January 2012 - Vol 98 No. 1 

Province moves quickly to make changes to ALC Act

By PETER MITHAM
VICTORIA – A report on the province’s Agricultural Land Commission (ALC) was in the hands of government for a year before being made public, but it took legislators less than two weeks to act on its recommendations.
MLAs completed work on Bill 19, an omnibus bill that revised the nine-year-old Agricultural Land Commission Act, on November 24, just 10 days after the bill was introduced in the legislature.
Agriculture minister Don McRae had come under fire in the house in October from Saanich South MLA Lana Popham, agriculture critic for the NDP.
“This minister and the two before him have kept a report by the widely respected chair of the Agricultural Land Commission under wraps for almost a full year. As a consequence, the commission has been unable to act on recommendations from the Auditor General,” she said.
Following persistent questioning, McRae retorted:
“I’m not going to be getting the report delivered to the critic for agriculture on the other side at her convenience. This ministry is doing its analysis. We will respond accordingly. In the end – and I have said this many times, both publicly and privately – we are supportive of ALC, the preservation of farmland and protecting the farmers.”
Or, as he told a media conference call on November 16:
“We wanted to make sure that when we released the report we released it with a suite of actions as well. Having a report sitting out there that actually had no actions attached to it wasn’t something I wanted to have.”
But with the report released, and recommendations made, amendments to the legislation governing the ALC were made quickly as MLAs pushed on to their Christmas recess.
“The changes will enhance the operational capacity of the Agricultural Land Commission in order to expand opportunities for farmers and ranchers,” McRae said in a press release announcing the changes.
The legislation enables the ALC to:

Increase enforcement within the Agricultural Land Reserve by involving qualified officials from other government agencies and levels of government in enforcement activities;

Place a five-year moratorium on repeat applications to the ALC and focus resources on core functions like preserving farmland and encouraging farming;

Begin the transition to a more self-supporting operating model by 2013, and prepare to augment provincial funding by charging certain fees;

Ensure greater consistency and consideration of the ALC’s core values in regional panel decision-making by increasing the oversight of the chair of the ALC.
The legislation also provides for $1.6 million in additional provincial funding that will boost the land commission’s budget to $2.9 million in 2012-2013.

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