After years of avoiding the issue, Salt Spring Solutions (SSS) has finally come down firmly against quantified growth restrictions in our Official Community Plan (OCP), calling them “antiquated theoretical calculations.” It is more evidence of their urban approach and relentless push for urban development.
In response to my Exchange article called “Salt Spring’s Population Bomb,” they claimed my reference to the projected 17,000 build-out population “misrepresents the origin and meaning of the number,” and suggested the zoning cap in our OCP is not based on “an ecological assessment.”
But the Ecosystem Health Report I cited, authored by Dr. David Rapport, an internationally-recognized ecologist and by Dr. Luisa Maffi, was commissioned by the Trust specifically for the 2008 OCP. The report repeatedly refers to population and build-out (when all lots are developed), and warns “we are already at or past build-out for maintaining healthy ecosystems.” In a recent email, Rapport again warned against “intensifying” the pressure on ecosystems “by increasing our numbers or our consumption of island resources or both.”
Additionally, former trustee Peter Lamb, who helped author the 2008 OCP, has stated a build-out analysis was undertaken to arrive at the 17,000 number, and that “we considered much of Rapport and Maffi’s work on a healthy environment in the updated OCP.”
So, yes, there are indeed ecological underpinnings to the 17,000 number. Although it was set by politicians dealing with political realities, it effectively put a freeze on upzoning—while leaving room for housing that is truly “affordable.” In that sense, it can be said that the trustees of the day did what they could to follow the recommendations of the study.
Rapport and Maffi’s findings were supported by the 2019 State Of The Islands Report covering all the islands. It determined Salt Spring was more than two thirds of the way to the “Accepted Threshold for Ecosystem Health,” even without factoring in build-out.
The environmental protection strategies cited by SSS are commonly used in municipalities where limiting growth is not a central issue, but they are inadequate in conservation areas, especially on islands with limited resources and special features that require protection. That leaves an obvious choice: non-market housing.
Because they cannot be fudged, the hard numbers in our OCP have the legal clout to put the brakes on attempts to develop the island like any other area. Vague, unquantifiable wording such as that SSS seems to want is like kryptonite to protected areas.
The Housing Action Program Task Force recommendations guiding our OCP update largely mirror those of SSS. They include but are not limited to: secondary suites and Accessory Dwelling Units in all residential zones (with possible strata conversion if detached); conversion of larger acreages to bonus-density strata development in exchange for covenanted land; tiny home villages and tiny home mobile parks; additional dwellings per lot if size is restricted—mostly with little or no guarantee of affordability and long-term rental.
It is great that SSS is now calling for a full community discussion of growth and sustainability—something they should have done long ago, before the Housing Task Force developed their free-market recommendations and before the Islands Trust invited public discussion of “complete communities.” In other words, we need a comprehensive OCP review rather than a “targeted housing update” that fast-tracks preconceived “solutions” on private land while allowing only “targeted community visioning.”
Please write to our trustees and ask for just that (ssiinfo@islandstrust.bc.ca). We live in a protected area, not a municipality. Let’s treat it as such.