2014 Legislative Session: Second Session, 40th Parliament

HANSARD

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.

The printed version remains the official version.

official report of

Debates of the Legislative Assembly

(hansard)

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Afternoon Sitting

Volume 13, Number

ISSN 0709-1281 (Print)

ISSN 1499-2175 (Online)

CONTENTS

Page

Routine Business

Introductions by Members

Orders of the Day

Second Reading of Bills

Bill 24 — Agricultural Land Commission Amendment Act, 2014 (continued)

J. Shin

K. Corrigan

S. Chandra Herbert

J. Kwan

D. Routley

Petitions

S. Chandra Herbert

Second Reading of Bills

Bill 24 — Agricultural Land Commission Amendment Act, 2014 (continued)

R. Austin

R. Chouhan

H. Bains

J. Rice

R. Fleming

M. Farnworth

Proceedings in the Douglas Fir Room

Committee of Supply

Estimates: Ministry of Energy and Mines (continued)

K. Conroy

Hon. B. Bennett

S. Fraser

D. Donaldson

A. Weaver

S. Simpson

V. Huntington

[ Page 3863 ]

TUESDAY, MAY 13, 2014

The House met at 1:33 p.m.

[Madame Speaker in the chair.]

Routine Business

Introductions by Members

D. Horne: We have a political science class from the University of Victoria spending the afternoon meeting with members and learning about civic engagement. This course, "Public Policy and Analysis: the Art of Engagement", is led by Prof. Sarah Wiebe, a former legislative intern from 2007. Would the House make them truly welcome.

Orders of the Day

Hon. R. Coleman: I call in this House second reading continued on Bill 24, intituled the Agricultural Land Commission Amendment Act, 2014. In

Section A, the Douglas Fir Committee Room, we will be continuing the estimates of the Ministry of Energy and Mines and Ministry Responsible for Core Review. Should that finish, we would then move to the Ministry of Finance.

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 24 — AGRICULTURAL LAND

COMMISSION AMENDMENT ACT, 2014

(continued)

J. Shin: I'm happy to resume my place in this debate. Before we rose for the break, I was sharing with the House the history of the ALR, as I have learned it, and the public reception of the legislation at that time, in 1972, when the announcement was made.

[M. Dalton in the chair.]

Understandably, the legislation announcement set off a frenzy of rezoning applications by the landowners hoping to make changes before the legislation went through. The Agriculture Minister then responded by introducing a farmland freeze order-in-council, which halted the agricultural land subdivisions immediately. The new statute created the Provincial Land Commission as well, a five-person body then tasked with designating ALR sites around the province. The commission, as it turns out, set up their headquarters in a long, narrow office in Burnaby, actually.

[1335]

Now, what became apparent in this process was that saving farmland was one thing, but saving the farmers was another. The two needed to go hand in hand for the agricultural viability of this province. The New Democrats — the government then — recognized more so than the Socreds ever did at that time that farming was a tough gig. It was a tough gig to be in, especially in terms of its profitability.

While many farmers held profound pride and found joy in their trade — planting seeds, watching them produce, supplying the market with the harvest — the business didn't command sufficient praise to make reasonable return on investment of all of their work. Unlike other industries…. Let's look at LNG, for example, with ROI expected at about 15 percent of the capital. We can't expect that kind of a return, that level of return, in farming.

It is known to most of us that farming is a perennially difficult business economically for any given farmer, especially when Mother Nature throws a curveball at you every now and then with severe frost just as the apple blooms are opening, drought or hailstorms, for example.

Something had to be done. If you take from the farmers their pension plan, which depended on the eventual sale or non-agricultural application of their property, you need to give them something else. You need to equip them with a better alternative for more profitable prospects in farming that would allow them to use that surplus towards their retirement plans.

That's, essentially, exactly what Dave Barrett came up with, which was called the "four pillars," that included the Farm Income Insurance Act, the Agricultural Credit Act, the Farm Product Industry Act and the Agricultural Land Development Act.

The farm income insurance program, in particular, is what I think is worth for us to spend a bit of time on. Not only was that program precisely the kind of support we should be exploring for our farmers today, but it's just the right way of doing things, period, instead of fracturing a perfectly sound and ever more imperative ALR.

The Barrett government wanted a support program for the farmers structured in an effective way, because nobody wants to see another subsidy program that may be rewarding inefficiencies. The way this farm income insurance program evolved is that the government would guarantee a portion of the cost of production of a particular crop for the farmer.

The cost of production was determined in consultation with the B.C. Federation of Agriculture officials and market experts, based on a rolling average of the production volume. For example, if it is determined that the average industry cost of production is, let's say, ten cents per pound of apples, and the farm typically produces 100,000 pounds annually, on average, then it'd be ten cents times 100,000 pounds. That would work out to be about $10,000, which would be assumed as the general cost of production.

Assuring a part of that — say, about two-thirds of that cost, which would be about $6,700 dollars — that the

[ Page 3864 ]

farmer can count on from the government if the weather events yielded worse returns that year, leaving the farmer without a profit for the year and his investment for the year lost — having that $6,700 — meant a lot for these farmers. It gave them confidence.

The program wasn't necessarily providing income for the farmers, so to speak, but rather, it provided assurance that the natural risks of this farming business would be covered for. For the first time in B.C. history, the farmers knew they wouldn't go broke in a bad year — that they would have some cost recouped for capital to try again next year.

What this program did was give the farming community the confidence that didn't exist previously, and that single stipulation invigorated the agricultural industry in the Okanagan Valley and beyond.

The climatologist that I interviewed last week actually, who grew up on a family farm, jogged his memory during this particular period in the '70s with this insurance program that was in place. He told me: "The farmers were investing in their trade. They were buying new tractors and planting more crops creatively, because they felt so confident about the risks being moderated for them by the government that they wouldn't be hung out to dry in bad years."

[1340]

Farmers could count on a good return, and that improved their finances, which, in turn, allowed them to build their retirement plans without always looking to the potential sale of their land as the only possible exit strategy.

The cost to the treasury to run this particular insurance program was trivially small because it only had to kick in when the returns to the farmer for that year fell below the cost of production, and that didn't happen every year. The weather wasn't bad every year. What it did mean, in addition to the confidence element, was that it actually also encouraged the farmers for efficiency, and I think we have a lot of appreciation for efficiency in this chamber these days.

Since the cost of production was based on the industry average, if you were able to produce the same volume but with less cost by increasing the efficiency of your farm, it meant that you could get, in a bad year, from this insurance program more than what you actually spent.

With the farm income assurance program, the Barrett government not only made it financially feasible for farmers to continue their services through the good times and through the bad times; it also effectively incentivized efficiency. At the same time, it allowed the farmers to support the ALR, which they were initially against, because everybody saw the value in the ALR being put in place for the kind of discipline that we all needed to preserve our farmlands.

As a result, as we all know, the legislation quickly not only became accepted, but it earned widespread popularity among British Columbians and the farmers themselves, and to this day, for four decades, it is rightfully considered to be the most progressive and visionary policy of its kind in North America, which many other jurisdictions are modelled after.

As life would have it, when the Socreds came back in power, within a few years they did start to chew away from the income assurance program. Ideologically, they saw it as a subsidy program, which it really, clearly wasn't. Despite the fact that the purpose of the program was to provide assurance so that the farmers could continue farming through the tough climate and the fluctuating market conditions, eventually, over a successive series of legislation, this program was killed.

This sent farmers right back to that same hole of insecurity, forcing them to reconsider all options outside of farming to make a living, to plan for retirement — be it working, finding another job, repurposing the use of their farm or seeking subdivision and rezoning, which they couldn't with the ALR in place.

They've been kept this way without much of a choice for the past 20 years. I think the hardships that the farmers have continued to face since then are not because of the ALR but because of shortsighted and what are, I think, just plain bad decisions by the Socreds then. I feel as though we're about to see another one being made right here with this Bill 24.

When I hear the members opposite I try my best to be respectful and to really listen and to see it from the other side, but when they say that Bill 24 supports farmers, I disagree. I can't help but disagree. I disagree not because of the e-mails and phone calls and letters in utter opposition to the bill that I get. I disagree not because I'm sitting on this side of the House. I disagree because I've actually combed through…. I haven't slept in the last week because I got so fired up about learning the history of how this came to be, and I wanted to see it for myself.

When I combed through the historical accounts and saw the programs that were in place, why ALR came to be and the science and the ethics that all of this was based on, I just have no other logical choice but to side with the public and the subject matter experts on this particular matter in asking this government: how on earth is corroding the ALR the right way to support farmers? This is not right.

[1345]

In fact, I think what's more disheartening and disenchanting — I'm pretty disenchanted already, after a year in politics — and what's actually even insulting is that the government uses farmers as their excuse, when you should just say it like it is. This is not about supporting the farmers. This is just really about opening the door to chew away on our reserve for money, for profit. It's about bottom dollars in the end, and you want that now. I think that's what it really comes down to.

If this government is truly about farmland, if it's about

[ Page 3865 ]

farmland preservation, if this government truly supports farmers, this is not only the worst way of showing that, but I think that it's just plain wrong. I mean that with a lot of respect.

I think the members opposite have to know. They must know that this is the case. They're looking at the same facts, the same history. I also understand that politics is not evidence-based decision-making, but it's decision-based evidence-making, so I get it. I understand.

Now we have the government that's set on ramming through this bill — against the public, despite the evidence, regardless of many better options that I think the government can really champion. Where do we go from here? As an opposition MLA in the House, I feel just as defeated as many British Columbians whose voices are falling on deaf ears with this government.

That's a little too depressing, so let's talk about all of the better things that I think we could focus on, that I think we should work on. Despite having some of Canada's most promising agricultural potential, the government provides the least amount of support for this industry out of any other provinces in Canada. As disappointing as that sounds, the flip side is that there are many great strides to be made.

One of the things, of course — the members all heard it: the government eliminated the Buy B.C. program in 2001. I understand that it was a hugely successful marketing initiative that was championed in partnership with farmers, the grocery stores and consumers throughout B.C. The program managed to resurface in 2005 with funding that was coming, really, just from the companies, at which point the government left it entirely to the industry to carry the costs of the program. There is now a remnant of this program, renamed, and I think that's the angle that we can continue to put more resources into.

The 25 percent funding cut in the Ministry of Agriculture in 2005 left the ALC with not a whole lot of resources to respond to the growing non-compliance problems, like the fill dumped on prime farmland, the case that we saw with tonnes of construction materials and trash on Babe's Honey Farm in Saanich. That's another area that I think this government needs to take seriously.

Of course, because of large agribusiness and the government subsidies to the industrial food system, it is often very difficult for our local farmers to compete in the market with their price points. Knowing that 95 percent of what B.C. eats is imported, when we can grow all of that right here in B.C…. That's $25 billion that is leaving this province. Why can't we work towards bringing some of that money back right here and putting it into the hands of our local farmers?

It turns out that the ALC also used to have an acquisition and leaseback program for young farmers, to encourage young farmers to get engaged in the trade — 20-year leases with option to purchase after three years. It was a very successful program, but that, too, didn't survive long. It was scrapped in 1976, the first year the Socreds came back in power.

