Richmond’s Garden City Lands

Directors of the Garden City Lands Coalition meet with Richmond’s federal MPs and provincial MLAs when the MPs/MLAs are interested. (So far that’s been one to three people representing the coalition at a time.) Until recently, we have not met with nominated MP/MLA candidates. On Thursday, however, we met with Joe Peschisolido at his request.

Some relevant background of Joe Peschisolido is that he was the MP for the Richmond riding from 2002 to 2004 but was not a candidate in the 2004 election after Raymond Chan, a previous MP for that riding, defeated him for the Liberal nomination. This year, when Conservative Alice Wong is the MP for the Richmond riding, Mr. Peschisolido turned the tables on Raymond Chan by winning the nomination to be the Liberal candidate in the next election.

After spending over two hours discussing the Garden City Lands issue with Joe Peschisolido, we left with a positive, encouraged feeling. He had previous familiarity with the Garden City Lands from working with the Jean Chretien government to make the property available for Richmond in a 2003 deal. We were told that the deal would have kept eighty percent of the lands green, with the rest (the northwest part) going to a convention centre and with the Musqueam Indian Band getting some money from the convention centre. In the Peschisolido account, Mayor Malcolm Brodie had been about to announce the agreement, but it had fallen apart at 3 a.m. on the day of the press conference when the Musqueam pulled out of the deal.

The Garden City Lands MOU that is currently in the renegotiation phase is an agreement that Raymond Chan took credit for. We went through the MOU with Joe Peschisolido, who had never seen it, and highlighted key points for him, especially the contingency process (including renegotiation, dispute resolution, and restoration of each party to its pre-MOU position). We also explained some aspects of the situation that make it more difficult for the MPs to help the Richmond community than ought to be the case.

Joe Peschisolido expressed the view that the Garden City Lands are still essentially federal lands and that the federal government can take the property back at any time if it has the will to do so. That is a stronger position than the one we have been asking our MPs to take, which is that the federal government should be ready to act decisively to take back the property from Canada Lands Company (CLC) if the Musqueam and/or CLC express any intent to terminate the MOU. Like us, Mr. Peschisolido believes that the federal government should do that for a program need that is for the benefit of the Richmond community.

Mr. Peschisolido said that the development of the lands should be limited to ALR-permissible ones. That would include infrastructure such as parking space and any required buildings. He shares the popular vision of the lands as “Richmond’s Stanley Park.”

Mr. Peschisolido, who supported Michael Ignatieff in both his leadership campaigns, conveyed the impression that he would certainly get the needed federal action if elected in an Ignatieff government and that he would also get results if elected in opposition.

As of the end of the meeting, the Garden City Lands Coalition includes Joe Peschisolido, not only as a Friend of Garden City but also as a new dues-paying member. We gather that his car is now sporting a “Save Garden City” bumper sticker.

The directors of the Garden City Lands Coalition Society made a thorough printed submission to Richmond council on Wednesday, September 30, 2009. The purpose was to provide expert community input into the Garden City Lands MOU contingency process, the stage that the City of Richmond and other Parties are now engaged in.

The main item was a colour-printed 16-page booklet for each council member. The directors also supplied three copies of the booklet for City staff and, on request, many more copies so that all senior staff could read it.

The booklet is confidential because it is advice to council related to confidential deliberations. However, the covering letter is not confidential. Along with contact information and niceties, the letter states:

On behalf of the Garden City Lands Coalition Society, we wish you success in the MOU contingency process. It is a complex challenge, but we believe Richmond council can enable a great result for the community that you—and we—serve.

We interact regularly with the coalition’s six hundred “Friends of Garden City,” so we know there is community desire to be involved. People want to hear how they can help save the Garden City Lands at the current stage. Rather than suggest they write to council, we have spent weeks bringing together one thorough message, the best we can offer.

Please give serious consideration to this community input. If you would like us to help further, we will be delighted to try.

In an envelope containing the booklet, each council member received the covering letter, addressed to the individual council member and individually signed by each of the six Garden City Lands Coalition Society directors.

