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ALR shouldn’t be reviewed
Letter to the Editor
I am disappointed to read Bill Bennett’s recent comments (in the Vancouver Sun) indicating that the Agricultural Land Commission and Agricultural Land Reserve would be reviewed (again).
This program is an example of a positive public policy that has helped “Grow BC” – to use the words of Premier Christy Clark – and it also helps to protect our food security, despite constant cutbacks and undermining by some B.C. governments.
The Auditor General Report (September 2010) found that the budget of the Agricultural Land Commission (ALC) and Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) Program had been decreased from $2.9 million in 2002-03 to $2.1 million in 2010-11. Their staffing to protect 4.7 million hectares of land had been reduced from 29 to 22 and commissioners increased to 19 during this same time period, hampering the ability of the ALC to ensure the ALR boundaries were accurate and to respond efficiently to the public and other agencies. The public support of the program remains high based on an Ipsos Reid poll of 2008, which found that 91 per cent of the population believed it was important that B.C. should preserve the options to produce its own food and 95 per cent of the population believed farmland should be protected through the Agricultural Land Reserve.
For 2013, the budget for British Columbia is approximately $44 billion, up from less than $26 billion in 2002-03. The budget of the ALC/ALR program at less than 0.01 per cent of the total provincial budget seems a pittance for Bill Bennett to be focusing his attention and the efforts of the Core Review on, especially because the ALC/ALR program has recently been reviewed by the ALC Chair at the request of government and in light of the modest budget increase given to the ALC in Budget 2013, to move forward with long needed improvements identified by its Chair.
The Core Review should begin with examining budgets in other areas of government in order of large to small to maximize the savings to the taxpayer.
Instead, we should all be thanking the ALC and the ALR program along with the farm families and businesses of British Columbia for their hard work to Grow BC.
Richard Stace-Smith,
Professor emeritus, University of B.C.
Vancouver