While I appreciate all the little programs that the government puts forth, because everything does help, at the end of the day I think that these piecemeal efforts that we've been seeing in the last decade…. We really need to do more than that. I think we are past the point of doing more because we want to do more. I think we're also past the point that we need to do more because we have no other choice.

We have no other choice at this point. There are alarming signals, and industry is raising flags everywhere. I think we really need to start paying attention to those things, and I feel as though Bill 24 is not taking us in that direction. If anything, it's taking us backwards. An average B.C. farmer is 56 years old. Young farmers cannot afford to take over their farms. B.C. is growing less than half of its own food needs.

[1350]

We've heard of the extreme weather conditions and climate change forecasts, and all of those point towards our support of the local agriculture here being more imperative now than ever.

Yes, I agree we can update and modernize the ALR, but Bill 24 I think does it in a very negative way. Positive changes that we need to see are more definitive, real measures, some of which the government is already taking on, but we need to do more in that direction. Also, we need to stop pinning farmers as an excuse to open more doors to rob land out of reserve. I think that's the ultimate, the last, straw there for me. The farmers are speaking out against this bill, yet the government continues to talk about the fact that this is how they're supporting the farmers. I can't make that logic work.

We are talking about our land, our food security here — something as incredibly important as this. I think every citizen of this province owns a piece of this, and they have the right to be informed and the right to be consulted. Another thing to add is the fact that this bill was crafted out of what feels like a special interest. It's just heartbreaking.

Hard-working farm families deserve to make a decent living again. Reconsidering the assurance program that was in place, reconsidering the lease buyback program for young farmers, reconsidering more resources into the Buy B.C. program — those are all things that I think we should be doing.

The ALC, of course, requires adequate support to continue conducting sound research, make evidence-based decisions and be able to do that independently in good faith for the public.

Despite its warts over the decades, the B.C. agricultural land preservation program remains the most successful program of its kind in North America. Here in B.C. it's unlikely we would still have commercial agriculture

[ Page 3866 ]

in places like Richmond, Delta, the lower Fraser Valley and parts of the Okanagan if we didn't have the ALR. It's important to remember that the ALR was intended as a permanent zone, not subject to rezoning, not subject to a rationing exercise, not a zone of convenience. This is a cause above all special interest.

British Columbia's ALR system has weathered various challenges, as we know, and reorganizations over the more than 38 years of its existence, and there's no doubt that it will have to continue to evolve as the administrations grapple with this challenge of preserving farmland for future generations. We do need to meet the needs of the land, the current inhabitants and the owners.

But all of those changes that need to be made, all the adaptations that we need to make…. I believe that the commission as it stands right now has the capacity to remedy the deficiencies, make the decisions based on the available biophysical data and fine-tune ALR boundaries accordingly. We can always fine-tune and improve this particular data and the inventory and our mapping, but that will take resources. That will come at a cost. Those are the kinds of investments that I think the government needs to make.

When British Columbians have been asked whether they support protecting the agricultural values and land for security, 95 percent said yes. More so, we are seeing a growing number of groups and individuals that are catching on to the severity of this bill, and they're speaking out more. They're organizing, and they're calling out to the government to get their voice heard. My staff just told me during the lunch break that we had three new e-mails just come in on this particular issue.

The questions are clear, I think. Is this bill serving our farmers or our landlords? Is this bill protecting food security for our society, or is it for short-term profitability for special interest? I think I've really tried to go beyond my briefing notes and listened and consulted with market analysts, with climatologists. I've talked with farmers.

I'll just finish with that. I urge the government to listen to British Columbians and reconsider this bill.

R. Lee: May I seek leave to make an introduction?

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

R. Lee: In the House today we have 32 very enthusiastic students from the Holy Cross Elementary school in Burnaby. I met with them at the front of the Parliament Buildings.

[1355]

This group of students was led by 18 adults and three teachers — Sabina McCloskey, Kristina Manfron and Carlo DeFazio. They are joyful and energetic. I believe they have brought us the sunshine as well. Would the House please join me in making them very, very welcome.

Debate Continued

K. Corrigan: It gives me pleasure, I guess, to speak on this bill, but I'm disappointed that I have to speak very negatively about it. This is a bad bill for British Columbia.

It's a particularly bad bill in that with Bill 24, we are essentially dismantling, or at least partially dismantling, the agricultural land reserve, which has served this province very well for over 40 years. It's really difficult to be a part of history that is so unfortunate. So it is with very mixed feelings that I get up and speak, but I am going to do my bit to try to convince the members on the other side of the House that this is a bad bill.

I'm glad that some of the company across the way…. I can't mention individual members, but I am pleased that I get a chance to speak when some members are in the House that I hope will listen. So many of us have been speaking so passionately on this side of the House about the importance of the agricultural land reserve.

I don't believe that all the members on the other side of the House, in their heart of hearts, are supportive of being the party whose legacy is going to be taking away the preservation and the protection of farmland in British Columbia that all parties have supported, and continue to support, over the last 40 years — all parties, even those that may originally have spoken against it many years ago.

The agricultural land reserve — when it came down to it, all parties have respected that this is an institution, that this is a program that is working for British Columbians, that it is in fact effectively preserving farmland and that it needs to continue to be protected, until now. Very unfortunate.

So what does Bill 24 actually do? It dismantles or, as I said, partially dismantles the agricultural land reserve, which has done what it was designed to do since it was created back in 1973 by an NDP government, and that is to protect farmland from development.

The thing we have to remember about farmland is that you don't get to take it back and forth — that once a piece of property is paved over, that once a development has gone in, that once the subdivision is there, it is gone. Once it is gone, it is gone. Now, I know that in some cases there is the ability to rehabilitate land, but it's very limited how we can rehabilitate land. For the most part, once it's gone, it's gone.

So how is this bill dismantling the agricultural land reserve? What has happened with this B.C. Liberal bill is that there are two things that are going to lead to the dismantling of the agricultural land reserve. First of all, and the biggest thing, is that the province will be divided into two zones. Zone 1 is the Lower Mainland, where I live. I represent Burnaby–Deer Lake.

It is wonderful to see students from Burnaby who have just been introduced. Thank you for coming.

[ Page 3867 ]

[1400]

The province is going to be divided, as I said, into two zones. The first zone includes the south coast, Vancouver Island and the Okanagan. The sweeping changes will not happen in those zones. That's important, but zone 1 is also vulnerable for different reasons.

Zone 2. Zone 2 contains 90 percent of the ALR. It is all of the province other than the south coast, the Okanagan and Vancouver Island, as mentioned. It contains 90 percent of agricultural lands. In that 90 percent of the province, the Agricultural Land Commission is forced not to prioritize farming within the agricultural land reserve, with those areas that are within the agricultural land reserve, but to give equal weight to economic, cultural and social values, regional planning objectives, and any "other prescribed considerations."

It often concerns me that we have bill after bill after bill coming into this House, laws coming in to be debated, which have large parts of them that we essentially can't debate because it's something that will be decided in the future. It'll be decided behind closed doors by cabinet.

When it says any "other prescribed considerations," this means that cabinet, behind closed doors, gets to write regulations and say what other considerations have to be considered by the commission when somebody is trying to get land out of the agricultural land reserve. We have no idea what that is.

I mean, it could be a consideration that if a pipeline is coming through this area, then that has to be a priority or that needs to be a priority. We don't know. It could be anything. I'm not saying that that's going to happen. But when you compare what has been the priority for the last 41 years, that farming and food security will be the primary consideration, and you replace it with these other things, including a bunch of priorities that we have no idea what they are because it's not in the legislation, it concerns me.

Those changes make…. There's no doubt that what the result of this is going to be, the obvious result, is that there will be far more exclusions, far more land taken out of the agricultural land reserve in this province.

The other thing that Bill 24 does which concerns me is that it shifts decisions — key decisions, with regard to exclusions and with regard to land in the ALR — away from the commission, which has been independent and has made decisions over the years on the basis of what is best for farming and farmland in British Columbia. It has been insulated from local pressures and had as a priority and has had as its modus operandi to preserve farmland in the province.

Now what's going to happen is that there will be six panels that are going to be populated by Liberal government appointees who will be responsible for making the decisions about what land comes out of the agricultural land reserve across the province. That's in both zone 1 and zone 2.

You know, it really concerns me because those individuals…. Number one, they are political. They will be political appointments. So we're taking the decisions away from an independent commission, and they will be political decisions that are made. In addition, those local panel members will be under a great deal more pressure and will not have the insulation that the commission does. They will be under pressure from those that are making applications. It really concerns me that that is going to happen.

The tension with regard to agricultural land is a natural one. What's happened over the years of development in British Columbia is that population growth has generally been in the prime farmland area, because that's where populations grew. It was what we did when we were forming as a country.

[1405]

People came and, for the most part, came for resource development, for farming, for fishing. Certainly, the forest industry was huge, and the coal-mining industry was huge as well. But a large part of the reason for population growing in much of the province had to do with the fact that there were good farmlands.

So it creates a natural tension. In the place that has had the most growth, the Lower Mainland, where I live, there has been a tremendous tension. It was because of that tension and the fact that thousands and thousands of acres were being removed from agriculture to sprawling development in the Lower Mainland and the fact that we were losing prime farmland…. That is the reason that the agricultural land reserve was created by the NDP government in 1973. There was a recognition that we needed to preserve the land.

I wanted to say that I appreciate the background paper that I read that was done by Emily Yearwood-Lee, a reference librarian. I believe she still is. I still see Emily, I believe, up in our wonderful Legislative Library here in the Legislature. She did a history of the agricultural land reserve back in 2006, updated in 2008. As she pointed out in her history, only a small fraction of British Columbia's land is considered arable and an even smaller proportion of the soil is rated top quality.

Historically, British Columbians have settled near that prime soil in valley bottoms or in river deltas. But what happened…. What she points out is that after the Second World War there was rapid housing and industrial expansion in B.C., and that started to prompt concerns about the loss of valuable farmland. She also points out that it was estimated that between 4,000 and 6,000 hectares of arable B.C. soil were lost yearly prior to 1972 to non-farming purposes.

She also points out in this history how all parties recognized…. In the run-up to the agricultural land reserve being formed in 1973, all parties expressed concerns about the loss of farmland and realized that we needed to do something — there may not have been

agreement,

[ Page 3868 ]

but that we needed to do something. I'm proud that it was our party that, when we were elected in 1972, created the agricultural land reserve. I think it's been seen as a legacy, as a real highlight for this province and made it somewhat unique. Although similar laws have been brought in, in other provinces and other parts of the world, it was certainly seen as visionary at the time. It was visionary, and it worked.

It was interesting that when they were bringing the agricultural land reserve, after the announcement that there was going to be an agricultural land reserve, or legislation brought to protect farming, there was a frenzy of speculation. So then there had to be a freeze on the sale of those farmlands.

I mention that now because it's interesting. I've heard from many different sources, friends in the development community and from all sorts of different sources, that exactly the same thing is now happening — that there is rampant speculation of land that is presently within the agricultural land reserve. You know what? Speculators, people who are investing in property, if they're not doing it for farming, are only doing it because they believe they're going to make a ton of money, make a bunch of money, by investing now.

There's a real confidence, I understand, that land is going to be much easier to remove from the agricultural land reserve. So the investments come. That's not good for farming in British Columbia. It's very unfortunate for farming in British Columbia.