Coun. Greg Halsey-Brandt sent back his package with a note: “I am returning this to the Society for safekeeping. Given the confidentiality of the paper it is best that the Society keep it as I would release it under a Freedom of Information request.” The directors responded to council with a further letter to explain that the responsibility to not release such advice is specifically addressed in paragraph 12(1) of BC’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

Mayor Malcolm Brodie sent the society a thank-you letter in response to the submission. The society will provide further advice when requested and/or when there is an apparent need.

It was not necessarily essential for the council members and staff to receive the Garden City Lands Coalition advice, since they would undoubtedly have come up with at least some of it independently. What is more certain is that a course of action that is consistent with the coalition’s recommendations will succeed.

In a Richmond News letter of July 3, 2009, and in other ways, I urged citizens to ask Canada Lands Company, the federal land disposer, to keep the Garden City lands green forever. Soon, a stream of people—exactly fifty at last count—had let the Garden City Lands Coalition know (usually via cc) that they’d acted. Excellent!

As well, the coalition put together a Canada Lands Company edition of Save Garden City, our 200-page in-depth analysis of the issue, including the community’s 1,962-name petition. In the July 10–20 period, we sent a July 10 introductory message and a July 15 note to let Canada Lands know it was coming, couriered the highly organized binder (17 tabbed dividers!) to Canada Lands president Mark Laroche, and added a concise follow-up letter and a further letter after hearing from him.

Neither Save Garden City nor the petition has been acknowledged. Nevertheless, Canada Lands now knows how to meet its community-benefit mandate when renegotiating the Garden City Lands agreement. That might include using a land trust and/or covenant to ensure that the 136 acres of Richmond green space will stay in BC’s Agricultural Land Reserve and be used only in ALR-permissible ways.

Justly, the ironclad ALR-use constraint should limit the property price (if there’s a suitable purchaser) to an ALR-land price, which is what Canada Lands paid the federal government for it.

Equally justly, that would allow no ill-gotten profit from the unseemly raid on the land reserve by parties who should have known better. In turn, that would help protect the future of the ALR.

The Garden City Lands is a way for the community to take local action on some of the most important issues of our time. One of them is climate action. We can take action locally to achieve impact provincially, federally, and globally by saving our best-known carbon sink, the Lulu Island Bog. There is both functional and symbolic value to conserving and enhancing the Garden City Lands, an integral part of the main surviving remnant of that bog.

Garden City Lands Coalition director Carol Southgate put a great deal of effort into approach to boosting the province’s climate action efforts through peatland preservation. Since the minister responsible for climate action is also a Richmond MLA, she anticipated a productive partnership. After trying for several weeks, she eventually managed to meet with him, but the results were disappointing. The coalition directors met that evening and issued the following press release in response.

News release, Richmond, July 23, 2009

Hon. John Yap, BC’s Minister of State for Climate Action, is “reluctant to make any public statement” about conserving and enhancing a high-profile carbon sink, Richmond’s Garden City Lands.

Canada Lands Company, the federal land disposer, holds the title to the property and is currently renegotiating its future with the City of Richmond and the Musqueam Indian Band. In February 2009, the previous plans to develop the property were halted by the Agricultural Land Commission’s refusal to exclude it from the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR).

Garden City Lands Coalition director Carol Southgate met with Minister Yap, who is also the MLA for Richmond Steveston, at his constituency office on Thursday, July 23. They agreed on the importance of peatland and discussed the climate-action role of the Garden City lands. Southgate described how the lands, an integral part of the main remnant of the Lulu Island Bog, have largely retained their peatland function as a carbon sink that reduces greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Arzeena Hamir, a Richmond food security activist who is also a director of the coalition, made a written submission. It explained how organic urban agriculture, a proposed use, would enhance the lands’ value as a carbon sink. Hamir cited research showing that local organic food systems could “mitigate nearly thirty percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and save one-sixth of global energy use.”

Garden City Lands Coalition president Jim Wright also participated in the meeting. He referred to Minister Yap’s Climate Change web page, http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/epd/climate/. It states that the two main fronts are adaptation and mitigation, “reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and enhancing carbon sinks . . . that remove carbon dioxide and other GHGs from the atmosphere.”

