News Notes - Protecting the ALR

Last month, we published a report about threats to the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR). This month, the Auditor-General's office released a report called "Audit of the Agricultural Land Commission". The Auditor-General found that the 5% of land in BC which is suitable agricultural lands is under threat because the Agricultural Land Commission (ALC) lacks "the current staffing resources and enforcement tools to support those policies" to protect the ALR.

The commission is challenged to effectively preserve agricultural land and encourage farming in British Columbia, specifically:
the commission has not determined that the boundaries of the ALR are accurate and include lands that are both capable of and suitable for agricultural use;
the commission has identified limitations in its ability to preserve agricultural land and encourage farming through the application process;
the commission is not sufficiently involved in proactive longterm land use planning with local governments to encourage farming on a broad basis;
and oversight of the decisions made by its “delegated authorities” needs strengthening to ensure that agricultural land is being preserved and farming encouraged.

The Auditor-General recommends that the ALC

-ensure that ALR boundaries are accurate and include land that is both capable of and suitable for agricultural use.
-seek government’s support to make changes that will allow it to more effectively -preserve agricultural land and encourage farming through the application process.
-engage in proactive long-term planning with local governments to encourage farming.
-work with Fraser-Fort George Regional District to address concerns it has with the District’s processes.
-work with the Oil and Gas Commission to develop an action plan to implement the recommendations of the 2009 audit.
-ensure that it has a sufficiently robust compliance and enforcement program.
-prioritize completion of the new database and finalize conversion of the original paper ALR maps into digitalized format.
-evaluate the collective impacts of its decisions on applications and its broader policy decisions.
-report publicly on the cumulative impacts of its decisions.

When I did research on the ALR in the South of Fraser, the biggest challenge I ran up against was that most of the information on the ALR is in paper form and isn't easily assessable. Also, I know that there are discrepancies with ALR boundaries and would support an accurate remapping of agricultural land within BC. Of course that requires the provincial government properly fund the ALC.