i'm going to throw my name on the list go ahead trustee hunter thank

[0:49:19] Voice 28: you chair uh thanks

[0:49:21] Voice 28: angie the really detailed report um on one of your slides i'm not sure which uh you mentioned

[0:49:29] Voice 28: the word co-governance and um on page 51 i think of the report uh it says 71 percent disagreement

[0:49:39] Voice 28: i'm just wondering where you got that term from is it is it something that was um

[0:49:46] Voice 28: shown in the responses because it's something that i think the island's trust is

[0:49:53] Voice 28: trying to do something that obviously they don't it's going to be difficult to co-govern so i just

[0:50:03] Voice 28: wondered where that word came from thank you thanks

[0:50:06] Voice 24: trustee hunter so page 51 just for folks

[0:50:09] Voice 24: who are seeing the report is specific to some feedback that was on the guiding principles

[0:50:15] Voice 24: and so we had noted that one of the more dominant themes within or predominant themes within the

[0:50:20] Voice 24: open-ended feedback to the guiding principles was concerns that the principles and in particular the

[0:50:26] Voice 24: reconciliation principles place too much emphasis on reconciliation and um and place too much

[0:50:33] Voice 24: emphasis on uh indigenous governing bodies uh being a part of land use planning decisions

[0:50:39] Voice 24: the co-governing pro is something that admittedly would come from our coding and was meant to

[0:50:44] Voice 24: describe a sentiment just any time not necessarily equal coat like uh respondents didn't always

[0:50:49] Voice 24: always necessarily infer that they were opposed to equal levels of decision-making with Indigenous

[0:50:57] Voice 24: governing bodies. We use co-governing just to acknowledge that the draft policies declare an

[0:51:02] Voice 24: interest in bringing Indigenous governing bodies into decision-making processes. So, you know,

[0:51:09] Voice 24: from the policies, it's not always explicitly, you know, extent to which that relationship would

[0:51:14] Voice 24: would be of you know equal governance versus you know perhaps one group taking the lead over the

[0:51:20] Voice 24: other so we're using code just to acknowledge that there is that relationship between islands

[0:51:25] Voice 24: trust and indigenous governing bodies thank

[0:51:30] Voice 10: you um jason newmans i see your hand raised

[0:51:33] Voice 10: yeah

[0:51:34] Voice 22: thank you chair just to um to trustee hunter's question i was just going to note

[0:51:39] Voice 22: for everyone's benefit that um draft cooperation principle 2.3.3 of the draft policy statement is

[0:51:46] Voice 22: is to work towards collaborative governance with Indigenous governing bodies.

[0:51:49] Voice 22: And so that is likely the source of where that language emerged from in Ange's reporting.

[0:51:56] Voice 10: Thank you, Jason.

[0:51:57] Voice 10: Thank you.

[0:51:58] Voice 10: My question, I know there was one organization that sent specific instructions out to their email list

[0:52:05] Voice 10: as to how to complete the survey.

[0:52:07] Voice 10: Were you provided that and were able to analyze whether there was a response related to that?

[0:52:14] Voice 10: yeah

[0:52:16] Voice 24: so um we yeah we were we were forwarded uh that their friends of the gulf islands had

[0:52:22] Voice 24: provided some suggested uh coding on how to respond to the survey um those responses we

[0:52:28] Voice 24: looked and tried to identify patterns that were consistent in total we flagged 51 responses that

[0:52:34] Voice 24: were really very explicitly and obvious to us at least consistent with the response patterns that

[0:52:40] Voice 24: were suggested by that group and how to respond to the survey. 51 responses out of 1,889 is not

[0:52:48] Voice 24: very many. So of course, other folks could have used the suggested coding for guidance, but maybe

[0:52:54] Voice 24: not provided the exact explicit wording that was provided. So it was very little in the end that we

[0:53:04] Voice 24: were able to identify. And in any event, we would always include all of those responses. Those are

[0:53:09] Voice 24: individuals who took time to provide responses and we're not necessarily indicating duplicate

[0:53:13] Voice 24: IP addresses or the same person providing, you know, the same person providing feedback over

[0:53:19] Voice 24: and over. It's different folks who share similar sentiments.

[0:53:22] Voice 10: Well, thank you very much. I see our

[0:53:25] Voice 10: list of questions has paused, which is, we're going to go on to other portions. I'm sure that

[0:53:31] Voice 10: if methodology or analytical questions come up later in the meeting, I'm sure Jason Yeomans

[0:53:37] Voice 10: We'll capture those and be able to get your answers back if our staff aren't able to answer those questions.

[0:53:44] Voice 10: So I really want to thank Amy and Natalie for being here today and for your work on this and really appreciate that.

[0:53:54] Voice 10: And it helps us set up our conversation that we're going to have more of.

[0:53:57] Voice 10: So thank you.

[0:53:59] Voice 24: Thank you.

[0:53:59] Voice 24: Thank you, everyone.

[0:54:00] Voice 24: Have a great day.

[0:54:02] Voice 24: Take care.

[0:54:03] Voice 10: Thank you.

[0:54:04] Voice 10: Thank you. So, trustees, we're going to move on in the agenda. I know the agenda, it's not quite lined up. We have two, we had all of this material here, the Policy Statement Amendment Project, the What You Heard Briefing Report, and sort of the Policy Amendment Project Next Steps.

[0:54:21] Voice 10: I'm going to turn the floor over to Senior Policy Advisor Jason Yeomans to do a presentation sort of on all of this. And then following Jason's presentation, we are going to have a roundtable where that is your chance to get now into the reflection of what you heard and to next steps. So I'm going to turn the floor over to Jason Yeomans.

[0:54:52] Voice 22: Thank you, Chair. Just allow me a second here to move a few things around on my various screens.

[0:54:58] Voice 22: of which there are clearly too many screens. All right. Is everybody seeing my screen at the

[0:55:17] Voice 22: moment? Great. Now, let me just make sure that I'm able to advance through slides here. Okay.

[0:55:32] Voice 22: I think we're good to go. Okay, folks. So, the purpose of the reports in this agenda package

[0:55:42] Voice 22: that you've got here today are really for the purpose of providing trustees with an update on

[0:55:47] Voice 22: the feedback that we've received via public engagement and through bylaw referral following

[0:55:52] Voice 22: first reading of the policy statement bylaw number 183 in July of 2025. It was a considerable

[0:55:58] Voice 22: volume of material to bring together in a good way for trustees and the public. So thank you

[0:56:02] Voice 22: for your patience while we assembled all of that. It is not the complete package that I think we

[0:56:08] Voice 22: would like to be able to be providing you in so far as for the main thing that continues to be

[0:56:14] Voice 22: missing is some Indigenous governing body referral responses. And we continue to work behind the

[0:56:19] Voice 22: the scenes to collect those together. It would have been nice to be able to present the complete

[0:56:23] Voice 22: package to you today, but we felt it was imperative to get the results, at least of the public

[0:56:28] Voice 22: engagement, in front of you, lest people think that we were sitting on those for any particular

[0:56:33] Voice 22: reason. As you'll have noticed, staff have not provided any requests for decision, together with

[0:56:39] Voice 22: commensurate recommendations, in these reports. That's because at this stage, with the Ministry

[0:56:44] Voice 22: of Housing and Municipal Affairs clear that the policy statement bylaw would not be approved

[0:56:48] Voice 22: before the next local government elections. Staff felt it better to simply provide the

[0:56:53] Voice 22: information to trustees, and we would kind of take our cue from you about your expectations

[0:56:58] Voice 22: for how the coming months should unfold based on the information that you're able to review today.

[0:57:06] Voice 22: Oh, things are not moving like I want them to. So the first item in your agenda package is the

[0:57:15] Voice 22: What We Heard report, and this is the roundup of what was learned from phase four of public

[0:57:20] Voice 22: engagement on the policy statement which ran from July the 29th 2025 to February

[0:57:24] Voice 22: the 2nd 2026 it was comprised of three primary elements the first was the

[0:57:32] Voice 22: survey and the second was correspondence which of course and from be the change

[0:57:36] Voice 22: group just discussed in detail with you and the third element was the trust wide

[0:57:40] Voice 22: webinar that we hosted in September that was another opportunity for members of

[0:57:44] Voice 22: the public to ask questions and share correspondence or share comments with

[0:57:48] Voice 22: trustees, those are all captured in the What We Heard report that's in the agenda package today.

[0:57:54] Voice 22: An aspect that's not included in the agenda package today because it was sort of an awkward

[0:58:00] Voice 22: dynamic insofar as many of you know, your local trust committees hosted local engagement events

[0:58:07] Voice 22: to both share information out and to gauge public feedback on your islands about the policy

[0:58:12] Voice 22: statement, that is not information that has been conveyed to Trust Council formally, because that

[0:58:20] Voice 22: information was for your local trust committees to inform your referral responses to Trust Council.

[0:58:26] Voice 22: And of course, Trust Council has now received your local trust committee referral responses,

[0:58:30] Voice 22: but we didn't consider the public feedback that was gathered through those processes to be for

[0:58:35] Voice 22: Trust Council and part of this broader engagement package. Minutes or notes from those local meetings

[0:58:43] Voice 22: are posted, however, to the Islands 2050 project webpage and so are there for your review or for

[0:58:51] Voice 22: public review if the public wants to dig into that. On the staff side of efforts to

[0:59:01] Voice 22: generate public interest in this project, as part of phase four of public engagement, a brochure

[0:59:06] Voice 22: Our following first reading of the policy statement was mailed to 16,491 residential

[0:59:12] Voice 22: island addresses.

[0:59:14] Voice 22: Staff made 69 social media posts about the policy statement and encouraging participation

[0:59:18] Voice 22: in the engagement opportunities.

[0:59:21] Voice 22: There was 23 printed online newspaper ads across the trust area during that time.

[0:59:25] Voice 22: Email notices were sent out to 5,850 subscribers to our email subscriber service and to 90

[0:59:32] Voice 22: media contacts.

[0:59:33] Voice 22: There's an educational video, which is available to view on YouTube.

[0:59:37] Voice 22: As of the end of Phase 4 public engagement, the project web page had garnered 6,201 views

[0:59:44] Voice 22: from 300-598 unique users, so that's a considerable amount of visitation to the project website

[0:59:50] Voice 22: to gather information, and public posters were put up on 12 islands.

[1:00:00] Voice 22: 65 folks register for the policy statement webinar, and as Ange noted, 1,889 completed

[1:00:06] Voice 22: surveys, which is a very significant response rate when it comes to local government land

[1:00:12] Voice 22: use planning engagement initiatives, and of course, received 186 pieces of correspondence

[1:00:18] Voice 22: as well.

[1:00:21] Voice 22: In terms of next steps on this public engagement side of things, I would encourage trustees

[1:00:26] Voice 22: to review the correspondence and the survey results if you haven't already.

[1:00:30] Voice 22: already. And, you know, it's not for staff to tell you what to do on the basis of what the public

[1:00:37] Voice 22: has said. Rather, I think as individuals or as a group, you're going to have to consider

[1:00:43] Voice 22: potential revisions that may emerge from the information that you received via public

[1:00:47] Voice 22: engagement. And you can either, you know, begin to formulate that yourselves, or you can direct

[1:00:53] Voice 22: staff to provide some sort of supportive information that you think would help you

[1:01:00] Voice 22: make future decisions based on this public engagement.

[1:01:07] Voice 22: Chair, would you like me to just roll from here right into sort of the broader project

[1:01:12] Voice 22: roundup overview?

[1:01:14] Voice 10: Yes.

[1:01:14] Voice 10: No, I think you should complete your presentation and then we'll have the roundtable.

[1:01:18] Voice 22: Okay.

[1:01:19] Voice 22: That sounds good to me.

[1:01:20] Voice 22: The second item in your agenda package is really just a status update on where this project is at at the moment.

[1:01:35] Voice 22: I'll note that 11 of 12 local trust committees have submitted bylaw referral responses to the draft policy statement.

[1:01:42] Voice 22: We have received feedback from 22 of 56 government agencies, and you'll find within that second item in the agenda package today, there are tables where staff have laid out both local trust committee and island municipality recommendations for revision.

[1:02:04] Voice 22: staff have offered some preliminary comments, preliminary thoughts on some of what we've heard

[1:02:09] Voice 22: from both local trust committees and from agencies. And so that's there for your information.

[1:02:14] Voice 22: And then we've heard from 10 of 30 Indigenous governing bodies to whom we've referred the

[1:02:22] Voice 22: policy statement bylaw. The prevailing message, I guess, on that front is that the Ministry of

[1:02:29] Voice 22: Housing and Municipal Affairs has set a high bar for us concerning engagement with Indigenous

[1:02:33] Voice 22: Indigenous governing bodies. And until that process is advanced to something that we might

[1:02:40] Voice 22: call completion or reaches some sort of conclusion, staff are not recommending to you at this time to

[1:02:45] Voice 22: start making, to not formalize further revisions to the draft policy statement until Indigenous

[1:02:52] Voice 22: governing bodies have had a chance to weigh in on the current version of it. On the bright side,

[1:02:57] Voice 22: you'll see from the referral responses that are attached to the staff report that some of the

[1:03:01] Voice 22: the nations with whom we've engaged throughout this project are quite supportive of the direction

[1:03:05] Voice 22: that Islands Trust has taken in the draft policy statement and have indicated that they have no

[1:03:11] Voice 22: further comment to make and that generally they think that the Islands Trust is on the right track.

[1:03:20] Voice 22: Next steps for staff on the project right now is that we're going to continue to pursue draft

[1:03:25] Voice 22: policy statement bylaw referral responses from Indigenous governing bodies. We are going to

[1:03:30] Voice 22: continue to meet with Indigenous governing bodies about the draft policy statement, as that

[1:03:34] Voice 22: is a request from some of those from whom we're still trying to gather formal responses. Staff

[1:03:41] Voice 22: are going to continue development of the policy statement companion handbook. Now, this is a body

[1:03:45] Voice 22: of work that Trust Council had requested several years ago. We've got a pretty good version of it

[1:03:53] Voice 22: right now that needs a little bit more fine-tuning at the staff level before we provide it to

[1:03:59] Voice 22: trustees and make it public. I always hoped that it could be on this agenda package today.

[1:04:03] Voice 22: Unfortunately, we just weren't in a place to feel fully confident about it. I think that what

[1:04:10] Voice 22: this companion handbook will do will answer some of what we heard from Ang today about people's

[1:04:16] Voice 22: concern about how is this policy statement going to be operationalized? Well, it is going to be

[1:04:22] Voice 22: operationalized through local official community plan and land use bylaw amendments that do the

[1:04:30] Voice 22: things that the directive policies or the advisory policies are telling local trust committees and

[1:04:36] Voice 22: municipalities that they are expected to do. And so the companion handbook will lay out the types

[1:04:42] Voice 22: of policies and the types of regulations that a local trust committee could consider that

[1:04:47] Voice 22: that executive committee may find to be a satisfactory implementation of the policies

[1:04:53] Voice 22: that are set out in the policy statement. Staff will continue to develop some documentation around

[1:05:00] Voice 22: policy statement implementation planning. We've had a number of team meetings about this, just

[1:05:05] Voice 22: trying to figure out how best to set this out for Trust Council's consideration. So we hope to have

[1:05:12] Voice 22: that ready for you in the very near future. So that's what staff are going to do. Now what are

[1:05:19] Voice 22: are you going to do or what could you do? You can consider the survey and correspondence results

[1:05:26] Voice 22: that you heard today and provide direction to staff if any emerges that you think is clear-cut.

