BCSC Affirms Judicial Power to Vary Administrative Terms of Charitable Trust

In The Sidney and North Saanich Memorial Park Society v. British Columbia (Attorney General), the British Columbia Supreme Court approved a trustee’s application to modify several terms of a charitable trust that was established in 1965. The background facts and issues reviewed in the case are lengthy and complex. However, in general terms, the trust involved the administration of land and property located in the Town of Sidney for the benefit of nearby residents. One of the terms of the trust involved a requirement that the trustee maintain an area of the property (which had been expropriated long ago and no longer formed part of the trust property) for purposes of a war memorial. The Court granted the trustee’s request, amongst others, to alter that portion of the trust so that the trustee could preserve another section of the trust lands for purposes of a war memorial.
Another provision of the trust required that if any lands forming part of the trust property was expropriated, the proceeds from the expropriation must only be used to purchase new lands and improve and maintain those new lands (i.e. and not to maintain the prior existing lands that were part of the original trust property). The Court allowed the amendment so that the trustee could apply the expropriation funds for all of the trust property, otherwise the prior existing trust property would fall into disrepair.
In arriving at the decision to approve the requested changes to the trust, the Court stated that it had “inherent jurisdiction for administrative scheme-making for charitable trusts. In cases where it cannot be said that the requirements to achieve the purposes of a charitable trust have become sufficiently impracticable or impossible so as to engage the cy-près doctrine, the courts may nonetheless, pursuant to this administrative scheme-making jurisdiction, vary the administrative terms of a trust for the furtherance of charitable purposes.”