I would also note that the commission, the first Agricultural Land Commission, set up headquarters in a long, narrow office in Burnaby, my community, and was fondly dubbed the yellow submarine by staff. The Agricultural Land Commission headquarters continues, I believe, to be in Burnaby, just across the street from the border of my constituency.

[1410]

But it's an important institution, and as I said earlier, it does continue to do the job that it was meant to do.

There's a lot of support for the land reserve as well. There was an Auditor General's report. For those that don't know, the Auditor General is an independent officer of this Legislature and reports on the effectiveness and the efficiency of the use of taxpayers' money — takes a look at projects and institutions and the finances all across government to decide whether or not taxpayers' money, as I said, is being used effectively and efficiently.

The Auditor General did a report on the agricultural land reserve and the commission in 2010. I remember reading the report, because I've sat on the Public Accounts Committee for several years now. One of the observations that the Auditor General made was: "Recently the commission reported that 95 percent of respondents to a public survey supported the agricultural land reserve and the policy of preserving agricultural land."

It went on to say: "Preservation of agricultural land is fundamental to securing food production for future generations, particularly given the uncertain effects of climate change on our food imports and our agricultural systems."

The report also points out that only 5 percent of the province's land base is suitable agricultural land and much less is considered prime agricultural land, so this is a precious commodity. It is a very serious decision to expose that precious commodity to being more easily removed from the Agricultural Land Commission. In my submission, it is shortsighted. It's a shortsighted decision to do this, and it's a shortsighted potential sacrifice of food production and food security for future generations.

I was reading the Globe and Mail this morning, and coincidentally, one of the stories that I read was the fact that two new groups of scientists — one of them from NASA and not sure what the other one was — were saying…. Here's the headline: "Ice-Sheet Melt and Collapse Now Unstoppable, Scientists Warn." The story in today's Globe and Mail says:

"'The collapse of large parts of the ice sheet in West Antarctica appears to have begun and is almost certainly unstoppable, with global warming accelerating the pace of the melting,' two groups of scientists reported on Monday….

"'This is really happening,' said Thomas Wagner, who runs NASA's programs on polar ice and helped oversee some of the research. 'There's nothing to stop it now. But you are still limited by the physics of how fast the ice can flow.'"

The story also points out:

"'Whatever the mix of causes, they appear to have triggered a retreat of the ice sheet that can no longer be stopped, even if the factors drawing in the warmer water were to reverse suddenly,' the scientists said."

These are the realities. We have the ice sheet of the Antarctic. More scientists are saying that it has started to melt and that it may be, no matter what we do, impossible to reverse that.

At the same time, we know that California is experiencing record-setting droughts. California has been, basically, the food production centre, certainly serving British Columbia, serving the west coast and much of the whole of the North America. We have irrefutable evidence that we do have climate change. We have we have serious disruption to food production in California.

[1415]

That should be a sign for all of us that we have to think very seriously before we do anything that makes it harder for us to protect farmland or anything that makes it easier to remove it from production.

You know, even the Liberals, a few years ago, were speaking language that made it sound like they were very concerned about local production and about farmland. Here's a quote from the provincial B.C. Liberal campaign, Eat B.C. I remember this: the vegetables and fruits in the schools. It was all part of Eat B.C.

A provincial campaign to promote local food explains — and this is a government press release:

[ Page 3869 ]

"By supporting local growers and suppliers, you help the environment, reducing your carbon footprint by limiting the amount of shipping and fuel consumption needed to get the seasonal foods to you.

"The more local food we consume, the higher the demand, which equals the more farmers that are needed to supply the products. And voila, a healthier local economy, more local jobs within agriculture and a stronger, more vibrant local food system.

"B.C. food and beverages. Fresher, faster. It's fresh, local and tasty. Eat B.C."

It's a B.C. government press release from just a few years ago. Yet here we have the same government that is overseeing the dismantling of the agricultural land reserve.

The Agricultural Land Commission has been doing a good job. There have been times when it's been a government priority. There have been times when decisions have been made to remove land, and that's appropriate. It's appropriate if we all have the confidence that the mechanism, the way that is being done, is transparent and fair and open.

There are times when it has made sense. Members have talked in this House about times that there have been exclusions that are appropriate exclusions. But again, it has to be done in a way that people believe is fair, and it has to be done by an independent ALR. The ALR needs to be independent.

This bill is no longer ensuring that we are going to have independence in those decisions. In fact, by having political appointments and local panels making the decision, we are going in the other direction. I think that overall the Agricultural Land Commission has been reasonably balanced.

The Auditor General's report that I mentioned before has acknowledged that there needed to be improvements, and the Agricultural Land Commission accepted, acknowledged and welcomed the suggestions for improvement.

Some of those improvements…. Well, they were talking about things like doing a better job of mapping, having a better understanding of the boundaries and making sure that much work was done, and also promoting agriculture.

The reason why they have not been able to do those things over the last several years, unfortunately, is the funding issue. There's a funding issue. The budget for the agricultural land reserve has been consistently cut.

I look back at the Auditor General's report again. The budget in 2002-2003 of the Agricultural Land Commission was almost $3 million — $2.93 million. As the Auditor General points out, since that time, the budget has decreased. This is up to 2010. There was an increase more recently.

The commission's most recent detailed budget submissions in November 2008 estimated that with the 2008-09 budget, it was operating approximately 20 percent or $530,000 below its minimal requirements to maintain its core business.

If you take a look at the Auditor General's report and also the review that was done by the Agricultural Land Commission, headed up by Richard Bullock, over and over again, the Auditor General indicates and the response from the ALC indicates that the problem was with the starving of the funding.

[1420]

I mean, I don't know what the plan was by the Liberal government. It looks to me like there was an intentional starving of the ALC to make it less effective. It's an old political ploy. You take away the supports for a good public service. You starve it, and you starve it. Then it doesn't become effective, and then you say: "Well, we'll have to get rid of it." That is what is happening in this case, so I'm not surprised with the cuts to the ALC, because it gets in the way. It gets in the way of Liberal plans to dismantle the ALC.

Over and over again. For example: "The commission has carried out preliminary estimates of the resources and the necessary funding" in order to respond to the recommendations that the Auditor General made. "The commission appreciates that the audit recognizes the commission's concerns about not being positioned to significantly enhance its efforts without the necessary resources and tools." That report….

There are seven or eight, nine or ten references to lack of funding being a fundamental problem with the agricultural land reserve. The Auditor General recognized it. Certainly, the response from the Agricultural Land Commission to that report said very clearly that that was the issue.

The budget was, as I said, almost $3 million in 2002-2003 and reduced to $2.4 million and reduced, I believe, in 2010 to $2 million. I mean, a huge decrease. How can you expect to do the work not only of adequately assessing requests for removal and exclusions but also the other work that the Agricultural Land Commission was supposed to do, which is to promote farming in British Columbia?

There has been an increase. It was down as low as $1.2 million in 2012-2013 — in other words, only two-thirds. Ten years later, only two-thirds of what it had been in 2002-2003. So, of course, they had struggles trying to do the work they did.

Now, to the government's credit, there was an increase in 2013-14 and planned for 2014-15. That allowed Richard Bullock as the head of the ALC, the commission, to start to do the good work — the mapping and so on — that needed to be done. I've got to give credit to Richard Bullock. Since his appointment a few years ago, he has stood up for the ALR. I think he's provided sensible leadership, and he's done a good job on behalf of British Columbians. So I appreciate his work — and the work of the commission, the good people of the commission.

As well as the Auditor General's report, we had a review done by the Agricultural Land Commission, tak-

[ Page 3870 ]

ing a look at itself. They again made it very clear that the problem is with funding. The recommendation is that they needed to have sufficient funding and resources for compliance and enforcement to fully implement its on-line application tracking system. There were many recommendations, but many of them said that really, essentially, the biggest problem is funding. That's unfortunate.

Interjection.

K. Corrigan: Not possible.

I want to talk for a second…. I guess what I want to do is sum up. This is a move that has happened without consultation. Apparently, the core review was supposed to be….

The member for Vancouver-Kensington found out with surprise that the Finance Committee meetings were actually the core review hearings, and nobody was apparently aware of it. That's where people were supposed to be making submissions on the future of the Agricultural Land Commission and the agricultural land reserve.

So there has been no consultation, very little consultation. Consultation was promised after the present minister was appointed, was made Minister of Agriculture. That was one day that we were going to change the bill. We were going to listen, but in fact, what has happened is that there has been no consultation. There's been reading of e-mails.

[1425]

The people of British Columbia are very concerned about this. I was hoping to get a chance to get to some of the people in my community who have expressed concern. The city council had passed a motion a month ago condemning Bill 24 and what it is going to do to farmland in British Columbia. The Lower Mainland Local Government Association has very recently, as have other local government associations, passed a motion condemning Bill 24.

We are getting thousands of e-mails. I'm hearing from my constituents. There have been individuals. There have been academics and soil scientists. There have been people all over this province that have expressed great concern about this bill, which is going to dismantle.

I want to finally say that the answer, instead, is something positive, like the member for Vancouver-Kingsway, who has brought a very thoughtful B.C. Local Food Act to this Legislature. That is worthy of support.

S. Chandra Herbert: Well, I, like everyone on the New Democratic side of this House, every one of the independents — and really, the Agricultural Council, the Cattlemen's Association, the Lower Mainland government association, the Kootenays governing association, the north, soil scientists, the farmers and on and on you go — oppose this legislation and call on this government to kill Bill 24.

The minister himself seemed to think that maybe we should kill Bill 24 at one point but was quickly drawn into line and had his wings clipped. That independent spirit, which I saw him once have in this House, seemed to vanish in the air. One day maybe we will see it arise again, like a phoenix, out of the crater that he has created in his credibility on this legislation.

Interjection.

S. Chandra Herbert: He laughs about that, but alas, this is not a laughing matter. This is a bill which makes British Columbia less resilient, less sustainable, which puts our children, our children's children and on into the future, I would say, of having a province with "Splendour without diminishment" at real risk.

Of course, that is our motto as a province: "Splendour without diminishment." Well, for me, splendour without diminishment means that we have farms and farmers and ranchers on into the future in all parts of this province, not just in a small window that the minister thinks is appropriate or that the Liberals think is appropriate but every part of this province that has arable land.

Hon. Speaker, you know that we don't have a lot of arable land in this province, but what we have, we have to protect. In the end, what else do you need in life? You need water, you need food, and you need air. By putting our food-growing parts of this province at risk, as this government does with its blacktop politics, with its belief in paving over things as opposed to growing food from those same areas, we are challenged.

This is not a bill that will leave us more resilient. It's a bill that decides that 90 percent of the province's agricultural land should be open. It should be open to say: "Maybe you want to put a condo on there. Maybe you want to put a parking lot on there. Maybe you want to cover it over in garbage." Well, those are all possibilities now under the B.C. Liberals' legislation.

Interjections.

S. Chandra Herbert: "Contaminated soil," a friend says in this House. Maybe we don't need to be growing food. Maybe we need to be growing garbage. Maybe we need to be growing blacktop, rather than food that sustains us all.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

"It's delicious," says somebody in this House. "Blacktop is delicious." Well, no, I think good cherries, good hay for the cattle and other things are delicious, not blacktop over good farmland.