[1:05:31] Voice 22: You can provide feedback to us on the approach that we've taken to conveying the referral results

[1:05:36] Voice 22: that we've received so far and our approach to providing recommendations. It's sometimes

[1:05:42] Voice 22: challenging for us to know the most helpful way to convey information to you

[1:05:48] Voice 22: so that so that we can help you make the decisions that you need to make you can

[1:05:54] Voice 22: begin to formulate revisions to the draft policy statement based on what

[1:05:59] Voice 22: you've heard through public engagement or referral responses as I said a few

[1:06:04] Voice 22: minutes ago we don't recommend Trust Council formalizing those revisions but

[1:06:08] Voice 22: you know if Committee of the Whole wants to begin assembling the list of

[1:06:11] Voice 22: recommendations that it would make up to trust council it can do that if you have any observations

[1:06:16] Voice 22: about your expectations for the policy statement companion handbook and what it should or should

[1:06:21] Voice 22: not contain or should or should not do please share that with us and if there's an opportunity

[1:06:25] Voice 22: to help inform the next round or the next business case that needs to be submitted in support of this

[1:06:32] Voice 22: project and if you have any thoughts on what needs to be funded through that by all means please do

[1:06:38] Voice 22: do so. There's more stuff you can do. I think it's important that Committee of the Whole today

[1:06:46] Voice 22: decide whether or not you want to continue to meet through the summer on this topic and continue to

[1:06:53] Voice 22: look at changes or action across the various aspects of the project. You can consider whether

[1:07:01] Voice 22: next steps should be directed by Trust Council, or is there work that you would want to farm out

[1:07:07] Voice 22: to executive committee or trust programs committee or some other committee in

[1:07:11] Voice 22: order to perhaps move with with greater efficiency or greater speed if if if you

[1:07:18] Voice 22: think there's a better body to do some of the the working work rather than just

[1:07:23] Voice 22: the decision work and yeah please just consider what what we can do as staff to

[1:07:28] Voice 22: assist you with with good decision-making on the project as as we

[1:07:33] Voice 22: we look at the months ahead. This table just shows some potential other opportunities this

[1:07:41] Voice 22: summer where the policy statement could be discussed if that's to Committee of the Whole's

[1:07:44] Voice 22: liking. You'll see that a potential June 4th Committee of the Whole meeting is one option if

[1:07:50] Voice 22: you want to recommend to Trust Council that such a meeting be scheduled. If you think there's work

[1:07:55] Voice 22: you want to do during that time, you can set out a Committee of the Whole meeting within your

[1:08:00] Voice 22: regular June Trust Council meeting if you want. There is a pre-scheduled Committee of the Whole

[1:08:04] Voice 22: meeting that's already set to take place on July the 22nd. That could be used for policy statement

[1:08:09] Voice 22: related work if you so chose. And if you are interested in another Committee of the Whole

[1:08:15] Voice 22: meeting during your September Trust Council meeting, that opportunity is available as well.

[1:08:21] Voice 22: So thank you. That's really all I have to say. I wish that we had a more clear and concrete

[1:08:30] Voice 22: set of next steps to provide you today. But because we just don't have the full range of

[1:08:36] Voice 22: the information that we would want to have in hand in order to say, based on everything we know and

[1:08:41] Voice 22: everything we've heard, and there's nothing more that will sort of penetrate this, here are the

[1:08:47] Voice 22: next key decision points for you. And I just don't feel that we're quite at that spot today. Thank

[1:08:54] Voice 22: Thank you.

[1:08:54] Voice 10: All right.

[1:08:55] Voice 10: Well, thank you, Jason.

[1:08:58] Voice 10: I see hands.

[1:08:59] Voice 10: We have questions.

[1:09:00] Voice 10: We are going to go into a roundtable.

[1:09:02] Voice 10: So are the questions regarding process?

[1:09:05] Voice 10: Because this is, we're going to go do a roundtable.

[1:09:07] Voice 10: So if you have process questions, Trustee Fast.

[1:09:10] Voice 12: Thank you.

[1:09:11] Voice 12: This just relates to the previous phases.

[1:09:16] Voice 12: Trustee Getty referred to Bowen not having a lot of input through the survey or letters this time.

[1:09:23] Voice 12: but they have in previous rounds and I'm thinking particularly about this uh uh set of um letters

[1:09:31] Voice 12: this

[1:09:32] Voice 10: isn't this isn't process of the question we're gonna have a round table where you can

[1:09:38] Voice 10: get into details on question do these still count do these still all you mean the material from

[1:09:46] Voice 10: previous sessions yeah like yes this is an accumulation of everything we've heard to date

[1:09:53] Voice 10: is sort of where we are now does that answer your question it

[1:10:01] Voice 12: sounds i'm getting the impression that

[1:10:03] Voice 12: we're only looking at the phase four input that we just received and uh so i guess my i'll save my

[1:10:10] Voice 12: thank you i think in regards

[1:10:13] Voice 10: to next steps trustees should always consider the accumulation

[1:10:17] Voice 10: of everything we are where we are now on the where you are map we're here when it comes to

[1:10:24] Voice 10: next steps trustees should should uh base their next steps on the accumulated project 2019.

[1:10:33] Voice 10: trustee boland

[1:10:37] Voice 16: thanks um i would find it very helpful if the responses from indigenous governing

[1:10:44] Voice 16: bodies were categorized or coded in the same way as the responses from the residents because

[1:10:51] Voice 16: because on page 118 so listening to what you said okay again trustee

[1:10:57] Voice 10: this is a that is a not

[1:10:58] Voice 10: a process question as to how we're going to go about our questions well

[1:11:01] Voice 16: no this is a process

[1:11:02] Voice 16: question i'm asking that that is done in future because i read the material and what is in the

[1:11:09] Voice 16: report on page 118 in my view doesn't reflect the material but what you said jason does more

[1:11:16] Voice 16: more correctly. So I would appreciate the Indigenous bodies' responses being coded or

[1:11:23] Voice 16: categorised in a way that makes it easier to digest them. And perhaps even similarly for some

[1:11:28] Voice 16: of the other agencies, although they focus on different elements, so it's a little bit more

[1:11:33] Voice 1: difficult.

[1:11:34] Voice 16: But getting a more digested flavour, because I was quite surprised at how positive

[1:11:40] Voice 16: many of the Indigenous body were, and that's not reflected on page 118. So, thank you.

[1:11:49] Voice 10: All right, Trustees, I'm just going to remind you, we may take a break before we start,

[1:11:53] Voice 10: if that's what people would like, but I want to remind you of the, so we're going to go into a

[1:11:56] Voice 10: roundtable, and this is your opportunity to have sort of overall reflections, reactions to what

[1:12:03] Voice 10: you heard from the public and referral agencies, and absolutely, you can take that into account

[1:12:08] Voice 10: count over the entire project of what you've heard sort of to date. If you have any questions for

[1:12:13] Voice 10: staff regarding any of the materials that are in the agenda package today, and then also want to

[1:12:18] Voice 10: hear sort of your reflections, your perspectives, your suggestions on what you think the potential

[1:12:23] Voice 10: next steps are. And again, you could question staff on their recommended next steps if you

[1:12:27] Voice 10: want to understand what they have recommended. I am going to go through an alphabet list so

[1:12:34] Voice 10: So everyone has a chance to speak.

[1:12:35] Voice 10: Would you like to take a break before we start?

[1:12:38] Voice 10: Or do you want to get started and take a break partway along the way?

[1:12:41] Voice 10: I just want to look at everyone who's here.

[1:12:45] Voice 10: Do you

[1:12:45] Voice 1: want to take a

[1:12:46] Voice 10: 10-minute break right now and then we'll get started?

[1:12:49] Voice 10: All right.

[1:12:50] Voice 10: So let's take a 10-minute break, come back.

[1:12:52] Voice 10: I'm going to start at the A's just to give everybody a heads up.

[1:12:55] Voice 10: So 10-minute break.

[1:12:57] Voice 10: All right.

[1:22:23] Voice 6: Is

[1:22:23] Voice 10: everyone back?

[1:22:39] Voice 10: Super.

[1:22:40] Voice 10: Super. So, trustees, I'm going to start the alphabet list. I've asked Trustee Elliott to

[1:22:48] Voice 10: put up a three-minute timer. I know three minutes may go quickly. What I'd like to do is let's move

[1:22:54] Voice 10: through using a three-minute time per speaker. We will start over again if you have more to say.

[1:23:01] Voice 10: So, I would really encourage you to sort of begin with the three minutes, and then we can keep going.

[1:23:07] Voice 10: We have lots of time, but I do want to make sure everyone has a chance to speak and we'll come back and do the round again if we need to, if there's more to say, if that's fair with everyone.

[1:23:20] Voice 10: So with that, first on the list is, I know Trustee Allen and Bernardo are not here today.

[1:23:29] Voice 10: So Trustee Boland, you're up first if you're back with us.

[1:23:32] Voice 10: Is Trustee Boland here?

[1:23:39] Voice 10: She was here a moment ago.

[1:23:41] Voice 10: trustee boland i don't see her in the um did she fall no she's still on the list oh she must be

[1:23:51] Voice 10: just temporarily out um all right i'll come back to trustee boland when we see her uh come up so

[1:23:57] Voice 10: is trustee borthwick here yes he is oh

[1:24:01] Voice 23: um so yeah i always hate when we go alphabetically

[1:24:07] Voice 23: because it means i have to go right at the beginning and then everybody says interesting

[1:24:10] Voice 23: things that I then can't respond to. So the trust policy statement process has obviously

[1:24:22] Voice 23: been going on since before my time in office. And the process over the course of these last

[1:24:31] Voice 23: several years on this has been very interesting on lots of levels. It's also been fairly excruciating

[1:24:41] Voice 23: in some ways for me in particular and it may just be in part because of how my particular brain works

[1:24:47] Voice 23: um engaging with uh something like this line by line has been a challenge for me i have

[1:24:57] Voice 23: done my best knowing that about myself to try and trust the process and you know listen carefully to

[1:25:03] Voice 23: people who seem to be more uh comfortable with this way of doing things and conceptually who

[1:25:09] Voice 23: have a better grasp on what the policy statement means broadly. Part of that comes from the fact

[1:25:18] Voice 23: that obviously there was a difficult engagement in the previous term. We were not privy to this

[1:25:26] Voice 23: policy statement for a hot minute once we got into office. And then once we did, we were sort

[1:25:33] Voice 23: of away to the races with a whole other process and we brought this Committee of the Whole

[1:25:37] Voice 23: uh format forward to to do this i know i'm sort of recapping things that everybody knows but

[1:25:44] Voice 23: nevertheless um and i'll be honest through through this through my conversations with

[1:25:50] Voice 23: uh constituents here on my island on other islands conversations with with other people

[1:25:56] Voice 23: sort of around the process um you know there's a lot that i really like and appreciate about how

[1:26:04] Voice 23: what what is in our our policy statement i think there's a lot of things that are that

[1:26:08] Voice 23: that are coming forward that are good.

[1:26:09] Voice 23: I think that the principles of reconciliation

[1:26:12] Voice 23: that we're advancing are really good.

[1:26:14] Voice 23: And I certainly hear positive feedback from First Nations

[1:26:17] Voice 23: that I get to work with through this

[1:26:21] Voice 23: in terms of generally a lot of the work that we're doing.

[1:26:25] Voice 23: I know I'm running out of time.

[1:26:26] Voice 23: So there's a part of me nevertheless

[1:26:29] Voice 23: that would really like to see this be

[1:26:33] Voice 23: a three to five page document

[1:26:35] Voice 23: document with some really broad, simple directives and to let the, uh, where the rubber hits the road

[1:26:44] Voice 23: be the prop, be the, the, the jurisdiction of, uh, of the LTCs as they apply it. But I think

[1:26:51] Voice 23: really clear. And I, to me, this speaks to the feedback that we've heard from before,

[1:26:56] Voice 23: or that we've heard as a part of this process that, uh, you know, people want to see that this

[1:27:01] Voice 23: is accountable people want to see that that we have the the means to enforce the things that

[1:27:06] Voice 23: we're doing sorry i'll wrap up really quickly i think the the the feedback that we got as a part

[1:27:13] Voice 23: of this engagement and i i i would agree that it's not it's it may not be totally representative it

[1:27:19] Voice 23: is obviously tricky with with self-reporting things but it echoes a lot of the criticisms

[1:27:24] Voice 23: that we do here um and i think you know being accountable being being clear about what it is

[1:27:31] Voice 23: we do, being clear about how we do it, and setting out some clear expectations is a really good

[1:27:36] Voice 23: thing. I would personally love to see this be a really simple document that we, and I don't know,

[1:27:44] Voice 23: and I have to at some point ask Jason what the bare bones minimum of what needs to be

[1:27:50] Voice 23: a trust policy statement. But I would love to see this be really simple. And I feel like we've

[1:27:55] Voice 23: definitely spilled a lot of ink. Obviously, people feel a lot of ways very strongly.

[1:28:00] Voice 23: staff, trustees, the public, all feel strongly about the trust policy statement in many different

[1:28:06] Voice 23: ways. I would love to see this be a really simple document that we could then move on from and get

[1:28:11] Voice 23: on with actually doing the work, which is where I think we would demonstrate the value of the values

[1:28:17] Voice 23: that we're trying to communicate. So I don't know how we get to that point, but that's the thing

[1:28:22] Voice 23: that I would like to see. Sorry for going over my time.

[1:28:25] Voice 10: That's all right. Well, next steps will be

[1:28:26] Voice 10: sort of one of our next formulations and we'll go around if we need to sorry trustee boland we

[1:28:30] Voice 10: jumped over you you weren't quite back yet so back to you thanks it's

[1:28:35] Voice 16: interesting because i

[1:28:39] Voice 16: i wholly agree with sam and i think we need something more simple i think the engagement

[1:28:47] Voice 16: if the engagement has demonstrated anything all all of it you know all the different rounds

[1:28:55] Voice 16: and the discussions and the endless reiterations it has demonstrated the impossibility of what

[1:29:01] Voice 16: we're trying to do which is to create a document that's all things to all people

[1:29:05] Voice 16: and that covers you know so many safeguarding and you know laudable ambitions but they are

[1:29:14] Voice 16: not within our purview and they are covered by other agencies we are trying to create something

[1:29:20] Voice 16: that exists in many places already and we are engaging engaging engaging and you know diverging

[1:29:29] Voice 16: and contracting diverging and contracting we already have a structure in the islands trust

[1:29:35] Voice 16: which is the ltcs the executive committee um the the way bylaws changes are enacted the ocps

[1:29:44] Voice 16: the LUBs, all of that already safeguards the Islands Trust in a way that is quite complex

[1:29:51] Voice 16: and works fairly well. I do find that, you know, one of the

[1:30:00] Voice 16: One of the things in the Citerna Local Trust Committee community session that really rang a bell with me was when somebody said, how is a planner supposed to sit down and face this huge web of advice, regulation, guideline, policy, and come to any conclusion?

[1:30:25] Voice 16: like the implementation of anything or the decision-making around anything is just becoming

[1:30:31] Voice 16: more and more complex so i like what um what sam said i feel like we have created you know words

[1:30:42] Voice 16: words words in there there are so many words and they're not really making life better for anybody

[1:30:48] Voice 16: money and we should simplify it we should really do what the act advises which is create something

[1:30:56] Voice 16: that sets out some you know very general in my view when i read it general high high level

[1:31:03] Voice 16: principles and then just get on with actually doing the work using the ocps the lubs and the

[1:31:11] Voice 16: structure of the trust with the ltc's the chair from another island the ec and you know refer to

[1:31:18] Voice 16: the minister like how hard can it be to work through that and why do we need this giant

[1:31:24] Voice 16: wordy thing with four levels and six seven years of engagement so that's my take on it thank you

[1:31:35] Voice 10: thank you i think trustee campbell's not with us trustee dogs are you

[1:31:39] Voice 10: Yes,

[1:31:39] Voice 19: I'm here. Following up on both Trustee Borwick and Trustee Boland said almost exactly what I would say. I think what we have created, you know, reflects a lot of how we feel, but I think it is too cumbersome.

[1:31:56] Voice 19: I think the moving forward to redo all our OCPs

[1:32:00] Voice 19: and incorporate everything we have in there is a nightmare

[1:32:03] Voice 19: and will take years and years and years to happen.

[1:32:05] Voice 19: I think we need to take what we've already created

[1:32:09] Voice 19: and shrink it down to a manageable format.

[1:32:12] Voice 19: I also think big red flag, we have an election coming.

[1:32:16] Voice 19: You're going to have a whole new group of people

[1:32:18] Voice 19: and you don't know what they have in mind

[1:32:21] Voice 19: in terms of how this is going to progress.

