A written submission to the Executive Committee.

To the Executive Committee of the Islands Trust,

In short. Please return Denman Island Bylaw Nos. 260 and 264 to the Denman committee under section 22(1)(b)(ii) of the Islands Trust Act, with directions to do five things before they are approved:

• add the limit on secondary dwellings that the Rural Residential zone is missing, and correct the cross-references that point at the wrong section or at no section at all;
• publish the work behind the 64-hectare minimum lot size;
• state in the plan an amount of housing for the next twenty years, as section 473(1)(a) of the Local Government Act asks;
• make the three dwelling rules of the Agriculture zone consistent with each other;
• add a transition section, because Bylaw 186 and all of its amendments are repealed outright.

I am not asking you to wait, because waiting past the month is approval. Returning the bylaws would also let the committee elected on 17 October consider them first. The detail follows, and everything I quote has a link to the words themselves.

I am writing about two proposed Denman Island bylaws. Bylaw No. 260 changes the Official Community Plan; it is cited (agenda package for 15 September 2026, page 22) as “Denman Island Official Community Plan, 2008, Amendment No. 1, 2026.” Bylaw No. 264 replaces the Land Use Bylaw; it is cited (page 47) as “Denman Island Land Use Bylaw No. 264, 2026.” The Denman committee read both bylaws a third time on 15 September 2026. It then sent them to the Secretary for your approval under section 27 of the Islands Trust Act. [Say here whether you own, rent or live on Denman Island, and where.]

What I am asking for. Please send both bylaws back to the Denman committee under section 22(1)(b)(ii) of the Act. Give your reasons, and give directions on the six points below. I am not asking you to wait. Under section 22(2), a bylaw on which no decision is notified within the month is approved anyway, so waiting is the same as saying yes. Sending the bylaws back would also let the new Denman committee, elected on 17 October, look at them first.

Which text I am writing about. I checked every point below against the bylaw text in the agenda package for the special meeting of 15 September 2026. That is the text the committee had in front of it at third reading. The committee then amended Bylaw 264. Staff had recommended ten housekeeping insertions. The amended text has not been published. It is not on the Islands Trust website. The minutes of the meeting are not posted. The Denman bylaws page still lists Official Community Plan Bylaw No. 185 and Land Use Bylaw No. 186, with no sign of 260 or 264. The available record does not establish when the Secretary received either bylaw, so it does not establish when the clock in section 22(1)(c) began.

That is not a complaint about staff. The staff report (page 20 of the same package) calls the amendments “minor, non-substantive administrative edits to Proposed Bylaw No. 264 to insert missing Parcel Identification Numbers (PIDs) and location descriptions into the site-specific zoning tables,” left out “during the reformatting of the Land Use Bylaw.” It says “there have been no changes to the site-specific zone boundaries, regulations, or permitted uses from the current Land Use Bylaw.” If that is right, none of the amendments touches anything below, and every point still stands. But nobody outside the Trust has seen the document. If you can send me the amended text, I will check it, and I will withdraw or fix anything in this letter that it proves wrong.

Where the links go. Everything I quote below has a link beside it, so you can read the words yourself instead of taking my word for it. Links to the Act and the regulations go to BC Laws. Links to staff reports go to the Trust’s own agenda packages, and I give the page number each time. Links to the bylaws go to abolishislandstrust.org, because there is nowhere else for them to go. The Trust publishes its bylaws as PDFs, and you cannot link to one section inside a PDF. So I turned the text into web pages and gave every section its own address. Each link takes you to that section and highlights it, and the words I quote are in the highlighted paragraph. The copy is mine and may contain errors. Each page says so and links the original, which is the text that counts. If the Trust has, or will publish, its own web version with section links, I would rather use yours, and I will change every link in this letter and on the site.

1. One rule is missing, and many cross-references point at the wrong place.

The missing rule. Bylaw 264, s. 5.2(2)(c) allows secondary dwelling units in the Rural Residential zone. On a lot under 4.0 hectares, s. 5.2(4) says: “Despite 5.2(3), on a lot less than 4.0 hectare in area, one (1) principal dwelling unit and secondary dwelling unit is permitted.” Section 5.2(5) allows one secondary suite for each principal dwelling unit, and s. 3.6(1)(b) says the same.

