Any plans for a chicken operation or a feedlot in the middle of a Saanich neighbourhood are almost certain to raise a stink. And while co-owner Don Alberg is likely trying to pressure the municipality into approving development plans for family property in Gordon Head, his threat to bring in 100 cattle is reasonable.
Alberg and his siblings inherited four acres on Mount Douglas Cross Road when their mother died. They want to develop a 12-home subdivision on the land, between Shelbourne Street and Blenkinsop Road.
Saanich council twice refused to support removing the property from the Agricultural Land Reserve. The chicken-farm and feedlot threats might be a pressure tactic, but it’s also true that an agricultural operation on 1.65 hectares — one that would provide a living wage — would likely be a problem for suburban neighbours.
A compost operation might make money, but the smell and truck traffic would be a nightmare. Greenhouses would mean building on a Garry oak meadow.
This week, council reconsidered. The municipality will send the application to remove the land to the Agricultural Land Commission, without any recommendation.
It was a way of avoiding a tough decision. And it failed to satisfy Alberg, who fears the family could be worse off if the commission removes the land, but Saanich council refuses to allow him to develop it.
The ALR has benefited the province. It protects farmland, the original goal. And it prevented suburban sprawl across the Saanich Peninsula and through the Fraser and Okanagan Valleys. (Its effect on housing prices, by limiting available land, is widely debated with no clear conclusion.)
Vigilance is needed to prevent erosion of the reserve. There is constant pressure from developers and landowners to remove farmland, producing huge windfall profits.
But the ALR boundaries should not be treated as some sort of carved-in-stone edict. Nor should we lose sight of the real goal — protecting land that could be farmed.
The Mount Douglas Cross Road property hasn’t been farmed for years, and is not likely to be. Despite right-to-farm legislation, people who have invested in suburban houses aren’t going to stand for a feedlot next door.
If the property stays in the ALR, it will most likely become another estate with a large home and, maybe, just enough farm activity to qualify for the property-tax reduction.
That could still be considered a good thing. The rural character of the Saanich Peninsula has been preserved in this way. But that could also have been accomplished through zoning and land-use bylaws. The ALR remains important, and measures introduced this year to give the Agricultural Land Commission extra powers and more funding to fulfil its obligations were welcome.
But the ALR and its regulations need to evolve. It was, for example, a serious mistake to allow greenhouses to sprawl across Delta, effectively paving over some of the finest agricultural land in Canada.
And councils and the public must accept that there is a reasonable case for removing some properties.
