This blog about saving the Garden City Lands, Richmond, BC, explores the issue in depth. The Garden City Lands Coalition site introduces the issue.
Earlier in 2009, the Garden City Lands panel of the Agricultural Land Commission rejected the application to remove the Lands from the ALR. That brought struggle to save the Lands into another crucial period.
In late July 2009, I described in Community to Canada Lands I how the Garden City Lands community was making every effort to help Canada Lands Company CLC know how to provide community benefit for Richmond.
One way the community spoke was in a torrent of letters, all expressing the writers’ opinions, not form-letter repetition. The Coalition has been informed (usually via cc) of 46 such letters (and no doubt there were more). Those letters were from 60 people, since some were signed by two or more people. A good example of the letters from citizens is this handwritten letter from 75-year-old Lorraine Bell.
The community also spoke through the Save the Garden City Lands petition urging the Government of Canada to be prepared to restore its ownership of the Lands for program needs within the ALR, such as urban agriculture and ecology uses, that serve the people of Richmond and Canada. At the time when it was sent to Canada Lands, there were 1,962 signatures on paper or in an online form.
The Garden City Lands Coalition sent Save Garden City: An urgent request to Canada Lands Company, a thorough analysis of the Garden City Lands issue. The binder, which included the petition along with sixteen other sections, had 200 pages, all carefully prepared. If Canada Lands went through that, they should by now be very knowledgeable about how to provide community benefit in Richmond, in keeping with their mandate.
Canada Lands has not even acknowledged receiving Save Garden City, let alone responded to it. It is disappointing that Canada Lands would snub the community in that way. It is not good enough or even remotely close to being good enough.
There will soon be a need for further action to ensure that they genuinely act on their community-benefit mandate with the Richmond property and, if need be, to ensure that Canada Lands’ good or bad performance in Richmond becomes well known throughout Canada.
A previous post discusses Garden City Lands MOU contingencies: Community input, the 16-page booklet that the Garden City Lands Coalition Society directors prepared for Richmond’s council and staff. It is a crucial document that could easily make the difference between success and failure, andthe directors wanted its production quality to be equally good. Ideally, it would be printed in colour and “saddle-stitched” (bound as a booklet, with tabloid-sized sheets folded and stapled at the spine). However, the printing estimates were prohibitively high, e.g., $300 for the first twenty copies.
Fortunately, at the last minute we asked Jim McKinnon of Budget Printing for a quote. He was supportive of helping save “Richmond’s Garden City” lands, and his immediate response was that they would print it as a community service contribution. When the City needed more copies, Budget Printing also did the second run for us at no charge.
The coalition directors are highly appreciative of the individuals and groups who are supportive. In the case of Budget Printing, it is nice to be able to recommend them to the blog readers.
Budget Printing does an immense amount of printing of all kinds and offers a wide range of printing-related services. Although most of Budget’s volume comes from big customers like companies and government-affiliated organizations, it also serves small customers. It combines low prices with prompt service. Judging from our booklet, the quality is excellent. The main location is at 505 Clark Drive (at Pender) in Vancouver. There is another Budget Printing location at 4645 Kingsway in Burnaby, and Budget also operates Copies Express at 110-8240 Lansdowne Road in Richmond.
Again, thank you, Budget Printing!
Ryan Lake’s “Corporate power runs political process” (Richmond News, Sept. 2) is one of the more discerning letters to the editor we’ll ever read, and it can easily be applied to the Garden City Lands issue.
It ends, “My only remaining hope is that I am wrong.” As a wise citizen who speaks out with words of warning, Ryan Lake himself is also grounds for hope.
This shore pine (centre foreground) was somehow surviving in the southeast part of the Garden City Lands just weeks ago, but the mowing has stunted it again now.
Mowing is happening on the Garden City Lands again, and the Coalition has been receiving messages from citizens who think it should stop. However, the matter is not as simple as it may seem.
Unquestionably, there are some good arguments against mowing. The following are based on advice from Michael Wolfe:
Despite those shortcomings, the mowing does keep the lands better prepared for agriculture, and that is important. The Garden City Lands are in the Agricultural Reserve so that they can be used for agriculture. Furthermore, many supporters of saving the lands want a large part of the lands to be used for urban agriculture. (Almost everyone would agree to keeping part of the lands as habitat, but even that would remain a reserve that could be used for agriculture if the need became strong enough.)
Mowing also limits the harm done to bog life by invasive species such as birches when they create a canopy over the bog, denying bog plants their needed access to solar energy. And mowing may have a net benefit for the growth of sphagnum moss and thus the enhancement of peatland.