On a lot of 4.0 hectares or more, the bylaw never says how many secondary dwelling units are allowed. Section 5.2(3) limits principal dwelling units only. The definition limits the size of a secondary dwelling unit, not the number. The Agriculture zone sets that limit at s. 5.5(7), and the Forestry zone sets it at s. 5.6(6). Rural Residential has no such limit, and it is not a small zone. It is 259 of the 894 lots we map, and about 100 of those are 4.0 hectares or more.

What I am asking for on this point: add the missing number before you approve the bylaw.

The broken cross-references. Again and again, Bylaw 264 points at a section that does not hold the rule it claims to hold. Each line below names the rule, then the section it points at, then what is actually there.

• Bylaw 264, ss. 5.1(13), 5.2(14), 5.3(12) and 5.6(17) each apply “the rules for proving water for a subdivision in Section 8.7(1).” But s. 8.7 is “Lot Configuration Regulations,” and s. 8.7(1) is the rule about lot width and depth. The water rules are in ss. 8.8 to 8.11.
• Section 5.5(18) applies the same rules “in Section 2.19.” Part 2 of the bylaw stops at s. 2.10, so there is no section 2.19. This one can be traced. In the bylaw in force today, Bylaw 186, the water rules are in s. 2.8, and s. 2.1(3) of that bylaw sends a second home there for proof of water. The draft of 17 April 2026 shows the number being changed. On page 93 of that agenda package, in tracked changes, the 8 is struck out and 19 is written in. The same change was made in all five zones. By third reading four of them had been changed again, to 8.7(1), which is the wrong section too. The Agriculture zone was missed.
• Sections 8.5(1) and 8.5(2) create exceptions found in “Section 8.12(3)” and in “regulations 8.12(2) and 8.12(3).” Section 8.12 is Waste Disposal, and it has only one subsection. There is no 8.12(2) or 8.12(3).
• Section 8.8(1) points at “regulations 8.7(2) to 8.7(4) of this section,” and s. 8.9(4)(b) points at “regulations 8.7(2) through 8.7(4),” both for water supply standards. Section 8.7 has two subsections, and the second one, 8.7(2), is about highway frontage. There is no 8.7(3) or 8.7(4). In s. 8.8(1) the words “of this section” also contradict the number, because that section is 8.8. The standards it means are its own, at 8.8(2) to 8.8(4).
• Section 3.5(1) sends proof of water for a second principal dwelling to “Section 8.7” as well, and calls it “proof of water for a subdivision,” which is not what s. 8.7 is.
• The site-specific Agriculture rules A(5)(d) and A(6)(a) make subdivision “subject to the regulations in Section 2.8.” In Bylaw 264, s. 2.8 is “Enforcement of Siting Regulations.” The words were copied from Bylaw 186, where section 2.8 was the subdivision rules. Those rules are now Part 8, and the two references were not updated.
• Part 10 sets the rules for temporary use permits. The objective for Area 2 says guest rooms in the main house “are subject to Section 2.4.” In Bylaw 264, s. 2.4 is “Violation.” In Bylaw 186 that number belonged to the home occupation rules, which are now s. 3.17.
• In the same area, Guideline 3 asks for landscape buffers and screening “subject to Section 2.7.” In Bylaw 264, s. 2.7 is “Owner’s Cost.” The screening rules are now s. 3.16.
• The opening words of Area 2 list the zones where these permits may be issued, and one of them is “(Resource).” Bylaw 264 has no Resource zone. The list of zones in s. 4.1(1) does not contain one.
• The site-specific rule A(2)(a) allows a restaurant “In addition to the uses listed in Table 1 of this Section.” Bylaw 264 has no Table 1. The table it means is in Bylaw 186, at s. 3.4, Table 1, and Bylaw 264 repeals it.
• Section 3.4(4) lets a farm building go above 6.0 metres “where the provisions of subsection 3.14(c) apply.” Section 3.14 has one subsection, 3.14(1), and (c) is only its last paragraph, the 15.0 metre cap. As written, the reference leaves out paragraphs (a) and (b), which are the conditions about the Reserve and about setbacks.
• Sections 8.9(3), 8.9(4)(b) and 8.10(1)(b) each ask for something “complying with Regulation of Section 2.6.” The words do not parse. Bylaw 186, at s. 2.8(14), read “complying with Regulation 4 of Section 1.2.” The numbers were changed and the words around them were left behind.
• Section 8.4(1) begins “Regulations 8.5(2)to 8.11of this section do not apply,” printed with the spaces missing. Sections 8.5 to 8.11 are not part of s. 8.4; they are sections of their own. The words come from Bylaw 186, s. 2.8(19), where “Regulations 2 to 19 of this section” were all subsections of one section.

