Islands Trust Act – good thing, or needs change?
From the Daily News: Group of residents from small Islands begin petition to demand a provincial review of the Islands Trust.
Some Gulf Island residents are collecting signatures to petition for a provincial review of the Islands Trust Act, saying the legislation is outdated and follows a
rigid pro-environmental policy.(…)Gabriola Island resident Jeremy Baker also backs the petition. He disagrees with which elected officials get to make local decisions. Trust committees for each island are made up of two locally elected trustees and a third trustee elected from an outside island.
We need a review of the Islands Trust Act to give more autonomy and responsibility to each island and so each island has more responsibility to carry out its own affairs,he said.Sheila Malcolmson, Gabriola Island resident and chairwoman of the Islands Trust, said that the act has been reviewed and significantly changed several times since it was put in place in 1974.
[The article quoted above is no longer available on the newspaper's website.]
Will you sign the petition? I won’t. A rigid pro-environmental policy
is just fine with me.
Related: Acts and Regulations page on the Islands Trust website.
Filed in environment,Gabriola Island,Gabriola people,politics 4 Comments so far
4 Responses to “Islands Trust Act – good thing, or needs change?”
enjay on 09 Jun 2010 at 7:04 pm #
A rigid pro-environmental policy is fine with me too.
I was quite taken with this phrase: “He disagrees with which elected officials get to make local decisions.”
So… people elect officials knowing what they’re responsible for; but you don’t like what those elected officials do, so you agitate to change the system so they don’t get to make the decisions?
Hello? Democracy?
pericat on 09 Jun 2010 at 7:14 pm #
I like “rigid, pro-environmental” policies, too. Helps keep stuff like crude oil out of the local sand. Not to mention shit in the streams.
It’s not all about making a profit on flipping your land. It’s actually a lot about just, you know, living on your land.
Gabriolan on 10 Jun 2010 at 9:42 am #
The article notes that
(Emphasis mine.)
Perhaps this is the part that Jeremy doesn’t like. ? I’d be interested to hear what changes he would make to the Islands Trust Act if it were up to him to decide. Maybe he’ll pop into the comments here one day and let us know.
The about us page at the Islands Trust site explains how local trust committees work:
Sounds fine to me.
Gabriolan on 14 Jun 2010 at 8:36 pm #
The group behind the survey has a website: Gulf Islands Citizen’s (sic) Council.
One wonders if the mistake in their name (citizen’s instead of citizens’) is telling. How many of them are there, anyway — or is it just Jeremy Baker and one other guy?
The website is new/unfinished/mostly not working at the moment.