When asked whether he supported conserving and enhancing the Garden City Lands carbon sink, Minister Yap said that he could not comment until he had heard from the other side.  Wright pointed out that there is no other side, since almost no one would publicly oppose a proven kind of climate action. He said that the minister’s clear support would help because some who appear to favour climate action actually work against it. Mr. Yap said, “I would not be able to go forward on this.”

I sent the following on July 16, 2009, as a Garden City Lands Coalition Society message to the president of Canada Lands Company, cc-ing the usual parties and more, as I had done a few days earlier. (That message is an earlier post in this blog.)

Dear Mark Laroche, President and CEO, Canada Lands Company:

This morning you will receive the couriered Save Garden City, a thorough presentation about the Garden City Lands and legacy benefit to the community. We have expedited its completion and delivery to you because we anticipate that the renegotiations of the Garden City Property Memorandum of Understanding will proceed in earnest soon.

Save Garden City is about two hundred pages long, with the 1,962-name petition accounting for almost half of that. The presentation is somewhat large, but we have designed it with care for convenient use; for example, it is organized with seventeen tabbed dividers. If you prefer an online version, you can find it at www.gardencitylands.ca/clc.html. While Save Garden City includes nothing labeled “executive summary,” the initial letter to you and the “please read first” preface will serve that purpose.

 We gather from some of our members who have written to you recently that they are more encouraged by your replies than other members were in earlier months. That progression is what we anticipated, especially after the Upton Farm win-win outcome in Charlottetown, but we are still pleased about it. Thank you!

 We look forward to hearing more from you.

 Sincerely,
Jim Wright
President, Garden City Lands Coalition Society 

Dear Mark Laroche, President and CEO, Canada Lands Company:

This morning you will receive the couriered Save Garden City, a thorough presentation about the Garden City Lands and legacy benefit to the community. We have expedited its completion and delivery to you because we anticipate that the renegotiations of the Garden City Property Memorandum of Understanding will proceed in earnest soon.

Save Garden City is about two hundred pages long, with the 1,962-name petition accounting for almost half of that. The presentation is somewhat large, but we have designed it with care for convenient use; for example, it is organized with seventeen tabbed dividers. If you prefer an online version, you can find it at www.gardencitylands.ca/clc.html. While Save Garden City includes nothing labeled “executive summary,” the initial letter to you and the “please read first” preface will serve that purpose.

We gather from some of our members who have written to you recently that they are more encouraged by your replies than other members were in earlier months. That progression is what we anticipated, especially after the Upton Farm win-win outcome in Charlottetown, but we are still pleased about it. Thank you!

We look forward to hearing more from you.

Sincerely,
Jim Wright
President, Garden City Lands Coalition Society

Thanks to Michael Wolfe, the minutes of the Garden City Lands Coalition Society’s 2009 annual general meeting are now available.

The minutes tell part of the story, but you really had to be there to fully appreciate it. The Barn at Terra Nova Rural Park was an inspired choice of venue (thanks, Mary Gazetas!). The participation was very good in numbers and phenomenal in interaction. People arrived early for set-up and registration and stayed late for clean-up (thanks Shane McMillan, Bruno Vernier, Jessica Lai, Carol Day, Olga Tkatcheva, Gordon Kibble, and many others), the refreshments were plentiful (thanks, Suzanna Wright), and the Rural Park intro and tour were magical (thanks Arzeena Hamir).

A highlight was the Save Richmond Farmland Society presentation near the end. Marion Smith, Pat Montgomery, and Penny Charlebois of the Save Richmond Farmland Society led a discussion about the Save Terra Nova efforts two decades earlier. There in The Barn, we felt as though we were succeeding on the shoulders of those pioneers, especially since we were gathered on land they had helped save, now called Terra Nova Rural Park. As if that wasn’[t enough, they concluded by presenting a cheque for $500 from their society to the Garden City Lands Coalition Society.

There are about thirty people who should be thanked, so a lot have been left out, but you get the idea. After an experience like that, it’s easy to see how  the Save Garden City campaign retains so much vitality.

I sent the following this morning as a Garden City Lands Coalition Society message to the president of Canada Lands Company, cc-ing the usual parties and more.