[1:32:23] Voice 19: So I also would hesitate to get too carried away

[1:32:26] Voice 19: with too much more staff time until after the election

[1:32:29] Voice 19: to see exactly where your new trustees stand

[1:32:32] Voice 19: on how much they either want to give credence

[1:32:35] Voice 19: to what's already written

[1:32:36] Voice 19: or whether they want to change it completely.

[1:32:39] Voice 19: Definitely looking forward to more First Nations response

[1:32:42] Voice 19: in terms of how they see it.

[1:32:44] Voice 19: But I do think we have taken on the role

[1:32:46] Voice 19: that other levels of government will do and should do

[1:32:50] Voice 19: and that we don't have the funding to be all things

[1:32:54] Voice 19: things, as Maury said, all things to all people. I think we need to go back and just put this to

[1:33:01] Voice 19: something much shorter, much simpler. And I do think that we're working towards a new term that

[1:33:10] Voice 19: is probably going to be just as challenging as this last one, because in many ways, you're going

[1:33:15] Voice 19: to be re-educating, redoing, reviewing. We spent a lot of staff time on this, and I'd like to see us

[1:33:22] Voice 19: just maybe hold off and wait and see what comes in december thank you thank you very much trustee

[1:33:32] Trustee Elliott: elliott okay uh well lots to consider it is um an almost overwhelming amount of feedback but i think

[1:33:43] Trustee Elliott: there's a lot of valuable feedback in there um it's great that the public is so engaged and cares

[1:33:50] Trustee Elliott: so much um i think that's evidence with the sheer number of um surveys completed

[1:33:58] Trustee Elliott: um it is unfortunate that it came or sorry it landed at a time when questions around decision

[1:34:05] Trustee Elliott: making uh about land and marine water and and all the tricky issues that we're facing in bc

[1:34:15] Trustee Elliott: it's it's just a polarizing time in the province generally and i think the survey responses

[1:34:21] Trustee Elliott: reflect that i think there's a lot of uncertainty about the future and when there's uncertainty

[1:34:28] Trustee Elliott: people are then saying what

[1:34:29] Trustee Elliott: we want clarity what exactly is the islands trust going to do in this

[1:34:34] Trustee Elliott: situation in that situation i think when we have the implementation plan or we see a draft

[1:34:40] Trustee Elliott: implementation plan and the companion handbook that's going to help a lot this draft of the

[1:34:47] Trustee Elliott: policy statement saw you know in the direction of the previous uh trust council removed a lot

[1:34:54] Trustee Elliott: of the context statements the framing around jurisdiction and all that so we need to see

[1:35:00] Trustee Elliott: that back in and i think the public would be more comfortable when they um sort of the story

[1:35:05] Trustee Elliott: is told about the islands trust context um work that we could do in the meantime as we wait for

[1:35:13] Trustee Elliott: feedback from the rest of the indigenous governing bodies uh we could consider approaches like

[1:35:18] Trustee Elliott: waiting the feedback from the ministry referrals and ltcs uh differently i think the the ministry

[1:35:26] Trustee Elliott: of agriculture and this ministry of municipal affairs and the crd for instance um they give

[1:35:33] Trustee Elliott: have a lot of clarity in terms of here's what we need to see from our perspective as an agency that

[1:35:39] Trustee Elliott: is you know constantly considering your policies and how our policies and and and laws work together

[1:35:48] Trustee Elliott: that is really key information i would actually focus on that the page 133 and onwards there's

[1:35:55] Trustee Elliott: an excellent table staff have provided and we could do could we direct some work on uh having

[1:36:03] Trustee Elliott: a table of you know old draft policy and then the the change from this ministry and what that would

[1:36:10] Trustee Elliott: look like um i think that would clarify some of the jurisdictional issues um and yeah i i'm just

[1:36:20] Trustee Elliott: wondering about a weighting tool you know the the members of the public are responding from

[1:36:25] Trustee Elliott: their perspective it's valuable how much do we weight that uh public input um i would tend to

[1:36:33] Trustee Elliott: put a greater emphasis on the agency referrals thanks thank

[1:36:38] Voice 10: you very much uh trustee evans

[1:36:41] Voice 15: thanks um yeah now this has been a great information that we received um i i'm glad

[1:36:49] Voice 15: glad that we're having an opportunity now to start having more broader discussions. One of the

[1:36:55] Voice 15: questions that I had for the very beginning of this process was, I was hoping that Trust Council

[1:37:01] Voice 15: could have a conversation about whether or not this document was headed in the right direction,

[1:37:05] Voice 15: because that conversation wasn't had by this council. And I agree with other speakers that

[1:37:13] Voice 15: went before that this is meant to be a guiding document that guides how the ocp is done and it

[1:37:20] Voice 15: presents the vision of our bylaws um this isn't as i understand it and correct me if i'm wrong

[1:37:28] Voice 15: i don't believe this is meant to be an enforceable document as in these are not bylaws these are the

[1:37:35] Voice 15: the policy statements to guide how the OCPs are treated

[1:37:39] Voice 15: and how the land use bylaws need to align with.

[1:37:46] Voice 15: And as such, my understanding is that there should be more broad guidelines

[1:37:55] Voice 15: versus prescriptive in-depth directives.

[1:38:02] Voice 15: those i feel should be at the bylaw level versus at the guiding document level um and i think also

[1:38:10] Voice 15: and i've heard this throughout my community is that we're calling this an amendment but this is

[1:38:16] Voice 15: this document we can't do a black line uh revision against it because it doesn't translate

[1:38:22] Voice 15: because it is a rewrite and as a rewritten document it presents a lot of pitfalls and

[1:38:29] Voice 15: problems that um that happens when you do a complete rewrite and we're sort of in the midst

[1:38:34] Voice 15: of this so i think we need to have a discussion as to whether this is the right direction that

[1:38:38] Voice 15: we should be doing a complete rewrite or whether it should be taken back to a higher level document

[1:38:46] Voice 15: or um you know like i think we need to have that discussion um what i was happy to see from the

[1:38:54] Voice 15: results was that in certain areas there is um there is good support for for the for the

[1:39:01] Voice 15: recommendations um and we got some really good constructive feedback on areas where there is

[1:39:07] Voice 15: not support um and also a lot of actionable items and recommendations from the public and and other

[1:39:15] Voice 15: municipalities as well so these are just sort of my very high level thoughts right now i have a lot

[1:39:21] Voice 15: lot of other ones obviously um so i'm looking forward to having further discussion and i'm

[1:39:26] Voice 15: sorry i can't seem the timer i can just see trustee boland right now so i'm not sure how

[1:39:31] Voice 15: much time i have left somebody

[1:39:32] Voice 6: could tell me

[1:39:33] Voice 15: okay then i will stop there thank you

[1:39:36] Voice 10: that's good

[1:39:37] Voice 10: that's all right we'll come around again if we um if we need to all right so thank you trustee fast

[1:39:42] Voice 10: well

[1:39:45] Voice 12: thank you um i'll start off with saying uh i'm encouraged by the um uh now i've got noise

[1:39:53] Voice 12: happening here sorry okay i'm uh i'm encouraged by the um uh where we've got to so far and uh

[1:40:02] Voice 12: and the progress that i think we're making and some of the uh feedback that we've been receiving

[1:40:09] Voice 12: one second, I've got to close the door. Sorry, I have a very deaf elder in the house.

[1:40:22] Voice 12: So I'm encouraged. I think we're making progress. I really appreciated the staff

[1:40:27] Voice 12: report that starts on page 118. Nice summary there. I appreciated the little two pager

[1:40:34] Voice 12: and it helped me find my way among the good input from Indigenous governing bodies. I was glad to

[1:40:43] Voice 12: to see the detail there and that more are coming in. I liked, like Toby Elliott, I had singled out

[1:40:50] Voice 12: the input from agencies, the CRD, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs

[1:40:58] Voice 12: and Housing, which of course is the ministry that Islands Trust is in. So we need their approval if

[1:41:05] Voice 12: we're ever going to advance this. And some of their expectations are described. So that would

[1:41:12] Voice 12: would be like pages 132 133 that kind of thing 135 in the middle and um i uh going back to my

[1:41:20] Voice 12: question at the beginning which was a question for staff i never really got to ask it but that's okay

[1:41:25] Voice 12: my point is um how do we uh for the trustees coming in the next term how do we convey to them

[1:41:35] Voice 12: all of the progress since 2018 the process so far not necessarily the progress sorry i misspoke

[1:41:43] Voice 12: uh how is the engagement uh continuing to accelerate uh are the different kinds of

[1:41:51] Voice 12: engagement changing uh have we had this kind of engagement from agencies and indigenous

[1:41:58] Voice 12: and its governing bodies before this just relates to my feeling for Bowen Island should I be telling

[1:42:05] Voice 12: them it's time to weigh in again or because I know their engagement was through the process we've had

[1:42:14] Voice 12: got into the first reading draft which is what we're looking at so my question I would like to

[1:42:22] Voice 12: to put to the group for discussion at some time is can we ask staff for a sort of where are we now

[1:42:32] Voice 12: report of the process to date and the progress made and the different kinds of engagements and

[1:42:39] Voice 12: some of the numbers for the incoming trust council and when would that be best over all right thank

[1:42:47] Voice 10: you that's an interesting next step so thank you for formulating some next step thoughts on

[1:42:51] Voice 10: on going forward so trustee gabriel good

[1:42:57] Voice 9: morning everyone happy to be here um i've been flip

[1:43:01] Voice 9: flopping on my mind on decisions for next steps for a couple of days now um just off the top i

[1:43:07] Voice 9: think about us meeting in the summertime i don't think i would favor that very much

[1:43:12] Voice 9: um i actually think that council should be very careful the time it spends on this project with

[1:43:17] Voice 9: the remainder of our term it's short i think october will come faster than we expected

[1:43:22] Voice 9: As far as next steps for this project, I think that we should continue waiting for the bylaw referrals.

[1:43:28] Voice 9: We've sent out referrals asking for a response and we should respect that and wait for the responses to come back.

[1:43:35] Voice 9: I also think that we need to meet with the Indigenous Governing Bodies and tell them more about the policies.

[1:43:43] Voice 9: I know from my own island, the Penelakut have expressed that they don't understand, they've asked for better information.

[1:43:49] Voice 9: What does this mean? I think that's a missed opportunity if we don't explore that.

[1:43:53] Voice 9: And that's certainly something we could probably do by the end of our term.

[1:43:58] Voice 9: In the meantime, I think we can continue development on the implementation plan and the companion handbook.

[1:44:05] Voice 9: Continue refining all the referral responses and kind of have staff can do that behind the scenes.

[1:44:11] Voice 9: We don't even really need to see that. That could be a document that's sent to the next council.

[1:44:14] Voice 9: I think at the onset of this, of our term, we set that expectation that this would be a collaborative process.

[1:44:22] Voice 9: So I think if we did any substantial changes to the policy statement itself right now, I don't think we'd be, I'm not sure that would be good governance.

[1:44:33] Voice 9: We said what we're going to do, and we should do it.

[1:44:39] Voice 9: Yeah, perhaps maybe a letter.

[1:44:42] Voice 9: We could forward a letter to the next council.

[1:44:45] Voice 9: outlining our expectations and our intentions with this draft

[1:44:49] Voice 9: and let those decisions be made by a future council.

[1:44:53] Voice 9: Thank you. Just my thoughts.

[1:44:56] Voice 5: Thank you. Trustee Getty.

[1:45:01] Voice 5: Okay. I think that it's important to keep in mind

[1:45:05] Voice 5: that it's in fact not a significant number

[1:45:08] Voice 5: and there's real potential for bias.

[1:45:11] Voice 5: So this is a little vignette and it's very weighty and it's very powerful and I think it's had a big impact, but I don't know that it necessarily reliably reflects a lot of the feelings of the community.

[1:45:34] Voice 5: So, in particular, with the racism comments and, you know, I've been avoiding reading the correspondence because it feels like I'm opening up an envelope with anthrax in it and it's just going to explode in my face.

[1:45:47] Voice 5: and I hope that the staff that have had to touch that and read it have had a whole lot of support

[1:45:53] Voice 5: services and any of us that do get you know everybody says we should be reading the the

[1:45:59] Voice 5: correspondence that that we take care of ourselves in terms of you know what's included in that

[1:46:05] Voice 5: and that we have a chance to actually focus on on that I think that it's it feels like we're

[1:46:13] Voice 5: We're opening up the Pandora's box, but I also think that we have an opportunity and we should be facing it and figuring out a strategy and because avoidance of it has a real price.

[1:46:27] Voice 5: And I think that we have had a lot of good educational stuff of the explanation of the Cowichan tribes decision that we maybe have a responsibility in terms of explaining to our community that there's been a really.

[1:46:43] Voice 5: negative, strong reaction to this and that we're going, I think, that we should be

[1:46:51] Voice 5: embracing it and going forward and explaining to our communities that this is something that we

[1:46:58] Voice 5: are, not just our community, but the whole province and probably the whole nation has to

[1:47:03] Voice 5: deal with. And that we're in a position of, because we want to take this stand, that we're

[1:47:08] Voice 5: We're in a position of explaining in better terms and using it as an opportunity for education.

[1:47:15] Voice 5: So figuring that out in terms of next steps.

[1:47:18] Voice 5: I think that there's repetition in terms of clarity and lack of clarity and confusion and some complaints in terms of some of the language that we've used and whether it's strong enough or it's weak enough.

[1:47:34] Voice 5: So I think that we could spend some time looking at the definitions and looking at some of the language that's used and take that into consideration.

[1:47:43] Voice 5: I don't think that there's a lot of the complaints seem to be attaching to the advisory instead of the directive components of this.

[1:47:55] Voice 5: And I think that we could figure out a way of formatting it so that the directives are much clearer.

[1:48:03] Voice 5: And sorry, I also think that the tension between protection and development, it's coming out in terms of housing needs, that that's something that is fundamental to the very inception of the trust.

[1:48:17] Voice 5: And that's something that has to be explained and figure out, you know, the explanation is that we're trying to stick handle our way through meeting all of the needs.

[1:48:27] Voice 5: But I'm reminded of the information that we got from the professional planner that was involved in the governance review saying fundamentally we need to understand what the physical limits are on each island in terms of potable water and septic capacity before we can really deal with development.

[1:48:48] Voice 5: And we still haven't done that work. And with respect to this plan never had included anything about implementation. So whether how we're going to enforce that, whether or not we've got the role of enforcement, whether or not, you know, we've got the capacity to deal with this was never part of this draft.

[1:49:07] Voice 5: and hopefully the handbook will possibly explain some of that.

[1:49:12] Voice 5: So I'm not in favor of reducing that.

[1:49:17] Voice 5: I think the handbook might help us reduce this down to three or four pages,

[1:49:20] Voice 5: but I think the overall document has to be the sun, the moon, and the stars,

[1:49:24] Voice 5: and it's delineated in terms of what we're keen on in terms of the directives

[1:49:29] Voice 5: and what we want to collaborate with and we need to aspire to in terms of the advisory.

[1:49:37] Voice 5: So I think that's my list.

[1:49:40] Voice 5: All right.

[1:49:41] Voice 5: Thank you.

[1:49:42] Voice 10: Okay.

[1:49:43] Voice 10: Trustee Graham.

[1:49:48] Voice 13: Wow.

[1:49:50] Voice 13: Such wonderful words from my co-trustees.

[1:49:52] Voice 13: I hope you're all running again, and I hope your communities put you back in the position to make these decisions.

[1:50:01] Voice 13: So just some thoughts.

[1:50:03] Voice 13: It's a survey.

[1:50:05] Voice 13: We've had lots of surveys.

[1:50:06] Voice 13: I know being on financial planning, we get surveys about the budget.

[1:50:09] Voice 13: And there are opinions.

[1:50:11] Voice 13: And it doesn't surprise me that they include the extremes of views on we're not protecting enough, we've gone too far with housing.

[1:50:20] Voice 13: And I think the whole reconciliation backlash is a direct response to the general fallout from the Cowichan and Richmond lands.

[1:50:32] Voice 13: And if you had a chance to watch Elizabeth May's speech in the legislature the other day, she just nails it.

