Salt Spring Election 2026: Questions for Candidates
Community Resiliency Candidate Questionnaires
Responses will be published in full on this website later in September.
Community Resiliency questionnaire for Islands Trust Trustee candidates:
Q1: Affordable Housing
The high cost and lack of availability of housing on Salt Spring make it difficult for many people, including workers, to continue to live here. Without a diverse community, Salt Spring will struggle to meet the challenges of climate change and other worsening issues. According to the Salt Spring Island Foundation's 2025 Living Wage Report, the average Salt Spring family spends more than 40% of their income on housing.
Do you support the creation of more affordable housing on Salt Spring within sustainable population limits?
Q2: Housing Density
Over 80% of housing on Salt Spring consists of single-family detached homes—double the regional average. This type of housing contributes to sprawl. Increasing housing density into already serviced villages cuts the driving, land clearing and ecosystem impacts, and infrastructure sprawl that add to Salt Spring's carbon footprint, taxes and climate risk exposure, while also creating more affordable housing options.
Will you ensure the revised Salt Spring Official Community Plan (OCP) directs most new residential zoning capacity into Ganges and other existing serviced villages, rather than continuing to expand into rural and forested areas?
Q3: Smaller Housing Forms
Smaller homes use less energy to build and heat, let people live closer to where they work, and can often be more affordable - all of which cut commuting emissions, protect ecosystems and create more housing options.
Will you support zoning bylaws that allow smaller housing forms such as garden suites, cottages, and tiny homes (aka: accessory dwelling units) as permitted uses for year-round housing in more places?
Q4: Engagement with First Nations on Land Use
Indigenous knowledge of this land's fire, water, food and ecological history is vast, and land use decisions made without them risk missing information that matters for adapting to a changing climate, while also repeating a pattern of consultation after decisions are already made.
Will you support a policy requiring early engagement with local First Nations governments before land use decisions affecting their territories move to a vote, even where that adds time to the approval process?
Q5: Data-Driven Planning
As wildfire, flood, and drought risks grow, decisions made without current and locally specific hazard and vulnerability data lock in policies that are difficult to reverse later.
Will you support a requirement that current climate hazard data (wildfire, flood, sea level rise, drought, food and freshwater availability) be a mandatory part of reviewing rezoning and subdivision applications?
Q6: Development Permit Areas for Habitat Protection
Forests, wetlands, and shorelines absorb floodwater, buffer wildfire, and store carbon, so weakening their protection removes exactly the natural systems that help the island cope with climate extremes and protect biodiversity.
Will you support the strengthening of Development Permit Area (DPAs) guidelines for forests, wetlands, and shoreline habitat, even where that adds cost or process time for applicants?
Q7: Watershed Health
With droughts becoming more frequent and severe, approving growth without confirming water supply sustainability sets up shortages that can hit every household. Water is also a lynchpin issue in ecosystem wellbeing and climate risk reduction.
Will you make watershed health and freshwater sustainability a key priority if elected?
Q8: Food Security
Local food production is one of the clearest ways to reduce emissions from transporting food from off-island and strengthen our resilience when supply chains are disrupted by climate, political and economic events. Farming is also notoriously hard to sustain, with farmers saying they need to be supported to allow for agri-tourism accommodations, worker housing, and on-farm sales.
Will you prioritize food security and the preservation of farmland and farming as a viable livelihood within the ALR, and outside of it, on Salt Spring?
Q9: Climate Risks
What do you believe are the main climate risks to Salt Spring Island’s citizens, infrastructure, economy, and ecosystems? What specific actions do you think the community should take now to adapt to these risks and prepare for the growing challenges, and how will you help advance these efforts?
Q10: Top Overall Priorities
If elected, what will your top priorities be in the coming term, and what specific actions will you take to address those priorities?
Community Resiliency questionnaire for Electoral Area Director and Local Community Commission (LCC) candidates:
Q1: Emergency Preparedness Funding
As climate hazards such as drought, wildfires, and floods grow, the difference between a community that copes and one that doesn't often comes down to whether they invested sufficient resources in local emergency preparedness efforts. Salt Spring’s Emergency Management Program currently receives only half of the budget provided for the Southern Gulf Islands, despite having twice the population size.
Will you support increased funding for emergency preparedness and services in CRD budget decisions, even when it competes with other service requests?
Q2: Affordable Housing
Climate and economic resilience depend on having enough nurses, paramedics, firefighters, teachers, care aides, and other workers who can actually afford to live here. Community diversity is at the heart of community wellbeing, and our ability to respond to increasing challenges – and affordable housing options are the key.
Will you support the formation of a CRD-funded service to create more affordable and workforce housing options?
Q3: Ganges Village Development and Livability
Affordable housing development should be directed in and around current village centres, primarily Ganges, in order to prevent further development in our fragile ecosystems and decrease risks to homes and businesses from fire, floods and sea level rise. There are many areas such as sewer infrastructure, water licenses for affordable housing, parking and village character that will be impacted by increased density.
Do you support efforts to prepare Ganges for more development such as housing, accessibility, beautification, etc?
Q4: Freshwater Sustainability
We need to recognize the limits to our local freshwater resources, and how important water is for humans and ecosystems to thrive, especially as droughts and floods are expected to increase in the coming years.
Will you support the setting of binding conservation and drought-response standards across CRD-managed water districts, even where that means restricting use?
Q5: Local Food Production
Local food production is a direct community resilience measure, since it reduces dependence on global supply chains that are increasingly disrupted by climate, political and economic events.
Will you support increasing CRD economic development funding and programming specifically toward local food production and agricultural products?
Q6: Engagement With First Nations
Indigenous knowledge of this land's fire, water, food and ecological history is vast, and CRD decisions on parks, capital projects, and resource use made without that knowledge risk missing information that matters for adapting to a changing climate, while repeating a pattern of consultation after decisions are already made.
Will you support a CRD policy requiring early engagement with local First Nations governments before park acquisitions, capital projects, or resource management decisions affecting their territories are finalized, even where that adds time to project timelines?
Q7: Sustainable Transportation
Communities that reduce their dependency on fossil fuels are more resilient to disruptions, and transportation is one of our main drivers of GHG emissions.
Will you support improvements for more active forms of transportation such as pathways, the completion of the Salish Sea Trail, increased EV charging infrastructure, and improved public transit?
Q8: Dealing With Our Solid Waste
Salt Spring's businesses, schools, and hospitals currently have few publicly funded recycling or composting services, unlike household services, which means institutional waste is either hauled off-island at higher emissions and cost, or not diverted at all.
Will you support increasing CRD investment in local waste management (e.g. composting and recycling infrastructure for businesses, schools, hospitals and other public buildings) even where it raises collection costs?
Q9: Climate Risks
What do you believe are the main climate risks to Salt Spring Island – our citizens, our infrastructure, our economy, and our ecosystems? What specific actions do you think the community should take to adapt to these risks and would you work to ensure that the CRD supports these actions?
Q10: Top Overall Priorities
If elected, what will your top priorities be in the coming term, and what specific actions will you take to address those priorities?