Earlier this week, one of the Quadra Island candidates in the upcoming election spoke of the need for a single political organization that represents the entire island. 

This isn’t the first time this concept has been expressed. Two and a half years ago, Regional Director Noba Anderson unveiled a similar vision for Cortes Island. 

While she and Marc Doll both expressed frustrations with the Strathcona Regional District, they are not calling for separation from it. Their proposed community organization gives their respective islands a chance to speak at several different tables: local, regional and provincial. 

“Quadra is a community in and of itself, but doesn’t operate so much as a community. It operates as a bunch of really motivated, organized people in silos. From a community development perspective, we need to bring them together,” said Doll.

“We need to have an organization where Quadra Islanders can come together and focus on the vision for our future. How do we want to deal with development? How do we want our voice to be heard at the provincial table, and at the SRD table?”

While Doll is proclaiming his vision during an election campaign, Anderson has been Cortes Island’s Director since 2008.

There are references to a conflict she is having with the SRD in the audio.

At the time of our interview she was about to leave for Hornby Island, which has had a functioning residents association since 1979. 

“I’m just really curious what other communities like that do and what version of that might be palatable and functional here,” she explained. 

“I want to built community council, really simply put. City has a mayor and council. There is a group of people that are elected by the community to discuss matters of interest to the community and make decisions that pertain to the community and communicate the city’s will to outside agencies. I’m interested in building something here that is complementary to the Regional District structure and certainly in no way would supersede or replace it.”

The way the SRD is structured, Anderson said, “I am inherently a minority. Structurally, we don’t know things about each other. We don’t know each other’s communities even with the best intentions, which aren’t necessarily always there.”

Doll describes the SRD as a board in which the 5 municipalities, 4 electoral areas and single treaty First Nation of the SRD are ‘almost in competItion,’ rather than working together. Worse, when it comes to budgetary matters, the city of Campbell River is ‘governing Quadra, Cortes and all the other rural areas on Vancouver Island.’ 

They both believe their respective islands would be harder to ignore if they had a single political body expressing their collective wishes.  

Top image credit: The Meeting Photo by Antenna on Unsplash

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