Change in the northern agriculture industry is germanating at the Regional District of Bulkley Nechako table.
The RDBN directors have had two public meetings in a row where long, passionate discussions have unfurled over the number of applications for local land use have been approved by Regional District officials but then refused by the Agriculture Land Commission (ALC) based on provincial laws.
Those laws have changed over the years, so what used to be allowed on land designated for farming in the Agriculture Land Reserve (ALR) is no longer allowed. RDBN chief administrative officer Curtis Helgesen and director of planning Jason Llewellyn walked all elected directors and mayors through the latest reality of the regulations.
“The big change was what Agricultual Land Commission panels had to consider when making an application,” said Llewellyn in his presentation. “Previous to 2018, the decisions could be based primarily on protecting agricultural land and promoting agriculture, but the commision was also allowed to consider economic, cultural, and social values, regional community planning objectives, and other prescribed considerations - so basically all the things the Regional District board is going to look at when considering an ALR application.”
The governing legislation was changed in 2018 and took away all those considerations. The only consideration now allowed is the direct use of agriculture.
“Largely, these policiy decisions by the ALC are driven by development issues and land economics issues that really are occuring in the Lower Mainland and Okanagan, to some degree. That level of control of agricultural land doesn’t necessarily make sense up here,” Llewellyn said.
Helgesen said the challenge was how much RDBN staff time was wise to invest in helping land-use applicants, if it was just going to get refused out of hand.
Director Chris Newell said it was also the wasting of time, stress, even money, sometimes, on the part of the applicants, who are usually farmers trying to become more viable in a rare and especially difficult entrepreneurial realm. Pushing for ALC regulation improvements was important.
Director Clint Lambert said “I think we need to do a lot more lobbying with this.”
He pointed out that some land in the local ALR footprint is not at all suitable for agriculture, and on the other hand the government won’t provide incentives like agriculture leases on Crown land or other pro-farming services, so he sees the need to infuse the regulations with give and take in the farmland considerations.
Lambert suggested tieing ALR decision-making to provincial forest zones, to give regional realities more consideration.
Director Stoney Stoltenberg observed that the best farmland in the province is now under concrete, pavement and steel in the Lower Mainland while the north is getting pushed and shoved on issues that actually facilitate the farmer being able to farm.
RDBN board chair Mark Parker said lobby efforts had been tried, already, and more should be done, in his opinion, based on the cold shoulder he got previously.
When he had a meeting with the last agriculture minister, Lana Popham, Parker said he presented a stack of RDBN applications (his recollection was about 20 cases) denied on the basis of the broader considerations that were once acceptable.
“She didn’t like me very much and threw the papers back at me; she didn’t like the challenge,” Parker said. “It just showed that when we had our own zone (the ALC used to consider rural applications differently than more urban ones), we had decisions going (in RDBN recommendations’ favour). We are not the same as the south, we do not have the same issues, we do not have the same pressures, and they need to understand we have other realities to help us stay in the business of agriculture.”
The directors agreed that amplifying the ALR / ALC message was an important job for them to do, on behalf of the northern economy. Bringing the concern to the Union of BC Municipalites was one suggestion. Another was inviting the ALC and Ministry of Agriculture staff, plus new minister Pam Alexis, to tour the places in the region where these issues were afoot.
“Good discussion. We have passionate ALR people, here on the board,” said Parker. “Maybe we’ll get papers thrown at us again.”