Dear Mark Laroche, President and CEO, Canada Lands Company:

You will soon receive a couriered petition from the Garden City Lands Coalition Society. The 1,962 signatories want to keep the Garden City Lands green for community benefit. The petition requests the assistance of the Government of Canada, and we have chosen to send it directly to you because our members have reported that such requests typically get forwarded to you. We hope that this will lead to mutually beneficial results.

After a period of distrust that was not without reason, there has been a surge of awareness here that Canada Lands Company may be genuinely committed to ensuring local community benefit from the disposal of federal crown land. (The good news from Upton Farm on Prince Edward Island has spread.) We would like to obtain that benefit and to ensure that Canada Lands Company receives credit for it.

Since our society exists to save the Garden City Lands, we take care to be in tune with the related sense of community needs. In brief, the lands are seen as Richmond’s Stanley Park, as a linchpin of B.C.’s Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR), and as a carbon sink that is functionally useful and symbolically vital. The community includes the citizens of Richmond but goes well beyond that. People from all around B.C. and northern Washington are interested, and there is involvement especially from citizens of the neighbouring parts of Metro Vancouver.

We gather that your company and/or the Musqueam Indian Band have sought renegotiation of at least one understanding in the Garden City Property Memorandum of Understanding (the MOU) that cannot be met. We are pleased that your company seems committed to following the MOU’s “Contingencies” process: renegotiation, dispute resolution, and, if all else fails, cooperation in making whatever arrangements are necessary to restore the four parties to the position that each was in prior to entering into the MOU.

As you probably know, the MOU divides the Garden City Lands into two halves: the Development Lands (widely thought of as the CLC-Musqueam lands) and the Public Lands (widely thought of as the City of Richmond lands). There is still essentially no impediment to the intended Public Lands uses, but the MOU-specified uses for the Development Lands, which have never been permissible, may never become permissible, and that is certainly cause for renegotiation. We ask Canada Lands, as the party entrusted with the land title, to proactively ensure the negotiation of ALR-permitted uses for the property that are consistent with the community’s needs.

We recognize that in Richmond, as in Charlottetown with Upton Farm, Canada Lands Company should be made whole, recovering its purchase price and expenses, and presumably the same would apply to the Musqueam and City parties if they do not end up with an ownership interest. While minor adjustments will be needed for that purpose, we suggest that any sale price for the Development Lands be basically at the ALR land value, as it already is for the Public Lands. As long as Canada Lands Company ensures (perhaps by means of an unequivocally worded covenant registered against the title) that the property will be limited to ALR-permissible uses forever, the land value is presumably the same, or at least essentially the same, as the fair market value stated in the MOU.

You may wonder why we would get into suggestions about price. Our goal in that is to eliminate the odious kind of land speculation that had unfortunately slipped into the transfer of the Garden City Lands from the federal crown. Parties had become land speculators trying to use their immense power to destroy a community-treasured green space, valued throughout living memory as the people’s lands, for urban sprawl that Smart Growth BC has definitively identified as NOT Smart Growth. From the standpoint of protecting land capable of producing food, any speculative profit from the Garden City Lands would send out the wrong signal. A similar point could be made about protecting peatland serving as an active carbon sink, which is what the lands also happen to be.

Two years ago, the significance of the Garden City Lands was magnified a hundredfold when it became a linchpin of the ALR. That aspect came to public attention when developers’ association head Philip Hochstein wrote “Space Invaders,” an anti-ALR guest column in BC Business magazine (July 2007). Another analogy is that the Garden City Lands became a cleverly chosen battleground where the ALR was pitted against rampant development of agricultural land. The only reason the Garden City Property ALR-exclusion applications might have succeeded was the power of the applicants, and less-powerful speculators were no doubt watching and waiting to demand equal treatment, perhaps fatally weakening the ALR. We are asking you now to turn the tables in a way that strengthens the ALR.

By striving to meet true community need in the disposal of the Garden City Lands, Canada Lands Company will be saving not only a Richmond treasure in the form of the particular 136 acres of peatland green space in Richmond City Centre but also, to at least some extent, a British Columbia treasure in the form of the B.C. Agricultural Land Reserve. For certain, that is corporate social responsibility!