In the pros and cons of mowing the lands, there is common ground. Those who are most knowledgeable about the environmental and agricultural aspects of the Garden City Lands seem to agree that invasive species like birch, grasses, knotweed, and Scotch heather need to be cut back or eliminated. And they agree with the goal of ensuring sunlight for the native bog species.
The problem is in the way that Canada Lands Company cuts back the vegetation. Despite its mandate, the company appears to have little concern for Richmond community values and environmental values, let alone ecological sensitivity. The way the mowing is done reflects that. The local expertise that the company has not drawn upon could be involved in the annual “maintenance,” turning it into something that actually restores the lands. That would bring everyone closer to a win-win result, which is what the Garden City Lands Coalition aims for.
Eating locally is very important to a lot of supporters of conserving the Garden City Lands, which they see as the future location of a significant amount of urban agriculture and as the generator of a lot more. Try visiting the Hellman’s Eat real, eat local website. You’ll probably be glad you did.
Also, the Gardens link at the main Hellman’s website opens a cornucopia.
Note: Hellman’s produces mayonnaise for a living and evidently wants to help people to live healthily, preferably with the aid of Hellman’s mayonnaise. For sure, they are also prompting a lot of free advertising – like what is occurring here. This seems to be situation in which everyone wins, which is a kind of outcome the people who want to conserve the Garden City Lands favour too.
Richmond school trustee Carol Day recently letter to the Richmond News published, and we’ve heard a lot of favourable comments about it. Carol wrote:
The Garden City lands are still in jeopardy as talks continue between Canada Lands Company, the Musqueam and the City of Richmond. These three parties will ultimately decide the future of these lands in the next two or three weeks. You are a stakeholder too, and you can help by writing to those parties and letting them know your wishes.
In response, people are asking “What should I say when I write them?” and “Where do I reach them?” I’ll offer a few thoughts here.
First, we most need to get through to Canada Lands Company. They hold the title to the Garden City Lands, and they have a mandate to provide community benefit when disposing of surplus federal lands like that. They don’t seem to understand the strength of the community feeling about keeping the Garden City Lands green, so the main point of your letter might be to let them know why it is important to keep the lands green and also to persuade them to find ways to make that possible. Write to:
Mark Laroche
President and CEO
Canada Lands Company
1 University Ave., Suite 1200
Toronto, ON M5J 2P1
mlaroche@clc.ca
Second, we need to get through to Richmond council that we need them to work together to ensure that the Garden City Lands remain green for community benefit. The biggest obstacle to a good result from the current renegotiations under the Garden City Lands memorandum of understanding is that three council members and some senior City staff are still fighting lost battles. Your challenging task is to persuade them all to work together. (Note, by the way, that we don’t necessarily need them to purchase all of the Garden City lands. It is possible for the lands to remain green in any of several ways that don’t require City ownership. Write to:
Mayor and Council
City of Richmond
6911 No. 3 Road
Richmond, BC V6Y 2C1
mayorandcouncillors@richmond.ca
Third, there’s a challenge that is very demanding but also potentially very rewarding. There are clearly some members of the Musqueam First Nation (legally the “Musqueam Indian Band”) that care a great deal about the environment, but they are not the most powerful members. It will be wonderful if the band will adjust its course enough to work with other parties to keep the Garden City lands green for community benefit. If the Musqueam act with that kind of goodwill, there will be a rapid increase in public respect for them and genuine reconciliation, which would be amazingly wonderful. If you are ready to give that a try, write to:
Chief Earnest Campbell and Band Council
Musqueam Indian Band
6735 Salish Drive
Vancouver, B.C. V6N 4C4
In your messages to those parties, it is typically useful to cc our members of parliament, who can help if the people show they want their help, and also the Garden City Lands Coalition. If you are writing the MPs at their Ottawa addresses, there is no postage required. Here are the addresses to cc:
John Cummins, MP
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6
cummij@parl.gc.ca
Alice Wong, MP
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6
WongA1@parl.gc.ca
On top of that, please cc the Garden City Lands Coalition and the Minister Responsible for Canada Lands Company, Rob Merrifield.
Garden City Lands Coalition
8300 Osgoode Drive
Richmond, BC V7A 4P1
GardenCityLands@Shaw.ca
Hon. Rob Merrifield
Minister of State, Transport
Place de Ville, Tower C, 29th Floor
330 Sparks Street
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0N5
Merrifield.R@parl.gc.ca
Update added late on May 22: When last seen, the Scotch invaders were retreating.
Ecology has a lot to do with balance. On International Biodiversity Day, May 22, 2009, Michael Wolfe will draw on his skills as a conservation biologist, educator, and Garden City Lands expert to guide humans who care about the ecological balance of the lands.
This year, the theme of International Biodiversity Day is invasive alien species. One could think of it as Invasive Species Day, and we do.