[1:50:39] Voice 13: So I encourage you to read that because I really honor her words and the work that she's done.

[1:50:47] Voice 13: Anyway, so I'm not surprised by the survey.

[1:50:50] Voice 13: In fact, I was actually surprised by the number of people that responded.

[1:50:53] Voice 13: I thought that was pretty good.

[1:50:54] Voice 13: But again, it's a survey.

[1:50:55] Voice 13: The work that we've done as members of the Committee of the Whole and as working on this particular revision of the OCP has been pretty good.

[1:51:05] Voice 13: And I agree that it would be great to have it shorter.

[1:51:08] Voice 13: order. Always, if you can consolidate and tighten things, you've got a better document.

[1:51:13] Voice 13: The policy statement is, in fact, an official community plan for the overall

[1:51:17] Voice 13: Islands Trust. That's how I view it. It's an OCP. And of course, the actualization is all done at

[1:51:24] Voice 13: the local trust committees. So that's not really well understood by most people. In fact, it's a

[1:51:31] Voice 13: complicated municipal level, a government with a narrow mandate, and we do the best that we can.

[1:51:37] Voice 13: And we've got to stand by the work that we've done. I don't know what the next iteration of Trust Council is going to do with it.

[1:51:43] Voice 13: I hope they take the words and the work that we've done and they can consolidate, they can tighten it a little bit.

[1:51:49] Voice 13: That would be a good idea. And the fear that's pervasive right now with reconciliation will have died down a little bit by the time next year rolls around.

[1:52:00] Voice 13: This is just a heightened point in the whole thing.

[1:52:04] Voice 13: As far as did we miss anything?

[1:52:07] Voice 13: I think it's possible that we've kind of pushed this idea of increase in humans on the islands at the risk of looking after the environment.

[1:52:20] Voice 13: I think our language is maybe a little bit skewed, a little bit towards the human side.

[1:52:25] Voice 13: and we and we may have missed some of the stronger language in in environmental protection and i i've

[1:52:32] Voice 13: done that i realized that with uh uh the dem and local trust committee and the work that we've done

[1:52:37] Voice 13: with housing and and i i had a good look at the changes that we were proposing and it seems yeah

[1:52:42] Voice 13: we were just straying a little bit more into let's make sure that everybody that wants can live here

[1:52:48] Voice 13: but so I agree that perhaps this version can be looked at with that lens and thank you.

[1:52:57] Voice 10: Right thank you very much Trustee Harris is not here so Trustee Hunter.

[1:53:07] Voice 28: Thank you Chair Patrick I'll turn my video on where are you there you go

[1:53:15] Voice 28: Anyone who doesn't want to work.

[1:53:20] Voice 28: Yeah, I have a problem when 71% of the people are not happy

[1:53:27] Voice 28: of a certain aspect of the survey.

[1:53:31] Voice 28: Everyone says it's not scientific, it's this and that,

[1:53:35] Voice 28: but it comes back to me, this whole reconciliation.

[1:53:40] Voice 28: reconciliation. Yes, we want reconciliation, but why are we doing the provincial government's work

[1:53:53] Voice 28: for them? And we don't know where the Cowichan Tribes court case is going. We don't know any

[1:54:01] Voice 28: of that. So honestly, I think we should wait for the referral responses from the other 20 First

[1:54:10] Voice 28: Nations. And the Committee of the Whole and Trust Council should just basically wait until we get

[1:54:19] Voice 28: those responses so that we can see what the temperament is there. And I don't know why we're

[1:54:28] Voice 28: not listening to the public. We say, well, we should listen to the agencies and hell or to heck

[1:54:33] Voice 28: with the public. You know, they're the ones that are paying the taxes. They're the ones that that's

[1:54:40] Voice 28: where your job comes from you're looking after the people of your jurisdictions so please remember

[1:54:46] Voice 28: that and as far as land use yes we can do better um the people that talk to me don't always like

[1:54:59] Voice 28: a lot of rules they're pretty careful with their property they're not chopping it up into little

[1:55:04] Voice 28: bits. So let's work together. And I wish someone on staff could tell me or make a comment about

[1:55:16] Voice 28: co-governance, what it means, how we're going to implement it and how much it's going to cost

[1:55:22] Voice 28: and what does it look like in reality? Nobody's ever come up with that. And I keep asking about

[1:55:29] Voice 28: it and asking and asking and go, well, co-governance might mean a percentage or they

[1:55:34] Voice 28: they have an influence, or they have something to say,

[1:55:37] Voice 28: what does it mean to the Islands Trust as a body?

[1:55:43] Voice 28: Are we going to elect people from First Nations?

[1:55:46] Voice 28: And they're going to sit on Trust Council.

[1:55:49] Voice 28: Like, where is this going down the road?

[1:55:53] Voice 28: So I think we need to have that answer before,

[1:55:57] Voice 28: because the public doesn't know.

[1:55:58] Voice 28: I don't know.

[1:55:59] Voice 28: And I've been on Trust Council for almost 12 years now.

[1:56:05] Voice 28: So there you have it.

[1:56:06] Voice 28: That's my comment.

[1:56:07] Voice 28: Thank you.

[1:56:09] Voice 10: Thank you, Trustee Hunter. I think that is a big question, but I think in general,

[1:56:13] Voice 10: this is not a question that can be simply answered. We can't tell First Nations what

[1:56:17] Voice 10: co-governance looks like. It is a process. We need to engage and develop relationships

[1:56:23] Voice 10: and work together about what collaborative governance looks like. So there isn't an

[1:56:29] Voice 10: answer. We have to work with Indigenous governing bodies to develop that. Okay,

[1:56:36] Voice 10: Okay, the next person is Trustee Laroni.

[1:56:39] Voice 10: Hi, everybody.

[1:56:44] Voice 20: First, I just wanted to say that I was just really impressed

[1:56:46] Voice 20: with the wholesome analysis of the policy statement.

[1:56:50] Voice 20: And I recognize the challenge between engagement and transparency

[1:56:56] Voice 20: and wanting to get stuff done,

[1:56:58] Voice 20: but then we have to be transparent to make sure that everybody knows what we're doing.

[1:57:02] Voice 20: And then people complain about the government being slow,

[1:57:05] Voice 20: and it's just a cat 22.

[1:57:06] Voice 20: too and I do also appreciate and what people have said about the sorry brain here lack of

[1:57:20] Voice 20: simplicity and it being quite complex because people are not used to reading 500 page agendas

[1:57:26] Voice 20: like some of us here and so I think that if we could make it this a little bit more condensed

[1:57:33] Voice 20: while still keeping the original meaning that would be great but I understand the complicity

[1:57:36] Voice 20: to be with that. And I know that almost there's just been a huge lack of understanding about

[1:57:43] Voice 20: Indigenous governance and Indigenous in general, the point where it's just nasty. And I think that

[1:57:49] Voice 20: just comes from a general lack of understanding. So we'll post that video on our Facebook group,

[1:57:56] Voice 20: and hopefully that'll help. But that's just my comment. Thanks.

[1:58:00] Voice 11: All right. Thank you very much. Trustee Luckham.

[1:58:02] Trustee Luckham: Oh, thank you, Chair Patrick. It's a little overwhelming hearing all the conversation.

[1:58:16] Trustee Luckham: So I'm going to jump into it here. The only thing that is certain is the past,

[1:58:22] Trustee Luckham: and it's not pretty, kind, or just. We can choose to lead into the future with equity and justice.

[1:58:31] Trustee Luckham: this. So thank you, Chair Patrick, for your opening remarks regarding the Allen book and

[1:58:39] Trustee Luckham: reconciliation. Very much appreciated. Good way to start the day. Lost my glasses. Bear with me a

[1:58:49] Trustee Luckham: second. There we go. Just in regards to jurisdiction, no one in the province has told us to

[1:58:59] Trustee Luckham: a stop. And if we were swimming outside the bounds of our jurisdiction, somebody would have

[1:59:07] Trustee Luckham: brought that to our attention. I really liked the Likert survey. There's some interesting

[1:59:12] Trustee Luckham: information there. And in fact, what I settled on in the end, the percentages of agrees and

[1:59:17] Trustee Luckham: disagrees with every question that was put forward in the survey, if you put almost any question

[1:59:23] Trustee Luckham: about governance before Canadian people nationally, the numbers would probably come out the same.

[1:59:29] Trustee Luckham: And so at the end of the day, it's up to us to take leadership and do the right thing.

[1:59:37] Trustee Luckham: It also strikes me that through this edit process over the last two years, I think we've lost more support than we've gained.

[1:59:44] Trustee Luckham: And so any further reduction of the size of the document and the detail that's in there, we're only going to get more responses indicating that we're not being detailed enough and I don't know what you're doing.

[1:59:58] Trustee Luckham: So let's be careful about that.

[2:00:00] Trustee Luckham: These lands that we live on and govern were never vacant.

[2:00:07] Trustee Luckham: A migrant population has transformed this place and subjected the people that lived here since all time remembered.

[2:00:16] Trustee Luckham: I appreciate the remarks from Beyond Change.

[2:00:22] Trustee Luckham: Thank you for your report regarding the harmful content.

[2:00:26] Trustee Luckham: content. And thank you for your statement about we do not support those views. It begs the question

[2:00:35] Trustee Luckham: is why do we publish this? Why do we include it in our review process if they or we do not support

[2:00:47] Trustee Luckham: those racist and hateful and denial points of view? So I appreciate the support from our colleagues

[2:00:54] Trustee Luckham: in other government bodies. The referrals that have come back to us, it's not lost in the weeds.

[2:01:01] Trustee Luckham: It's generally, we support these amendments. I appreciate the acknowledgement of those First

[2:01:08] Trustee Luckham: Nations that have also responded so far. Granted, I think it's 11 out of 22 or 8 out of 22.

[2:01:16] Trustee Luckham: to. But generally, in respect, despite it's not perfect, understanding the Alliance Trust is

[2:01:24] Trustee Luckham: trying to move the dial. Was this not one of the primary goals, was to engage with First Nations

[2:01:31] Trustee Luckham: and garner their support? And so let's keep on this path and do that, despite those that disagree

[2:01:37] Trustee Luckham: with the entire premise of that responsibility, which was laid out by Murray Sinclair in the

[2:01:44] Trustee Luckham: the truth and reconciliation work done so very long ago, of which you will recall Lisa, forgetting

[2:01:51] Trustee Luckham: her last name just at this moment, worked for us in the past, pointed out those sections of that

[2:01:56] Trustee Luckham: document that local government was responsible to do, and we are definitely swimming in our lane.

[2:02:04] Trustee Luckham: We have not asked one question. Is this document that was before us better or worse than the

[2:02:13] Trustee Luckham: original policy statement. I think this is definitely a step in the right direction.

[2:02:18] Trustee Luckham: The current policy statement has been called completely inadequate. The current old version

[2:02:24] Trustee Luckham: of the policy statement has been called as completely inadequate, insulting to First

[2:02:30] Trustee Luckham: Nations people, history, and culture. Honestly, we can get lost in the weeds. I think we are lost

[2:02:40] Trustee Luckham: in the weeds we need to advance this to move the dial and absolutely those

[2:02:47] Trustee Luckham: additional clarifications and more work can come on top of this initial work

[2:02:55] Trustee Luckham: that is before us today of which I have lost track of how many years we have

[2:03:02] Trustee Luckham: been working on this and it's longer than almost every single one of us at

[2:03:07] Trustee Luckham: at this table.

[2:03:08] Trustee Luckham: Thank you, Chair Patrick, for the time

[2:03:10] Trustee Luckham: and council for listening to me.

[2:03:12] Voice 10: Thank you.

[2:03:13] Voice 10: Trustee Maberly.

[2:03:17] Voice 27: Thank you, Chair.

[2:03:19] Voice 27: So I look at this from a couple of different perspectives.

[2:03:24] Voice 27: The great part about going first, Sam,

[2:03:27] Voice 27: is all of your ideas are original.

[2:03:29] Voice 27: Nothing I'm saying will be original.

[2:03:31] Voice 27: Everybody has said it already.

[2:03:33] Voice 27: But I think we're in the middle of a process

[2:03:40] Voice 27: We still have to hear from a significant amount of nations, and so that's the work of staff, and that's the work that should proceed.

[2:03:51] Voice 27: We can't do anything until we've heard from those nations, and then we'll take their input.

[2:03:56] Voice 27: And whether we make changes or not, that'll be our job.

[2:04:04] Voice 27: This job has not been made any easier by the provincial government and their handling of the aftermath of the Cowichan decision and the Kitsagatla decision.

[2:04:21] Voice 27: So, you know, we still do the work.

[2:04:24] Voice 27: I mean, that's our job.

[2:04:25] Voice 27: I mean, staff can still continue to consult.

[2:04:28] Voice 27: salt. I think I have heard pretty clearly from my constituents that there still needs to be a

[2:04:36] Voice 27: considerable amount of more engagement from the public. That's what my constituents are saying.

[2:04:44] Voice 27: So, you know, as a trustee, as elected trustee, I would like to see more engagement. I'm not

[2:04:53] Voice 27: quite sure what form that engagement takes, but we need to keep hearing from the public.

[2:04:59] Voice 27: But I think Lisa or Trustee Gavreau is right when she, in her comments, we need to, as local trustees, endeavor to have face-to-face negotiations with our local nations.

[2:05:23] Voice 27: I think that's a really important step here.

[2:05:28] Voice 27: we've seen when we've done that in the past that it it really improves the um the outcome

[2:05:38] Voice 27: of what we're trying to achieve so i think that's important there is absolutely no rush here this is

[2:05:45] Voice 27: clearly not getting done before the next election and so from that perspective let's continue to do

[2:05:52] Voice 27: the work i will speak about i mean i i'm when i when i look at this document and when um i hear

[2:06:08] Voice 27: um phrases like you know for the executive to enforce the policies and and that i i start to

[2:06:20] Voice 27: worry that we're creating um the very thing that um a lot of our constituents and there's a reason

[2:06:29] Voice 27: um a lot of people move to the gulf islands and both uh trustee hunter and barthwick touched on

[2:06:36] Voice 27: this is a lot of our constituents are incredibly independent and um and have moved away from rural

[2:06:44] Voice 27: areas or urban areas to to be in rural areas where um there's more freedom to um i wouldn't

[2:06:55] Voice 27: say anti-government but um you know there's there's just more freedom so i think the problem

[2:06:59] Voice 27: is is if we try to create a document that's so cumbersome that needs to be

[2:07:04] Voice 27: enforced by the executive committee or staff I think the problem we're running

[2:07:11] Voice 27: into is is we eventually get to a point where local LCC's aren't making any

[2:07:17] Voice 27: decisions right those decisions are going to be made from the top down and I

[2:07:23] Voice 27: apologize to trustee Gavreau and trustee Peterson because I constantly talk about

[2:07:28] Voice 27: The reality is that good governance in local communities is always from the bottom up. It's never from the top down. And we have to be aware of that. We have to be aware that we are not a 26 island community.

[2:07:46] Voice 27: We are a bunch of small communities, and each community needs to have the ability to elect trustees and allow those trustees to do what they feel they need to do for their constituents.

[2:08:03] Voice 27: There is no way you can convince me that what Salisbury needs and what Lasketeen needs, islands of 20,000 people and probably 200 to 300 people are the same.

[2:08:20] Voice 27: That's just the needs are not the same.

[2:08:23] Voice 27: The goals are not the same.

[2:08:25] Voice 27: And every island is different.

[2:08:27] Voice 27: And I think we need to be really aware of that.

[2:08:30] Voice 27: and so you know i sort of i i'm gonna go back to that to my original where i started was we have

[2:08:39] Voice 27: some work to do let's continue to do the work there's going to be a a new trust council let's

[2:08:46] Voice 27: let them look at the work we've done it's not our job to direct them on on what they should or

[2:08:55] Voice 27: shouldn't do. It's our job to continue to do our job and present them with what we've been able to

[2:09:02] Voice 27: attain in our time. And so that's where I'll leave it. I think let's continue to do our job

[2:09:12] Voice 27: and let's just be really mindful about the feedback we're getting from our local constituents.