Sincerely,
Jim Wright
President, Garden City Lands Coalition Society

At Terra Nova, the northwest tip of Lulu Island, the City of Richmond got things wrong two decades ago but then recovered to some extent before it was too late. The good result was the Terra Nova Rural Park, along with the Terra Nova Natural Area. The park is in a spectacular location, and the City is doing a spectacular job of cooperating with the citizens there. With the Garden City Lands, the City of Richmond was on an even worse course than the initial Terra Nova one, but we hope that the turn-around will continue, with an end result that will be even better.

In that context, we’re excited that the 2009 annual general meeting (AGM) of the Garden City Lands Coalition Society on Monday, June 22, will be at The Barn at Terra Nova Rural Park. It’s a great setting for celebrating and learning. For more, please go to the Barn-AGM page on the Garden City Lands website. If you support the goals of the society, we hope to see you, as a member of the society, at The Barn.

When you reach this sign at 2631 Westminster, you’re there!

This is a follow-up to the “Surprise council meeting . . .” post. Here’s what happened.

Citizens De Whelan, Jessica Lai, Olga Tkatcheva, and I all made brief presentations to council on the agenda item related to the City’s input on Metro Vancouver’s Regional Growth Strategy. In different ways, we all advocated that the City of Richmond firmly support Strategy 2.3, “Protect the region’s supply of agricultural land and encourage its use for food production.”

In response to my presentation and others, Coun. Bill McNulty moved that the City request Metro Vancouver to include the Garden City Lands and the adjacent Department of National Defence Lands in the proposed new version of the Green Zone. In the new version, they would be in an agricultural zone. Mayor Brodie and the couple of Pave Garden City councillors managed to derail the motion so that it was replaced with one that lets Metro Vancouver know that certain matters, including that one, will require further study. Although that is not ideal, it is far better than what would have happened if those presenters and attentive council members had not acted. It is likely that the Garden City Lands would have gone into the new Regional Growth Strategy as “urban” — a bad result.

What happened today is typical of what needs to happen, with small steps forward where the alternative would have been a step backward. Bigger steps forward are nice too, but “slow and steady” is fine too.

Good work, presenters, a number of councillors, and the citizens who came to the meeting to lend their support.

For those who would like a clearer sense of the issue, I’m providing my brief presentation as a separate post.

The Coalition is likely to present the Garden City Lands petition again soon. We have already presented it, with good effect, to the Agricultural Land Commission and the Government of Canada. However, it may soon be useful to send it to Canada Lands Company, which is the government’s land disposal arm, and to other decision-makers in the federal government.

So far we have a total of about 1,950 signatories (including over 1,100 online). Let’s at least bring the total up over 2,000 for a start.

The petition says this:

We, the undersigned, request that the Garden City Lands, Richmond, B.C., remain green in the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) for agricultural and ecological uses and park uses that may be permitted within the ALR.

We also request that the Government of Canada 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.

If you haven’t already signed the petition online or on paper, please visit it online and “sign.” Signing just involves your name and city (not your street address), along with your email address for verification.

Your email address will never appear publicly, but choose the “available to petition author” option if you are a supporter who wants to receive the Garden City News, an email newsletter that is typically sent out twice a month.

Note: This is an updated version of an earlier post.

This blog does not endorse any provincial election candidates, but it does aim to identify candidates in the three Richmond constituencies who are likely to take “Save Garden City” action as MLAs if elected on May 12.

·        Michael Wolfe, Green Party Candidate in Richmond Centre, is as much a part of the Garden City Lands as the red-winged blackbirds and bog blueberries. He has campaigned steadfastly for years, moderates a large Google Group on the issue, and is a member of the Garden City Lands Coalition leadership group, with a coordinator role that includes guiding eco-tours of the lands.

·        Hon. Linda Reid, MLA for Richmond East and Minister of State for Childcare, came out in support of keeping the Garden City Lands green in a paid-ad column in the March 11, 2008, Richmond News. Her public stand was helpful for the Save Garden City campaign. The Coalition will be looking to her for further help in getting the attention and effective action of the provincial government.

·        The Green Party candidate in Richmond East is Stephen Rees. Especially through his insightful blog, Stephen Rees has been a long-time advocate of saving the Garden City Lands. His expertise includes extensive deep knowledge of transportation and land uses in the Fraser delta. 

