Jessica Harkema

Last week I wrote about Salt Spring's crisis: hollowing services, collapsing infrastructure, and a community that is slowly losing the very people who make it worth living in. The response has been encouraging. Many of you reached out privately to thank me for speaking up. Then came the legal opinion. Frants Attorp's summary of Don Lidstone KC's letter to Trust Council has been circulating as a kind of closing argument: the mandate is clear, the Trust's job is to protect the environment, and any Policy Statement that ventures beyond that is legally indefensible. Case closed. I have respect for Mr. Lidstone's expertise. But I think this argument rests on a misreading of what the mandate actually says. The Islands Trust Act states that the mandate of the Trust is to "preserve and protect the Trust Area and its unique amenities and environment for the benefit of the residents of the Trust Area and of British Columbia." There are four parts to this sentence. And th…

Salt Spring Island prides itself on being a model of environmental stewardship — a rural sanctuary where sustainability is more than a slogan. But beneath that self-image lies an uncomfortable truth: our community is in crisis. But we can do better. We tout ourselves as being an eco-conscious, sustainable community, yet there is not much that is very eco-conscious or sustainable about our community. We are vehicle centric, rely heavily on ferries for food, building materials, health care access and essential workers. Even our waste tells a story of dependency: we export huge amounts of garbage and human waste to other communities to process and dispose of. Salt Spring’s Official Community Plan (OCP) has not been revised since 2008, and for the most part remains similar to the versions before that. Yet there is still resistance in the community for any meaningful changes, in the name of “sustainability”, where all the verbiage is wrapped around the environment and ignore…