Bryan Young to run for Islands Trust local trustee 

The Driftwood, August 12, 2026

“The Trust is broken.” How many times have we heard that? Well, when trust is broken, you don’t throw it away — you repair it. Maybe not at the Repair Café, but through the work of the two trustees we will elect on Oct. 17.  

We repair it, because we need a healthy, strong Islands Trust to preserve and protect the places we love, and to make sure we’re ready for big challenges like preparing for climate change, preventing ecosystem loss and making room for affordable housing. 

If you elect me on Oct. 17, I’ll work hard to: 

1. Protect our ecosystems and our community from climate risks like forest fire, flooding and drought by incorporating better protections in a new Community Plan. 

2. Direct most remaining development and affordable housing to places with existing services through the Community Plan. 

3. Ensure that the true diversity of island voices is better heard and truly engaged by the Trust. 

4. Create better coordination on related work between the Trust, CRD, Local Community Commission (LCC) and our water and fire districts.  

A Community Plan sets the rules for what gets built where, and the bylaws that follow put those rules into effect. On Salt Spring, that plan is shaped by the Islands Trust. If we didn’t have those rules, the slopes of Mount Tuam might look more like North Vancouver, and we’d likely have expensive seasonal condo towers in Ganges. But we don’t — and that’s one of many reasons why many of us love this place.  

As a lead author of Salt Spring’s Climate Action Plan, I learned a great deal about protecting our ecosystems and communities as forests dry and oceans rise. With Transition Salt Spring (TSS), I helped develop recommendations to the Trust for a new Community Plan — one that takes on climate, watershed and forest health, and affordable housing by steering most remaining development away from forested and natural areas and into serviced, walkable places like Ganges. I’ve worked hard to learn what our 18-year-old plan says now, and understand where it likely needs to go to serve us better. Finishing that work is a key reason I’m running. 

Before moving back to BC and landing on Salt Spring in 2018, I spent two decades in Ontario working in renewable energy and electricity conservation outside government — and then from the inside. I’ve been a renewable energy developer struggling with local government permitting to build a wind turbine on Toronto’s waterfront (approved as an “amusement park structure/communications tower/other structure”!), which led to the creation of a province-wide renewables industry. From inside government, I spent 15 years helping Ontario transition from polluting coal and gas-fired power plants to renewables and electricity conservation.  

Those experiences taught me how government works, and how to make government work for community and planet. I took those skills to TSS, where I initiated the development of incentive programs to save islanders money on rainwater catchment systems, cleaner-burning wood stoves and heat pumps.  

While at TSS, I also developed strong working relationships with local elected officials and staff at the CRD, LCC, the Trust, North Salt Spring Waterworks and the fire district. I’ve got a head start on the job of trustee and can put these skills and relationships to work with kindness, determination and creativity to help untie the knots that hold us back. 

Repairing our relationship with the Trust will take work to transition to engaging with the community in a meaningful way. How often have you heard that “Salt Spring is an argument surrounded by water?” Well, a longtime islander told me last year that the original line was actually “Salt Spring is a conversation surrounded by water.” Let’s change the channel back to “conversation.” 

And better engagement starts with meeting folks where they are. You shouldn’t be shut out of the conversation because you have a job or a family, because you’re too busy for a long survey, or because you find it tough to speak in front of a crowd. We need to engage Salt Springers in new creative ways that fit better into their lives, and make sure that input is reflected in the result. More voices make for better decisions — and people are generally happier when they’ve been heard. I’m proposing working with my fellow trustees and Trust staff to change the Trust’s institutional culture starting on Salt Spring, and making that a model for the other islands.

Later in August, I’ll share more details about my vision. Anchoring this vision are my beliefs that:

• climate change and rural sprawl require that we do more to protect our watersheds and forests, which have a limited capacity to absorb development;

• housing, when done right and built in serviced areas, takes pressure off the natural spaces we love; and

• meaningful First Nations reconciliation could help right many wrongs, and get us rowing in the same direction to tackle the big problems, together.

I’ll be requesting meetings with all the declared candidates and look forward to more discussions about how each pair of us could work together if we are both elected. I’m also inviting the candidates to host joint open houses, so you can speak with each of us in one location.

In the weeks ahead, I look forward to hearing from you and answering your questions.

Where do you want Salt Spring to go? How do we turn an argument back into a conversation? I’m up for a channel change and a big shot of hope if you are.

Ask me questions on my website at youngfortrust.ca, or by sending me an email message at young4trustee@gmail.com.