·        Shawkat Hassan, the NDP candidate in Richmond East, has been active in the Garden City Lands Coalition. Among other things, his participation has included a pub night at Legends and an eco-tour of the Garden City Lands.

•    In addition, it was clear from the all-candidates meeting on May 4 that Jeff Hill, Green Party candidate in Richmond Steveston, and Kam Brar, NDP candidate in Richmond Centre, are supportive of protecting the Garden City Lands.

Note: If there are other declared candidates who should be mentioned, you can add comments to this post or send an email on the topic.

Update: Thanks to eco-guide Michael Wolfe and the twenty eco-enthusiasts who participated with him, the Earth Day tour was another big success. In true Earth Day style, the group even picked up several bags of litter on its travels.

From Wednesday, April 22, to Saturday, April 25, 2009, the Garden City Lands Coalition is celebrating Earth Day.

Join the Wednesday, April 22, eco-tour of the lands at 6 p.m. Or come to the Garden City Lands Coalition booth and other Earth-friendly booths and activities on Saturday, April 25, at the Terra Nova Rural Park, 2431/2631 Westminster Highway, Richmond, BC, between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.

Or do some relevant reading. The Garden City Lands are often associated with the values of local food, not just to reduce the greenhouse gas effects of transportation but also to garner a range of other benefits, including great kinds of community building. A recent Worldwatch article, “Is Local Food Better?”, analyzes such values in an insightful way.

By the way, the Jewish Tribune has an Earth Day issue of the Western Edition coming out on April 23, and we’ve heard it will include a column on the Garden City Lands from a Jewish perspective.

The Garden City Lands story has paused for over a month. At the end of 2008, the future of that 136-acre green space in Richmond Centre took a turn for the better with the expiry of a bad agreement that would have put high-density construction on that fertile wetland. Judging from a Richmond Council vote on Dec. 8, the Richmond Council that emerged from the November 2008 elections is in favour of saving the Garden City Lands.

In that 6-3 vote, Council soundly defeated a drastic motion that would have extended the bad agreement and added new burdens on Richmond in order to buy support from B.C.’s Agricultural Land Commission to remove the lands from the protection of the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR).

There are understandings in a more basic memorandum of understanding (MOU) that need to be renegotiated by the City of Richmond and other parties in order to determine the future of the lands. The other parties will include at least Canada Lands Company CLC Limited and the Musqueam Indian Band, and they may include the Government of Canada at some point.

However, the Commission still has not ruled on the application. It does not make much sense to renegotiate before the decision is definite. No doubt CLC and the Band are getting geared up, but not much is happening on the surface.

With the lull in the Garden City Lands issue, this blog has taken a one-month break. However, this is the calm before the storm, and intense action will begin after the decision. Deeply held values, along with hundreds of millions of dollars, are at stake.

This post is the content of a message that I sent, as president of the Garden City Lands Coalition Society, to the Agricultural Land Commission on Dec. 17, 2008.

The Garden City Lands Coalition requests you to announce a decision soon on the 2008 re-application to exclude Richmond’s Garden City Lands from the Agricultural Land Reserve.

If you have had time to read the Coalition’s Save Garden City response to the application, as well as the outpouring of submissions from citizens, we anticipate that Richmond staff’s view of your opinion is accurate — “very little chance of approval.” We appreciate that promising outlook, since the proposed development would harm agriculture, food security and the environment while aggravating community needs.

Although the City of Richmond nominally put forward the re-application, Canada Lands Company CLC Limited and the Musqueam Indian Band were co-applicants, and all three applicants have stated that the City will possess no interest in the Lands after the City’s purchase agreement expires on Dec. 31, 2008. The applicants’ views have been expressed most eloquently by the Band’s lawyer, and the Richmond Review summarized them like this: “Richmond is still obligated to assist a development project on the lands — only now it won’t get an acre of land” (Dec. 13, 2008, p. A3). While the Band and CLC apparently still want the application to proceed, they are now admitting that the benefits from a decision to exclude the property from the ALR would just profit them. The applicants no longer even pretend that the supposed benefits for agriculture and the community actually exist.

