In public, DoS Mayor Karen Elliott, Director of Engineering Chris Wyckam and all other councilors and staff who speak on the matter maintain that the District’s role in the spit removal project is minimal, limited to flood risk approvals and what sounds like calendaring services:
“The District will only be required to sign off on an engineering report regarding flood management. As we continue to learn more about this next phase of the project, the District will also continue its efforts to facilitate solution-focused conversation among parties as best it can, recognizing that we have limited influence.”
source: Squamish Chief 2021-02-24 article, also DFO 01961 response page 696
However, in private, emails obtained via Access to Information Act reveal how much power the District holds on the matter, and how crucial their approval is to the success of the project, spelled out by none other than SRWS:
source: DFO 01961 response, page 171
Since then, the province has remained completely absent from the spit removal issue, so the District still has full authority to not support this project, yet they choose to pretend that they are powerless, because what they actually want is to remove the spit. They just don't want to deal with public backlash if they admit to that, so they choose to mislead the public instead.
Here is another private SRWS email making it clear that SRWS needs District support:
source: DFO 01961 response, pages 479 & 480
Of course they also want the District to solve the mess that they will leave by removing spit access. Spending public funds to destroy useful public infrastructure is fun!
The mayor and the council support spit removal, yet do not have the courage to admit it, nor the leadership capacity to find a solution that will actually work for the community, even though it is very much their prerogative to do that. As such they are complicit in all of SRWS shenanigans.