[2:09:21] Voice 27: constituents. Sure, the survey is 1,800 people, but 30,000 people live here. There is a lot of

[2:09:28] Voice 27: feedback yet to get. And yeah, so I'll leave it there. Thank you, Chair.

[2:09:35] Voice 10: Thank you. Trustee Maude.

[2:09:37] Trustee Maude: Thank you, Chair. It's always difficult when you come sort of at the end of the train and

[2:09:43] Trustee Maude: out at the beginning of the train, because you reflect on what others have said. I must say,

[2:09:50] Trustee Maude: Through this process, I've gone from being exceptionally optimistic

[2:09:53] Trustee Maude: to being somewhat humbled by the survey results.

[2:10:01] Trustee Maude: What I saw from the constituents that I spoke to over the trust area

[2:10:05] Trustee Maude: was I thought people were generally happy with the trust policy statement

[2:10:10] Trustee Maude: with the draft that we rolled out last year.

[2:10:14] Trustee Maude: I'm humbled. I'm wrong.

[2:10:16] Trustee Maude: Now, the survey results are in no way, shape, or form of what I expected they would have done.

[2:10:29] Trustee Maude: I have to say, in reflection, as my predecessors and my much more well-speaking colleagues on Trust Council,

[2:10:40] Trustee Maude: Council is like beginning with Trustee Borthwick. I agree that, you know, the next iteration,

[2:10:49] Trustee Maude: if it was smaller and a little bit more lean and limber, I think that would be a really good way

[2:10:57] Trustee Maude: to go with the document because it has grown to be quite large. And then sometimes the people

[2:11:02] Trustee Maude: have stated being cumbersome. I agree very much with Trustee Maberly with his comments about the

[2:11:10] Trustee Maude: the mandatory direct policies is that each Island is unique.

[2:11:16] Trustee Maude: And when we go down a road of direct policies,

[2:11:21] Trustee Maude: we're not allowing the islands to be unique.

[2:11:24] Trustee Maude: It's hard to be able to combine a document

[2:11:29] Trustee Maude: as he says that both represents a place such as Salt Spring

[2:11:33] Trustee Maude: and a place such as Liskety.

[2:11:37] Trustee Maude: The community needs or differences and interests

[2:11:39] Trustee Maude: are totally different, and sometimes the directive stuff

[2:11:45] Trustee Maude: just does not work.

[2:11:49] Trustee Maude: I also agree with how many of my colleagues have spoken

[2:11:54] Trustee Maude: about the need not to necessarily pause,

[2:11:56] Trustee Maude: but reflect on the fact that we have an election coming up.

[2:12:03] Trustee Maude: We're looking at a substantial change,

[2:12:05] Trustee Maude: likely in trust council, given the number of trustees

[2:12:08] Trustee Maude: who have verbalized at this point

[2:12:10] Trustee Maude: that they are not gonna be running again,

[2:12:12] Trustee Maude: So this is going to go under a whole new lens.

[2:12:15] Trustee Maude: So I don't think Trust Council should be putting a lot of energy into anything going forward until after the election.

[2:12:24] Trustee Maude: There's work definitely can be done in the background, but, you know, anything that we do now won't be sort of necessarily embraced by the next Trust Council.

[2:12:35] Trustee Maude: So thank you very much for the opportunity.

[2:12:38] Trustee Maude: As I say, I'm humbled and I'm also looking forward to the future.

[2:12:42] Trustee Maude: Thank you.

[2:12:43] Voice 10: Thank you. I think Trustee Morrison's not here, so I'm next on the list.

[2:12:49] Voice 10: When I read and hear a lot of the comments that came through the What We Heard report, I think of clarity and communications being, and even what I just heard around this table, is not a clear and definitive understanding of what it is the trust policy statement is.

[2:13:09] Voice 10: that is concerning to me, specifically from this table. I can understand the community.

[2:13:17] Voice 10: So what is a trust policy statement and what are we trying to achieve? It is not an OCP.

[2:13:22] Voice 10: It could be. It could be highly directive and it could highly tell every island what to do.

[2:13:27] Voice 10: We have that authority. I don't believe this document does that. We are trying to be a high

[2:13:33] Voice 10: level guidance document of laying out what our preserve and protect mandate is. And then we hear

[2:13:39] Voice 10: comments that, oh, we're getting into other jurisdictions. Well, you might want to read

[2:13:42] Voice 10: the Islands Trust Act, in particular Section 35. No regional district can implement any work

[2:13:48] Voice 10: or bylaw that isn't conforming with our bylaws from a local trust committee. So we do have

[2:13:58] Voice 10: authority to tell other organizations what to do. From working toward collaboration with First

[2:14:04] Voice 10: First Nations. Is this trust policy statement the path to get there? No. It indicates our interest,

[2:14:11] Voice 10: our desires, our vision. But I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done with First

[2:14:17] Voice 10: Nations to truly move in that direction. To me, that's parallel. It's something else other than

[2:14:22] Voice 10: this document. We indicate our direction here and it's how we come through. So I think we need

[2:14:27] Voice 10: clarity. And I'm hoping that the handbook and the implementation plan are documents that will do

[2:14:32] Voice 10: that. So where I'm coming from is I think there's been a lot of really good feedback we've received

[2:14:40] Voice 10: already, in particular from the agencies. And I think there's an opportunity to work with staff

[2:14:44] Voice 10: to take that and clarify that as to what that could look like in changes. Again, identifying

[2:14:50] Voice 10: what could be changes. I'm not saying change the document necessarily, but let's understand what

[2:14:54] Voice 10: changes could be done in particular to meet the agencies and the referral agencies and the First

[2:14:58] Voice 10: nations that have commented and will continue to comment in the months to come. I think we owe it

[2:15:05] Voice 10: to the next trust council to continue to do that work. Let's leave them with as much information

[2:15:10] Voice 10: and strong a package as possible at the end of this term. So as Trustee Borthwick said, we started

[2:15:15] Voice 10: our term with almost two years of nothing in our hands. Let's leave the next trust council on day

[2:15:21] Voice 10: one a strong package that we left it in as good a shape as possible. So I come from the grounds of

[2:15:28] Voice 10: Well, let's keep working. Let's keep pulling this together. Let's not stop that work. And so that we can have, like I said, as strong a package as possible at the end of the term so that they start out of the gate running, not limping. So the next person then is Trustee Peterson.

[2:15:50] Voice 10: Great

[2:15:54] Voice 25: to hear everyone's different and similar perspectives today.

[2:16:00] Voice 25: I think survey responses, you know, the stage four engagement really points out a number of tensions that are sort of inherent.

[2:16:13] Voice 25: The federation versus local autonomy. Directive policies being overly restrictive versus not being specific enough or enforceable was one of the words that was cropped up a number of times.

[2:16:34] Voice 25: times um hindsight i i i think we could have done um i think we could have laid out the whole

[2:16:44] Voice 25: process differently uh but we are where we are now so what are what are the next steps that make

[2:16:51] Voice 25: sense um i think uh the continued engagement with first nations is essential and that has to

[2:17:03] Voice 25: to continue um that work has to has to happen uh so to me that's that's a given um i think there

[2:17:12] Voice 25: was some valuable input as others mentioned uh from some of the agencies and certainly um

[2:17:18] Voice 25: uh ministry municipal affairs we had best be taking careful look at what uh what uh they're

[2:17:30] Voice 25: are saying because they're they're ultimately the the approval agency uh for whatever whichever

[2:17:35] Voice 25: trust council uh ends up advancing a new policy statement um we're in an interesting time in the

[2:17:47] Voice 25: province and and i i'm not sure that the preponderance of uh survey responses um would

[2:17:59] Voice 25: would have been the same a year or two ago or a few years from now.

[2:18:05] Voice 25: We know that the couch in cases, there's a lot of uncertainty

[2:18:13] Voice 25: and there's a lot of fear and that's not going to be resolved anytime soon.

[2:18:21] Voice 25: And at the same time, there has been a concerted effort

[2:18:28] Voice 25: by some political bodies in our province to really push the fear narrative.

[2:18:34] Voice 25: And it's quite concerning, but it's not surprising that we're hearing

[2:18:39] Voice 25: what we're hearing from our populations.

[2:18:43] Voice 25: It's not surprising at all.

[2:18:45] Voice 25: I think we could have done a better job in our communicating out

[2:18:50] Voice 25: what it is we mean

[2:18:52] Voice 25: when we talk about our relations

[2:18:55] Voice 25: with Indigenous governing bodies.

[2:18:57] Voice 25: So I see there's some missed opportunities there.

[2:19:02] Voice 25: But how do we go forward?

[2:19:04] Voice 25: I think we need to keep on the engagement work

[2:19:09] Voice 25: with First Nations.

[2:19:10] Voice 25: I think we definitely need to think about

[2:19:16] Voice 25: what's the companion book,

[2:19:17] Voice 25: what's the implementation plan because when we have an implementation plan to point at

[2:19:24] Voice 25: i think it could help answer a lot of the uh a lot of the questions and uh i have lots more to say

[2:19:31] Voice 25: but i'll i'll wrap for the moment all

[2:19:33] Voice 10: right thank you trustee peterson so i think we have trustee

[2:19:37] Voice 10: scott and stanford or not with us today so trustee yates thank

[2:19:42] Voice 2: you chair patrick and thank you

[2:19:44] Voice 2: everyone for your really good comments um i want to thank you uh chair patrick for your opening um

[2:19:51] Voice 2: and talking about george abbott and adam olsen's book i i too find that book very inspiring and um

[2:20:00] Voice 2: just giving us lots of hope working for the future so it was a great way to start this session um

[2:20:08] Voice 2: And I'm also really grateful for the organization, the agency, Be the Change, for doing that coding and analysis, because we have had criticism from the public on, well, how are you going to figure out what it all means?

[2:20:22] Voice 2: And I love their name, Be the Change.

[2:20:26] Voice 2: That's what we need to do.

[2:20:27] Voice 2: We need to be that change.

[2:20:29] Voice 2: and we have these reconciliation and climate change declarations that we made

[2:20:37] Voice 2: well before other government agencies and we need to back those with our leadership

[2:20:44] Voice 2: as as as you've probably heard before we need to vote our hopes and and not our fears i think

[2:20:53] Voice 2: that's really important. So practical things, I'm looking forward to the handbook and the

[2:20:59] Voice 2: implementation. That will be very helpful. I'm sort of mixed as to whether the trust policy

[2:21:06] Voice 2: statement should be shorter in length. A number of comments I've received from the public who

[2:21:12] Voice 2: really care is that it's way too long. On the other hand, it's a really important guiding

[2:21:19] Voice 2: document. It is a bylaw. And despite the fact that we all feel the individuality of our communities,

[2:21:28] Voice 2: and I appreciate that, because I have visited all of your islands in the last two years.

[2:21:33] Voice 2: And I love how they're different. And I love how they're the same. The one thing that we might

[2:21:40] Voice 2: forget as a council is that the province sees us as a federation. The Act has put those 13 islands

[2:21:48] Voice 2: for a reason together and so as much as we'd like to have our individuality we're not elected as

[2:21:57] Voice 2: councillors we're elected as trustees and our job is to support our local community

[2:22:03] Voice 2: and the federation so i want us to remember that as we go forward um um i appreciate a trustee

[2:22:13] Voice 2: Govro's comment about maybe we could send an encouraging letter to the next council

[2:22:18] Voice 2: I expect what will be most useful is to continue working on this give the next council the best

[2:22:25] Voice 2: package we can as others have said and I'm sure staff will be very helpful in summarizing our work

[2:22:33] Voice 2: of the 30 indigenous governing bodies who have had this referred I think 10 responses is pretty good

[2:22:43] Voice 2: because it's a long statement to read and consider.

[2:22:46] Voice 2: So we need to wait for the other 20.

[2:22:50] Voice 2: We're in a new era and we need to be patient.

[2:22:56] Voice 2: Thank you.

[2:22:59] Voice 10: So we've gotten to the end of our speaker's list.

[2:23:02] Voice 10: I know three minutes for some felt long

[2:23:06] Voice 10: and for others felt not long enough.

[2:23:09] Voice 10: I want to look back.

[2:23:10] Voice 10: Are there, I don't want to rehash or re-argue,

[2:23:13] Voice 10: you, but did you have more words that you wished to say? Are there more of you that feel you'd like

[2:23:20] Voice 10: another chance to come back? I'll come at it alphabetically best I can. I see two hands raised.

[2:23:26] Voice 10: Are there others that want to? I see Trustee Peterson. We have three people who would like

[2:23:36] Voice 10: another chance to add on to what they had. So, okay, I'm going to go at it alphabetically. So,

[2:23:40] Voice 10: Trustee Borthwick, I know you always get to go first. Lucky you.

[2:23:45] Voice 23: um yes no and thank you for for giving me a chance to sort of come back around and i i i

[2:23:50] Voice 23: really appreciate the the the conversation that we're having around this i share a lot of the

[2:23:54] Voice 23: opinions and um you know number one one of the things that i meant to say i forgot to was

[2:24:01] Voice 23: absolutely i think we need to wait and hear the rest of of the referrals for especially from first

[2:24:05] Voice 23: nations um i would not want to interrupt that process by any means um and uh and yeah i mean

[2:24:15] Voice 23: obviously the tension between a federation and and individuation is is important and a key is it will

[2:24:22] Voice 23: will always be a question for the islands trust um i think the my desire for a for a simplified

[2:24:31] Voice 23: qualified document. I think there's, there's a part of this that is, yes, obviously we're

[2:24:35] Voice 23: hearing engagement that some people think it's too complicated. Some people think it's not

[2:24:38] Voice 23: complicated enough. Um, there's a lot of people. And I think that again, this is stuff that is

[2:24:44] Voice 23: inherently missed out of the surveys than the engagement that we're going to do always is that

[2:24:50] Voice 23: there's a lot of people who just don't care, uh, or, or, or at least have a real, have such a hard

[2:24:56] Voice 23: time engaging with, they care deeply about what happens in their community. They have a very hard

[2:25:00] Voice 23: hard time engaging with the way that government works. Um, and that's not an unreasonable thing

[2:25:06] Voice 23: to be. Um, and, and, and certainly, you know, not everyone should have to deal with every bit of

[2:25:13] Voice 23: minutiae. Um, and one of the, one of the important lessons for me as a new trustee, as a new public

[2:25:19] Voice 23: servant in this is, you know, uh, to some degree, I came in with the intention of wanting to make

[2:25:26] Voice 23: sure that i was listening to everyone and being a conduit for the voice of my community to this body

[2:25:33] Voice 23: um but also one of the things the the realization that i've had as i've gone on also is that

[2:25:40] Voice 23: in being elected uh the people who chose to put me in this position knew something of who i was

[2:25:47] Voice 23: and my voice and my perspective and to some degree have invested their trust in me to to speak to my

[2:25:55] Voice 23: my own perspectives and, and, and, and understandings of the world. And so there's also a degree of

[2:26:03] Voice 23: responsibility that we have to be true to ourselves and our own understanding. And there's a lot of

[2:26:08] Voice 23: things I'm, I'm, I'm a stealth Brit. I grew up in the UK. I got to watch Brexit happen from the

[2:26:15] Voice 23: sidelines and, you know, was in this position where the decision to make a dramatic change

[2:26:22] Voice 23: was made by a number of people who who ought to have had the who ought who who stated that they

[2:26:29] Voice 23: didn't think it was a good thing to do um and then they went ahead and did it anyways because it was

[2:26:34] Voice 23: they were handing off responsibility to the public i think it's also important for those of us who

[2:26:39] Voice 23: are in this position who spend a lot of our time concentrating and focusing on the questions and

[2:26:43] Voice 23: and the issues that reflect this federation

[2:26:47] Voice 23: to also show bravery.

[2:26:50] Voice 23: I 100% refute the racist comments

[2:26:55] Voice 23: that have come through this process.

[2:26:56] Voice 23: I think that's, I think they're awful.

[2:27:00] Voice 23: I would want us to make sure that we're doing this

[2:27:02] Voice 23: in a way that we're going forward in a good way.