Humans have had a lot to do with Garden City Lands invasive species like Himalayan blackberry and Scotch heather. Richmond humans even buy Scotch heather for their gardens, but the seeds that find their way to the bog do a lot of harm to native species by crowding them out. Michael will help the human visitors to distinguish harmful invaders from natives.
Unlike most invaders, humans can help restore the balance. In a symbolic but useful way, the Michael-led humans will do that. Fortunately, the bog is pretty good at resisting the Himalayen blackberry, so it won’t be necessary to root out thorny brambles. Fortunately also, humans can vanquish the relentlessly invading Scotch heather with their bare hands, although gloves such as old work gloves are recommended.
On Invasive Species Day, eco-touring humans can pace themselves as they see fit, and the battle with the Scotch invaders will take no more than a third of the ninety-minute tour time. Still, the human action will be a step in the right direction, and the lands will be a little more ecologically balanced at the end.
The Invasive Species eco-tour of the Garden City Lands starts at 6 p.m. on Friday, May 22. Please read more about it and join in.
This post is essentially my five-minute presentation at the surprise council meeting of May 11, 2009, as promised in the “Results of surprise . . .” post.
Mayor and Councillors,
I suggest that the lands in the proposed agricultural zone in the Regional Growth Strategy should include all lands that are either zoned agricultural by Richmond or part of the Agricultural Land Reserve unless council makes specific decisions to exclude some of them before passing on its input to Metro Vancouver.
I will use the Garden City Lands as an example because it is the most glaring omission from the agricultural areas in Map 4.
The Garden City Lands are zoned AG1, Agricultural, by the City of Richmond, so I suggest that it is natural for Richmond to ensure that the property is included as agricultural in the Regional Growth Strategy. If there’s a good reason why the property should not be included, then I believe it should be up to our elected council to rezone the property as something other than AG1 or 2, Agricultural. I am asking that this be a council decision, not something that slips past, buried in an 85-page staff report.
And there are further reasons why the Garden City Lands should be designated as agricultural in the Regional Growth Strategy. They are in the ALR, and they are fertile farmland. The property has always remained in the Agricultural Land Reserve despite intense challenges to that status from powerful speculators, including the fattest application the Agricultural Land Commission has ever seen. In response, the commission has repeatedly affirmed that the Garden City Lands are prime farmland and belong in the reserve. It has repeatedly stated that the lands are capable of agriculture and suitable for agriculture. There is probably no parcel of land in Metro Vancouver that has been more emphatically shown to belong in the current Green Zone and the proposed agricultural zone.
Strategy 2.3 in the Regional Growth Strategy is to “protect the region’s supply of agricultural land and encourage its use for food production,” and I encourage council to firmly support it and not go along with toothless lip service. On a more specific level, I’m suggesting that council specify that the Garden City Lands must be added to the region’s agricultural zone.
One final point. The Garden City Lands were evidently left out of the existing Green Zone. No one seems to remember how that happened. In any case, the Agricultural Land Commission’s decisions have surely shown that the property does belong in the Green Zone. I suggest that council consider asking Metro Vancouver to include the Garden City Lands in the Green Zone immediately. That will ensure that the property gets included in the proposed regional agricultural zone if it goes ahead, and it will also ensure that Metro Vancouver will treat the Garden City Lands properly even if the Regional Growth Strategy gets stalled.
As an earlier post describes, some Richmond candidates in British Columbia’s May 12, 2009, election have already acted to help save the Garden City Lands. There are now various ways our MLAs can help ensure a green future for the lands for community benefit. That is true even though the province is not a party* to the basic Garden City Lands agreement, the memorandum of understanding known as “the MOU.” The BC government and MLAs can:
1. Keep the Agricultural Land Commission strong and faithful to its purpose.
2. Urge the Musqueam Indian Band to partner in keeping the Garden City Lands green for the benefit of the community where the lands are located, moving forward together with the Richmond community in the spirit of the 2008 Musqueam Reconciliation Agreement.
3. Urge Canada Lands Company to ensure that any transfer of the Garden City Lands (whether to the City of Richmond, a federal department, or any other party) occurs for local community benefit for permitted uses under the province’s Agricultural Land Commission Act.
4. Provide provincial collaboration in Garden City Lands uses that naturally involve the province, e.g., Kwantlen Polytechnic University urban agriculture education, agriculture, and affordable housing (as discussed in “15. Homelessness + GCL”).
5. Urge the federal government to support transfer of the lands to a suitable party, such as the City of Richmond or a land conservancy, for ALR-permitted purposes at a suitable price, most likely the fair market value stated in the MOU, although some citizens are adament that it should be one dollar. (For legal assurance that the intent is honoured, a covenant on the title would make sense.)
Other ideas? Please suggest them via a comment or email.