By refuting their previous reasons for excluding the property from the ALR, the applicants have implicitly agreed with the Garden City Lands Coalition that there is no good reason. At last, the consensus has become as broad as possible. We ask you to reject the application, publicly affirming the consensus, as soon as possible. Such a decision will clarify the ongoing ALR status of the Garden City Lands, enabling the Coalition and our supportive politicians to move forward more effectively toward saving the Lands for ALR-appropriate uses in perpetuity.

This is about a win that is important for the future of the Agricultural Land Reserve, as well as for Richmond.

It is essentially certain that Richmond’s Garden City Lands will remain in the ALR. On Monday afternoon, by a 6-3 vote, the general purposes committee of Richmond council voted down a proposal that would have given new life to the ALR-exclusion application that City staff, after discussion with Agricultural Commission staff,” had described as having “very little chance” of approval.

The committee then voted to renegotiate under an underlying agreement (“the MOU”) with Canada Lands Company, which was entrusted with title to the Lands by the federal government for the MOU purposes, and the Musqueam Indian Band, which has an unregistered 50% beneficial interest. (In other words, the Band was going to get half the profits from the anticipated ALR removal and rezoning, and it will still get half of any profits that occur.)

At the regular council meeting that evening, council unanimously adopted the renegotiation resolution. The aim is to secure the whole property for the City of Richmond (easier said than done, though). While that would not ensure that the Lands would remain in the ALR, public opinion has become sufficiently informed and on the “Save Garden City” side that the ALR status is reasonably secure.

Inevitably, the ALR-exclusion application will come to an end in the near future. One reason is that the changed circumstances mean that much of the rationale is no longer relevant. In any event, if City staff were right, the Agricultural Land Commission would turn down the application, since staff-recommended changes to give the application a better chance will now not occur.

In short:
We won!
The people of Richmond won.
The Agricultural Land Reserve won.
Food security won.
The environment won.

However, in the military analogy, we have just won a major battle. There will be more battles in the war.

This is a major milestone.
There will be more to accomplish.
But let’s celebrate for a few minutes.

On Monday, Dec. 8, at 4 p.m., Richmond Council’s General Purposes Committee will hold a special meeting in the Anderson Room to make a crucial decision. It is related to the Garden City Lands recommendations in this staff report. The report is the topic of several posts in this blog.  A good way to start learning about some of the drastic proposals might be to scroll down to the post titled “Carol Day – Leave Mclennan alone!”

Note: If you want to make a 5-minute presentation, let the city clerk or mayor know before the meeting.

On Monday, Dec. 8, at 7 p.m., the same recommendations will be on the agenda for the regular Richmond Council meeting. It will be in the council chambers, and citizens can attend.

Note: If you wish to make a 5-minute presentation, preferably get on the speakers’ list at the door before the meeting, even though you can still put up your hand to speak later.

Which meeting to attend and perhaps present at?

• If you can, attend the 4 p.m. meeting because it’s naturally helpful to share insights with council members in time to affect how they vote the first time, even though the second vote (at the evening meeting) matters more as the final decision. 
• That said, a large turnout and good presentations at the evening meeting will have the great additional value of being televised on Shaw Cable 4, enabling further public education on the issue.

The three staff recommendations that council will vote on:

1. Extend the ALR-exclusion deadline from Dec. 31, 2008, to June 30, 2009. (This has the effect of simultaneously extending the life of the Garden City Lands purchase agreement.)
2. Offer to the Agricultural Land Commission to take new measures. (That is because the Commission says the application has “very little chance.” The drastic measures appear to be an attempt to pay off the Commission with action that has far-reaching effects, some of them apparently bad for the people of Richmond.)
3. Offer to enter a new MOU with the Commission. (Since the application is many hundreds of pages that amount to almost nothing, an MOU is needed to show that the applicants will actually do something. Unfortunately, what they will commit to may be bad for the people of Richmond.)

Which “staff report” pages are more important?