[2:27:05] Voice 23: But yeah, I think there's a world in which this document

[2:27:09] Voice 23: is a higher level thing and I am hesitant to,

[2:27:14] Voice 23: uh hesitant for us to to waste a lot more ink there's a lot of people who've gotten very

[2:27:19] Voice 23: snarled up in this process and i think we're we're potentially distracting from our our

[2:27:23] Voice 23: potential to do good things by getting up in a very philosophical discussion about how and what

[2:27:28] Voice 23: those things will be um i think there's more consensus than than we realize in some cases

[2:27:33] Voice 23: um anyways thank you very much and sorry for going long again that's

[2:27:39] Voice 10: all right trustee evans

[2:27:40] Voice 10: than Getty. Thanks.

[2:27:44] Voice 15: I just wanted again to say that there's a lot of good feedback that we

[2:27:48] Voice 15: received in this referral process and the survey and everything else. And yes, some gaps were

[2:27:56] Voice 15: identified that I think that we really should look to and what we can do about it. I don't know what

[2:28:03] Voice 15: we can do between now and the end of our term, but looking at education, especially around First

[2:28:08] Voice 15: Nations rights. I think we should continue to work on some of the constructive feedback that

[2:28:14] Voice 15: we received and where possible we can do some merging or simplifying of the text or sections.

[2:28:23] Voice 15: The areas that receive the most positive information, take a look at those and see

[2:28:29] Voice 15: if there's anything that we can do to further strengthen those and the areas that receive the

[2:28:34] Voice 15: the least support. Take a look at that and see why. Is that lack of education? Is that lack of

[2:28:42] Voice 15: awareness? Is that lack of understanding? Or did we get something wrong? Have we worded it in such

[2:28:48] Voice 15: a way that it's not clear? And I always think of the phrasing, I apologize for the length of my

[2:28:55] Voice 15: letter. I didn't have the time to shorten it. So I think us taking the time while we have it

[2:29:02] Voice 15: to get the wording right is really important because getting the wording right means that

[2:29:07] Voice 15: the interpretation of it becomes clearer not just for the trustees that are looking at

[2:29:13] Voice 15: implementing it but also the public that are receiving it as well as other government agencies

[2:29:20] Voice 15: and other organizations that rely on it so those are sort of my other points that I wanted to make

[2:29:28] Voice 15: earlier and staff have a lot of comments and suggestions that they put into this document

[2:29:33] Voice 15: as well i think it behooves us to go through that um and look at what they what's been recommended

[2:29:39] Voice 15: and see what fits with uh with the direction that we wish to go in so i am for the additional

[2:29:45] Voice 15: meetings i think we need to have them um it's it's uh the work that we need to do and um

[2:29:51] Voice 15: like Chair Patrick said, let's get this to a point that it sets the incoming council up.

[2:30:00] Voice 15: for the most success possible. Thank you.

[2:30:03] Voice 11: Thank you. Trustee Getty then Hunter.

[2:30:09] Voice 5: Thanks. One of the things that came out and somewhere in all of these documents was that

[2:30:15] Voice 5: there was some concerns with respect to capacity and I'm just wondering if we can get some

[2:30:22] Voice 5: feedback and I guess have a future discussion in terms of next steps in terms of what we need to do

[2:30:30] Voice 5: possibly budget-wise, and staff work plans in terms of making sure that if we want to try and

[2:30:37] Voice 5: get more feedback from these other First Nations that haven't replied yet, is it an issue of their

[2:30:45] Voice 5: capacity? Do we have any more funding in terms of capacity building for them and for us? And if not,

[2:30:52] Voice 5: and I guess it goes back to that issue that was on the Executive Committee in terms of,

[2:30:57] Voice 5: you know, what do we do with the province in terms of asking them for more

[2:31:01] Voice 5: support? So I'd like someone

[2:31:05] Voice 5: in terms of our discussions about next steps

[2:31:09] Voice 5: and wanting to get that more detailed feedback from more groups.

[2:31:14] Voice 5: What are the limitations and what do we have to do to correct or

[2:31:19] Voice 5: ameliorate that?

[2:31:24] Voice 11: Thank you.

[2:31:25] Voice 11: I think Trustee Hunter had to leave. Oh no, so Trustee Leckham.

[2:31:30] Voice 11: Thank

[2:31:33] Trustee Luckham: you, Chair, once again. The question has come up about co-governance. What does that mean? I don't know. But I think that democracy represents co-governance and that democracy engages people in governance.

[2:31:54] Trustee Luckham: Historically, people of color, women, haven't participated in democracy.

[2:32:02] Trustee Luckham: In Canada, Indigenous people have not only been not engaged in democracy through voting.

[2:32:14] Trustee Luckham: They have not been able to vote. They could not own land.

[2:32:19] Trustee Luckham: They were moved onto reserves. They had their children taken away.

[2:32:22] Trustee Luckham: way. They had their culture, language, and possessions stolen. The very democracy we enjoy

[2:32:31] Trustee Luckham: has trampled others throughout time. And it's not the fault of democracy or co-governance

[2:32:41] Trustee Luckham: involving people. It's the lack of the voices at the table and the leadership at the table

[2:32:46] Trustee Luckham: to provide equity for all and i think it says that somewhere in other documents so

[2:32:55] Trustee Luckham: let's consider that moving forward let's not be afraid of the future let's embrace the future

[2:33:01] Trustee Luckham: thank you

[2:33:03] Voice 10: thank you trustee peterson i

[2:33:07] Voice 25: appreciate um a couple calls around this table

[2:33:11] Voice 25: um for leadership for for bold vision um i again want to just digress back to

[2:33:23] Voice 25: um i think one of the missing pieces um that we didn't do a great job on is is answering the

[2:33:33] Voice 25: questions what does this mean what do directive policies mean how is this operationalized and

[2:33:39] Voice 25: And in the lack of the implementation plan of the companion handbook, those questions loom large for many.

[2:33:48] Voice 25: I also want to sort of note the notion of waiting responses.

[2:33:54] Voice 25: I know in my own community, there are a number of people who come to our meetings and express their fear and opposition to our work and reconciliation.

[2:34:13] Voice 25: conciliation. And I'm very cognizant that that is nowhere near a majority in my community.

[2:34:24] Voice 25: That is a small minority. And so when we look at survey results with the results that we see,

[2:34:33] Voice 25: again, I'm not surprised given the context. As I mentioned earlier, if this had happened two years

[2:34:38] Voice 25: years ago, we might have had very different numbers to look at. And at the same time,

[2:34:46] Voice 25: seeing those numbers that we do see doesn't convince me that we need to drop this work or

[2:34:53] Voice 25: take a different approach. When it comes to our reconciliation work, I believe we need to keep

[2:35:00] Voice 25: doing it. We need to show the leadership. And we need to do a better job of explaining

[2:35:05] Voice 25: defining um what it is we mean there was a number of things in the text that that people found

[2:35:11] Voice 25: confusing we mentioned co-governance and although it was very clear to me what we were mentioning

[2:35:17] Voice 25: was um that we had we were acknowledging the express desire of nations for co-governance

[2:35:24] Voice 25: that does not mean we are offering co-governance we certainly don't have the jurisdictional space

[2:35:30] Voice 25: space to do that at this point um so there that's just one example where you know lessons learned we

[2:35:37] Voice 25: could have done better um and then yeah sort of the the operationally like what does it mean when

[2:35:46] Voice 25: we have these directive policies that say x y or z um in relationship to the aspirations of our

[2:35:54] Voice 25: communities to to bring bylaws that are are important um to our communities so i i don't

[2:36:03] Voice 25: know that i uh would necessarily endorse all of the proposed meetings but i definitely think we

[2:36:09] Voice 25: need to have some more um before the end of term and uh um because there's so much here thank you

[2:36:17] Voice 25: thank

[2:36:18] Voice 19: you trustee dodds i just want to say well i i think that we need to have a shorter simpler

[2:36:24] Voice 19: simpler policy statement, I certainly do not think that we are going to give up all of the work we've

[2:36:29] Voice 19: done in reconciliation. So when I've heard people's concerns about the way the survey went,

[2:36:37] Voice 19: I don't share those concerns. I don't hear those in my community. I see nothing but ongoing

[2:36:42] Voice 19: reconciliation programs on Nain Island. And I do think, yes, we need to take a leadership role in

[2:36:49] Voice 19: that. It's how we actually lay out the policy statement, how we approach it, how we explain it.

[2:36:54] Voice 19: that's what's important. So just wanted to be clear on that. We definitely have a role to play

[2:36:59] Voice 19: and we will be playing that on into the future.

[2:37:04] Voice 10: Thank you. Trustee Luckin, your hand was still

[2:37:06] Voice 10: raised. Did you have something else to add or?

[2:37:10] Trustee Luckham: Negative on that. Sorry.

[2:37:12] Voice 10: All right. Well,

[2:37:14] Voice 10: thank you, trustees. I think we're heard a lot. I just wanted to turn to staff for a moment. And

[2:37:19] Voice 10: we understand the companion handbook and the implementation plan is underway. And I'd like

[2:37:25] Voice 10: to just ask staff approximately what was what timeline uh were those two pieces um on go ahead

[2:37:38] Voice 10: jason

[2:37:39] Voice 22: sure thank you chair um so we have a draft of the companion handbook um i would like to see

[2:37:49] Voice 22: it run through um sort of a thorough filter of our planning department um before we bring that

[2:37:56] Voice 22: forward. I don't know if the director of planning can jump in here with an idea of his availability

[2:38:04] Voice 22: or his team's availability to take a look at that and the extent to which we can prioritize that

[2:38:10] Voice 22: work. Certainly, the June trust council meeting seems feasible to me, but I don't know if my

[2:38:18] Voice 22: colleagues would agree with that. I know it's in a reasonable state right now. What we bring forward

[2:38:27] Voice 22: yeah, is not necessarily going to be the finished version, but we want to ensure that what we put

[2:38:32] Voice 22: out there is something that we can confidently stand behind. And then on the implementation

[2:38:37] Voice 22: front, yeah, I feel reasonably confident suggesting that June Trust Council could be

[2:38:43] Voice 22: doable for that as well.

[2:38:46] Voice 12: Right, thank you. Because

[2:38:47] Voice 22: a lot of the work has been done. It's just a

[2:38:50] Voice 22: matter of, yeah, finalizing it.

[2:38:53] Voice 10: I appreciate that. Director Cermak, did you have anything you wanted

[2:38:56] Voice 10: to add or no

[2:38:59] Voice 1: i just heard my name summarized and i was busily working on the sidelines but but i

[2:39:02] Voice 1: understand the question to be was whether or not the review that we have up to date is ready for

[2:39:07] Voice 1: june trust council and i know that staff have been working

[2:39:10] Voice 6: jason

[2:39:11] Voice 1: and i have been working together

[2:39:12] Voice 1: with a bunch of other staff and we feel reasonably prepared to bring it to trust council but if

[2:39:16] Voice 1: there's any outstanding questions i'd be happy to answer them thank

[2:39:20] Voice 10: you i just was trying to get

[2:39:22] Voice 10: some frame frame for um the trustees um uh director freighter did you have anything to add i see your

[2:39:27] Voice 10: camera on now too?

[2:39:29] Voice 14: I would certainly just add what we could bring forward is a discussion draft,

[2:39:32] Voice 14: right? So it wouldn't be a polished, completely final product. It would be a product brought

[2:39:36] Voice 14: forward for feedback to then send us back and continue refining. So I think as long as it's

[2:39:41] Voice 14: brought forward with that understanding that it's there for discussion purposes and feedback,

[2:39:45] Voice 14: then I think, yes, we could have something ready.

[2:39:48] Voice 10: Yeah, I think that's what I was more or less,

[2:39:51] Voice 10: I would, you know, this group, of course, we're going to have opinions.

[2:39:57] Voice 10: All right. So that's work that's coming. So we know that this Trust Council will be seeing that and have an opportunity to weigh in on those two pieces of work.

[2:40:10] Voice 10: Um, I wanted to sort of to test, uh, there was some, I can't say there was strong, but I heard there was some interest in seeing, uh, direction to staff to, to continue to, um, make suggestions for changes to the document based on what they were hearing, hearing from referral agencies.

[2:40:29] Voice 10: I guess a quick straw poll, that might be a way to do it.

[2:40:32] Voice 10: if you could raise your, is that something you were interested in? We'd have to frame that

[2:40:36] Voice 10: question, but are you interested in giving, requesting staff to continue to work on what

[2:40:41] Voice 10: changes would be possible based on what they're hearing from in particular referral agencies in

[2:40:48] Voice 10: First Nations? Is there interest in giving direction? And the

[2:40:54] Trustee Elliott: LTCs, the LTCs were referral

[2:40:58] Trustee Elliott: agencies. I think that's an important swath of data that we could discuss. Thanks.

[2:41:04] Voice 10: Okay. So I saw some nods was on that. So that's a possible resolution that we would need. Trustee

[2:41:12] Voice 10: Getty, were you just indicating some interest in that question?

[2:41:16] Voice 5: Well, I'm wondering if what you're thinking of is that we get fed it in dribs and drabs or that

[2:41:21] Voice 5: that we have some sort of a summary for one of these possible meetings.

[2:41:27] Voice 10: That's exact. I think that's, no, we don't want it to be,

[2:41:30] Voice 10: I don't think dribs and drabs are going to help anyone.

[2:41:33] Voice 10: I think that would be a work piece of, you know,

[2:41:36] Voice 10: staff to summarize the recommendations and sort of where it came from.

[2:41:41] Voice 10: This agency made this suggestion or this is how they would recommend it.

[2:41:45] Voice 10: Trustee Fast?

[2:41:47] Voice 12: Yeah, I agree.

[2:41:47] Voice 12: I think that's the way to go, is to let staff keep taking in the input that we've asked for.

[2:41:55] Voice 12: And I see that the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing is also out there shaking the bushes, trying to get other referral groups to respond, as well as the 21st Nations.

[2:42:09] Voice 12: I mean, all of those people who've been invited for their input, let's keep having staff receive the input and doing the good work of figuring out how it could be or should be incorporated. Thank you.

[2:42:23] Voice 10: All right. So that's a possible next step. Are there other next steps that I didn't hear? Was there any other different versions that someone felt? Trustee Getty?

[2:42:38] Voice 10: Well,

[2:42:38] Voice 5: I guess I'm wondering if the trust and our staff do some bush shaking, if that's the right verb, but, you know, trying to figure out how we can increase and help people react to this.

[2:42:56] Voice 5: I

[2:42:57] Voice 10: believe, I guess I'll turn to staff again, I think, Jason Yeomans, what I understand without our need of further direction, is staff continuing to rattle those that have not responded to the referrals?

[2:43:13] Voice 10: Sure.

[2:43:15] Voice 22: So of agency and government body referrals, we sent out the original referral package and then sent a reminder email, I think, a month after or something like that.

[2:43:27] Voice 22: And then with regional districts specifically, because they are referenced in the Islands Trust Act as being, they are the only body with whom Trust Council is required to engage on the policy statement.

[2:43:40] Voice 22: uh we were directed or suggested strongly by the ministry of municipal affairs that they want to

[2:43:46] Voice 22: ensure that we have gathered all of their feedback so we made some direct phone calls after that and

[2:43:51] Voice 22: made sure that uh trust council would receive feedback from all the regional districts in the

[2:43:55] Voice 22: trust area and you do now have you do have that um it wasn't staff's intention at this point to go

[2:44:02] Voice 22: back to any other referral agencies or government bodies insofar as they are mature organizations

[2:44:08] Voice 22: They received the referral. They received a follow-up. It's incumbent upon them to respond or not. But if you would like us to send one further reminder to the outstanding agencies and government bodies to see if anybody missed it, we can certainly do so. And I would take that direction.