These are conditions people have to meet before they can build or subdivide. A permit officer cannot work out what they require by reading the bylaw. A rule that points at a section which does not exist is the kind of rule a court is asked to strike down for uncertainty, and the new committee would have to defend it.

What I am asking for on this point: fix the cross-references, or send the bylaw back so they can be fixed, before you approve it.

The numbering and the title page. The same lack of proofreading shows in the bylaw’s own numbering.

• In the Forestry zone, s. 5.6(20) sits between subsections (12) and (13).
• Section 8.6 has one subsection, and it is numbered (3).
• There is no section 5.13. The zones go from s. 5.12 straight to s. 5.14.
• After s. 5.5(19) the next provision is printed “20)” with no opening bracket, so it cannot be cited the way every other subsection is.
• Section 4.1(1) lists the zone as “Institutional I,” and s. 5.9 calls it the “Institutional (IN) Zone.”
• On the bylaw’s own title page (page 47 of the 15 September agenda package) the committee’s name is spelled “COMMITEE” and the bylaw is headed “LAND USE BYLAW NO. 264, 2022,” though section 1 on the same page cites it as 2026.

None of these changes what the bylaw means. Together they show that nobody read the text from beginning to end before third reading, and that is the text you are asked to approve.

Definitions that collide. The bylaw defines a secondary dwelling unit as “an attached (secondary suite) or detached secondary dwelling unit,” so by definition a secondary suite is a secondary dwelling unit. Yet s. 5.2(4) and s. 5.2(5) count the two separately, and s. 5.5(7) allows “one (1) secondary suite or secondary dwelling unit,” which on the bylaw’s own definition is a choice between a thing and itself. Section 5.2(10) caps “The combined maximum gross floor area of a principal dwelling unit and secondary suite.” Section 5.2(11) then provides for a house that is already over that figure, and limits its secondary dwelling unit without saying whether that unit may be a suite.

What I am asking for on this point: have the whole text proofread, the numbering corrected and the definitions made consistent with the zones that use them, before you approve it.

2. Nobody has published any work behind the 64-hectare figure.

Bylaw 264 sets a smallest lot size of 64.0 hectares in ten zones: Residential, Rural Residential, Land-Share, Agriculture, Forestry, Commercial, Light Industrial, Institutional, Conservation and Park. They are ss. 5.1(12), 5.2(13), 5.3(11), 5.5(19), 5.6(18), 5.7(5), 5.8(6), 5.9(5), 5.10(3) and 5.11(4). Section 8.1(4) then says it plainly for the rest: “The minimum lot area for all zones is 64.0 hectares.” Affordable Rental Housing and the marine zones are not on that list, and a few named places have smaller figures, so I put this as ten zones plus a general rule, not as one rule for everything.

Section 8.5(3) says the test is an average worked out “including the remainder.” So splitting one lot into two needs a parent lot of 128 hectares. In fact it needs more than that. Section 8.1(1) allows subdivision only “as authorized under Section 8.2,” and the list in s. 8.2 is closed: boundary adjustment, lot consolidation, transfers to an Indigenous governing body, park dedication, conservation dedication, community use, and affordable housing. An ordinary sale and split is not on the list at any size.

The staff report for the second-reading meeting of 24 August 2026 (page 143 of that agenda package) says the amendments “remove outright subdivision potential and reduce the number of units permitted outright on larger lots,” and that “the estimated maximum buildout under the proposed amendments is approximately 100 fewer units than under the current regulations.”