This bill leaves us less resilient as a province. It leaves us less sustainable. It puts our food sovereignty and our

[ Page 3871 ]

food security at real risk, just at a time when we need to be considering this more than ever.

We know…. The science has been telling us. Scientists have been shouting, in their scientific way, saying: "Well, the probabilities say that climate change is going to make it harder to eat. Climate change is going to put the food prices up." That's what we used to be told we should be worried about, because sometime in the future it might happen.

You know what? A government in the '70s heard cries like that, heard cries for food security, and brought in the agricultural land reserve. That was the Dave Barrett government, of course.

[1430]

That was the NDP at the time thinking long term — thinking more than the day in front of us, thinking about the future, something that we all should do more of. Thinking not just about making a quick buck today, but thinking about whether or not that buck will be able to buy you any food at all tomorrow.

Let me think about it. Just yesterday I was reading an

article about limes. Now, they don't grow limes in British Columbia. They may try to in the future with climate change, but maybe there won't be any land for it, because the Liberals will have paved it all over.

But limes. You can't get them anymore. You go to the pub. You go somewhere. You want a little lime in your guacamole. It's pretty difficult to do. And you know why? A variety of reasons — climate change, disease, etc. So the costs are shooting up.

Now, if you don't want to get scurvy, limes are good things to have. If you like a margarita, limes are good things to have too. But what that points out to me is that if you can't get those today, it's because you can't grow them somewhere else. It shows how dependent we are on food from elsewhere — not food grown here but food from somewhere far away.

With gas prices climbing, with the climate change changing the environmental systems and killing off crops — with droughts in California, with ice sheets falling into the ocean, tidal waves increasing, storms, incredible amounts of water, flooding, etc. — you won't be able to get the same food that you thought you'd be able to get today because of that. What does that do? That puts more pressure on British Columbia to make sure we can feed our people ourselves, feed people within this province from our own land, from our own farmers.

You know what? People want that. They want to be resilient. They want to know where their food is coming from. They no longer think that it's okay to just look, and it says: "Where is your food from?" It doesn't tell you. It's just from some box somewhere far away. Because you know what? People want to know their food is healthy. They want to know that the people who made it are paid fairly. They want to know that the food they're eating is not creating climate change, creating environmental devastation somewhere else. That is why people are buying more and more local food.

But just as people want to buy more and more local food, the Liberals seem to want to create less and less of it. They've cut the Agricultural Land Commission's budget year after year after year. They put a little bit back, saying: "Oh, we learned our lesson." Now what do they do? They want to take an axe to the whole agricultural land reserve itself. They've decided that partisan self-interest, pavement politics, is more important than food security and resilience, and that is wrong. That is sad. It's angering. It's ridiculous. It is just wrong.

Nobody in the food system seems to want this. None of the consumers want this. The local governments don't want this. The hon. members over there — some of them clearly don't want it, since they won't even get up and defend it. And when they do even get up and defend it, the ones that do want it won't even talk about what's in the bill itself. They won't talk about the bill itself.

They'll talk about spin, about claiming this is helping farmers when what this is doing is helping land speculators pave over farmland. That's what this bill is about. It's about partisanship, going to the developers who paid for some of their election campaigns and asking for favours, them getting favours. "You scratch my back, and I scratch yours." That's what it looks like to me, because they cannot argue and they cannot show why this is necessary. They have not shown that in any sense.

Now, of course, when we talk about climate change, when we talk about resilience, we should talk to the farmers, something this government really didn't do when they introduced the legislation at all.

The Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, the B.C. Agriculture Council — they're doing that. They're going out saying, "Agricultural is threatened by climate change. Let's talk to farmers about what they need help with to adapt, where possible; what risks are going to be created that we can't adapt to; and what challenges that puts on each of us as British Columbians both for our export, because we of course export so much of our food" — which is great because people want it, and it's healthy food — "but also for our own people to eat, because that's what people want."

Do you know what they're finding out across this province? Well, up in the north, they're saying that huge storms may cause incredible damage to the crops. In the Kootenays you've got challenges of drought. In Vancouver, again, rain could wash the food away, and then droughts could dry it out so that you don't have the food security that you thought you had.

But in some areas they say — and this is up in the Peace River country; I was reading about it — that you might be able to actually grow more hay, more wheat than you are currently, possibly, unless the storms get at it first.

I know the minister…. He is not the Minister of

[ Page 3872 ]

Agriculture but seems to think that he gets to say what happens here, and nobody else in the Liberal caucus seems to tell him otherwise. He said that well, you could only grow hay in his area of the Kootenays and, really, that was somehow a bad thing.

[1435]

Well, I tell you, I come from a family who, in Alberta, grew a lot of hay. They fed a lot of cattle, and hay was something you needed if you were going to feed things. You needed hay. You needed wheat. You needed to be able to use that for your farms or to sell to other farms and that that was important. If the Liberals don't think hay farmers are important, that's their choice. I think they are.

I think they are very important for the whole cycle of farming in this province and, of course, across this country. It's also made our province and our country a lot of money over many years. They may dismiss it, but I think it's important. I'd much rather have a hayfield than blacktop. I'd much rather have a hayfield than a parking lot.

You know what? The members opposite seem to think that if you live in Vancouver, you don't have the right to even ask about agriculture.

Interjection.

S. Chandra Herbert: I guess the member from Surrey, who's now chittering away here, doesn't eat. Maybe he doesn't eat at all. Maybe he can get rid of his belt, and he won't even need to worry about that anymore. I know that new MLAs often — and I'm not talking about that member; I can only speak about myself — put on a little bit of weight because in this place you do eat. You eat a lot. People feed you — like last night at the B.C. Agriculture Council. They fed us because they wanted us to know how important good B.C. food was.

Whether it's in Vancouver or Surrey, we all eat. Whether it's in the north or the Kootenays, we all eat. If the food prices are being driven up because the member for Surrey seems to think that we should have higher food prices by getting rid of the agricultural land reserve, that'll lead to some people eating less.

Now, maybe he doesn't think that's the case. Maybe he thinks this will drive down food prices. If he thinks that, he should get up and speak in the debate. If that's his belief, he can share it. But not one person I've met says that this bill will lead to lower food prices. This bill will lead to higher food prices, just as climate change will lead to higher food prices and less resilience in our people's lives and more challenges when we know we already have the worst poverty in Canada.

Local food. Why do we need it? We know that climate change is threatening it across the world. We know that people want it — our farmers markets. I'll be ringing the bell at our local farmers market, which has food from all across B.C. from farmers across B.C., this next weekend in the West End — good local food, farmers meeting the people that eat the food, people supporting each other.

Well, what could we be doing instead of deciding to pave over farmland to help farms, as the Liberals seem to suggest will happen? Well, what we should be doing is eating more local food. What we should be doing is ensuring that our hospitals, our schools, this Legislature itself, our local governments…. Everybody in B.C. has a connection to a farmer and supports it through buying local.

That's exactly what the NDP has called on this government to do. The bill sits there on the order paper again and again and again. We talk about it. The public says they love it. The government says, "Oh yeah, we love it too," but do they do anything? No, they do not. Instead, they bring in the "Pave Over Farmland Act," the "Get Rid of Farmland and 90 Percent of the Farmlands in B.C. Act." That's what they do, because it would help their supporters, I suppose, but not the farmers, not the farmland. No, it doesn't help those at all, not at all.

If they thought that it would help their supporters and their voters, they would have run on it in the election, but they didn't. They didn't say a peep about it — not one word. Maybe they did behind closed doors — we don't know — but they certainly didn't say it in public.

Now they bring in a bill to take a hatchet to something that we all love in B.C., and that's our agricultural land and our farmers. Of course, if you take care of the land, that takes care of farming. If you take care of the farmers, they take care of us. There are few other professions, in this world, certainly not MLA, that you need to rely on three times a day. A farmer is that kind of profession. That's certainly what my grandparents taught me as a young boy, when I got to visit their farms. You have to take care of the land, you have to take care of the farmers, and then you'll get some pretty good food, which will take care of you.

Well, it's not just, of course, the farms and the food that we've got to consider. As Environment critic, I also look to this bill and say: "Will this help the environment?" Well, we know it won't lead to resilience for food and food security in this province. It will lead to less. It will lead to higher prices. But what about the environment?

Well, I received a letter from William Harrower, Judith Myers, Sarah Otto, Eric Taylor, Elizabeth Kleynhans and signed by biologists, naturalists, environmental assessment specialists, conservationists. They wanted to take a look at this bill from a slightly different angle.

[1440]

We know this bill doesn't help farmers; it helps developers. Does this help the critters, the animals, that rely on farmland, the elk that hunters look for, the moose that also sometimes use the farmlands in this province? Well, on that count, this bill fails as well.

I'll quote from the letter, because maybe for once the Liberals will actually hear this. "Agricultural lands that occur in all regions of the province hold many values

[ Page 3873 ]

other than simply crop production. These areas contain wetlands, streams, ponds, riparian areas, woodlands, hedgerows and uncultivated grasslands that are either adjacent to or integral to farm operations."

I think that's a very important point, because I know the cattlemen, the cattle ranchers and farmers work very hard to try to improve the resilience of their farmland but also the natural species that rely on it, and this bill does not support that.

The letter goes on. "These areas are instrumental in protecting functioning, healthy ecosystems, and in many cases these diverse services help boost agricultural production." Certainly, when you have more bees buzzing around, you have more flower production. Again, when you have a healthy ecosystem, you can have those ecological services provided for you free. You don't need to pay somebody to go around doing that, as I've seen and read about in some other countries where the bee population crashes and they try to pay for that service by hiring people to go around and pollinate the flowers.

That's an insanely expensive proposition, and the bees do it for us for free, when we take care of the land.

"Many of the ecosystems encompassed by the agricultural land reserve are rare in British Columbia, and they provide habitat for a number of the province's most threatened or endangered species, such as the burrowing owl, American badger, yellow-breasted chat, sage thrasher, Nooksack dace and westslope cutthroat trout.

"Other more common species that occur on the agricultural land reserve land are integral to agricultural production. These species range from" — stay with me, hon. Speaker — "soil microbes that sequester carbon below pasture lands to birds such as the western meadowlarks, swallows and common nighthawks whose populations, unfortunately, are already declining.

"Species prized for hunting, such as deer and elk, also use so-called marginal agricultural lands. These species decline when agricultural lands are removed from production, marginal lands are converted to more intensive uses or non-agricultural developments are permitted on agricultural lands."

And this is in bold. Not my bold but the authors' bold — in fact, all the many, many signatories' bold.

"Allowing more non-agricultural uses on ALR land and the release of more lands from reserves will have the unintended consequence of threatening many important ecosystems and, by extension, many valuable species, including species at risk."

As one of only two provinces in Canada without endangered species legislation — the Liberals have refused to take action to support our endangered species in the province — we need to sit up and take notice of this because, of the endangered species we have, a number of them continue to be on the decline.

What we seem to see here is again more shortsighted actions by the Liberals: pave over the farmland; ignore the endangered species; ignore food security; ignore the impacts of climate change; and as they did with Bill 4, ignore our parks; ignore the people's demands to support our parks and put pipelines through.

