Rural District of Bulkley-Nechako (RDBN) held their regular meeting on Sept. 28 at 10 a.m.
During the meeting, several things were discussed along with a presentation on the update of Agricultural Land Commission (ALC) by ALC Chair Jennifer Dyson and North Panel Chair Janice Tapp.
“The commission turned 50 years old. It’s been certainly 50 years of changes to certainly reflect the kind of agriculture that exists today,” said ALC Chair Jennifer Dyson.
Dyson said over 50 per cent of the Agriculture Land Reserve is under crown land and 46 per cent are private ownership.
She also said, 48 per cent agriculture land of B.C. is in the northern region.
“It’s a huge and vast area yet, a little known fact is that, the triangle, which is the eastern side of Vancouver Island, lower mainland, and then the Okanagan are still some of the highest incomes for agriculture,” said Dyson.
“We are an Independent Administrative Tribunal. Everything is in a legal framework in terms of how we look at it.”
Majority of the time, the ALC application bends backwards over permit applications for agriculture which is also one of her concerns.
“I would say 90 per cent of what we get coming through the door has nothing to do with agriculture in terms of our applications,” said Dyson.
“All accessory buildings now require ALC approval until mid 2022. The ALC didn’t typically play a role in approving accessory structures such as garages. Recent information make it clear that ALC approval is required for all residential structures,” said Director of Planning for RDBN Jason Llewellyn.
“Fill and deposit removal is another area that’s causing some challenges. ALC rules prohibit placement of filler removing soil on ALR land. The process for the ALC to approve fill-in-deposit is through the Notice of Intent process, which 60 days to approve or denied the application,” said Llewellyn.
“In collaboration with other communities, we’ve worked closely with groups like the B.C. Cattleman, B.C. Dairy, B.C.I [British Columbia Investment Management Corporation], Council and others. We’re trying to find out what and how we need to make sure and address their concerns going forward,” Dyson said.
“So, we have six administrative panel regions around the province. One of the big changes with our legislation happened in around 2019, that we no longer will have two people from the same administrative region. So in other words, we won’t have two people from the Bulkley-Nechako. We will want to spread them around in terms of your Regional Districts throughout the North. And part of that was, sometimes we would get all three people from the Peace River Regional District. We see and recognize fully that agriculture is different in every Regional District and there’s different concerns,” Dyson said.
The ALC North Panel consists of Janice Tapp from Fraser Lake, who is the Chair; Andrew Adams, who has a greenhouse about 150 miles outside of Prince George and Karen McKean the Secretary of Peace River Regional Cattlemen’s Association.