There seems to be growing support in the Central Okanagan for the move and perhaps even some cautious support from some North Okanagan politicians. NORD has agreed to bring the proposal forward at a future meeting for some healthy debate.
According to chair Jerry Oglow “We need not put our head in the sand on this,” he also suggested that there are areas that may cause greater grief than benefit, but there are also services that could be truly enhanced with a regional approach. He pointed to the existing 911 service and the North Okanagan Columbia Shuswap Regional Hospital District.
“I don’t believe a mega corporation is possible. There are things that are truly local in nature,” said Oglow. “But I believe strongly there are other ways we can improve our services by thinking inter-regionally.”
Like most of you, I’m on the outside looking in on this, and it makes me nervous that we might not be getting the whole story within this public debate, particularly when the Minister if Community Services is toured around the area without a lot of explanation at the time.
Some of our public servants should convince our elected politicians that they can eat fruit salad without owning the orchard. The provincial government encouraged the formation of regional districts in 1965 as a way of ensuring that all residents have access to commonly needed services, no matter where they live. In other words they are a legal entity that can enter into contractual agreements with other legal entities, like other regional districts.
We don’t need to form one big regional district in order to join with regional efforts to address bigger questions of water, infrastructure or what have you. We simply need to agree to a contractual agreement to perform a service together.
Now that’s a tall enough order, without starting to discuss a new governance model that places us all in one big “community”.
So what might be the real reason for forming one big community that includes Vernon, Penticton and Kelowna and all points between and beyond?
Here’s what I think.
Our major urban centres, primarily Kelowna are hungry for more land to serve the interests of housing and industrial development. The primary obstacle to limitless urban sprawl in the valley has been the Agricultural Land Reserve.
Today, the advocates for removing agricultural land from the ALR cling to a relatively new provision in the Agricultural Land Commission's mandate that justifies such removal based on "community need" - something some argue is an illegal consideration, given the current legislation that governs the ALR.
It already appears as though our elected representatives are the one’s that define “community need” to the Commission. One has to ask the question how will the definition of “community need” change if we are all within one big regional district, or community?
There continues to be growing pressure within this region to remove land from the ALR, which is intended to protect lands to have agricultural capability.
Proponents of excluding certain lands from the ALR within urban/rural fringe areas point to high housing prices and the trend of continued growth as the reasons to make more land available for housing and jobs.
Bob Ransford an urban development consultant and columnist with the Vancouver Sun recently said, “It is nonetheless ironic that the same people who argue that community need should trump agricultural capability also reject the role that the ALR plays as a de facto urban-growth boundary. They argue that the only criterion for including lands within the ALR should be agricultural capability”.
Ransford went on to explain that on the other side of the debate, the positions are just as entrenched and principle often trumps logic. There are environmentalists unwilling to make certain land-use trade-offs for more intensive forms of agriculture that would result in increased food production and that have no deleterious impact on the land. There are also those who look purely at the aesthetic value of open space, yet are unwilling to accept the realities of farming.
We should all be concerned about certain foundation issues while our elected representatives debate this governance issue. When land is removed from the ALR using the community need provision, what guarantee is there that sprawl won't result if the ALR boundary was, in effect, the urban growth boundary?
Is there a chance that Kelowna’s urban growth boundary could move from outer Glenmore to meet the City of Vernon and so on?
Will agricultural viability and food security be placed at risk when a decision is made to exclude certain lands from the ALR based on community need?
These kinds of questions can't be answered, given the absence of a plan and a common vision for the future of the Agricultural Land Reserve, which is under constant scrutiny, by developers and certain members of the Union of BC Municipalities.
The bottom line is this, we are without proper long range planning that considers neighbourhoods and rural communities within the urban mix and we are without a food production plan in the Okanagan.
We will always need to eat; therefore, we will continue to need to secure a food supply, which is also at risk as a result of a lack of water, climate change and the downhill curve of peak oil.
Such surfacing realities should be added to a few other basic realities like population and industrial growth that shape our decision-making about how we will use our finite land base in the future.
So while our politician’s debate and ponder, maybe we should be suggesting that getting real with the issues should be the priority and not years of debate around a new governance model.
I think each representative on the NORD board needs to come clean, are they in favour of one big regional district or not, and regardless, what valley-wide agreements need to be put into place in order for a growing population to be sustained and a secure food supply to be guaranteed?
Then get on with real problem solving.
(30)