As we've seen again with their abandonment of any action, really, on climate change, this continues a short-term focus with long-term consequences — very long-term consequences. "Splendour without diminishment" indeed. Well, that's a lot of diminishment under this government.

It didn't have to be this way. They could have consulted the public. They could have consulted the food growers. They could have consulted the agricultural communities. They could have consulted the people of B.C. and said: "What do you want to do? Do you want to support more local food in this province? Do you want to support food sovereignty? Do you want to support us continuing to grow local food and also our ability to export food?" They could have asked those questions.

They could have supported our local food act. I'll read the explanatory note, since the government seems not to have read it. If they had, they probably would have implemented it. "The British Columbia Local Food Act seeks to improve and maximize food security, economic returns…from protected farmland through the creation of a British Columbia local food and agricultural strategy. This plan requires the Minister of Agriculture, in collaboration with the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia's...Agriculture Committee…" — which should actually meet.

That's a little aside here, since the committees never meet. The government decides democracy doesn't matter, and the voices of people in this House, who represent communities across B.C. don't matter. They, instead, decide backroom conversations are consultation. I disagree.

[1445]

But I digress. Allow the Agriculture Committee "to determine recommendations and targets on increasing local food production, processing, distribution, marketing, plus increase public sector organization purchasing of B.C.-grown food. The minister is required to report annually on the progress made and expected under the strategy. The act also re-establishes the Minister of Agriculture's Buy B.C. marketing program that is universally accessible to all B.C. farmers."

It's a good act. I give credit to my colleague the member for Saanich South, the member for Vancouver-Kingsway, who introduced the legislation, the current Agriculture critic, the member for Powell River–Sunshine Coast, for their continued advocacy. But indeed, to all food growers, processors, distributors across this province and all eaters who want to support B.C. food, this make sense. This would be a huge improvement upon the current legislation, which goes backwards with the attempt to allow more non-agricultural uses on agricultural land.

But we've also got to, of course, consider the farmers. We know that this act that we suggested, not the government's act, would actually support farmers. We know it would actually put more money in farmers' pockets. We know it would lead to longer-term success to keep the kids in farming if they want to be. We know that an agricultural strategy would actually come up with real ways to allow more people to farm. Let more farmers farm. That would be a good demand. Not "let more pavers pave over farmland," but "let more farmers farm."

[ Page 3874 ]

We can do this. It's not difficult. All it requires is sitting down and focusing on it, rather than focusing on the short-term buck of flipping your land that you bought two months ago and saying: "Jeez, agriculture — so hard now. I didn't know it when I bought the farmland, but now I'm getting out, two months later. I want to flip it to put condos on it, because that'll help." Well, that's not farming. That's farming condos, perhaps. That's farming development, perhaps. But that's not farming food. That's not farming things that we rely on in this province. No, that's shortsighted greed — greed, plain and simple.

No consultation, no resilience, no action on actually supporting farmers when you could. That's greed, and that's shortsighted beyond belief. It goes with this government's track record when it comes to the agricultural land reserve. You think about certain areas of this province. I go around. I visit farmers. I talk to people across this province, people who are farmers. But they tell me: "You know what? I care about the environment first." Or: "You know what? I'm a farmer first, but I also care about the environment."

What they tell me is that they are being undercut by people who've decided to use their farmlands as fill land. Bring in some garbage and fill it up. That's not farming food. That's farming garbage. What do the Liberals do? Oh well, we've got two agricultural enforcement officers in the entire province — only two. So what do they do? Well, they go in and say: "You're not allowed to do this."

Well, what do the Liberals do? They roll over and play dead. They say: "It's okay. You can build on that farmland. Let's put a parking lot up there. Oh, let's fill it up. Put on the garbage. You can do it. Jeez, this is a quick buck for us, a quick buck for you." And "Oh well. Jeez, we really care. We're so concerned. We furrow our brows. We say to the media that this really shouldn't happen. Oh, they know that the rules are bad. Oh, I'm going to slap their wrist. Oh, that's a bad idea."

Meanwhile, some of these goons are making out like bandits. Some of these people who've decided to destroy our agricultural heritage are making out like bandits through the quick buy, the quick flip or the quick garbage fill, and that's just dead wrong — dead wrong.

So no, we need to support our farmers so they don't get undercut by those who've decided to break the rules. We need to support our farmers so they can get their food into our hospitals, into our schools, into our Legislature and the public buildings all across B.C. We need to support our farmers so that their food is sold in every supermarket with a big buy-B.C. logo. We can do this. That's called foresight. That's called foresight for our grandchildren and our children's children's children.

You know what? As the long saying goes, as the saying many in this House have heard before, when will we realize that we can't eat money? We cannot eat money. You could try. Maybe the member from Surrey would like to try, but you can't eat money. It's not good for your budget, it's not good for your wallet, and it's not good for your belly.

[1450]

No, you need good food. You need good food from the Creston Valley. You need good food from the Kootenays. You need good food from up in Peace River country, from every little piece of that agricultural land that we've got in this country you could develop. Vancouver Island — you've got good food on Vancouver Island, incredible food on Vancouver Island and even in the Surrey. There's lots of good agricultural land in Surrey, and you could be eating from good agricultural land. Sunshine Coast as well.

Our province is rich in agricultural land. But it doesn't need to be rich in the short term by paving it over, because once it's gone, it's pretty darn hard to get back. Once you develop it…. Look in B.C.; look in the Lower Mainland. We had so much good farmland, and it got paved over. People didn't think about the long-term effects of it until the agricultural land reserve was brought in, and they said no. They said: "No more. We need our food. We need our farmers; we need the farmland for our province."

That's when they said no, and this government has decided, "Too bad, we don't need that future. We need to put it in doubt," despite everybody saying no, despite almost everybody in the agricultural system saying no. Now they say change is good. Change can be good, but this is a bad change. This is a destructive change. This is a change that should never have ended up in this Legislature and never would have if they'd actually asked the people what they thought. But no, they didn't.

As the Liberals consistently do, they think might makes right. They think brawn is better over brains. Well, no, brains are important. Thinking long term is important. Greed is not a long-term strategy. Greed is a short-term strategy which will leave you in pain and will leave our communities less resilient.

This strategy the Liberals have brought forward with this bill is about greed. It's not about food. It's not about helping the farmers continue to farm. No, that's not what this legislation is about. We've shown how you could help farmers farm. We've shown how they could be more profitable. They've shown it, too, and they've told us that they've shown it. They've told us to listen to them, to let them do their work and to support the farmland in a real way — not in a way that's about supporting a developer make a quick buck off flipping the land, but about farmers digging in the earth and planting the seeds so that we can have true long-term prosperity.

I've been doing some reading about it. We of course had one of the Premiers in this House, who — mixed record — was successful in some regards. John Oliver high school was named after him, of course — "Honest John" as they called him at the time. He was a salt-of-the-earth kind of guy, they said. Mud Bay, I think, in Surrey was

[ Page 3875 ]

the area that he farmed. At the time he said that his vision was B.C. as an agricultural powerhouse. That's where he saw B.C. going. He saw the land; he knew what wealth it created. He thought that this was something that would lead to long-term prosperity in this province, as did the founders of the colony of Vancouver Island, the colony of the mainland, the Vancouver area, which became British Columbia when it became united. They saw that as a crucial building block for this province.

Of course, the First Nations knew this long before us — that we have incredible abundance when we treat this land well. But this government does not treat the land well and does not support those that do treat the land well, either. That's, again, why this bill must be defeated. They could change their ways. They could think about our grandchildren. They could think about the future. They could think about the realities of climate change breathing down our necks today. They could think about the fact that we've lost billions upon billions already due to climate change.

If you look to pine beetle, forestry of course, like agriculture, was one of our founding industries — hugely important with many, many jobs and lots of tax revenue for our province. But the pine beetle, in

part largely because of climate change, have wiped out billions of dollars in that industry.

Well, the Liberals seem to be continuing on a course of stick their heads in the sand, ignore the realities of climate change and ignore the realities of the need to support food security and long-term benefits of the agricultural land reserve for our children and our distant grandchildren — instead, choosing short-term greed.

Now, if the farmers don't support it, if the communities don't support it and if the public doesn't support this — and they don't — why is the government continuing? Why? They've yet to provide any rationale that actually adds up. The scientists don't support it. The academics, as well, don't support it. You might want to listen to somebody once in a while who has researched these topics for their whole life — just a thought that could lead to longer-term benefits for this province than short-term greed of paving and garbage-filling. But no. The government refuses.

They go back to their little room, talk to each other, pat each other on the back and say: "Let's let 'er rip. Let's fill it up, and let's forget the future."

[1455]

That's what they're doing with the bill. It's not about sustainability. It's not about resilience. This is about the short term.

Resilience is what we need. A sustainable future is what we need. Supporting our Local Food Act is what we need. Supporting our farmers is what we need. Taking care of the land so it takes care of us is what we need. We need a vision that embraces agriculture and all that it can truly be for this province. It has done so much for us so far, and it will do so much more for us when we take it seriously and when we care for it, when we really feel for it.

"We've all got to eat to live," as the member for Delta South used to say so memorably in this House, and as this government used to seem to believe. No more. Under this current Premier and current cabinet, they've forgotten the future. I regret that very much and will fight to kill Bill 24.

J. Kwan: I rise to enter the debate on Bill 24, the Agricultural Land Commission Amendment Act, 2014. Now, there has been a lot of public outcry. My good colleague the member for Saanich South has been out in the community talking with stakeholders, with people across the province of British Columbia. And do you know what they're calling for? They're calling for the government to kill Bill 24.

I've got to say those are pretty strong words — an adjective that really speaks to, I think, the deep feelings that people have around Bill 24. You might ask: why are people concerned about Bill 24? Why do they want Bill 24 gone? Members of this House will know that the B.C. Land Commission Act came into effect on April 18, 1973. That's 40 years ago. Stemming from that act was the agricultural land reserve, known as the ALR.

The ALR was created to protect B.C.'s agricultural land and to ensure that it is available for agricultural use — not for non-farm uses and subdivisions of the ALR land, not for developments. Why? Because agriculture is an important, sustainable industry in British Columbia. It is a food source. It is a valuable economic driver. It is a vital local food source.

Today agriculture generates approximately $12 billion for our economy and provides approximately 45 percent of B.C.'s food source. It employs some 61,000 people, and it contributes $2½ billion in exports. So it is a significant sustainable industry, and all of this comes from less than 5 percent of our land base. It's not a lot of land which many stakeholders in our community are calling for protection of.

You know, prior to the introduction of the ALR British Columbia actually lost 15,000 acres of agricultural land to urban growth each year. That's not unsubstantial, given that there's less than 5 percent of our land that could support agriculture.

Today we're debating Bill 24. By the government's own admission, they did not do proper consultation with key stakeholders, let alone talk to British Columbians, on the whole, about Bill 24. Of course, we know that during the election there was not one whisper from the Premier or any of the cabinet ministers or candidates about any changes to the agricultural land reserve. This government here today is overhauling the way we protect agricultural land.

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Now, you hear the government say: "Don't worry. Trust us." I know that MLAs in the House have spoken, and

[ Page 3876 ]

they have said: "Hey, we love agricultural land. Don't worry. Trust us." Well, the truth is, given their record, it's pretty hard to actually just trust them. As my good colleague, the member for Columbia River–Revelstoke, has said, this is not an agricultural land protection act. Let's be clear about it. This is a development act. That's what it is.