___________
* Note: The parties to the MOU are the federal and Richmond governments, Canada Lands Company, and the Musqueam Indian Band. The MOU is currently at the stage where there should be renegotiation of certain conditions that can no longer be met, primarily because the property has not been—and very clearly should never be—removed from the BC Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR).
The Garden City Lands Coalition as a group is not involved in the referendum on BC-STV (single-transferable vote), the new voting system recommended almost unanimously by the Citizens Assembly, 160 citizens from every part of British Columbia. However, I noticed at a public meeting on the issue at the Richmond Culture Centre that all the people there who have taken significant roles in saving the Garden City Lands were on the Yes side, even though they had connections to all three parties running Richmond candidates in the May 12 election.
Maybe the common factor, crossing both party lines and issues, was a shared commitment to the community voice being heard and represented. In any case, here’s my personal view, as expressed in a brief note that I’ve sent to a newspaper:
The campaign against BC-STV is drilling a scare word, “complicated,” into our minds.
But the reality is simple. Under BC-STV there are five chances out of six that your vote will help elect someone you want.
True, BC-STV requires more counting, which the computers will easily handle. Since it enables most votes to matter, not be wasted, that is good.
If you want a longer explanation, I recommend the YouTube video of Christy Clark’s endorsement of BC-STV on her CKNW talk show.
Please visit our very special new page, “Earth awareness,” by guest blogger Howard Jampolsky. Well known in Richmond, Howard is a businessman, officer of the Canadian Jewish Congress (Pacific Region), and politically active citizen. In this well-informed column, Howard relates the Garden City Lands issue to Earth awareness and his own identity and encourages the reader to do likewise.
Click “16. Earth awareness” in the left menu to read Howard Jampolsky’s column in this window. Or, to read it in a new window, click this Earth awareness link.
This post is a follow-up to the excellent “Optimal community value—CLC” post by guest blogger Carol Southgate. Besides publishing that message on this blog and in both Richmond newspapers, Carol sent it to Mark Laroche, the president of Canada Lands Company, with a cover letter dated March 29, 2009. At the same time, Carol forwarded the cover letter to the Garden City Lands Coalition with permission to use it at the appropriate time. We felt that we should wait before posting it in order to allow a little to allow time for a Laroche reply. No reply has been received yet, but we’ve waited long enough. Here is the cover letter, which we hope you will find as illuminating as what Carol wrote before.
Please take a new look at the way Canada Lands Company implements its mandate in its stewardship of the Garden City Lands, Richmond, BC. I explained the need to the people of Richmond in the enclosed letter that the Richmond papers published online and in print (Richmond News, March 18, and Richmond Review, March 19).
That letter focuses on the future, but for your background I will also comment on past experience. As a grower and a member of the Richmond Agricultural Advisory Committee (RAAC), I did not find that Canada Lands’ project management of the application to exclude the Garden City Lands from the BC Agricultural Land Reserve was beneficial to the community. In brief, these are just two of many possible examples:
· An Agricultural Endowment Fund idea featured in the application, though never endorsed by the RAAC, would have divisively set “bona fide farmers” (large conventional growers with little understanding of urban agriculture) against smaller growers, leading to the loss of a lot more farmland and harming local food security.
· No sensitivity has been shown to the property being largely peatland, which requires much different management strategies than any other type of land.
Your corporate plan says, “Through fulfilling its mandate, CLCL takes pride in strengthening the many communities in which it operates across Canada . . . and attempts to enhance the quality of life in local communities.” Your company still has a great opportunity to make that sentiment a reality in Richmond, and I wish you success. Please think about what I am suggesting and let me know what you come up with. I very much look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
[Signed]
Carol Southgate
Jessica Lai’s “Guest shot” column, published online and in the April 9 Richmond Review newspaper, provides insight into the difficulty of understanding the Garden City Lands issue.
Her simple advice combines idealism with common sense. If I’ve grasped the gist, it comes down to this:
If Canada Lands Company, the party that has had the greatest control for the past four years, acts on its stated principles, it will be doing what is best for the community. It will then be able to win public support while telling the truth in a straightforward way. Individual citizens and the whole community will be empowered.
There is a human-resources rule of thumb that past performance is the best predictor of future performance, and in that context it remains a huge challenge to somehow get Canada Lands Company to put its high-sounding principles into practice, with lasting good results for the Garden City Lands. That said, Jessica Lai has brought the goal a little closer.
People often mention that the Garden City Lands issue is complicated. It is time to try again to simplify it. How is the following attempt at a current summary? All constructive advice is welcome, either in a comment below this blog post or via email to the Coalition. (Apparently we have a shy readership, since they mainly go the email route, but informative blog comments are nice to get too.)