I cannot find any published work that explains the number 64. The draft plan in front of the committee on 17 April 2026 still carried a placeholder where the figure now sits. On page 31 of that agenda package the policy reads “below X hectares,” and the note in the margin reads “Placeholder. Waiting on GIS.” I can find no published comparison of other thresholds at any stage of this review. If that work exists, it has not been put anywhere a resident can read it, and I would drop this point if you showed it to me. Our own model of the island’s 894 mapped lots finds 2 that meet the new general size rule. Both are zoned Agriculture and sit in the Agricultural Land Reserve. So the rule binds almost every private lot on Denman. Section 8.3(1) then lifts the minimum altogether for lots created under s. 8.2(c) to (f): heritage transfer, park, conservation and community use. Section 8.3(2) sets it at one hectare for the two housing purposes in (g) and (h), which include affordable housing.

Approving one island-wide number that has no published reasoning, at the last regular meeting before an election, sets the standard of evidence for every other local trust committee.

What I am asking for on this point: require the analysis to be published and referred before you approve the bylaw.

3. The plan’s twenty-year housing number has been taken out, and nothing was put in its place.

The draft plan carried the figures from the housing needs report: 109 additional housing units over five years, and 359 over twenty. On 24 August 2026 the committee deleted them by resolution DE-2026-070(a). The bylaw read a third time on 15 September no longer has them. The planner’s reason, at 3:44:48 of the meeting recording (linked from our record of that meeting), was this: “I guess it’ll be left to the ministry to decide how we’ve referred to it. So how about we just delete it and see what they say.”

The Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs had written on 21 July 2026 (pages 375 and 376 of the 24 August agenda package) that it was “great to see” that Denman Island had “incorporated the 20-year HNR numbers.” It asked for one phrase, “housing targets” on page 8, to be changed. It also asked the committee to “ensure that the OCP includes the necessary statements and map designations for the approximate location, amount, type, and density of residential development needed for at least the next 20 years (LGA s.473(1)(a)).” Staff changed the wording and said the existing map still applies. They did not answer the part about the amount.

Those sentences were not the only numbers in the plan. Bylaw 260 also deletes the cap on overall residential density (Housing Objective 3), the roughly five per cent allowance above it (Housing Policy 12) and the residential density bank (Appendix D; items 27, 32 and 47 to 49). After the bylaw, the only words left about quantity (page 29 of the 15 September package) are a count of “approximately 74 vacant residentially zoned lots” and the sentence “caution is needed when considering future housing capacity.” The plan’s own list of required contents (page 31) still repeats the duty in s. 473(1)(a) to state the “amount … of residential development to meet anticipated housing needs over at least a 20-year period.”

The committee does not have to adopt the report’s 359. The duty to provide for that number, in s. 473.1(3), applies to municipal councils. But s. 473(1)(a) of the Local Government Act reaches this plan through s. 29 of the Islands Trust Act, and it asks for an amount. You are asked to approve both bylaws, and the Minister must also approve Bylaw 260 under s. 27(2)(b).

What I am asking for on this point: send Bylaw 260 back with directions to state an approximate amount of housing needed over at least twenty years. That could be the report’s figures, put back as a statement of future housing capacity, or another figure the committee can justify. Please send Bylaw 264 back with it, so the pair stays together, and let this happen before the Minister is asked to approve.

4. Farm housing gets narrower, and narrower than the provincial rule.

Land Use Bylaw No. 186 (consolidated to Bylaw No. 229, adopted 7 May 2024), Section 3.4, Table 3, sets the Agriculture zone rule today. The Agriculture zone is the first of the three columns. Line 1 gives a smallest lot area of 15.0 hectares for each principal single family dwelling unit on land outside the Agricultural Land Reserve. Line 3 sets no separate cap on dwelling units per lot; it reads “n/a,” because line 1 does that work. A second home is not automatic even now: s. 2.1(3) requires proof of enough water first.

Bylaw 264 keeps that rule. Section 5.5(3) still says “The minimum lot area per principal dwelling unit outside the Agricultural Land Reserve is 15.0 hectares.” But the very next subsection, s. 5.5(4), says “Only one (1) dwelling unit is permitted per lot, both inside and outside the Agricultural Land Reserve.” The second rule cancels the first. A rule of one home per 15.0 hectares can never do anything under a flat cap of one home. On a 40.5-hectare (100-acre) A-zone lot outside the Reserve, two principal homes become one, and the loss grows with the size of the holding. I do not say this of land inside the Reserve, where line 6 of the same table in Bylaw 186 already allows only one principal dwelling.

