Oliver Council Meeting, December 9th, 2013
Issue: Agricultural Land Reserve
This information, except for my opinion at the end, was copy and pasted from news clippings and online articles.
It is the opinion of the provincial government that the Agricultural Land Commission’s legislative mandate is too narrow to allow decisions that align with its priority for economic development. Bill Bennett wants 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.
Cabinet is days away from considering the Core Review’s proposal on the Agricultural Land Reserve and Agricultural Land Commission.
The proposed changes, if approved, will:
1) Dismantle the Agricultural Land Commission – staff and their functions will move into the Ministry of Agriculture. There will be regional panels but decisions will be able to be appealed to a third party and overturned.
2) Change the mandate of the ALC – the ALC will be required to give equal weight to economic development as well as agriculture.
3) Create two classes of ALR – one area will be status quo – this will be the Okanagan and Fraser Valley-Vancouver Island. The other area will cover the Interior, Kootenays and everything north of the Okanagan, where the rules will be “anything goes.”
4) Change what local governments can and can’t do around land use decisions.
5) Make oil and gas decisions the priority land use decisions and the Oil and Gas Commission the primary authority.
Earlier this year, the ALC signed a “delegation agreement” with the BC OGC, giving the agency limited authority to authorize non-farm use of agricultural land. Under this proposal, the BC OGC would become the primary authority on deciding whether agricultural land, outside the Okanagan and southwest region, could be withdrawn for industrial use. The move appears designed to allow the government to ease the way for resource development in the northeast, where oil and gas development has increasingly been in conflict with farmers and ranchers.
The Agricultural Land Reserve was originally implemented to protect agricultural land over the long term. It has been very successful in preserving farm land for over 40 years. This change will shift the priority from protecting agricultural land over the long term to land use for short term political expediency.
I am asking Council to send a letter to Cabinet stating Oliver’s support for maintaining the status quo in the administration of the ALC, independent of government control.