We live in a place of extraordinary beauty, great environmental significance, and rare biological diversity. We appreciate and accept our responsibility to be the stewards of our island home, to honour its past, care for its present, and protect its future. We know that it is more important to leave a legacy than to leave an impact.
We also respect our island’s human heritage – the First Nations peoples who lived in harmony with the land and sea, and whose traditional territory we inhabit, and the early Hawaiian, black and Japanese pioneers who landed on these shores with little more than their cultures and their determination and turned them into a way of life. And we acknowledge the old island families, with their diverse origins, whose generations have served our community and moulded past into present.
Today, we know that our island and its people face many challenges. Some of these are global, such as climate change and diminishing fossil fuel supplies, both of which pose particular problems for island communities. Others are more local, like our aging population and the loss of socioeconomic diversity. The availability of housing to meet a wide variety of needs, and the supply of safe, potable water are also issues that must be addressed. There are many others.
With our Official Community Plan, we lay out a vision focussed on a set of objectives and based on a commitment to honour the natural integrity of the island, while striving to meet the basic needs of its inhabitants. We commit ourselves to leave the next generation with an environment and with opportunities at least as secure as those that we ourselves have enjoyed.
Download the plan: https://crd.bc.ca/docs/default-source/salt-spring-island-ea-pdf/cedc/ssbylbaseocp434vol1_reduced.pdf?sfvrsn=2