Sequester the Islands Trust?.

The Provincial Liberal Government should realize that the Islands Trust, (once defined as merely an associated NDP agency of the Provincial Ministry of Municipal Affairs), has gained an extreme, autonomous independence from Provincial control. And they appear to have done so directly proportionate to reductions in Provincial funding over the years. What was once an over 95% Provincially funded entity has, over the years, completely reversed proportion of responsibility onto Gulf Islands taxpayers with the Province hardly contributing anything anymore!

Should we not as taxpayers be asking the Province to step back into funding the Trust's budget? Certainly the Province should at least acknowledge accountability and control of the Islands Trust budget and they should do so for fiduciary reasons on behalf of all those British Columbians the Trust was created to protect these fair lands. The Province has a responsibility to regain the reins of Governance from an independent NDP entity that is not actually mandated to govern, particularly in an unincorporated district where the decentralized costs of services and redundant bylaws can otherwise run wild.

Under the original agreement, the Islands Trust Act legislation was created to simply advise on matters of environmental concerns and only later on was it given its limited mandate to serve as a land-planning function through its Local Trust Committees. That certainly does not provide a balance of local government services worthy of the name governance.

Clearly as the Province has stepped back from its responsibility, the 26 Island-wide Trustee's have had free range to squander tax dollars for years on all manner of issues quite outside their land planning function. While it may have served the Trustees well in increasing their self-proclaimed 'governance' power base and bureaucracy, I'd wager they have done so at our expense and to the detriment of our fragile local island economies.

The pattern of performance we see now is less service, fewer and fewer development permit approvals, undefined guidelines within application requirements, 100% non-refundable fees and a recent bylaw 449 suggestion that homeowners might be responsible to fund their own mapping of waterways on their properties! All this less service with more regulation along with increased budgets year after year is quite unacceptible, no?

Add up the millions of dollars spent on annual Trust budgets since 1974 ask yourselves what have we got to show for it? Has the Trust purchased one tree?, one acre of land?, saved one molecule of clean air?, one degree of so-called global warming? Nada. The Salt Spring Conservancy has a better organizational track record for that and they do it all through donations! Imagine if we gave them our millions.

ONE POSSIBLE SOLUTION IF WE DON'T GET A PROVINCIAL REVIEW
As a unified group of island Canadians and British Columbians we should consider, after the debacle of the Salt Spring Coffee Company decision and this last RAR bylaw fiasco, that the Islands Trust may need to be sequestered through a court action brought against it by island taxpayers. The charge might be two-fold; a charge of fiduciary mis-management of our money, inadvertently affecting our local island economies, and a constitutional challenge to the presumption that they are a local government where none can legally exist in an unincorporated district.

Afterall, since when is a single-function, associated agency of the Provincial Ministry of Municipal Affairs, a bonified local government? 'Elected' Trustees do not define a Trust as a Government no matter how many times you let it roll off your tongue, and ultimately the Province should not be allowed to stretch the definition either!

The reality is that since the inception of the NDP legislation that created the Islands Trust Act in 1974, the Islands Trust is no longer perceived by many island residents as acting in the interests of residents but rather in the interests of expanding its own power base and bureaucracy.

Of course to add insult to injury, our tax dollars are used against us in funding organizations and advisory commitees that result in an increasingly regulatory rural lifestyle. In many respects we fund their legal fights with those of us who resist their often innane policies and bylaws. Policies and bylaws I might add, that easily target the little guy and simply do not apply to the real and larger environmental culprits! What up with that?

Once again I have to apologise for the length of this entry, it is a complex issue.