Now, the government says: "Don't worry. We want to protect agricultural land. You guys are fearmongering. The opposition is fearmongering. The stakeholders, the farmers — they are fearmongering."

Well, now, let's just look at the history and record of how well this government has done when it comes to agricultural land protection under their watch. Let's just take a look for a minute. Now, by way of comparison, between the years of 2001 and 2012, many of B.C.'s most agriculturally productive regions have actually lost agricultural lands. Under this bill's definition of zone 1 and in this period, B.C. actually saw a net loss of 3,867.9 hectares of zone 1 agricultural land.

Mr. Speaker, if you just look at the land area under the zones and juxtapose that to the time period of the Liberal government's watch, we've seen a substantive net loss in prime agricultural land. Now, this compared to the period between 1991 to 2000, there was actually a net increase to the agricultural land reserve of 15,323 hectares. So that's under the NDP government. Agricultural land — actually, an increase in prime agricultural land. Under the Liberal watch, a net loss of prime agricultural land.

When you look into the details of this, it is interesting to note that from 2001 to 2012, land excluded from the ALR is concentrated in the Okanagan, in the south coast, in the Kootenays region, and the gains were actually primarily in the north, which the government would deem to be substandard agricultural land under Bill 24.

The government will say, then: "What's the big deal? There was actually a net increase of agricultural lands." Well, the big deal is this. Under the Liberal watch, prime agricultural lands were lost to developments. The south coast region excluded 178.5 hectares of prime agricultural land in Abbotsford — prime agricultural land.

The Island excluded 140 hectares of agricultural land in Courtenay in exchange for the inclusion of 318 hectares of agricultural land in Comox. The south coast panel — the people that were in charge of making these decisions — allowed for 64 residential villas to be built at a golf course on agricultural land in Sechelt. Not exactly farm use, I would say. Nonetheless, that decision was allowed and went ahead.

In the Kootenays it excluded 267 hectares of grazing land, near Invermere. If this could happen with prime agricultural lands, what do you think will happen when the government considers agricultural land that they are now wanting to call, under Bill 24, a substandard agricultural land, under a definition of what the government will now define as zone 2?

Under Bill 24, I believe that the government is looking for ways to allow for the erosion of agricultural land through this new zone, zone 2. The government will have you believe that zone 2 lands are unproductive, so it's no big deal if you lose those lands.

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You would ask the question then: what is the difference between zone 1 and zone 2 agricultural lands? Now, I will be the first to admit that I am not an expert on soil or climate when it comes to its use related to agriculture. So I went and actually researched expert opinions on this matter. Here's what they have to say. In fact, this information is shared to all MLAs, including the Premier.

In an open letter to the Premier the experts say this:

"In Bill 24, B.C. creates a two-tiered ALR, and a lower-quality of agricultural lands and climate in zone 2 has been stated and assumed several times. However, these assertions are patently false when examined in the light of objective soil science data and agriculture capacity ratings, ratings that incorporate a substantial body of climate data gathered during the Canada land inventory. In actual fact, there is far more class 1 to 4 land in zone 2 than zone 1 — about 85 percent, or two million hectares, in zone 2 versus 15 percent, or 350,000 hectares, in zone 1.

"This is not to say that lands of the same capacity are directly comparable. A class 3 soil in the Fraser Valley is different from a class 3 soil in the Peace. Capability, based on the range of crops, needs to be considered along with the suitability and productivity of individual crops on specific soils in specific local climate.

"Lower-capacity soils can be highly productive for a particular crop. For example, a capability class 5 soil that is restricted to producing a forage crop is often highly productive for that one narrow cropping option. It is for this reason that class 5 lands were included in the ALR, where they form the basis for some types of agriculture — i.e., important forage production lands in ranching areas and class 5 organic bog soils suited to the production of blueberries or cranberries.

"Similarly, some class 6 lands are important components of livestock production, notably the natural grasslands of the southern Interior. These provide the often limited early spring and fall grazing, thereby reducing both the labour and feed costs of ranchers."

This is coming from a group of experts in soil, scientists who've actually dedicated their lives in understanding this particular subject.

This open letter is much longer than that, but for the purposes of this debate, I won't read the entire letter into the record. But suffice it to say, every member of this House has a copy of it. Suffice it to say, it was particularly directed to the Premier, so presumably, the Premier would have taken the time to read the letter. Then she would have known and understood about the differences between zone 1 and zone 2 agricultural lands and the value that both zones, under Bill 24, of these agricultural lands contribute to farm production in British Columbia.

If the approach that this government is adopting was taken when the ALR was created 40 years ago, then today we would not have the growth and successes in cranberry production and processing, B.C.'s award-winning wines and associated tourism economic activities. These industries grew out of what was deemed as "marginal or class 4 or 5 agricultural lands."

These so-called marginal agricultural lands support

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important industries today in cranberry production and processing, in fine wine, in B.C.'s vineyards. I've visited them on a farm tour with a number of my colleagues.

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When Corky Evans was in this Legislature — when he was the critic for Agriculture, back then, formerly a Minister of Agriculture and now a farmer in his community — he talked with expertise around the farming industry with love in his voice and his heart. I actually don't know anybody who knows as much as Corky does on agricultural lands and their value to British Columbia's economy and the sheer love of it — except for maybe the member for Saanich South, I've got to say.

On this tour we actually took the Shandong Satellite TV people with us to tour B.C.'s agricultural know-how — what we produce here from local soils, and the farmers and the production, in an attempt to not only promote Buy Local, Buy B.C., but also showcase to the rest of the world what we've got to offer: the incredible produce that comes out of it and the processing and technologies that we have and the wines that come out of British Columbia.

Once upon a time people said it was impossible, that B.C. could not possibly produce passable wine, let alone award-winning wine.

But we beat the odds because of the dedication of the farmers in our communities, advocates of the people in our community and the foresight 40 years ago from the Barrett government, which took action to preserve agricultural lands and not to make a distinction to say that some lands are second-class citizens but, rather, that the less than 5 percent of the lands in British Columbia that can produce agricultural goods are valued and valued all the same so that we can maximize all of the opportunities that the abundance of the lands of British Columbia could give to all of us.

That's what those 40 years meant. Fast-forward to today, and where are we at? We're in a situation where the government, under Bill 24, will actually allow, I believe, other uses ahead of agricultural lands. If the government wants to protect agricultural lands, then let's maintain the notion of preserving agricultural lands based on the principle that the ALR was founded on: that it is a provincial interest to preserve agricultural lands.

Now, "What does 'provincial interest' mean?" you might ask. This means the preservation of agricultural lands as a sacred and non-renewable resource and the promotion of agricultural land use. That's what it would mean. There are four conditions that should be tied to the definition of "provincial interest" — that it is provincewide in its context and its application, and that it provides for long-term consequences. You need to consider long-term consequences. It means that the decisions around the agricultural land should be open and accountable in its decision-making and that the preservation and management of sacred and important provincial assets need to be considered as well.

The conditions or definition, if you will, of "provincial interest," I would argue, ought to be defined in the act explicitly and reaffirmed explicitly. That would be a good place to back up the government's claim that they want to protect agricultural lands when they say: "Bill 24 is not going to harm agricultural lands at all, so don't worry." Well, stakeholders are worried. The opposition is worried. We happen to disagree; many of my constituents happen to disagree.

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But let's start with this. If in fact that is the overriding principle that we can all agree on, which the government says they agree to, then let's start with that. Let's put on the table clearly defined "provincial interests" and what that means — including the four principles of provincewide content, long-term consequences, open and accountable decision-making, and the preservation and management of scarce and important provincial assets. On the table, as you define agricultural land protection — that would be a good start, and that would be a good place where the government can then say that they want to protect agricultural lands.

The issue, of course, is that that definition is not there. The government has done no such thing around it. Again, doing the research and looking this up — there was a report that was done to actually look at the issue of provincial interest, what it means, and to evaluate it against agricultural lands. The conclusion of the report came back to say that we should absolutely reaffirm the term "provincial interest" in the act and clearly define what it means.

I want to spend a moment talking about long-term consequences, because I think this is at the heart of the matter. The time element is significant. We're talking about trying to protect an asset that ought to belong to all British Columbians and is known as agricultural lands, and the provincial interest around these long-term consequences would be to ensure that these lands are available and continuing their use in perpetuity.

Often, though, and what we see in Bill 24, politics and economics tend to be based on what, I would argue, are short-term cycles, and that challenges the notion of provincial interest. I think that the government is willing to sell its soul and its commitment on the agricultural land and its preservation through the creation of Bill 24, allowing for the erosion of agricultural lands and therefore shortchanging the long-term consequences of losing this land base.

The issue of zone 1 and zone 2 is not the only issue in Bill 24. There are other issues with it as well, and that actually, I think, warrants some discussion in this debate. The creation of zone 1, zone 2 absolutely is critical around the preservation of agricultural land. I disagree with how the government's proceeding with that. I think we should clearly define a public interest with the preservation of agricultural lands — to reaffirm that commitment; to state clearly by legislation what that means; and to get rid

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of this two-tier system, this substandard notion or notion of substandard agricultural lands that the government wants to define, now known as zone 2.

The government, in this bill, is also creating the six panels, the regional panels. It goes to the accountability and decision-making question. In 2002 the Liberal government attempted to decentralize the Agricultural Land Commission by creating six regional panels consisting of three commissioners each. The panels at that time, when it was created, were deemed to be discretionary.

Now, the Auditor General, as we have heard from the member for Vancouver-Kingsway, has said, in identifying…. We have all seen this report. He pointed out the deficiencies with the panels, not the least of which is a cost analysis around the panels.

In Bill 24 it actually makes these panels mandatory and ensures that the key ALR decisions, such as applications for exclusion or subdivision of land in the reserve, must be decided by the panels.

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The net effect, I think, is that this will subject the Agricultural Land Commission to the pressure of local land issues. That, I fear, would result in the loss of agricultural lands.

Now, Mr. Speaker, don't just take my word for it, though. People might just say: "Hey, you know what? That's your problem that you might have those worries. That's just your problem." I think we should actually go back and look at the record of how these panels have functioned since their creation, even though it was discretionary, to see how well it's worked on the principle of protecting agricultural lands.

There was an analysis that was done, which I researched and was able to find. The analysis was done by Ryan Green from the environmental law clinic at the University of Victoria. This report is a case study of Agricultural Land Commission decisions. With the creation of the six regional panels, the analysis shows that "it appears that the regional panels are not adequately protecting B.C.'s scarce agricultural land." That's the finding of the report itself.

The study examined and rated how the regional panels have approved exclusions from the ALR between the period of 2002 and 2005. The study shows that it approved 70.5 percent of the hectares of ALR land that were proposed for exclusion. That's more than a third of the lands for which exclusion was applied. The regions with the highest rate of ALR exclusions were Vancouver Island, at 89.1 percent; the Kootenays, at 83.6 percent; and the Okanagan, at 82.5 percent.

The report goes on to say that "the significant exclusion rates of southern regional panels are consistent with the general trend in the ALR's history, in which the ALR's total land base has been kept fairly consistent by replacing excluded agricultural land in southern British Columbia with relatively less productive lands in northern British Columbia."

