Report on today's Lasqueti Trust Committee meeting

The meeting started about ½ hour late, because of difficulty setting up the equipment and connecting to the internet. Peter Luckham and Tim attended at the Health Centre, along with Heather Kauer, our planner. I attended electronically, from home.

Part way through the meeting there were further technical problems, and the live streaming seemed to end. I apologize for this. The recording of the meeting will be available soon, possibly by the end of this week, and almost certainly by the end of the day Monday.

Agenda package for the meeting is at https://islandstrust.bc.ca/document/lasqueti-ltc-regular-meeting-agenda-8/  The recording will be accessible from this page, too.

Here is my recollection and understanding of what we discussed and decided. Please be aware that this is completely unofficial and informal. The draft minutes will be available in the agenda package for our next meeting, which is scheduled for Monday, June 6. The agenda package should be available about May 27.

Three members of the public were in attendance, and there was a lengthy Town Hall session. A considerable part of it concerned the possibility of the province granting the Islands Trust increased power to regulate tree cutting in the Trust area. As I understand it, the government and the Trust are talking about the possibility of this, largely asking why the Trust wants increased authority and what it would like to do with it. There has not been much discussion about this at Trust Council, except that there is a general recognition that we live in the smallest biogeoclimatic zone in BC, and one that has been significantly altered through development, and that the Trust’s mandate is to preserve and protect it, as one of the amenities of the area, for the benefit of the residents of the Trust Area and the province generally. How the Trust and Local Trust Committees might attempt to regulate tree cutting has not been considered yet. To a large extent, these decisions, if the province agrees to grant additional powers, could be left to individual Local Trust Committees, though Trust Council might want to include some parts in the directive policies of the Trust Policy Statement – in a future revision, not this time around.

We took a few things that we don’t regulate on Lasqueti out of our proposed new Fees Bylaw, and gave it first reading. It’ll come back again next meeting for more discussion.

We did no further work on the OCP review. Chair Luckham will write to Chief Edwards of the Snaw-Naw-As Nation to request that they meet with us soon, so we can learn of their concerns around the draft OCP.

We discussed the apparent lack of necessity for public notice of meetings that are called unexpectedly or are changed from our annual schedule of meetings. We asked staff to come back with a recommendation about how to rectify this, through an amendment to our new Meeting Procedures Bylaw, or a new Standing Resolution. We all want people to be aware of each meeting, so that they can attend or otherwise give their input into discussions and decisions, and we recognize that this is currently lacking.

Staff will communicate with current Advisory Planning Commission members, whose term is expiring in June, and ask them if they’d like to be reappointed to the APC. Staff will also ask if other community members would like to be appointed to the APC.

In our Land Use Bylaw there is a definition of a “sleeping unit”, but its only use in the bylaw refers to the Hotel’s sleeping units, more commonly known as rooms. This is noted for a future time, when we need to revise or LUB.

The meeting ended about 3:30, time when our chair and planner needed to head for the ferry.

If you have questions or comments, please contact me or Tim, or post them on this page..