Delta case a canary in the mine

Holm writes for Country Life in B.C., in which this column first appeared.

I sat in the audience this summer when Delta, B.C., council gave third reading to a bylaw that will impose $23,000 per hectare ($9,312 per acre) development costs on Delta greenhouse operations.

Purportedly this is to recover costs for road repairs and municipal services.

As to the unsubstantiated claim that greenhouses are not paying their fair share under the present system, as a sector, Delta greenhouse growers have contributed close to $3 million in water, sewer and road improvements and between $1 and $1.5 million in habitat protection (set asides, hedgerows and the like.)

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Delta’s largest employer, greenhouses account for $175 million in local investment and create 1,000 jobs producing beefsteak tomatoes, English cucumbers, tomatoes on the vine and red and orange peppers for sale to Vancouver, the rest of Canada, the USA, Japan and Hong Kong, a market valued at $135 million a year.

With 100 hectares (247 acres) under glass (one percent of Delta agricultural land), the industry has plans to double in size over the next decade.

Delta greenhouses already pay close to twice the water rates (56 cents per cubic metre) of their Surrey counterparts, despite the fact that the wholesale price of the water to each municipality is the same (17cents per cubic metre.)

I listened to councilors ask the Delta bureaucrat for an economic justification for the greenhouse levy. (There is none.) I listened to them demand to know what is meant by “intensive agriculture.” (Impossibly imprecise; likely inserted to avoid legal challenge were the bylaw aimed solely at greenhouses.) And why, if there were such fiscal needs, did they not appear in Delta’s recently approved budget and were only now being hastily added as the bylaw to levy greenhouse taxes was given third reading?

Why indeed? Because it has nothing to do with development cost charges and everything to do with the politics of controlling greenhouse development.

For almost a decade, groups such as the Friends of Boundary Bay, Boundary Bay Conservation Committee and Tsawwassen Homeowners Association have been lobbying to stop greenhouse development in Delta. Some see covering open fields with glass as a withdrawal of habitat. Others base their opposition on aesthetics. They prefer idyllic farm fields and red tractors to food production under glass. Still others fear increased truck traffic.

When these groups made greenhouses a major issue in the last municipal election, the Tri-Delta slate, which included the current mayor and three elected councilors, campaigned on a promise to control greenhouse development.

The Tri-Delta slate now controls Delta Council. It wants to control greenhouses on farmland, a power it does not have. It tried and was unsuccessful under the Soil Conservation Act.

So now it is going to levy an unsubstantiated tax to do the dirty work of politics.

The minister of municipal affairs must turn back the bylaw and tell council to play fair. Farmers don’t mind paying development charges if they are actually reflective of development costs.

Take the B.C. Agricultural Council up on its offer to study development costs for greenhouses in Delta. If the concern is that one operator or the entire sector may go udders up, farmers can buy insurance to cover soil reclamation costs.

The problems facing Delta’s farmers today are potentially fatal and easily solved. All that is missing is political will.

Delta is a frontier. It is the green edge of the Fraser Valley protecting farming from the pressure of urban growth.

Like the canary in the mine, shouts of injustice from Delta’s farm community resonate a warning across the rest of the province.

Is anyone listening?