The Garden City Lands, Richmond, BC, are a 55-hectare (136-acre) green space on the east side of the City Centre area. About 2 km south of the Oak Street Bridge, the lands stretch from Alderbridge Way to Westminster Highway and from Garden City Road to No. 4 Road.
Although it looks placid, the green space is the centre of a values clash: development for vast immediate profit versus conservation with environmental and food-security aims for long-term community value.
In 2005, the federal government entrusted the property to the federal land disposer, Canada Lands Company, for uses described in a memorandum of agreement (MOU).
Under that agreement, the company and the Musqueam Indian Band planned to split the profits from rezoning of at least half the property for high-density construction. The City of Richmond hoped to get the rest, which would have been scattered throughout the lands.
The property has been in the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) ever since the ALR was established over thirty-five years ago to protect BC’s scarce farmland, which was being lost to uses that increased short-term worth at the expense of long-term food security.
The ALR has been continuously both widely supported and widely threatened. The desirability of food security has been obvious enough, but the prospect of windfall profits from changing farmland into residential and commercial land was a powerful motivator to chip away at the reserve.
In 2006, the Agricultural Land Commission rejected Canada Lands Company’s first application to remove the property from the ALR. The commission said that it is fertile farmland and the applicant had not even shown community needs for the land.
The company, band, and city then began a second application to remove the property from the ALR, this time a massive 16-month undertaking with the city as the nominal applicant, as it would have greater credibility with the commission. The company (Canada Lands) retained full control as project manager for the application.
In 2007, citizens reported that the project’s phone “survey” about the reapplication with 508 residents made false statements, manipulating opinion under the guise of gathering it. That was evidently an eye-opener that prompted rapid growth in public awareness about the issue.
Community groups brought forward alternative plans such as the Richmond Sustainable Food Systems Park, a proposed agricultural park that would facilitate urban agriculture education, feed the needy, and give city dwellers space to grow food, enjoy trails around a reservoir lake, and come together in a tranquil setting. Some envisioned it as an idyllic place for tai chi.
In early 2008, citizens and groups who wanted to keep the space green for community values formed the Garden City Lands Coalition Society to facilitate effective action.
In February 2008, citizens reported that the ALR-removal project’s open houses and a related survey were misleading the public about the reapplication. In particular, the stated premise of a survey question that solicited approval was that the proposed development would be “Smart Growth.” In a subsequent letter to Richmond council, the executive director of Smart Growth BC explained why it would definitely not be Smart Growth.
In March 2008, citizens addressed Richmond council in a six-day public hearing, with a strong majority urging council not to put forward the reapplication to the Agricultural Land Commission.
When the reapplication went ahead anyway, almost two thousand citizens signed a petition to the Agricultural Land Commission asking it to keep the Garden City Lands in the ARL.
Citizens also sent almost two hundred detailed submissions to the Agricultural Land Commission, with well over ninety percent opposed, principally arguing that community needs would be better met with the property kept in the ALR, not removed and also making the case that the proposed development would cause a major loss for food security and the environment.
Political support for saving the Garden City Lands has progressively grown, with clear support from the Richmond East MLA from the beginning, landslide victories for supportive MP candidates in both Richmond ridings in October 2008 (with a landslide defeat for one pro-development incumbent MP), and then an election-aided Richmond council shift to a pro-conservation majority at the end of 2008.
In February 2009, the Agricultural Land Commission rejected the reapplication to remove the Garden City Lands from the ALR. The commission confirmed the property’s agricultural potential and did not comment at all on the applicant’s lengthy community-need arguments, implicitly indicating they had no merit.
Since Canada Lands Company had argued that the property is not suitable for agriculture because parts were debilitated by federal uses, the commission essentially said that the owner should rehabilitate them.
The effect is that the high-density development is not permitted, so that aspect of the basic agreement cannot be met.
Under that Garden City Lands agreement (the MOU), Canada Lands Company, the Musqueam Indian Band, and the City of Richmond are expected to renegotiate conditions that cannot be met.
If the renegotiation is not successful, the company and band can terminate the agreement, but only after the four parties, which include the federal government, first cooperate to restore each to the position it was in before entering the agreement. The federal government’s position was that it owned the lands.
Since the company, as a land disposer, will not want to be the Garden City Lands caretaker longer than it has to, the property’s status will change in one way or another. The Garden City Lands Coalition is continuing to work to ensure that the property will remain green with ecological and food-security uses for community benefit.
Citizens can help by finding ways to positively influence Canada Lands Company, the City of Richmond, the Musqueam Indian Band, the federal government, and the provincial government.
Public awareness is increasing that the company has a mandate to ensure optimal benefit for local communities in all its dealings and “enhance the quality of life in local communities” and that it proclaims values of transparency and corporate social responsibility.
