ASK Salt Spring: Answered - Ep. 57 Rob Botterell, Green Party MLA

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Host Damian Inwood talks to Rob Botterell about the Islands Trust, the BC budget, the future of BC's economy and the threat of tariffs.

You're listening to episode 57 of Ask Salt Spring Answered when we speak with Rob Botterell, who is the Green Party MLA for Saanich North and the islands. We talked about all kinds of things, you know, pending tariffs, how BC needs to rejig its economy to obviously be less reliant on the US but at the same time becoming environmentally friendly and a whole bunch of other issues that came up at Ask Salt Spring. So I'm here with Rob Botrell, our MLA for the Green Party for Salt Spring Island and the other Gulf Islands We were just in Ask Salt Spring and welcome Rob. Great. Thanks a lot. It's great to be here. Yeah now we talked about the Islands Trust and

There was a complaint that they were I guess not Not really honoring the mandate the original mandate of the Islands Trust to preserve and protect was a complaint that they were, I guess, not really honoring the original mandate of the Islands Trust to preserve and protect. And you said you thought the Islands Trust had lost its way. Perhaps tell us a little bit about what you feel should be now done to help find its way.

Sure, yeah. No, thanks for that great question. First of all, I want to emphasize that the islands trustees throughout the Gulf Islands, I just want to give them a shout out. They have a hard job and they work extraordinarily hard and, you know, so all of my comments are not focused on the genuine hard efforts and really appreciate the efforts of all the Islands Trustee. The Islands Trust itself though, you know, the mandate is to preserve and protect the unique amenities of the Islands Trust area,

the Islands Trust area and that mandate is as strong and important now as it was at the creation of the Islands Trust and from my perspective you know that mandate you know involves the unique amenities and from my perspective anyway my personal perspective is unique amenities do not include housing and economic development and so on. I mean that's something we as settlers have brought to this equation. It's really to preserve the unique environment of the islands. And you know when I was running for office, I heard from a lot of constituents concerns about making sure that the Island's Trust can effectively achieve its mandate.

And some were concerned about the high cost of the trust. Others were concerned about the way in which the policy statement was evolving, yet others were just concerned about the approach taken to land use planning. And so I've been seeking clarification from the Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs on at the provincial level any plans to review the Islands Trust or look at changing its approach and what I've emphasized today in the meeting and certainly with I will be with the Minister is just looking at a way for us to collectively review how the trust approaches its mandate, to confirm the original mandate, and to really

develop a 21st century approach to preserving and protecting the trust area. And I'll certainly be reporting back at the next Ask Salt Spring on what I learned. Yeah and you said it's a structural issue and you think that if the Islands Trust had said you know we need to change certain things they would have got more of a response and just throwing it out there and saying you know perhaps it needs to be reviewed. Yeah I mean everybody has their different approaches but in my prior career as a lawyer what I often I would deal with the province and I always found

that it was far more effective to make specific requests and proposals to the province rather than a general request for a review. And so on the issues that I was dealing with I always made it a real priority to suggest to my clients that they put a specific request in front of government. That's not the approach the Islands Trust took but you know I think the path forward now is to make sure that any review is quite focused and to have some specific requests so we'll see what happens. Yeah okay now there was a question about the Drake Road development. I don't think it really is something that you would be involved in directly, but we all saw the the modules being piled up on top of each other a few days ago, and the

question I guess was about whether there, because it's being done through BC housing, there's no building permit issued and no there, because it's being done through BC Housing, there's no building permit issued and no inspection and it's all modular housing that was pre-built I guess off-site. Is there something for you in that, that you would get involved in that? Well certainly where, and as the question came up this morning, where I'm happy to assist where I can is if, you know, a specific Salt Spring Islanders or others on the island have a concern about whether the work has been done to code or whether the code applies or those things. I really

