1970s NDP Nightmare Flashback persists!

Given some distance I had from Salt Spring recently on a trip back east about 4600 kilometers, the Gulf Islands appeared officially under a quasi fiefdom of power hungry environmentalists spawned of an old 70's flashback hallucination that the NDP managed to actually get legislated (quite likely under the influence some exotic herb they were smoking at the time). The NDP may have decided to call their great idealistic notion "The Islands Trust" yet everything the 'Trust' has ever presented to us by way of bylaws has essentially characterized residents as untrustworthy children with the added inuendo that somehow we are not grown-up enough to know when we are devaluing our substantial investment in property on Salt Spring. Where is the love? where's the "trust" when we are deemed environmentally guilty before being proven innocent!?

Regardless of how the Islands Trust characterizes themselves in a snowblinding public facade that they are "local governance" in an unincorporated district or that internal policies they set for themselves re: their little 'code of conduct' rules hold water and even whatever bylaws they continually intimidate their tax-supporting residents with, ie: their Riparian Area Restrictions etc etc ad naseum, people should keep in mind that rules and regulations are only as effective as affordable enforcement. Keeping all things in perspective, your blood pressure will thank you. While they may appear to be creating all the conditions of a police state, they are afterall is said and done, almost totally reliant on their neighbourhood's busy-body snitch system.

Imagine getting a bylaw 449 citation for digging in your own garden? Imagine the cost of hiring a 'professional environmentalist' to do a study before building a fence to protect your children or farm animals from a ditch. Imagine a citation for not being able to prove you already had a goldfish pond before bylaw 449 was inacted?... Imagine the Draconian headlines and public redicule directed at the Trust. They really would be shamed and shunned into non-existence.

Without properly pre-mapping the existing Salt Spring Island official waterways (what are they relying on Google Earth?) all residents will suddenly have to archive and photograph conditions currently existing on their properties... what an excellent opportunity for future computer graphics artists to 'photoshop' and backdate photos of peoples' properties 'pre-existing' conditions!

As our future unfolds under this quasi Trust fiefdom in an unincorporated district, the power struggle is between anyone who has the temerity to seize power and the laisse faire among us who came here to enjoy the freedom from endless encroachment on our lives from those with nothing better to do with their independent wealth. Unfortunately we cannot simply sit down and shut up and let things devolve, afterall Roberts Rules dictate that silence and a laisse faire perspective is apparently taken as assent! It is Not!

In the sixties we used to say...

Are we back to that madness?