What exactly does that mean, you might ask. It basically means that the government, under their watch, allowed for exclusions of land, prime agricultural land, in exchange for what the government would call substandard agricultural lands — right? — and lands that are now primarily in the north, which the government classifies as zone 2 lands. The government will say: "Zone 2 lands are less productive, and therefore, if we let go of some of that land, it's not a big deal."

You can see the erosion and the pattern of behaviour that is exhibited here by this government in their attempt to erode agricultural lands, the sacred land of which we have less than 5 percent in total. When you look at the analysis of the report, where these lands were lost…. These lands were lost for developments. Make no mistake about that. They were lost for non-farmland use.

Let's be clear. Once you lose that land and you put developments on it, you can't get it back. Even if you are able to buy the land back, it's questionable whether or not you can use that land for agricultural production purposes because of contamination and a variety of other factors. The long-term consequences are significant and very potentially irreversible. That's what we're dealing with, with Bill 24 today.

I know that the members of this House will say: "But you folks from the Lower Mainland don't understand about agricultural lands." The interesting thing is that people from across the province of British Columbia are calling for the government to kill Bill 24. It's not just a phenomenon in the Lower Mainland, although the voices in the Lower Mainland are very strong. Make no question about it.

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I have received a large stack of correspondence and letters — and voice mail and e-mails and on Facebook — from people in my riding, calling on the government to back off, to stop what they're trying to proceed with and to kill Bill 24, because agricultural lands ought to be kept sacred. It is a sustainable food source and provides for a strong economy for British Columbia. And once you lose that land, we cannot get it back.

I support my colleagues who have spoken on this bill and are opposed to Bill 24. I hope that the government members will pause and take a moment and listen to their constituents, to hear what they have to say about Bill 24 and their concerns around it. If they truly believe in their voices and respect their voices, then they will agree with us that they should stand down Bill 24.

Kill Bill 24, and let's start with the place of agreeing that we want to protect agricultural lands and with the principle of defining in the bill a provincial interest of what that means, with the four principles around that, so that we can preserve agricultural lands for generations to come — not just for today but for tomorrow and for your grandchildren and their grandchildren, Mr. Speaker.

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D. Routley: I am going to take my time in this second reading debate — most of my time, actually — to read a letter that I received through my colleague the MLA for Powell River–Sunshine Coast, the Agriculture critic.

Also, I'd like to commend him on the fine work he's done on this file — and at the same time, the work that the previous critic, Saanich South, did on this file as well. I think both of them have demonstrated what it means to be really committed to public interest and to be activist politicians representing not just their constituents but primary and most important issues of the province.

I will first read this letter, because it's a long letter, and I'm not sure how much time I'm going to have left for my own comments at the end. I think it's important because the substantive issues of the day are too frequently debated without the witness or participation of those to whom the consequences have the most gravity. So many British Columbians are left out of the public discourse in this province and feel absolutely unheard.

Now this is my effort to allow this one person, Jim Wright, to be heard in this Legislature. I think he has written a very salient and important piece of work here. He's from Richmond, and he's a longtime Liberal supporter. In fact, he has never voted NDP, but he's had to resort to having one of our members read his letter into the record, partially because his MLA is the Speaker herself. He admires her as a person, but he's most upset with this legislation.

I want to read his letter into the record now.

"Dear MLAs of British Columbia:

"I've been following the Bill 24 debate closely, mostly through Hansard , and I love hearing letters from citizens. It is almost like we're being consulted. I have an excellent MLA, who shares many of my values, but she is the Speaker. That means she's not able to speak for me in the Legislature. I therefore sent this letter to the Agriculture critic, who arranged for an MLA to read it.

"An NDP member is representing me at this pivotal time, and that is ironic. I happen to have never voted NDP in my life. Late last year, as a longtime Liberal supporter, I received a Today's B.C. Liberals message about standing up for taxpayers, through core review, November 29, 2013.

"The message states: these goals for the core services review 'to save taxpayers money, reduce the regulatory burden on the private sector and make public services more focused and efficient….'

"Wow, I thought. I stand for all of that. But it reminded me of something that happened four months earlier in East Kootenay. It was reported in the Cranbrook Daily Townsman as: 'Agriculture Minister sees local farmers' struggles.' It got wider attention in the Vancouver Sun . The Agriculture Minister, who was new in the job at the time, had been taken under the wing of the minister responsible for the core services review. After this, I'll call him the core minister, for short.

"The core minister had invited his protégé to tour parts of East Kootenay to see the terrible things the ALR and the Agricultural Land Commission were doing to farmers and ranchers.

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"I should pause here to say that I'll go into a small number of matters in detail in this letter instead of dabbling in everything. I'll fill in gaps I've noticed from Hansard . For broad knowledge, I suggest watching the video of the MLA for Vancouver-Fairview's speech at the end of last week. For informed passion, I suggest the early presentation by the MLA for Saanich South. Many other MLAs have spoken well, so it may seem I'm left with just a few details, but they fill out the picture.

"Let's get back to the end of July 2013 in East Kootenay. As we visualize the sunny scene, the core minister, who is the MLA for Kootenay East, is tutoring the fledgling Agriculture Minister. According to the Cranbrook Daily Townsman , the local MLA, Minister for Core Review, focused on a key issue for local farmers — the seemingly arbitrary boundaries of the ALR, the agricultural land reserve and how it restricts farmers' ability to make a living.

"I agree that there are boundary problems, but there was one huge omission that stood out like a chasm in all the articles. The core minister never mentioned that the Agricultural Land Commission was already immersed in a solution at that very time in that very same region, Kootenay East. The omission makes all the difference between a valid observation and a confusing message from a person who should have known better. Politics is not known for fairness, but that went too far.

"At that, let me pause once again in this story. We need to go into the background of the ALR boundary reviews in East Kootenay. It begins with the audit of the Agricultural Land Commission by the Auditor General of British Columbia, who released his report in September 2010. The very first of the Auditor General's nine recommendations is this: 'Ensure that ALR boundaries are accurate and include land that is both capable of and suitable for agricultural use.'

"In a core review of the ALC, surely a key thing to look at is the highly relevant report by the Auditor General, along with the Agricultural Land Commission's systematic response to the Auditor General's report. If the Auditor General is ignored by the government even on the occasion of a core review, the efficiency that the Auditor General aims to enable cannot possibly occur. The Auditor General's staff are experts in efficiency. I should mention that the ALC is headed by Richard Bullock, an expert executive, who is building on a distinguished career as a farmer, business leader and public servant.

"In any case, one could assume that the core minister had not read the Auditor General's report and did not know how the commission was implementing it. The appearance is that the core minister was ignorant of at least three factors: (1) the recommendations in the Auditor General's report; (2) the strategic plan of the Agricultural Land Commission that the commission was systematically implementing; and (3) the comprehensive set of East Kootenay ALR boundary reviews, which were a major event in the core minister's own constituency.

"Besides ignorance, the only other possibility I can think of is that the core minister was concealing his knowledge of the ALR review while criticizing the ALR boundaries and the Agricultural Land Commission, but entertaining that possibility would lead to conclusions that I don't want to believe. I therefore choose to assume that the core minister was not trying to influence the commission to laxly exclude too much land from the ALR in the boundary review. Similarly, I will not assume the minister was deliberately misleading his trusting constituents so as to make a case against the ALR.

"In short, it is fair to give the core minister the benefit of doubt that he just didn't know what was going on. That benign view also fits with the Cranbrook Daily Townsman's other details of the core minister's orientation tour with his Agriculture Minister pupil at the end of July 2013.

"According to the article, the core minister cited a particular Agricultural Land Commission decision in East Kootenay as 'just plain wrong.' However, the core minister missed the purpose that the applicant stated in their well-written application, which I located and read. The intent of the application, which was good for farming, was 'to create a residential parcel for the owners, a retiring farm couple, so their daughter's family could succeed them in owning and farming the farm.'

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"The ALC decision showed that the applicants could already ac-

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complish their stated goal under the ALC Act. It happens, though, that the part of the act's ALR land use provision the commission had to apply is clumsy. Fortunately, the commission followed up, working with the farming family to meet the spirit of the law. As an administrative tribunal, the ALC has more leeway than a court to collaborate like that to flexibly meet the intents of the law. In my view, the regulation needs refining, but the ALC should have been commended for using common sense in the interim. The core minister's lambasting of the ALC's actions as 'just plain wrong' was at best an uninformed and unpleasant thing to do.

"The problem with all this is that it doesn't matter how genuine the core minister is in not knowing what's going on. The problem is that it's doing harm in a range of important ways, and Bill 24 is extending the harm. To stay with the damage in East Kootenay, let's look at what has happened with the set of boundary reviews there. One can do that from the home page of the Agricultural Land Commission website, since the ALC is as open as possible.

"We see from the ALC site that the commission completed the Elk Valley ALR boundary review on February 18 of this year. As of early March the ALC was progressing well with its other four East Kootenay reviews. By now the planning of the concurrent boundary reviews in the Cariboo and the north would have begun, but I suspect that Bill 24 has thwarted that.

"There is no sense in reviewing ALR boundaries in the Kootenays, Interior and north when Bill 24 would practically eliminate the ALR in those regions. ALR boundary reviews are an efficient method, and the ALC used the Elk Valley boundary review to fine-tune the system.

"Instead of that modern adaptation of the tried-and-true system of ALR boundary reviews, we're headed for an avalanche of applications that will have to be handled individually. I gather that it began months ago, after the core minister and former Agriculture Minister spurred land speculators with their comments. The avalanche will certainly gain momentum if Bill 24 goes through.

"Of course, though, Bill 24 makes it super easy to stack the ALC panels with commissioners who will approve anything, and maybe that is the idea. Otherwise, the massive inefficiency will be exactly opposite to what the core review was supposed to accomplish. This is a reason to take time to think about how the core review went wrong, before going headlong downhill into the abyss with Bill 24, the bill to kill the ALR.

"I hope the review of the core review will look at all the other inefficiency that Bill 24 would impose by law on the Agricultural Land Commission. Trying to find anything anywhere in the bill that might improve efficiency, you're more likely to find that anything in the bill that's a real change is an added burden on the ALC and the citizens it works with. According to today's B.C. Liberals' message I began with, the core review was supposed to 'save taxpayers money' and 'make public services more focused and efficient.'

"In Bill 24, in my view, every one of the real changes adds a burden of bureaucracy. It is bound to cost more money while doing harm to farmland conservation, food security and the independence of the Agricultural Land Commission as a tribunal. If this perversion of the core review is applied to large ministries, it will bankrupt the province. Applied to the ALC with its tiny budget, the bumbling under the cloak of a core review can't do that, but the effect on our future could be as bad.

"Let's go through Bill 24 sections that involve significant change.

Section 2 of Bill 24 divides the provincial land use zone, called the ALR, into two zones. Since a zone can't be two zones, this

section creates two ALRs. ALR 1 is a weakened version of the existing ALR. ALR 2 is an anything land reserve, which keeps agricultural land in a land bank until anything else that is wanted more comes up.