encouraged participants in ASK if put your concerns in writing and I'll take them forward to the Minister of Housing and seek some clarification. And in that in this instance that's that's the way that I can support because it's it's always important for everybody to get their concerns or questions answered. Okay now we've just had a provincial budget in the obviously the background being how do we deal with what's going on with tariffs south of the border and so on although I think as you said this this budget was drawn up before that right yeah what's your what's your view on the budget and I know you've had expressed some concerns about the the deficit but you talked about the

need to dice diversify and changing the way we view our economy as in the 21st century to include, you know, I guess ecological things and things that don't rely on the US in the future. What do you mean by that? What do you have in mind? Yeah, so this is very much a standstill budget. It protects key supports for education

and healthcare and social programs. And that's extraordinarily important in these uncertain times. But it's also the case that we need to diversify away from reliance on US markets and it's also the case that we need to build an economy that actually tackles climate change, an economy that actually is built on innovation because what we need is we need an economy that will generate the the wealth and revenues needed in a sustainable green environmentally you

know sound way to support the programs we all want and and so yes right now we're running gonna run on an $11 billion deficit this year. That's not something that can be sustained over the long term. So what we need to do is we need to build a 21st century green economy that is built on innovation so that we have the revenues, resources to actually ensure people have the services and programs they need and that we don't run up the debt, that we ultimately

balance the books rather than having the debt continually increase. So things like in the logging industry where we basically export raw logs, why not keep them in BC and mill them here and create jobs that way and actually have a value added system? Yeah, and so in the forest, the forest sector is really being heavily hit and the future of the forest sector is value added. You know, we can protect old growth, we can partner with First Nations, but the economic benefits from the forest sector on value added are huge. And you know, whether it's mass timber buildings or whether it's specialized types of sawmill products, that's the way of the future and we can diversify into many other markets than the US to realize the benefits

from those value added products. So this year in the agreement between the Green Party and the NDP, we will be doing a review of forests together. We will be looking at Clean BC and climate action type of projects together. And those will give us the ability to actually chart a new path that is sustainable for the long term. Now as a response to the budget I think you said you asked for a two billion dollar innovation fund as something that the government could consider. You said they have a four billion dollar contingency. Do you have any confidence

that they will start looking at innovation as part of their response to Trump? Well the optimist in me says that this budget was put together under very difficult circumstances with a lot of uncertainties and so you know it's encouraging that there's a four billion dollar contingency there. And really over the next six, nine months, what we want to do is really press the government to devote some of that contingency to really doing the type of innovation work that's needed so that our mining sector, our forest sector, our tech sector, our film sector, our tourism sector are really at the leading edge and able to generate the revenues that we need to pay for all the programs we have.

Now there has been some concern expressed by environmental groups about the fast tracking of these projects that have been brought on stream now to counteract the tariffs. What's your view on that and how are you going to protect the environment while still going ahead with these projects? Well, we'll be watching very closely over the spring session to see what legislation the province brings forward to fast-track environmental assessments for these projects and we'll be doing everything we can to make sure that fast-tracking doesn't lead to less rigorous type of environmental assessments and and you know that's going to be our heavy lifting in the spring

session and you know there are always better ways to do things but we have to make sure that the amount of rigor and thoroughness isn't lost in that process. And of course down the road we're going to be doing more and more projects I guess depending on what happens with tariffs and so on. We'll need to redirect our economy as you said and what's what's going to happen then if we if we do get pressure on to develop these these kind of you know resource projects and mining projects and things like that. Yeah so for future projects we'll be pressing really hard to make sure that they're green and that's the Clean BC review will really help us make sure that's the case. And then that also that for future projects environmental assessments are done that are really

thorough and don't allow for shortcuts and we move toward protection of the environment and we move toward tackling the climate emergency with future projects rather than moving away from those two objectives. Okay thanks Rob I know you've got a busy day and you've got another appointment so thanks very much for coming in to Ask Salt Spring Answered and we're on CHIR FM and have a great day. Great thanks very much that was terrific take care.