Despite their appearance, commercial cannabis operations do belong on Agricultural Land Reserve land, says Frank Leonard, outgoing chair of the Agricultural Land Commission.
“It’s a hard position to explain and to defend because when I was a mayor I was opposed to marijuana in the ALR, that looks like an industrial building,” said Leonard who was Saanich mayor from 1996 until 2014.
But after being appointed chair of the ALC, Leonard said he changed his tune. “Agriculture is an industry. So if the government was to try to go after marijuana, a particular plant, as being industrial, that’s a very tricky thing for them to do,” Leonard said.
Several people, including local politicians, have said the bunker-like pot grow ops have no place on farm land and are better suited to industrial areas.
But Leonard said several farm operations are industrial in nature.
“A lot of activities in the agricultural industry look like industrial buildings.
“Your dairy farms, many of them are on concrete slabs. … You go into poultry farms in the Fraser Valley and they’re in industrial-like buildings. Then you get into the issue of greenhouses, and the flower industry is in greenhouses. Very much industrial.”
Agriculture Minister Lana Popham announced in January that an independent commission would hold consultations across B.C. on the “revitalization” of the Agricultural Land Reserve.
Leonard said one of the issues the province will have to address is setting the income level from agriculture that determines farm status for property tax purposes.
“The threshold for getting the reduced property taxes is too low. So we’re not getting farming on farm land.”
But that’s hardly a new issue, Leonard said, noting that he had raised it in a Farm Assessment Review he had done for the province more than as decade ago.
While not a particular problem on Vancouver Island or in the Interior or the North, Metro Vancouver is having a huge problem with monster houses being built on ALR land, he said.
“You’re having someone buy ALR land in Richmond, building a 10,000-square-foot mansion plus tennis court, pool and out-buildings and only producing $10,000 in revenue and then paying next to nothing in property taxes.
“So the ALR land is essentially lost,” Leonard said.
While the monster house problem has touched the Island, it’s not a problem at all “in the world beyond Hope,” he said. “In the regions of British Columbia, people just build the house size that they need,” he said.
Leonard has recommended that the province might want to consider setting a different farm income threshold in Metro Vancouver than it does for other regions of the province.
But it’s unlikely that Popham will agree.
In 2014, the former Liberal government split the ALR into two zones — making ALR land in the North, the Kootenays and parts of the Interior more easily available for non-farm uses while keeping Lower Mainland, Fraser Valley, Okanagan Valley and Vancouver Island land restricted.
Popham is on record saying it was a mistake to split the ALR into two zones, which she says weakens protection of the ALR.
The ALR was created in 1973 to protect 4.7 million hectares of farmland, because only five per cent of B.C.’s land area is considered suitable for agriculture. At that time, 6,000 hectares of farmland was being lost to development each year. That pace has slowed to 600 hectares a year.