[2:44:25] Voice 22: protection um indigenous governing bodies are a little bit different insofar as you know the

[2:44:32] Voice 22: province's expectation is is something along the lines of it takes as long as it takes and you need

[2:44:37] Voice 22: to demonstrate to the minister that you have done the best that you can to to get those responses

[2:44:43] Voice 22: and so that's work that continues to to be ongoing and you know we're we're making the phone calls

[2:44:49] Voice 22: we're making the rounds um and we'll continue to do so until we feel confident that we've done

[2:44:55] Voice 22: the most that we can to to um garner garner their interest in the project

[2:45:00] Voice 10: thank you so i think we've

[2:45:02] Voice 10: heard from staff that they're continuing to work with uh to pursue first nations uh responses and

[2:45:08] Voice 10: work with first nations uh if you wish further direction on agencies that didn't respond we would

[2:45:16] Voice 10: have to give that any other next steps that like i said that i that you would you think we should

[2:45:27] Voice 10: consider or recommend today so if we are to request staff to um to do um to continue to

[2:45:45] Voice 10: summarize or to report back on recommendations i think we'll have to we'll have to work on a

[2:45:50] Voice 10: resolution for that uh trustee getty we

[2:45:54] Voice 5: want to set up some of these meetings and figure

[2:45:56] Voice 5: out what the topics would be and i mean that's going to involve some staff work

[2:46:00] Voice 5: Yeah, that's next steps if we can agree on having any and when and what we're talking about.

[2:46:07] Voice 10: I think we hear we're going to have some pieces of important work coming, a handbook and an implementation plan, and if we do support a resolution requesting a report on recommended or possible changes or recommended changes following from referral agencies and First Nations,

[2:46:29] Voice 10: that that would have to be worked on through.

[2:46:32] Voice 10: So would you like to have that table put back up on the screen, Trustee Elliott?

[2:46:38] Trustee Elliott: Yeah, I was just going to ask that.

[2:46:41] Trustee Elliott: So there had been a proposal for the June 4th potential date with discussing public engagement results,

[2:46:49] Trustee Elliott: requesting staff advice on potential revisions.

[2:46:53] Trustee Elliott: I wonder about the feasibility or how soon could we get sort of a compilation summary report on the referral agency's specific recommendations for change?

[2:47:12] Trustee Elliott: Could that be sort of a later June one or that sort of post-June Trust Council meeting, as in we stage the work, we look at the draft companion handbook and implementation plan first and sort of discuss that at Committee of the Whole in order to review, have further discussion in the formal Trust Council meeting, hopefully.

[2:47:41] Trustee Elliott: hopefully shorter, because I think, I think that'll be a big discussion. But if we do that

[2:47:48] Trustee Elliott: in advance at Committee of the Whole, that could be sort of the first stage of work and then allow

[2:47:52] Trustee Elliott: staff to work on sort of the summary of referrals and continue to get feedback from Indigenous

[2:48:03] Trustee Elliott: governing bodies for the next stage to sort of prepare for a September Trust Council discussion.

[2:48:08] Trustee Elliott: discussion.

[2:48:10] Voice 10: Thank you. Could you just scroll up so we can see all four of those boxes on the screen?

[2:48:14] Voice 10: That would be appreciated. Whoops, I guess we can't. It's split over. Oh, I think it was Jason

[2:48:19] Voice 10: had it in his presentation. There we go. Perfect. Right now, the June 4th is before Trust Council.

[2:48:27] Voice 10: I would also like to throw out a possibility. We are having Trust Council. There's no reason we

[2:48:33] Voice 10: could not split into a committee or adjourn the regular meeting and move into a committee of the

[2:48:39] Voice 10: the whole discussion at our trust consult meeting in june as well on those pieces of work so i want

[2:48:46] Voice 10: to throw that option i'm seeing a thumbs up from trustee fast because i know bowen does that all

[2:48:50] Voice 10: the time pops into committee the whole meetings during a regular agenda meeting a regular meeting

[2:48:56] Voice 10: trustee getty yeah

[2:48:59] Voice 5: i think if my recommendation would be that if the staff have something that's

[2:49:03] Voice 5: ready to go for at least having preliminary discussion in terms of the handbook and

[2:49:07] Voice 5: possibly implementation that we could, and that seems to be something that everybody's keen on

[2:49:13] Voice 5: in terms of how can we simplify this and be able to explain it. If we can have that pre-trust

[2:49:20] Voice 5: meeting on the 4th, for instance, and then at the Trust Council, if we can have an update on the

[2:49:28] Voice 5: other, summarize all of the, there's a lot of material in this report from all of the different

[2:49:32] Voice 5: government agencies so if i'd like some help in terms of summarizing that if that could be part

[2:49:38] Voice 5: of the um trust council meeting i'm not sure there'd be a lot of discussion but it would

[2:49:43] Voice 5: certainly be um interesting to have that summary i

[2:49:48] Voice 10: guess i'd look to staff based on um if if if

[2:49:53] Voice 10: trust council today recommends that there be a staff report um i guess we can't actually give

[2:50:03] Voice 10: direction to staff to go do it's a recommendation to ask staff to do that work so um that's the

[2:50:11] Voice 10: that's a little bit of a dilemma that we are in um as to win a report so that might be a later item

[2:50:18] Voice 10: i guess i'll look to you uh jason sure

[2:50:22] Voice 22: thanks um it would it would likely not be possible

[2:50:30] Voice 22: that's that for a euphemism to provide you with any new material ahead of a june 4th

[2:50:37] Voice 22: committee of the whole meeting um for us to to bring the handbook up to the place that we want

[2:50:42] Voice 22: it to be or to bring the implementation plan to the one it to the place we want it to be or indeed

[2:50:46] Voice 22: even to create a more refined version of the referral responses table that's in today's agenda

[2:50:51] Voice 22: package i i don't see the the june 4th um target as being feasible but i do see probably two out

[2:50:59] Voice 22: out of those three items being feasible for the June Trust Council regular meeting and a committee

[2:51:06] Voice 22: of the whole meeting within that, if you chose to do that. And then also,

[2:51:10] Voice 22: I'll look to the directors

[2:51:11] Voice 22: or to the CAO, if he's still online, to weigh in about, you know, I know this is not a directive

[2:51:19] Voice 22: body, a directing body as a committee, but at the same token, this is a priority project. We want to

[2:51:25] Voice 22: advance the work in a in a way that is to the benefit of trust council so i you know if there's

[2:51:31] Voice 22: a way to fudge whether or not we take direction to do certain things from this body i would

[2:51:36] Voice 22: appreciate some clarity from the directors on that

[2:51:38] Voice 10: i'd say there's probably one possibility

[2:51:40] Voice 10: that we could recommend to the executive committee to provide a committee of the whole

[2:51:44] Voice 10: meeting within the agenda package and i see claire put her hand down that may have been what she was

[2:51:48] Voice 10: going to suggest there yes i'm seeing nodded so that may for in regards to scheduling a meeting

[2:51:54] Voice 10: on the 17th. We could just provide executive, recommend executive committee do that as we

[2:52:00] Voice 10: pulled the agenda together for Trust Council. Then future recommendations for any additional,

[2:52:10] Voice 10: if we're going to have the July one or such, Trust Council could address in the June Trust

[2:52:16] Voice 10: Council. Go ahead, Director Frieder.

[2:52:20] Voice 14: Thank you, Chair. What I was going to say was I think in

[2:52:23] Voice 14: In terms of any future work that's needed from staff, you could look to executive committee

[2:52:27] Voice 14: to direct that work of staff if there's something new and different from what's already sort

[2:52:31] Voice 14: of in the works.

[2:52:32] Voice 14: In terms of scheduling a committee of the whole meeting, typically we run a resolution

[2:52:35] Voice 14: without, we could do a resolution without meeting decision for trust council to schedule

[2:52:40] Voice 14: that.

[2:52:41] Voice 14: But it would be good to have a decision here today, you know, as to the will of the group

[2:52:45] Voice 14: as to if you'd like to have a meeting on June 4th and perhaps sort of get, if you could,

[2:52:49] Voice 14: an inclination of the group as to what time slots might work.

[2:52:53] Voice 14: But we could also undertake a poll of trustees outside of this meeting to see what time frame looks best for everyone.

[2:53:00] Voice 10: So the June 4th, the only material that we could have at a June 4th meeting is essentially what you have in the agenda package today.

[2:53:07] Voice 10: Is that correct?

[2:53:07] Voice 10: So would you like a second committee of the whole to further discuss this material or would you like to move on to waiting?

[2:53:16] Voice 10: I'm seeing nods that so generally, is there anyone that sees, go ahead, Trustee Peterson.

[2:53:22] Voice 10: yeah

[2:53:25] Voice 25: given what we just heard from staff um i think it's reasonable to go ahead with the

[2:53:31] Voice 25: within council committee of the whole um but i don't see a lot of utility of trying to schedule

[2:53:38] Voice 25: the june 4th if if we're not looking at new material thank you my thoughts

[2:53:43] Voice 10: is there anyone

[2:53:44] Voice 10: who wishes to argue differently that would like to have the june 4th meeting well that took care

[2:53:51] Voice 10: of that question so june 4th is off the table so i'm hearing good interest for having the committee

[2:53:58] Voice 10: of the whole session during our june uh meeting to uh get into the the documents that we're going to

[2:54:04] Voice 10: see for the first first time um so we'll we'll need to have a resolution on that one sorry i'm

[2:54:14] Voice 10: just i'm just uh tracking resolutions so we have one on we will have to further work on it of course

[2:54:21] Voice 10: my pen stopped working um all right uh go ahead alexandra hi

[2:54:28] Voice 7: chair packard patrick i'd like to

[2:54:30] Voice 7: double check with director marler but i don't think we need a resolution to go into committee

[2:54:35] Voice 7: the whole during the trust council meeting so if that's your intention i think staff can

[2:54:42] Voice 7: um walk away understanding that unless there's further direction on content but i'd like director

[2:54:46] Voice 7: Marler to confirm. There he is. Director Marler, thank

[2:54:51] Voice 21: you. Yeah, through the chair, that's correct.

[2:54:53] Voice 21: You don't need to do a resolution now for that. So if you want to have an in-camera, sorry,

[2:54:59] Voice 21: Committee of the Whole in Trust Council, that's something that can be developed through the

[2:55:03] Voice 21: Executive Committee. And then you just do the normal resolution once you get to Council.

[2:55:09] Voice 10: All right. Well, thank you very much. So that makes that easy. So is it premature to consider

[2:55:17] Voice 10: the next two other than if I guess I guess we're looking at a July 22nd is

[2:55:29] Voice 10: their interest in a July 22nd one where is that too early to consider this point

[2:55:36] Voice 10: we could always consider it at Trust Council in June if we think we we need

[2:55:40] Voice 10: it so i'm not seeing anyone jump up uh trustee peterson well

[2:55:46] Voice 25: according to this table it is uh

[2:55:48] Voice 25: the july meeting is uh already scheduled so i think unless trust council um decides to

[2:55:56] Voice 25: de-schedule it then i don't think we need to do anything about it all

[2:56:02] Voice 10: right well that makes

[2:56:02] Voice 10: that easy so in regards to meetings as long as we're all satisfied executive committee could

[2:56:08] Voice 10: proceed with working with staff on the June 17th. Trustee Getty. Director Marley's hand is up.

[2:56:18] Voice 10: I think he just left it up. Is that correct?

[2:56:21] Voice 5: All right. I have no problem with the dates.

[2:56:26] Voice 5: I'm looking at the potential topics and I would like to suggest that further to the discussions

[2:56:33] Voice 5: today that perhaps the potential topics get switched between the 22nd and the 17th.

[2:56:43] Voice 10: Yes, I think. Or we may have further work depending after June Trust Council.

[2:56:48] Voice 10: So I think we can clarify the intent. And if we proceed with a if we're if we make a resolution now regarding asking staff to to.

[2:56:58] Voice 5: Yeah, I think everybody's been taking note of the discussion.

[2:57:01] Voice 5: So it's if the handbook is ready and that's the clarification that everybody's asking for would be very helpful, then that would be the priority.

[2:57:08] Voice 5: And then later in terms of all of the different responses, give more time, as much time as we can in terms of the governing bodies.

[2:57:20] Voice 10: Okay.

[2:57:21] Voice 10: So I guess the question regarding giving staff direction on summarizing the changes, we have, there is a table in this package.

[2:57:32] Voice 10: Is that table sufficient?

[2:57:34] Voice 10: I know it is, or could it be maybe brought together all recommendations into one table just to make it cleaner?

[2:57:45] Voice 10: What would you need?

[2:57:47] Voice 10: I'm trying to turn to the right page, but of course, doing that, I have one screen here.

[2:57:53] Voice 10: I guess I'd look to staff, what page number, I know it's after 118 here.

[2:57:58] Voice 10: Which page is the table?

[2:57:59] Voice 10: It's

[2:58:00] Trustee Elliott: 133, Chair.

[2:58:02] Trustee Elliott: Thank you very much.

[2:58:03] Trustee Elliott: or that's the middle of it sorry 1 23 i was gonna i have a

[2:58:15] Trustee Elliott: question if that's okay

[2:58:17] Trustee Elliott: um i think the table is really useful but it by separating it out by agency

[2:58:24] Trustee Elliott: it doesn't give a sense of the whole and any conflicting changes so how could it be presented

[2:58:34] Trustee Elliott: presented in a way that we could see, you know, if, if we take in, you know, this suggestion from

[2:58:42] Trustee Elliott: North Salt Spring Waterworks District, and this with from Municipal Affairs on policy, da da da da,

[2:58:50] Trustee Elliott: you know, here's looking at a policy by policy, or would that be just an enormous amount of work

[2:58:55] Trustee Elliott: that isn't possible like how do we synthesize um and and create a draft that gives some sense of

[2:59:04] Trustee Elliott: the the coherent or some order in the the feedback thank you trustee fast

[2:59:13] Voice 12: uh thank you i uh appreciate the idea but i'm hearing starting to work on the next draft

[2:59:20] Voice 12: and uh i i'm concerned that we're we've been talking about waiting for the rest of the uh

[2:59:28] Voice 12: first nations and the other input so i my feeling is that i like the table that's in our agenda

[2:59:36] Voice 12: today in terms of this is the feedback from this group and if the next set of uh feedback hopefully

[2:59:43] Voice 12: hopefully we'll get more, comes in the same pattern,

[2:59:47] Voice 12: then I think we'll be able to compare them equitably

[2:59:51] Voice 12: and not be trying to create a new draft too early.

[2:59:58] Voice 12: That's my feeling.

[2:59:59] Voice 12: I think it would be.

[3:00:00] Voice 12: cleaner to use the same process for the next set of input that's coming in on our first reading

[3:00:06] Voice 12: draft. Thank you.

[3:00:08] Voice 10: My expectation was that we're looking at what are the suggested changes. So

[3:00:13] Voice 10: we're not making the changes, we're understanding the changes. And that's what I'm looking at from

[3:00:18] Voice 10: this table. We have feedback on what's been suggested. And this is good information.

[3:00:24] Voice 10: and I think as we move forward with First Nations,

[3:00:28] Voice 10: they may be interested in seeing this as well

[3:00:30] Voice 10: if we're continuing to seek feedback from them.

[3:00:34] Voice 10: Trustee Yates.

[3:00:36] Voice 2: I was just going to echo what Trustee Fast said,

[3:00:40] Voice 2: but I think you've answered my question.

[3:00:42] Voice 2: Thank you, Chair Patrick.

[3:00:45] Voice 2: All right, Trustee Getty.

[3:00:47] Voice 5: Without changing the content,

[3:00:48] Voice 5: I would find it very helpful to organize it

[3:00:52] Voice 5: according to the subject areas.

[3:00:55] Voice 5: goals or the policies.

[3:00:58] Voice 10: Yeah, I think that's what I think, just putting it and I think it would be

[3:01:02] Voice 10: all right if staff would flag some, you know, if something is not contradictory, but if there is a

[3:01:08] Voice 10: contradictory recommendation, one agency says do this and the other agency says the opposite,

[3:01:14] Voice 10: that's okay. I think that would be, you know, trust counsel should then, you know, direct you

[3:01:19] Voice 10: to pursue those two agencies and try to, or how do we, how do we correct that? So I look to staff

[3:01:25] Voice 10: Would that be possible to take the table and to put it in order of more in order of the sections of the policy?

[3:01:41] Voice 22: Certainly.

[3:01:42] Voice 22: There we go.

[3:01:44] Voice 22: Yeah, no, I certainly that is something that we can do.

[3:01:48] Voice 22: Yeah, I just timeline to be determined.

