Who am I?

I spent two decades in and outside government in Ontario advocating for renewable energy, starting with one wind turbine on Toronto's waterfront that gave our advocacy a symbol everyone could see. That led to a province-wide renewable energy policy and the birth of a homegrown renewables industry. 

Since coming home to BC, I've been a lead author of Salt Spring's Climate Action Plan, and was the Chair of Transition Salt Spring for seven years. That local work seated me across the table from Trustees, CRD officials, and government staff on file after file, and gave me a good sense of where things get snagged on the road to change. Most of what I learned in that time was about how to make institutions actually deliver.

Where do I stand?

I believe we need a high functioning Islands Trust to preserve and protect the places we love, and to deal with what's here now: a changing climate, the steady fragmentation of the ecosystems that make these islands so special, and a housing crisis that is pushing working people and families off the island. I strongly support the Islands Trust and its preserve-and-protect mandate, and I also believe it can do a lot better. 

Decisive action on our pressing issues has to start with an honest look at where we are. Islanders I've spoken with are unhappy with the Trust’s performance. That isn't just my impression. When Return on Insight, an island-based public opinion polling firm, surveyed a random, representative sample of islanders about water infrastructure, it also asked them to rate our local government agencies. Only 11% said that the Trust was doing a good job.

How do I work?

There's a saying that Salt Spring is an argument surrounded by water. But people who've been here decades tell me that saying started out as “a conversation surrounded by water”. 

Meaningful conversation founded on trust is a far better way of creating change than by arguing. Some of our disagreements will still be there even after the best conversations. For those, we need decisions made in the open with the reasons on the record, so it’s clear that all sides were heard, their thoughts were considered, and the decision was fair. Disagreements built on suspicion get in the way of revealing the common ground that’s usually hiding in plain sight on most issues.