Since there is a wide perception of a gap between the company’s professed values and actual conduct with the Garden City Lands, advocates of keeping the lands green for community benefit are increasingly calling for the company to act with and for the community.
A year ago, several Save-Garden-City presenters at the public hearing into the now-rejected ALR-exclusion application used a conceptual map as a visual aid. The map, with some discussion, remains available on the “Future” page of the Garden City Lands website. In this post, I’ll begin with the relevant excerpt and then, from this year-later perspective, add further reflection.
Many alternatives to high-density development have been proposed. At the Garden City Lands open houses [in February 2008], Garden City Lands Coalition members were available at all times to listen to the visitors’ ideas. The vast majority of visitors wanted to keep the Lands for purposes that can be permissible within the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR). Urban agricultural education was very popular, and a surprising number of people would be content to leave the lands the way they are. What the supportive visitors had in common was the desire to keep open green space.
Many of the open house visitors were concerned about retaining the food-growing capability for community uses. There was a general willingness to compromise on particular uses provided that the lands are kept in the ALR and not built up. The following illustration expresses the Richmond citizens’ vision. It’s all possible within the ALR.
The citizens’ vision map for the Garden City Lands is conceptual, and many of the features would ultimately be located in different places. For example, the main reservoir lake would be placed wherever the City engineers and agrologists choose, perhaps in the wide strip of non-bog fill along Alderbridge Way. Similarly, while some of the trails are in logical places, others are just where the artist happened to put them.
Reflecting a year later, I see particularly that sports fields need to be addressed in another way. The Agricultural Land Commission (ALC) has been rejecting cities’ attempts to use ALR lands for sports fields, and the artificial turf fields that are in vogue would be especially out of place. If the Garden City Lands become available as an agricultural and ecological park, then I think it’s important for citizens to ensure that the need for sports fields is being very well met—elsewhere. That could begin with upgrading of fields that are little used because of poor drainage, and it might include adding more artificial turf fields for reliable availability through our long rainy season.
My sense is that there is growing awareness of the value of keeping wetlands as bog and habitat, and there would probably be public support for retaining a wetlands area that is considerably larger than what the map labels as “natural habitat.” It would be in the parts where the sphagnum bog is deepest, largely to the east and the south. I don’t see the division as being a straight line drawn through the lands because that isn’t how nature chose to develop the bog and it wouldn’t be an attractive way to do things. Since the ditch along Westminster Highway actually drains the southeast corner too much, there might need to be reduced drainage in that corner, even though the west side needs better drainage, perhaps including the reservoir lake(s) that are needed for City Centre stormwater management.
I gather from Hon. Linda Reid, MLA for Richmond East, that constituents are very interested in a memorial garden, which she envisions as including a grove of maple trees. That would need to be in the northern part of the lands, where the ALC permitted up to 50,000 cubic metres of clean fill to be deposited years ago.
Of course, the property may not be available for these purposes. In that case, all of the Garden City Lands will probably remain as greenspace and wetlands, since Canada Lands Company, along with the Musqueam Indian Band, has said that the lands will not be farmed.
This post is written by a guest blogger, Richmond’s Olga Tkatcheva, a quality assurance professional who is a City Centre activist.
I read with interest Carol Southgate’s article where she is talking about the mandate of the Canada Lands Company to dispose federal properties like the Garden City Lands to “produce the optimal benefit for the Government of Canada and local communities.”
In a recent letter to me, Mark B. Laroche, the president of Canada Lands Company, said something similar in reply to my question about the company’s principles. Mr. Laroche expressed it as a goal, “the goal of implementing innovative property solutions to benefit communities across Canada.”
Is there is a conflict between the general policy of Canada Lands Company and its implementation here by its local representative who was the project manager for the failed ALR-exclusion application? We did not need to accommodate more than 15,000 more people on top of the planned 120,000 in the City Centre area. The company would have got more money from the sale of land to real estate developers, but it would have meant a huge loss to our quality of life.
We do have serious community needs for the Garden City Lands. We need to provide food-growing lots within the walking distance for the people from the high density areas next door, to provide a teaching field for Kwantlen Polytechnic University urban agriculture students, to grow more local produce, to preserve the bog as a carbon sink, and to keep green space.
I invite Mr. Laroche to come to Richmond to tour the Lands, to speak to the people and to realize that the benefits for Canada and the people of Richmond do not exclude each other. We people of Richmond are Canada too.
Above, Councillor Harold Steves pauses to listen to some Richmond citizens near the main entrance to the Garden City Lands. He had just finished walking the lands, making notes at intervals to further develop his extensive first-hand knowledge.
In contrast to that approach, the failed applications to exclude the Garden City Lands from BC’s Agricultural Land Reserve showed essentially no-first hand study of the lands other than the drilling of a grid of holes, with an analysis of samples, as a step toward the high-density construction that has fortunately become an unlikely fate.