Section 5.5(4) also fights with the subsections around it. The bylaw defines a dwelling unit as “a building, or set of rooms in a building, used as a residence, containing an independent cooking, sleeping, and living facilities.” It defines a secondary suite as “an accessory, self-contained dwelling unit within the principal dwelling unit.” So a secondary suite is a dwelling unit. Read literally, “Only one (1) dwelling unit is permitted per lot” forbids the secondary suite and the secondary dwelling unit that s. 5.5(2) lists as allowed accessory uses and that s. 5.5(7) caps at one.

Section 5.5(7) also cuts what lines 8 and 9 of Table 3 in Bylaw 186 allow on Reserve land today. Today a lot may have both: one secondary suite and one secondary dwelling unit. Section 5.5(7) allows one or the other, not both. The Forestry zone keeps both, at draft s. 5.6(6). Nothing in the record explains why farmland is treated worse than forest land.

For comparison, the provincial rule is wider. Under the Agricultural Land Reserve Use Regulation (B.C. Reg. 30/2019), a parcel with only one residence on it may add a second detached home without asking the Commission. Section 31 allows one secondary suite inside the main home. Section 34.3 allows a second detached home of up to 90 m² where the parcel is 40 hectares or less, with the main home then capped at 500 m², or up to 186 m² where the parcel is larger than 40 hectares. The same is true of the main home. Section 5.5(15) caps a dwelling on Reserve land at 410 square metres, where s. 20.1(1)(b) of the Agricultural Land Commission Act allows 500. That cap is carried over from Bylaw 186, so it is not new, but it is not explained either. I know that s. 2 of that regulation preserves other enactments, and that s. 46(3) of the Agricultural Land Commission Act lets a stricter local bylaw stand. I raise the provincial standard as a benchmark, not as a limit on your powers. A bylaw that goes below it should say why, and the record does not.

What I am asking for on this point: send ss. 5.5(3), 5.5(4) and 5.5(7) back to be made consistent with each other, with a stated reason for going below the provincial standard.

5. Bylaw 186 is repealed outright, and the new bylaw says nothing about work already under way.

The last enacting clause of Bylaw 264 (page 47 of the 15 September agenda package) says Bylaw 186 “and all of its amendments are repealed.” Bylaw 264 has no transition section. Section 2.9 is headed “Repeal and Replacement,” but it deals only with references to other Acts and to renamed agencies. Nothing in the bylaw tells an owner who has an application, a permit or a temporary use permit under Bylaw 186 which rules apply to it on the day Bylaw 264 is adopted. A bylaw that changes what may be built on almost every lot on the island should say so.

What I am asking for on this point: direct the committee to add a transition section that says how applications and permits already in progress are to be treated.

6. The committee could have left this to the new trustees, and chose not to.

The staff report of 3 September 2026, written for the 15 September meeting, set out Alternative 2 (pages 20 and 21 of that agenda package), headed “Defer Third Reading to the Incoming LTC”: the committee “may choose to defer consideration of Third Reading of Bylaw Nos. 260 and 264 to a future meeting of the incoming LTC,” which is “not expected to begin considering applications and projects until early 2027.” The committee did not take it. The same report calls that meeting “the final regular meeting of the current LTC before the local election.”

Your approval can still come before the new trustees have said a word. They are the ones who will inherit these bylaws: the enforcement, the variance applications, and the consequences. The object of the trust in s. 3 of the Act 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 generally.” A pair of bylaws that staff estimate at about 100 fewer units, approved on a threshold with no published reasoning and with the housing number deleted, should be tested against that object by the committee that has to live with it.

I want to be clear that these bylaws also carry real improvements, and I am asking you to keep them: the temporary-use-permit requirement for secondary dwellings is removed, homes are allowed in Industrial zones, secondary suites and detached secondary dwellings are expanded, and exclusion applications to the Agricultural Land Commission for affordable housing are supported. I am asking for process and correction, not obstruction.

What I am asking for on this point: send the bylaws back to the Denman committee with the directions above.

A request to the Secretary

This last request is for the Secretary rather than the committee. Please tell me the date you received these bylaws from the Denman Island Local Trust Committee, and the date the one-month period in section 22(1)(c) runs out. That date is not published anywhere. Without it, a resident cannot tell whether there is still time for the committee to act before section 22(2) treats the bylaws as approved.

Yours respectfully,
[Your name]
[Your address on Denman Island, or your interest in the trust area]