[3:01:52] Voice 22: But yes, it is definitely a feasible thing.

[3:01:55] Voice 10: And we would need a resolution to do that or recommend or?

[3:02:02] Voice 22: I mean, we always appreciate resolutions to help guide our work.

[3:02:10] Voice 10: So I'm wondering if we should take, I know it's noon.

[3:02:17] Voice 10: Are we close?

[3:02:18] Voice 10: Is this the only resolution that we're looking at is to provide on this, at this item?

[3:02:24] Voice 10: Are there more items in the agenda?

[3:02:26] Voice 10: How close are we to finishing is what I'm saying, because we have one o'clock is the

[3:02:31] Voice 10: end and we are sitting at exactly what, 13 trustees at the moment.

[3:02:36] Voice 10: So I don't want to lose quorum.

[3:02:38] Voice 10: Can we take a short break and work on a resolution with staff to bring back?

[3:02:52] Voice 5: So what are we saying?

[3:02:53] Voice 5: This council or this community of the whole recommends to executive committee to recommend to staff that they reorganize the agency referral responses according to the sections of the draft policy document?

[3:03:13] Voice 10: Yeah, I think it's to continue working on this table.

[3:03:16] Voice 10: So they can, like I said, also identify where there is conflicts.

[3:03:20] Voice 10: Is that good enough verbally?

[3:03:21] Voice 10: Beef up this.

[3:03:25] Voice 10: We can try to wordsmith it online here,

[3:03:28] Voice 10: or we can come back with a draft resolution in a few minutes if that's.

[3:03:33] Voice 5: Well, we're losing people.

[3:03:34] Voice 5: Is it good enough, Alexandra?

[3:03:35] Voice 5: Is it good enough verbally?

[3:03:36] Voice 5: Go ahead, Alexandra.

[3:03:38] Voice 7: So I have, I just need the first part.

[3:03:42] Voice 7: I did write the content, although.

[3:03:44] Voice 7: So the

[3:03:46] Voice 5: committee of the whole

[3:03:46] Voice 7: recommends

[3:03:48] Voice 5: to executive committee to recommend to staff to continue to work on.

[3:03:54] Voice 5: Yeah,

[3:03:55] Voice 7: I got the rest.

[3:03:56] Voice 7: Yeah.

[3:03:56] Voice 7: Okay.

[3:03:56] Voice 7: So it was the first part.

[3:03:59] Voice 7: Just one moment.

[3:04:01] Voice 7: And of course.

[3:04:04] Voice 5: You're good.

[3:04:05] Voice 5: Thank you.

[3:04:08] Voice 18: Executive committee.

[3:04:15] Voice 18: I think it's a pen.

[3:04:29] Voice 18: the appendix one one moment or attachment attachment

[3:04:36] Voice 10: one may one all right does that

[3:04:42] Voice 10: make sense it's up on the screen for people and

[3:04:50] Trustee Elliott: sorry chair um did we want to say reorganize and

[3:04:55] Trustee Elliott: continue working on or continue work on is reorganize enough i

[3:05:01] Voice 18: did it sorry

[3:05:03] Voice 10: it has reorganize

[3:05:04] Voice 10: and continue working on so it is there yeah thanks I look just to Jason does

[3:05:15] Voice 10: this table reflect what we were talking about or you do have questions just want

[3:05:19] Voice 10: to make sure we're giving staff clear clear direction yeah

[3:05:23] Voice 22: we've been

[3:05:24] Voice 22: following the conversation so okay the direction is understood right trustee

[3:05:29] Voice 10: Getty do you want to make this motion I

[3:05:34] Voice 5: move the motion as written and on the

[3:05:36] Voice 5: screen i'm gonna ask you to read it out i think okay um i move that committee of the whole

[3:05:43] Voice 5: recommend to executive committee to request staff to reorganize the agency referral response

[3:05:47] Voice 5: responses according to the sections of the draft policy statement and continue working on the

[3:05:52] Voice 5: agency referral responses table attachment one may 1 2026 all

[3:05:58] Voice 10: right is there a second

[3:05:59] Voice 10: Second. Second by Trustee Luckham. Any discussion? Trustee Fast.

[3:06:08] Voice 12: I'm assuming that the other work for receiving, continue working on the First Nations referrals as they come in is just a given?

[3:06:21] Voice 10: Correct. Yes. That was an understanding staff are continuing that work and we do not need to direct them to do so. That is going to continue.

[3:06:28] Voice 10: you all right any further discussion i'm going to call the vote all those in favor please raise

[3:06:38] Voice 10: your electronic hands let's

[3:06:58] Voice 21: say 12 hands up all

[3:07:00] Voice 11: right lower your hands any

[3:07:06] Voice 10: opposed raise your

[3:07:08] Voice 10: hands that carries all right trustees we have some work coming back i guess we um we've got

[3:07:19] Voice 10: got the next pieces that we're going to receive maybe more on this we'll give staff the time to

[3:07:24] Voice 10: do this right um any other next steps that you want to discuss today staff are there any other

[3:07:37] Voice 10: things that you need from us i just want to make sure we're not

[3:07:41] Voice 10: cutting short a conversation if you need further direction go ahead sure

[3:07:50] Voice 22: no i think from our

[3:07:52] Voice 22: Our prospective chair, we were primarily interested in understanding if this body or Trust Council wish to continue to meet on the subject over the summer.

[3:08:01] Voice 22: If I understand correctly, we'll have a Committee of the Whole meeting within the regular Trust Council meeting in June and then make use of that already scheduled Committee of the Whole meeting in July.

[3:08:13] Voice 22: And so we'll bring to you, at some order over those meetings, the companion handbook, some implementation planning considerations, and this revised referrals table that's just been requested.

[3:08:27] Voice 10: Thank you very much. And trustees, thank you. This is important work. Trustee Elliott?

[3:08:33] Voice 10: I

[3:08:34] Trustee Elliott: had a question about communication to the public. You know, this is now public information that's landed on an agenda. Do we want to request executive committee direct staff to do some, you know, newsletters, sort of compile what we've heard reports? Of course, it's on the website, but sort of a status update of the project and next steps?

[3:09:10] Voice 10: trustees thoughts on that sounds good i don't think we can just leave it i guess the executive

[3:09:19] Voice 10: committee has the authority to uh communicate uh so do we need i guess we would we could we

[3:09:25] Voice 10: could make take that action at the executive committee to uh provide some a kind of a status

[3:09:32] Voice 10: update on the project i i think yes i think agreeing that the public is aware of where we

[3:09:39] Voice 10: are where next steps are i look to staff is that something the executive committee can decide to do

[3:09:44] Voice 10: or do we need to make further recommendations to that um

[3:09:52] Voice 14: go ahead i

[3:09:54] Voice 14: can speak to that um trust

[3:09:56] Voice 14: council has delegated the project management of the project to executive committee so yes

[3:10:00] Voice 14: executive committee at their next meeting could direct anything additional and we could certainly

[3:10:04] Voice 14: advise you at that time sort of what's in that communications plan that we've got super thank

[3:10:09] Voice 10: Thank you very much.

[3:10:09] Voice 10: No direction needed today?

[3:10:10] Voice 10: No direction needed today.

[3:10:14] Voice 10: All right.

[3:10:15] Voice 10: Is there anything else?

[3:10:16] Voice 10: I don't want to cut anyone off short.

[3:10:18] Voice 10: Like I said, I really do want to appreciate everyone who provided deep and meaningful feedback on where we are.

[3:10:24] Voice 10: This has been a project that's been going for a very long time, since 2019.

[3:10:28] Voice 10: It is important work.

[3:10:30] Voice 10: And I think it's great to see the Trust Council wanting to continue as far as we can do this this term.

[3:10:38] Voice 10: So thank you to staff for their ongoing work and to working with the First Nations to get their feedback.

[3:10:46] Voice 10: And we do want to hear it, as that was extremely evident today.

[3:10:52] Voice 10: OK, if there is no further business today, I just need a motion to adjourn.

[3:10:57] Voice 10: I see Trustee Getty. Love it. I love it.

[3:11:01] Voice 10: So Trustee Getty is moving to adjourn. Is there a second?

[3:11:04] Voice 10: I think Trustee Elliott is seconding that motion.

[3:11:07] Voice 10: So I guess all those in favor or I don't know how anyone opposed to adjourning, I guess would probably have been the right one.

[3:11:14] Voice 10: We are adjourned. So thank you, everyone. Enjoy your day.

DRAFT
 
Trust Council Committee of the Whole                                DRAFT                                                                                      1 of 4 
Meeting Minutes 
May 13, 2026   
Islands Trust Council Committee of the Whole 
Minutes of a Regular Meeting 
 
 
Date:  
Location:  
Wednesday, May 13, 2026 
Electronic Meeting 
 
 
Executive Members 1.  Laura Patrick, Chair, Salt Spring Island Local Trust Area 
 
Present: 2.  Tobi Elliott, Vice-Chair, Gabriola Island Local Trust Area 
 
 3.  David Maude, Vice-Chair, Mayne Island Local Trust Area 
 
 4.  Timothy Peterson, Vice-Chair, Lasqueti Island Local Trust Area 
 
 
Members Present: 
 
5.   Sue Ellen Fast, Bowen Island Municipal Trustee 
6.   Judith Gedye, Bowen Island Municipal Trustee 
 
 7.   Sam Borthwick, Denman Island Local Trust Area 
 
 8.   David Graham, Denman Island Local Trust Area 
 
 9.   Susan Yates, Gabriola Island Local Trust Area 
 
 10. Lisa Gauvreau, Galiano Island Local Trust Area 
11. Ben Mabberley, Galiano Island Local Trust Area 
 
 12. Mikaila Lironi, Lasqueti Island Local Trust Area 
 
 13. Jeanine Dodds, Mayne Island Local Trust Area 
14. Mairead Boland, Saturna Island Local Trust Area 
 
 15. Kristina Evans, South Pender Island Local Trust Area 
 
 
 
Members Regrets: 
 
 
 
 
Members Absent: 
 
 
16. Ken Hunter, Thetis Island Local Trust Area 
17. Peter Luckham, Thetis Island Local Trust Area 
18. Joe Bernardo, Gambier Island Local Trust Area 
19. Kate Louise Stamford, Gambier Island Local Trust Area 
20. Lee Middleton, Saturna Island Local Trust Area 
21. Dag Falck, South Pender Island Local Trust Area 
22. Alex Allen, Hornby Island Local Trust Area 
23. Grant Scott, Hornby Island Local Trust Area 
24. Aaron Campbell, North Pender Island Local Trust Area 
25. Deb Morrison, North Pender Island Local Trust Area 
26. Jamie Harris, Salt Spring Island Local Trust Area 
 
Staff Present: 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Guests Present: 
 
Others Present: 
Rueben Bronee, Chief Administrative Officer 
Stefan Cermak, Director, Planning Services 
Clare Frater, Director, Trust Area Services 
David Marlor, Director, Legislative and Information Services 
Alexandra Trifonidis, Executive Coordinator 
Jason Youmans, Senior Policy Advisor 
Lisa Millard, Meeting Administrator/Recorder  
 
Natalie Chan, President, Be The Change Group 
Ange Cullen, Senior Researcher, Be the Change Group 
There were no members of the public present 
 
  

DRAFT
 
Trust Council Committee of the Whole                                DRAFT                                                                                      2 of 4 
Meeting Minutes 
May 13, 2026   
1. CALL TO ORDER 
Chair Patrick called the meeting to order at 9:00 a.m. 
2. TERRITORIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT  
Chair Patrick acknowledged that the meeting was held on the territory of the Coast Salish 
First Nations. 
3. APPROVAL OF AGENDA  
By general consent the agenda was approved as presented. 
4. ADOPTION OF MINUTES 
4.1 Draft Committee of the Whole Special Meeting Minutes of February 18, 2026 
By general consent the Committee of the Whole Special Meeting minutes 
of February 18, 2026 were adopted. 
5. FOLLOW UP ACTION LIST 
5.1 Committee of the Whole Follow Up Action List 
Received for information. 
6. PRESENTATION  
The Senior Policy Advisor introduced Be the Change Group representatives Dr. Natalie 
Chan, President and Co-Founder and Ange Cullen, Senior Researcher and Project Manager 
who presented an overview of the survey and analysis of public correspondence received 
on Phase 4 Community Engagement.  
7. BUSINESS 
7.1 Discussion / Decision Items 
7.1.1 Policy Statement Amendment Project: Public Engagement Phase 4 
Report - Briefing  
The Senior Policy Advisor provided a presentation detailing the methods 
used during Phase 4 Public Engagement and noted the number of referral 
responses received and those remaining outstanding. 
    7.1.1.1 Q & A 
It was clarified that trustees should consider feedback 
received in all phases of public engagement undertaken 
throughout the project when determining next steps. 
A trustee requested First Nations referral responses be coded 
for clarity. 
7.1.2 Policy Statement Amendment Project: Next Steps – Briefing 

DRAFT
 
Trust Council Committee of the Whole                                DRAFT                                                                                      3 of 4 
Meeting Minutes 
May 13, 2026   
The Senior Policy Advisor summarized next steps and detailed potential 
actions for trustee consideration. 
The meeting was recessed for a break at 10:13 a.m. and reconvened at 10:23 a.m. 
  7.1.2.1 Trustee Roundtable 
A trustee roundtable was undertaken and the following themes 
emerged, with diverse views expressed within each theme: 
• Draft Trust Policy Statement 
o The document is complex, should be condensed to a 
few pages that contain broad, simple guidelines and/or 
general high-level principles; 
o It is meant to be a guiding document that land use 
bylaws align with; 
o The document should be fulsome; 
o Enforcement of the document through Executive 
Committee fetters discretion of local trust committees. 
• Outstanding First Nations and Agency Referrals 
o Weight the feedback from ministry referrals; 
o Put greater emphasis on agency referrals; 
o Meet with Indigenous Governing Bodies in person to 
discuss the document and honour the collaborative 
process; 
o Further work on the Policy Statement should not be 
undertaken until First Nations referrals are received; 
o Organize agency referral responses based on Policy 
Statement sections. 
• Survey and other public feedback 
o Surveys open to bias and are opinions; 
o Negative comments regarding reconciliation are often 
a response to the Cowichan court decision; 
o There is need to listen to, and integrate, public 
feedback and not just agency referrals; 
o Regardless of comments received, it is important to 
maintain Islands Trust commitments to reconciliation. 
• Draft Implementation Plan and Companion Handbook 
o Both components will provide clarity on the Policy 
Statement and help answer questions and concerns 
from the public. 
• Incoming Islands Trust Council 
o Continue refining referral responses for incoming 
Islands Trust Council members; 

DRAFT
 
Trust Council Committee of the Whole                                DRAFT                                                                                      4 of 4 
Meeting Minutes 
May 13, 2026   
o The outgoing Islands Trust Council could provide a 
letter to incoming trustees on the work of the project to 
date. 
Trustees Boland and Hunter left the meeting at 11:30 a.m. 
Trustee Dodds left the meeting at 11:38 a.m. 
Discussion ensued regarding work that can be done in the 
coming months, need for additional Committee of the Whole 
meetings and content of said meetings. 
Trustee Mabberley left the meeting at 11:55 a.m. 
TC-COW-2026-019 
It was MOVED by Trustee Gedye, and SECONDED 
by Trustee Luckham, 
that Committee of the Whole recommend to 
Executive Committee to request staff to reorganize 
the agency referral responses according to the 
sections of the draft Policy Statement, and continue 
working on the Agency Referral Responses table 
(Attachment 1, May 1, 2026). 
CARRIED 
8. NEW BUSINESS - none 
9. CLOSED MEETING - none 
10. RISE AND REPORT – not applicable 
11. NEXT MEETING 
The next Islands Trust Council Committee of the Whole meeting will take place 
electronically on Wednesday, July 22, 2026 at 9:00 a.m. 
12. ADJOURNMENT 
  Be general consent the meeting was adjourned at 12:11 p.m. 
 
 
_________________________ 
Laura Patrick, Chair 
 
Certified Correct: 
 
_________________________ 
Lisa Millard, Meeting Administrator/Recorder 
Minutes are not official until adopted at a subsequent meeting.