The “staff report” is a 55-page PDF that includes a lot more than the main staff report. You will probably want to hone in on the more important pages. If you don’t have time for all that, these pages would be a good start:

• Page1: Staff recommendations
• Pages 8-18: The relevant staff report

Notes:

• The reference is to “PDF pages” because the staff report numbers the pages in different ways. This post therefore refers to the PDF page numbers that appear at the top (toward the left side) of a PDF document on the computer screen.
• Much of the rest of the document is an elaborate attempt to discredit possible outcomes that are good for Richmond.  One comment: It is a sad state off affairs that Richmond staff have been co-opted to work against the optimal result for the taxpayers who ultimately pay their salaries.

The Musqueam Indian Band has elected Ernie Campbell for another two-year term beginning January 5, 2009.

At the Garden City Lands public hearing in March 2008, lawyer Keith Clarke emphasized the importance of thinking of the band and Canada Lands Companies as businesses that the City of Richmond is dealing with on Garden City Lands matters. With Ernie Campbell continuing as the CEO for the next two years, the significance is that we can expect continuity in the Band’s business tactics.

Need a break from the seamier side of the Garden City Lands? How about two weeks of sustainable-food immersion with Save Garden City advocate Wendy Holm, P. Ag.? In Cuba!

Wendy invites you to join her Farm Tour of Cuba, Feb. 9–23, 2009, if you’re a farmer or farm/food professional. Alternatively, share the invitation with someone who is. Wendy describes the “unique introduction to Cuba’s sustainable farming sector” like this: 

Beginning with three days at the 5-star Melia Varadero, we head off for eight days in the countryside to meet with farmers and see the real Cuba.

Our tour starts at a farm cooperative in Havana Province with an award-winning sustainable dairy model. It was developed by Canadian and Cuban farmers in the Canada-Cuba Farmer-to Farmer Project.

From there we travel east, stopping in Ciego de Avila, Camaguey and Bayamo to visit surrounding farms and see how Cuba has coped with crisis (the collapse of the Soviet Union) to become a world leader.

We fly back from historic Santiago de Cuba to Havana for three nights in the fabulous Hotel Nacional. 

Visit Wendy Holm’s website for “10 excellent reasons to go” and plenty of detail. Or call Wendy at 604-947-2893 for information. Bookings close on Dec. 28, 2008.

Since this post is about Single Transferable Vote, BC-STV, it’s a change of pace for this blog. However, prominent Garden City Lands supporters Harold Steves, Michael Wolfe, and Neil Smith are active in it. I was contacted about it by Nick Loenen, former Richmond councillor and MLA, who is another vocal defender of the Lands.

There will be a public information meeting about BC Citizens’ Assembly and BC-STV on Tuesday, December 9, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at Tapestry Christian Reformed Church, 9280 No. 2 Road, Richmond. The speaker is Craig Henschel. Visit www.STV.ca and/or come to Nick’s gathering on June 9.

Nov. 17 update to Nov. 15 bulletin: All of the councillors indicated that the Garden City Lands issue should not have been put on the committee’s agenda for a decision until newly elected councillors have replaced councillors who have completed their service, and the committee made that official with a vote. The most significant news at the meeting was a letter from MPs John Cummins and Alice Wong that included this sentence: “Accordingly, with the support of our constituents, it is our intention to work with the Minister responsible for Canada Lands to return the Garden City lands to the Crown so that plans may be made to secure the lands in perpetuity for the benefit of our constituents.”

Nov. 15 bulletin: At 4 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 17, 2008, Richmond Council will meet as the General Purposes Committee in the Anderson Room at City Hall. The agenda, released on Friday evening, shows that the committee will vote on major Garden City Lands issues on Monday. Here is the related staff report.  You can be a public “delegation” making a short presentation of up to five minutes if the chair, who will be Mayor Brodie, permits it. Even if you don’t wish to speak, come to the meeting to show interest and support those who do speak to save the Garden City Lands.

Since the agenda and staff report were posted in an obscure place on the city website on the evening before the election, there was no opportunity for the step to be publicized to affect how the public would vote. What is particularly wrong about it is that it will be the old council that votes, not the one elected on Nov. 17. I’m writing this before the polls close. No matter who gets voted in, they will not vote on this matter because the old council will be in place for the committee meeting and the following Monday’s council meeting. In other words, this is happening at the one time when the old council can do what it wants without fearing a public backlash affecting re-election.