Where Ethan stands, and the hard questions, answered.
A trustee's powers are narrow but real. Below is what Ethan would actually do with them.
Homes for the people who keep the island running
The Trust doesn't build housing. It makes housing possible or impossible. Right now, even good projects feel impossible, and the nurses, teachers, tradespeople, and families who hold this community together can't build a life here if they can't afford to stay.
Creating a false choice between housing and the island's ecosystem is lazy, and honestly it's a smokescreen. It avoids the real questions: what kind of housing, where, and for whom. Ethan would open clear pathways for practical workforce housing in the village core, on already-cleared land, and end the decade-long approval marathons that kill good projects by exhaustion.
Salt Spring has watched good things leave over that slow process. Mickey McLeod from Salt Spring Island Coffee has written about how the company ended up leaving the island after a slow no that came only once years of investment were already spent. As a trustee, Ethan wants the opposite instinct.
A system that too often says NO when it should be asking HOW. The problem, as Mickey McLeod from Salt Spring Island Coffee described it
Ecology first. Community second. Luxury last.
Water is the real limit on this island. Every Gulf Island sat under Level 4 drought, the highest level, this past summer. The Trust can't create new water, but it can stop pretending land use and water are separate decisions. They are the same decision.
Ethan would base land-use on what the watershed can actually carry: the ecological flows that keep creeks and fish alive first, the community's real needs second, luxury use last. And he'd make it easy to do the right thing, clearing the way for rainwater cisterns and grey-water reuse instead of treating them as exotic exceptions.
Protection that actually protects
We're all stewards here, and stewarding a forest means tending it, not just fencing it off and hoping for the best. Doing nothing and hoping for the best isn't protection. It's the slow erosion of everything we claim to value, dressed up as principle.
Ethan wants “preserve and protect” measured honestly: by the health of our watersheds, forests, and shoreline, using the best science available. The tools a trustee has (development permit areas, tree retention, FireSmart standards, OCP designation) are under-used. And the climate is changing now: wildfire risk and a shifting coastline mean the Trust has to stay nimble and adapt.
Let a farm house the people who work it
Farms need workers, and workers need somewhere to live. Food security starts with letting a farm legally house the people who work it.
Salt Spring leans heavily on ferries and imported food. A trustee can't set crop prices, but the levers a trustee does hold are real: farm-worker housing, water access, and farm-protective zoning.
The questions Ethan keeps getting
Tap a question. If yours isn't here, bring it to the Facebook page.
+What exactly is a citizens' assembly, and why do you keep talking about it?
It's a group of islanders chosen by lottery, like jury duty, and balanced to look like Salt Spring itself: renters and owners, every age and income, every neighbourhood, with Indigenous participation built in. They're paid for their time, with childcare and travel covered, given balanced information and skilled facilitators, and asked to work through one big question together over several sessions.
They make recommendations, and the trustees still decide. What it buys you is legitimacy: decisions shaped by a true cross-section of the island, including the people who can't give up a Tuesday night. As Ethan put it in his op-ed, attendance is not the same thing as representation.
Source: “Lessons from Ground Zero,” Salt Spring Exchange, May 2026.
+Isn't that just government hand-picking people who'll agree with it?
That's exactly the failure mode to design against, and it's solvable. The selection is a random civic lottery run independently. People can't apply to get themselves on it. The facilitation is independent, the information is balanced and public, and the whole process is transparent. Done that way, an assembly is harder to stack than a town-hall meeting.
+Didn't BC already try this in 2004, and the reform failed?
BC's 2004 Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform is the example most people here remember, and it's a fair thing to raise. Its recommendation went to a referendum and did not pass. Assemblies have come a long way since then, and the strongest recent examples are local and land-use focused rather than province-wide ballot questions. Ireland's assemblies produced recommendations that later matched referendum results closely. Cities like Petaluma, California have used a lottery-selected assembly on a single contested public-land question, with the council obligated to respond publicly. Those local, single-question models are the ones Ethan thinks fit Salt Spring.
+What would a citizens' assembly cost, and who pays?
An assembly costs money, and Ethan won't pretend otherwise. Comparable local assemblies elsewhere have ranged from modest budgets to several hundred thousand dollars, depending on scope, length, and how many people are involved. Salt Spring would need its own real quote before committing. The honest comparison is that cost against the cost of years of stalled, litigated, and re-litigated decisions.
+You own waterfront at Baker Beach with a project before the Trust. Isn't that a conflict?
Yes. Ethan is direct about it: the Baker Beach situation makes his own position more complicated, not less. His rule is simple and absolute: “Any decision touching my property or my foundation, I recuse, publicly, on the record, every time.” That's the same transparency standard he's asking of the whole Trust.
And he says it's exactly this experience that lit a fire under him, to make sure the next person doesn't get stuck in the same maze just for trying to do the right thing.
+How would you handle consultation with First Nations, like on the ADU bylaw?
Indigenous governments are governments. We don't have to always agree with them, but we have to respect them as governments and work with them meaningfully from the start. Consultation is not another box to check.
The secondary-suite bylaw (Bylaw 530) stalled precisely because that consultation with SȾÁUTW̱ (Tsawout) came too late; SȾÁUTW̱ holds treaty rights on Salt Spring under the 1852 Douglas Treaty. Getting it right early is faster than getting it wrong and having to redo it.
+How is housing different from “more development” that the Trust exists to limit?
Most people here want both, and the island's own engagement work has shown it: more homes for working people and a protected environment. The lever Ethan cares about is workforce housing in the village core, on already-cleared land, through a faster and clearer process. That means homes for the people who serve the island, while the forest stays the forest. Protecting the island and housing the people who keep it running are the same project.
+What can a Trust trustee actually decide, and what can't they?
A Local Trust Committee's job is land use: the Official Community Plan, zoning, development permits, and the bylaws that flow from the Islands Trust's “preserve and protect” mandate. That's real power over how the island grows.
A trustee can't directly control ferry schedules and fares, transit, or water-district operations. Those sit with BC Ferries, the CRD, and the water districts. There, a trustee's tools are land-use that supports good outcomes, plus public advocacy. Ethan will be clear about which lever he's actually pulling.