The biggest question in BC farming today is what will happen to the Agricultural Land Reserve: Now, a recent Orchard and Vine interview with Agriculture Minister Pat Pimm may provide some of the answers.
Pimm and his Liberal colleagues have been under fire since the Globe and Mail acquired secret, cabinet documents detailing the Liberal MLA's plan to ‘modernize’ the Agricultural Land Commission (ALC).
Just before that document was leaked, Pimm told Orchard and Vine he wants to loosen rules in most of BC, while possibly tightening the rules in the Okanagan and Fraser valleys.
The document is known as a “Cabinet Decision Summary Sheet,” and was prepared for Pimm’s signature.
It details his request to cabinet to “Modernize the ALC to ensure that government’s priorities for economic development are reflected in ALC decisions, and to improve service levels for applicants.”
The document lists the primary changes Pimm would like to make in the way the ALC operates:
• “Develop the necessary policy, regulatory and legislative amendments to:
• Modernize ALC decision making to reflect government priorities.
• Create two ALR areas with different rules.
• Change the ALC’s legislative mandate, in one or both ALR areas
• Remove some decisions from the ALC.
• Community growth applications decided by local governments.
• Modernize ALC operations by moving the ALC into the Ministry.”
That alone would have stirred the pot for supporters of the ALR, but an accompanying document put that pot onto a rapid boil. That document, among other things, proposed giving equal weight to ‘economic development’ as opposed to agriculture, making the Oil and Gas Commission the primary authority over land use decisions, and creating two different agricultural zones. The Fraser Valley and Okanagan would remain relatively strict, but everywhere else would be in a zone “Where the rules will be ‘anything goes’.”
Not surprisingly, the chair of the Agricultural Land Commission, Richard Bullock, has come out swinging.
He accused the Liberals of planning to gut the ALR regulations, and said the ALR has close to universal support among farmers. “We’ve had enough of this business where people buy farmland and sit on it, hoping it will turn into a lottery ticket,” he says.
Before the ALC was put in place by the NDP, an average of 6,000 hectares was taken out of agricultural production every year in the Lower Mainland and Okanagan Valley. In 2010, only 364 hectares was removed from the ALR province wide. In 2011 the number was up to 632, but only three hectares of that was in the Lower Mainland.
Supporters of the ALR say there simply wouldn't be a vibrant agricultural industry without a strong and independent Agricultural Land Commission.
While Bennett has refused to go into detail about the proposed changes, Pimm was more open with Orchard and Vine before the document was leaked.
“When I became Agriculture Minister I had a mandate to look at the ALR to make sure it’s working for BC,” Pimm argues.
“We’re going to be proposing some things, and certainly we want to get some facts on the table as to what’s happening.”
Pimm denies he is planning on weakening agricultural protection for productive land. Particularly in the south, he says those protections may be strengthened.
“In the Lower Mainland, I don’t think the land has been preserved enough,” he said. “We certainly protect it in rural areas, but it’s very important that we look after the most productive lands (in the Fraser Valley and Okanagan).
“I think that we need to make a real strong statement that those lands are going to stay in it so that we have strong farming production. If anything, we may have to tighten up further in those most productive areas.”
However, Pimm also argues that much of the ALR land in other parts of the province is not actually productive.
“You can’t grow much on rocks and so we may see less protection on the rocks in the ALR,” he said. “If there’s land that shouldn’t be in the ALR, we should be talking about that.” ■
