By Transition Salt Spring Elections & Candidates, Local News – September 30, 2026 on the Salt Spring Exchange. See the original post here.
What do candidates in the October 17 local election see as the most pressing climate risks for Salt Spring? What are their plans to engage with First Nations on land use? How do they plan to support local food production? What do they plan to do about affordable housing?
All 13 candidates running for CRD Area Director, Local Community Commission Commissioner and Islands Trust Trustee recently completed Community Resiliency questionnaires sent by Transition Salt Spring in partnership with the Salt Spring Island Farmland Trust.
Kudos to the candidates for putting so much thought into their answers.
You can view their responses to the questionnaires, either question-by-question or candidate-by-candidate, here: transitionsaltspring.com/election-2026-questions.
We will also be sharing the responses, one question at a time, in a series of upcoming posts on The Exchange.
The questions posed in the Community Resiliency questionnaires are based on 10 Guiding Principles, shared last week on The Exchange, that grew out of what we heard from 70 community leaders last year at the Common Ground Summit.
We submitted the Guiding Principles as part of our submission earlier this year for an updated Official Community Plan, one of the major tasks that lie ahead for our next set of Islands Trust trustees.
Given the growing challenges of living at a time when the climate is getting hotter and becoming less stable, it is imperative that we do what we can to boost our community’s resilience.
We can’t know when the next atmospheric river or heat dome will occur, but we know that now is the time to increase our preparedness for whatever is to come.
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.
Similarly, climate and economic resilience depend on having enough nurses, paramedics, firefighters, teachers, care aides, and other workers who can actually afford to live here.
Emergency preparedness and affordable housing are among the big topics that our local elected officials will be tackling over the next four years, so it is imperative for Salt Spring voters to be as informed about our choices as possible.
We hope that seeing the differences — and similarities — in the candidate answers to our questionnaires will help you be an informed voter when you cast your ballot on October 17, or via advance voting on October 7 and 14.
For more information about when, where and how to vote, see our How To Vote page: transitionsaltspring.com/election-2026-how-to-vote.