This post is written by guest blogger Carol Southgate of Richmond. A blueberry grower, Carol is a member of the Richmond Agricultural Advisory Committee.
Now that the Agricultural Land Commission has shown foresight in its decision to retain the Garden City Lands in the ALR, it is time for Canada Lands Company to revisit its mandate, which emphasizes “optimizing community value.” The mandate is to ensure the orderly disposition of federal properties to “produce the optimal benefit for the Government of Canada and local communities.”
When the property was put in its charge, Canada Lands Company may have thought high-density development on the Garden City Lands was optimal, but that was four years ago. Much has changed. Today, a more appropriate use would include food production and its related businesses, as water shortages are looming to the south.
In California, the main source of irrigation water is expected to go dry this year. Drought will affect up to one million acres of farmland. Water rationing may limit the planting in the most economically productive farm state.
Dwindling imported produce, with increasingly higher prices, is inevitable, and we will need to increase our local food production. Luckily, the Garden City Lands are eminently suited for urban agriculture, which entails farming smaller parcels of land organically. Community farms and gardens can help meet this need with benefits to our health and economy.
As a grower, I am very conscious of the food production aspect, but I agree with preserving areas as natural habitat as well. Walkways would enable people to enjoy the habitat without disturbing it. Medical researchers and psychologists are discovering many benefits from living close to nature, including stress reduction and improved physical and emotional health.
Retaining part of the site undisturbed would also address climate change. The Garden City Lands are largely peat bog that stores significant amounts of greenhouse gases. The high-density construction would have released them, including a great deal of methane, which is twenty times as potent as carbon dioxide. The urban agriculture, habitat, and recreational uses would preserve the lands’ environmental value.
While writing this, I walked through the Garden City Lands, bringing together the public’s suggestions, my own knowledge, and what the lands themselves told me. Planning communities to create sustainable agriculture systems and provide greenspace is not only possible, it’s essential.
In managing this property under its care, Canada Lands Company will arrive at a similar view if it too reflects deeply about optimal benefit, keeping faith with its mandate and the Richmond community.
This topic was addressed in an earlier post, but this post is a current replacement.
The “Spotlighting Renegotiation Provisions” post and other blog posts and letters to Richmond newspapers have referred to sections of the basic Garden City Lands agreement, the memorandum of understanding (MOU). This post provides (a) key MOU excerpts related to renegotiation, mediation, and restoration and (b) supporting notes.
Red colouring has been added to key content for emphasis.
Step 1: Renegotiation
Section 1(22):
In the event that the City does not [meet certain conditions that it now cannot meet]:
Musqueam, CLC and the City will meet to discuss the renegotiation of any understandings, arrangements or agreements between them with respect to the Garden City Property in order to give effect to the spirit of this MOU, to the extent possible, in the changed circumstances. If Musqueam and CLC are not satisfied with the outcome of the negotiations, Musqueam and CLC will have the option of termination this MOU and, as appropriate the JVA [a joint venture agreement between between Musqueam and CLC]. However, before any of the understandings in this MOU may be terminated, the parties will utilize the dispute resolution process described below.
Step 2: Dispute resolution
Section 2(1):
If a dispute arises between any of the Parties with respect to the interpretation of this MOU, or in giving effect to the understandings that have been reached, the Parties will, as soon as practicable, meet to attempt to resolve the dispute. If the Parties are unable to resolve the dispute themselves, they may seek the assistance of Bob Plecas to mediate in which case the costs of mediation will be shared equally by the Parties participating in the mediation.
Step 3: Restoration of the parties to their original positions
Section 1(22), quoted under “Renegotiation,” continues as follows:
If any understandings in this MOU are terminated, all costs incurred to that stage of the process will be equitably shared by the Parties where applicable, and in accordance with Attachment 1, and the Parties will cooperate in making whatever arrangements are necessary to restore each Party to the position that it was in prior to entering into this MOU.
Development Lands — First Offer
Section 1(19): The City will have a right of first offer in the event that Musqueam and CLC decide not to implement its plans of land development, but instead to sell any of the Joint Venture Lands prior to servicing, or the Musqueam decides not to implement its plans of land development, but instead to sell any of the Musqueam Lands prior to servicing.
Notes:
1. In section B of the preamble, the “Parties” are identified as the Musqueam, the City, CLC and DFO. (DFO stands for Department of Fisheries and Oceans—essentially the federal government.) The federal government is not involved in the initial renegotiations (unless, presumably, requested to be). However, it is “the Parties” (defined by the MOU to include the federal government) who are involved in cooperating to restore each Party to the position that it was in prior to entering into the MOU. At that time, the federal government was in the position of holding the property as Crown land.