"Administering two ALRs with two sets of rules is bound to cost more while largely protecting farmland for non-farming uses. By the way, that is how there is an element of truth to the seemingly absurd talking point that Bill 24 protects farmland. The catch is that the bill to kill the ALR would actually protect farmland as a reserve for non-farmland uses. That is obvious in ALR 2 and less obvious, at this time, in ALR 1.

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"Section 3 of Bill 24 adds a whole lot of commissioners, eliminates the current efficient means of quality control, makes the tribunal more like six tribunals and enables almost instant stacking of the tribunal panels with chairs and other members who think approved thoughts. That applies to ALR 1 and ALR 2, so forget about the supposed status quo in ALR 1.

"From a focused efficiency standpoint, most of the increased costs are self-evident, so I'll comment only on the stripping away of quality control by taking away the ALC chair's right and duty to consult on appointments. That greatly increases the likelihood of unsuitable appointments.

"All of us who have dealt with the consequences of being stuck with bad team members know that it's far more efficient to get the selections right to begin with. There is little cost for the quality control of the chair's involvement in hiring the chair's team members, but there's unlimited cost to the consequences of the bad choices that Bill 24 makes more likely.

"Section 5 of Bill 24 is related to the panels that would become nearly independent tribunals. The review of Bill 24 by the B.C. Food System Network's expert panelists brings out that the routine decisions would lack provincial context because the ALC chair does not participate; that previous experience with regional panels shows they can be costly and awkward to manage; that there would be increased concerns about unfairness and inconsistency, both between regions and over time; and that there would be increased danger of collusion, conflict of interest or outright collusion between members of the regional panels and regional or local governments.

"In the ALC's strategic plan the chair came up with a hybrid approach that includes representation from each region while avoiding the pitfalls, and there has been evident progress toward that efficient and regionally fair model. As I've mentioned, chair Richard Bullock is an executive with a record of success that has been evident in his systematic modernizing of the ALC. But Bill 24 would trash that progress by Mr. Bullock and the ALC team.

"The Bill 24 plan that would turn past mistakes into law is financial idiocy. If we recall the stated goals for the core services review, it certainly does not 'save taxpayers money' or 'make public services more focused and efficient.'

"Section 6 of Bill 24 amounts to bureaucracy at any cost. Some key words in that

section are 'the commission must submit to the minister….' We know from a leaked memo that the intent has been to bring the Agricultural Land Commission directly under the Minister of Agriculture's thumb. This

section is the main means.

"Richard Bullock, the current chair of the ALC, already does a lot of reporting on the ways the ALC is systematically improving service while limiting costs. It makes no sense to go further to the ten listed kinds of ways in which he is supposed to submit to the minister. That level of micromanaging could be prescribed for entry-level clerks on probation to get them to quit, but even then it would be unsavoury.

"The excellent B.C. Food Systems Network analysis once again provides insight with this comment: 'Opens door for government pressure that could compromise regulators' independence and fairness.' In other words, this

section introduces pointless cost, hampers the commission's freedom to do useful work and compromises the independence of a supposedly independent tribunal.

"For

section 8 of Bill 24, I'll conserve time by just commenting on the way the bill leaves no stone unturned when it can add to the bureaucratic load on the Agricultural Land Commission. In the current act cabinet can make regulations that establish policies and procedures, and the amendment changes that to policies, procedures, rules and regulations.

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"Why add rules and regulations? The likely reason, given the

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previous Minister of Agriculture's leaked intents, is to put the ALC more firmly into the ministry without officially doing so. Cabinet would theoretically be setting rules and regulations for the ALC, but they would come from the Minister of Agriculture or, possibly, the core minister. But that's a problem too.

"Throughout the sections of Bill 24, the powers of the chair of the Agricultural Land Commission are curtailed. Someone with the skills of a Richard Bullock would still find a way to make the best of a bad situation, and his recent comments to Metro Vancouver leaders show he is already looking ahead to doing so.

"However, turning a tremendous asset like Mr. Bullock into a much more limited asset is not the purpose of a core review. As I pause to reflect about that, the phrase that comes to mind is from the MLA of Oak Bay–Gordon Head. In his presentation to the Legislature on this topic a few days ago, he used the expression 'decision-based evidence making.'

"The evidence making that the Globe and Mail sought to obtain recently was not available because 93 pages of it was redacted. Mark Hume's

article summarizes the core minister's assertion that the changes are warranted because the ALC has been keeping too much land locked up in the land reserve.

"The obvious solution was the ALR boundary reviews that the ALC was doing and that Bill 24 is blocking, so the assertion is false. However, it would be useful to see the 93 pages for insight into the core minister's decision-based evidence making. I even wonder if those 93 pages have always been blank.

"In lieu of the missing 93 pages, I will have to rely on evidence from the core minister at and around his media party, March 27, 2014, to celebrate what appears to be a life dream of vanquishing the ALR. At the media party he 'could not contain his excitement,' says Vaughn Palmer.

"There are stories about how the core minister botched the supposed consulting that the B.C. Food Systems Network policy leaders tried to take

part in, but to be fair, it seems that the core minister did get ideas from his Kootenay East constituents.

"At the media event one of them said her children might build a prison or a motel on ALR land. That is a valuable insight into the purpose of Bill 24, especially since the speaker had been selected and brought across the province to represent the source of the core minister's evidence.

"Talking to the Cranbrook Daily Townsman that day, the core minister said: 'If I was going to point to one aspect of the ALC that people in my region really don't like, it's the fact that they apply, and they get they turned down by essentially bureaucrats who live in the Lower Mainland.'

"That stirs local pride, but it is false evidence. As the Agricultural Land Commission website shows, ALC commissioners live in five of the six regions. There's one apiece in the Kootenay region and south coast, which includes the Lower Mainland. The ALC panels also meet in the regions. I think there should be swift action to add a qualified commissioner from the north, but we don't need Bill 24 for that.

"The core minister implied that Cranbrook, where he lives, has no local food, but the ALC's Cranbrook commissioner produces free-range beef. Even if the core minister is genuinely ignorant about other local agriculture around Cranbrook, he should at least have known that fact if he is to have any credibility about the value of having commissioners from the region.

"To be clear, I agree with that value. In the context of the balanced way that Richard Bullock's hybrid model values it. The core minister said the bill would allow farmers to do 'canning or making jams or cheese or wine.' To that I say: what?

"Within reason they've always been ALR uses, and Bill 24 doesn't change that. The core minister complained that a constituent was stopped from mining gravel from a farm. But that was the Mines Ministry that turned it down. That's the same minister's own ministry. Why is Bill 24 needed to fix the minister's ministry? Can't he just take his fingers out of the ALR pie and tend to his own problems?

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"The core minister whined again about the bad local lands stuck in the ALR. But the rest of us all know that the ALC is doing an ALR boundary review in Kootenay East. We all know that it implements the Auditor General's advice and that the core minister appears to have slowed it to a standstill. Bill 24 is not needed to enable the ALC to go back to solving the problems they were already solving.

"At his media party on March 27 the core minister did admit confusion and mentioned that he had not consulted for Bill 24. True. He didn't even consult the ALC chair, Richard Bullock. All we know is that he consulted the woman who sees motels and penitentiaries on farmland in her children's future. Even for decision-based evidence-making, that is not much evidence.

"This government got accolades from people of all political persuasions for its Water Act consultation. Now, on this matter, there have been many calls for consultation, including a recent one from Metro Vancouver. Surely, the bill to kill the ALR can be put aside until the fall sitting for that.

"I have been offering this input as a non-partisan view of how Bill 24 fits with the stated purposes of the core review. Since those purposes have a financial emphasis, my letter has had that emphasis too.

"However, I should add that I'm also president of the Garden City Conservation Society, I am well versed in the values of the ALC Act for agriculture and ecological conservation, and I have followed the ALC and ALR, with firsthand involvement, for many years. I am also active in the Richmond Poverty Response, and food security is important to me because it is so important to the least privileged members of society.

"If Bill 24 were actually good for protecting farmland, for agriculture or for food security, I would be singing its praises. The unfortunate reality is that it is dreadful for protecting farmland and dreadful for protecting food security. The day of reckoning for ignoring those values is fast approaching.

"Ideally, please put Bill 24 out of its misery. If you can't bear to see it go, please at least give it a summer vacation. At the same time please urge the Minister of Agriculture and the chair of the Agricultural Land Commission to consult widely together.

"With best wishes,

"Jim Wright,

"Richmond"

I have rarely taken such time to read someone's thoughts, a citizen's thoughts, into the record, but I think it's really important for a government that refuses to hear the voice of the people it represents, refuses to consult with British Columbians about the valuable, important issues of gravity that affect them. This government is deaf to the voices of British Columbians. This government is blind to the values of British Columbians. This legislation and other legislation brought by this government fail the public interest.

I've been here for nine years, and I've seen it over and over and over again — from land removals, from forest protection that the Auditor General condemned as a failure to the public interest, to the sale of public assets against promises made by that government in campaigning for power. This government is failing the people of B.C. This government is betraying the public interest.

This government is so loathsomely and contemptibly arrogant as they sit there and laugh, whether we're talking about homelessness, whether we're talking about

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the environment and protecting the coast of this province, whether we're talking about the ALR and 40 years of preservation of farmland — 40 years of the most progressive land use management regulations on the planet. This government doesn't take it seriously. This government doesn't care.

As this citizen, who declares himself a longtime supporter of the B.C. Liberals, has said, the day of reckoning for this kind of ignorance is fast approaching. I beg the government to hear these voices. I beg the government to act, finally, in the public interest and kill Bill 24.

S. Chandra Herbert: I seek leave to table a petition.

Leave granted.

Petitions

S. Chandra Herbert: I rise to table a petition. I've got guests in the gallery. A young woman, Marissa Smithson, and Jasmine Storm have been collecting signatures on a petition, along with Ms. Margaret McCullough.

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The petition is to call on the B.C. government to ban the sale of shark fin products in the province of British Columbia, with about 1,500 signatures.

Debate Continued

R. Austin: It's a privilege for me to rise and participate in this debate on Bill 24. I'm going to start by quoting a joke that my former friend Corky Evans once told me. In his estimation, there were only two ways to get rich quick in British Columbia. One was to beat all the odds and buy a winning lottery ticket. The other was to be fortunate enough to have a piece of land and, even more fortunate, to have someone who would change the zoning on that.

I think that at the end of the day, that's what Bill 24 is all about. It's about having the ability to change zoning in 90 percent of something which most people regard as sacrosanct: the agricultural land reserve.

My house is on two acres on the north side of Terrace. It's actually in the agricultural land reserve. When I was doing research on this bill, I was actually a little bit surprised to find all the agricultural land that is around my property — surprised because most of the land in that

section of the ALR is, by any estimates, unusable for farming.

The land is too steep. It's forested. We have salmon-bearing streams running through the properties close to my area. Yet it's still in the agricultural land reserve. So I would agree with the minister on one point, and that is: yes, when the boundaries were drawn 50 years ago, there were pieces of land which were not suitable for farming which were included in the ALR.

However, where I disagree with the Core Review Minister…. There is a process already in place to solve that problem. If I or any of my neighbours had decided that they wanted to remove our properties from the ALR, we could have applied for an exclusion and we could — definitely, I would say — have gotten it.

Anyone who comes to look at our properties would realize that only at the upper sections of the end of my road is there land that's flat enough, with suitable drainage, suitable for farm