The Trust readies for Halloween - Alcyonenews

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Islands Trust

Posted October 25, 2019

The Trust readies for Halloween

The Trust nowadays abstracts and publishes “Decision Highlights” of its quarterly meetings. The September 2019 version of it includes an item that I find hard to believe what I see. It is fifth on the list of eight “highlights”:

“Call for an Independent Review of the Trust

That Trust Council request the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing to add the Islands Trust to the Auditor General Act, allowing for review of the Trust by the Auditor General for Local Government.”

This is scary aplenty and certainly worthy of a few words. In effect it is a continuation of the serial Trust machinations to evade the public will and to quench the vox populi demanding a reconsideration of the Trust.

Ironically, the Trust has recently wasted $115,000.00 on “Be the Change” consultants to buy advice on how to control the “change” of the Trust. It may be the consultant who advised the Trust to play this trick on us.

As a reminder the Trust started this series with the “let sleeping dogs lie” approach and succeeded in keeping the matter of a Trust revamp suppressed since September 2017, when in the aftermath of the SSI Urbanization Referendum the consensus to change the Trust was made. But in December 2018, the Trust surreptitiously addressed to the government of BC a request to change the Trust into what appears being a version of itself with expanded scope and more muscle to continue doing what it has been doing in the past, that which fueled the quest for reconsideration of the Trust.

That attempt was exposed in the Marketplace and the Trust retreated, recoiled and sprang out with a plan for fake public consultation. The plan was pompously titled “Islands 2050, have your say!" and came complete with the exclamation mark and an explanation that reads:

“In communities throughout and around the Trust Area, the Islands Trust will engage the public and First Nations through open houses, community events, onboard BC Ferries and online conversations.”

The veiled objective is to produce fake optics of public input. The method is to “engage” individuals one on one with PRofessional persuaders; and to corral people in a hall, split them into small groups and subject them to “free discussion”, but which is in effect firmly controlled by PRofessionals. Then, the “decisions” the groups make are collected by the Trust or its consultants, never to be seen again. This leaves the partakers thankful for the opportunity they were given to contribute to the public affairs of their society and send them home assured that the Trust is democratic. The system is fail-proof too, for its perpetrators that is, because anything unfavourable to “Inside Stakeholders” is contained like an oil leak is from a ship ringed with a boom. Of course, “offensive” submissions are secretly turned upside down, by the Trust “Consensus Manfacturers”.

This latest Trust maneuver, that of placing itself in the hands of the Auditor General, is safe for the Trust. This is based on the observation that public bodies in the general category of “commissioners” are benign as they tend to function as “pressure relief valves” for the institutions they are meant to “watchdog”. For example, the Trust supplants: “If you are not satisfied with our decision, go talk to the Ombudsperson” for the previously used closing paragraph which read: “If you have any questions, please contact the undersigned”. Then, if no complaint is filed with the Ombudsperson, the Trust brags about been certified righteous.

In this episode, they are goading us into the belief that if the Trust becomes subject to review by the Auditor General of BC, the Trust would behave itself and for as long as the Auditor remains silent, everything is proper and we need not worry. But it is not true – in effect the Trust is out to secure for itself a coverup for arbitrary conduct.

Perhaps the Trust made the move after observing the BC Auditor General’s performance in the Plecas Scandal, that which is currently boiling with the lid of the pot dancing loudly.

The BC Auditor General Carol Bellringer, investigated the Plecas’ shop, and found “weaknesses and gaps” that would make decent folk “vomit” (Plecas lingo ). Immediately, she hired a consultant to advise her what to do with the stuff. Eventually she made a handful of recommendations for fixes supposed to ensure that future Legislature Clerks and Sergeants at Arms would not have the “opportunities” James and Lentz had. Presto, the “vomit” inducing stuff would not happen again. Nonsense really, because where there is a will a way will be found, for the inventiveness of suitors is boundless. Then, having done what was tacitly expected from her by those who had created her post, she resigned and went for a barf-bag, I presume.

She did not ask for heads to roll and the Trust noticed that. She did not suggest the prosecution of the wrongdoers, nor did she comment on the Government’s readiness to let James and Lentz keep the loot, (other than the infamous wood splitter and a trailer, now both “Rusting In Piece” on the Legislature grounds).

There is no way to make the Trust behave, other than force it to operate in the open. The curtain of secrecy must be torn away and the dungeon must be filled with concrete, for unless this is done the Czarists of the Trust will remain just that, what they have been and what they are.

TOM V