2. It is implicitly all four Parties that will cooperate in restoring each of the Parties to its original position prior to any understandings in the MOU being terminated, but only three parties need to be involved in the initial renegotiation. They are the City, CLC, and the Musqueam.
3. It has been suggested that the Garden City Lands property could not be restored to federal government ownership because federal procedures require it to go through a Treasury Board process. It has been well known for a long time that the bureaucratic hurdle exists, but the government and CLC should be able to deal with it together in order to meet an obligation. This makes me think of a well-known saying of Google co-founder Larry Page, a 35-year-old multi-billionaire who advocates “a healthy disrespect for the impossible.” Citizens have successfully put that into practice on the Garden City Lands issue, and surely we can expect our politicians to at least show a healthy disrespect for the slightly inconvenient. And, for sure, MP John Cummins will.
4. The parties may seek the mediation assistance of Bob Plecas. If they decide to seek mediation, they can choose someone other than Bob Plecas. That individual, who was a BC deputy minister under Social Credit and New Democrat governments, is too closely associated with the initial botched pre-MOU Gardne City Lands negotiations for my liking. He led the pre-MOU discussions between the four parties that led to the City going from a position of strength to a much weaker position (although not as weak as the position as the one they ended up in under the later purchase agreement, which has become null and void). In human resource selection, there is a rule of thumb that “past performance is the best predictor of future performance.”
5. A while ago, there was a suggestion of making an offer to just the Musqueam. Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t understand the thinking. At most, the Musqueam only own a 50% beneficial interest in the property, and we are not sure whether they still have that since they and CLC have kept their joint venture agreement hidden. What is definite is that the federal government entrusted CLC with the title for specificied purposes and also that the City’s “No Development Covenant” is registered on it (assuming that the City took the agreed-upon step and has not foolishly removed the covenant). The City is evidently interested in obtaining the title, which CLC holds but would only sell with the Musqueam’s approval. To achieve that end, the City should scrupulously follow the provisions of section 1(22), as well as 1(23) and 2(1) if need be, and that means renegotiating with both CLC and the Musqueam.
I’m asked why I put so much into this one issue, the Garden City Lands.
Well, it seems to me that a large green space on the edge of a city centre is better than urban sprawl there and that nothing is safe in an agricultural land reserve if its guardian gives up fertile land just because big speculators flex their muscles. But, beyond that, it’s a matter of community empowerment:
I’m involved
in this complex issue
to enable well-meaning people,
as individuals who also form a critical mass,
to take informed action to get results
in political and other ways,
making a difference
for local food security,
ecological responsibility,
self-fostering community,
and so much more that keeps
unfolding.
A brilliantly written article by aboriginal issues lawyer Keith Clark of Lang Michener LLP is relevant to the Garden City Lands issue. Mr. Clark, who brought considerable insight to the Garden City Lands public hearings a year ago, later wrote “Why B.C.’s Premier approved the Musqueam Reconciliation Agreement.”
Point by point, the article shows that the BC government’s Musqueam Reconciliation Agreement has only a minimal connection to the disputes that it supposedly settled. Instead, it is an enormous goodwill gesture by the province toward the Musqueam in the hope of reconciliation, the renewal of a friendship.
Mr. Clark concludes, “The ball is now in the Musqueam’s court.” Actually, since the time when he wrote that, June 2008, the Musqueam Indian Band has received many additional millions of dollars in separate agreements, and the provincial government is now planning further province-wide reconciliation provisions.
Perhaps the Musqueam have not had an opportunity for a memorable gesture in return. That situation has now changed because of the need to renegotiate key understandings in “the MOU,” the basic Garden City Lands agreement. The Musqueam appear to hold a 50% beneficial interest in the lands (the right to receive 50% of the profits from sale of the half of the property that is not already promised to Richmond), and certainly they must be part of the consensus on any renegotiated MOU understandings.
As a conciliatory gesture, the Musqueam could support the transfer of the entire Garden City Lands (not just half) to the City for an ALR-compatible park at no more than the fair market value stated in the MOU. Besides $4.77 million for the “Public Lands” half that the City should already be entitled to, that would involve another $4.77 for the “Development Lands” half, the CLC-Musqueam half, for a total of $9.54 million.
That fairness, reciprocating the goodwill that Richmond has shown to the Musqueam and CLC, would reflect well on the Musqueam themselves and on their provincial goverment friend that may have hurt itself politically by going out on a limb for them. It would establish genuine reconciliation with a large community in Richmond and beyond. It would complete the circle of reconciliation.
Of course, the Musqueam have no obligation to complete the circle in that way or any other way. Instead, it would be an act of friendship, and that’s what would be so meaningful.
