An Open Letter to Almost Everybody:
My name is Corky Evans. I garden and farm in the Kootenays of B.C. Many years ago I was the Minister of Agriculture.
I do not understand popular culture or electronic communication. I have not learned to do Facebook. What I have been told is that when people find something interesting from someone they trust, they send it on to other people and in this way it is possible to engage more people, faster, than ever before.
I have decided that this technology that I do not understand may be the last chance we have to influence the Government of B. C. not to dismantle the historical protection of farmland where we live.
All you need to know
I am not going to try to explain the issue or the history or the legislation that is being debated in Victoria as I write. You do not have to know that stuff to know that food is important and that land to grow food on needs to be protected from being paved over. That is all you need to know. For forty years we have had rules in B.C. that protected farm land pretty well. This week the Government is trying to pass a law that will destroy the protection of farmland.
The Government didn’t think up this idea. They got it from the Fraser Institute. You may have heard of those people. They represent the largest Corporations and Banks in the Province. They are not known for caring a great deal about public policy. They will get richer paving farmland than by leaving it alone.
Bad law
I think lots of the MLAs in Victoria know this law they are debating is a bad law. The law is opposed by Greens, New Democrats and Independents. They are, as I write, trying to delay passage to give citizens a chance to learn what is happening and react. I think it also opposed by some Liberal members who are too afraid to speak publicly.
You can research everything I am saying if you have time. If you don’t have time, and if you got this letter from someone you trust, I beg you to take 5 minutes to try and stop this law. I do not care, by the way, if it is stopped forever. I just want it stopped until citizens understand what is happening and get to have a say before the Government wrecks something of great importance for our shared future.
Take action
If you have 5 minutes here is what you do: You look in the phone book for the number of your MLA and call them and say you don’t want them to pass Bill 24. Or you send them an e-mail by looking here to find their address. Then you send this request to the people who trust your judgement enough to read it.
This probably won’t work. I am asking, though, because nothing else will. In a week or so we will all know how it turned out.
Thank you for reading this.
Sincerely,
Corky Evans
Winlaw, BC
Corky, thank you – if you are on social media I guess hell has really frozen over! I am guessing you meant to say Bill 25?
Thanks Corky & Harold Steves for your decades of standing up for agriculture. I will put it on my blog and message some Liberals.
thanks – i get it, loud and clear !
done and done !
ok, my MLA is NDP so I must find someone else to call.
Thanks for the heads up, and the urgency!
Sent my email.
Keep ALR.
Are you people farmers? Do you know the most profitable way to farm vegies? Its not large tracts of land, it’s greenhouses! That’s why you see enormous greenhouses on ALR land.
The only crops in the lower mainland that need lge open space farming is cranberry farming. The rest can be done in greenhouses. You are the probably the same people that want affordable housing in the lower mainland. Well, we had an independent company with no axe to grind come in and evaluate why the prices in our region were so high compared to other locales in Canada. The result wasn’t foreign investment! It wasn’t the Chinese! It wasn’t the developers! And it wasn’t because it’s so beautiful here. There are beautiful places to live just south of us. It was two things, Rent Controls, and Land Restrictive Practises, ALR. Restricting or withholding anything drives prices up. When this was announced, the cries and denials by the people who enacted it, the NDP, and the people who most benefit from it, the Real Estate agents was deafening. And now we are all whining about the same thing again, the prices in metro Vancouver are too high. We are wanting a different result, but doing exactly the same thing, and ignoring the truth. What do they call that? Yes, stupidity. You can’t have your cake and eat it too!
We have to understand that they’re doing this so that they can frack anywhere they damn well please, farmland or not farmland. So it’s not just about protecting farmland (which is reason enough to fight this), it’s about safeguarding our children’s health and their future, as well.
On behalf of the BC Food Systems Network and all the people in BC who eat, thank you to Corky and thank you to Harold Steves. This is an urgent issue. I have contacted Joyce Murray in our federal riding and had a very supportive, good reply by phone however our MLA is the one I need to focus on and really badger.. Thanks for the reminder. About to e-mail.
Done….well said Corky
Done
Thank you for standing up and protecting our valuable farmland
Thank you so much Corky for posting this message on facebook! A family member posted it on her page. The link didn’t work so I looked you up and pasted the correct link there for others to see. I wrote my MP asking him to vote against Bill 24, I’m sending the link to your site to all my friends with the heading “If you like to eat, read this”. Thanks again for your bold efforts to spread the word I hope your valiant efforts work. Loraine
I do not want bill 24 passed! Sarah Wallin Mission bc
It’s good to email, then also do a follow-up call to get the MLA’s response. They’re busy, so you have to badger them.
Emailed ! thanks for bringing this to my attention
I tried to email my MLA but the server wont allow hotmail addresses……….
Thanks for putting this out here. I have done it and will gladly encourage othe Delta folk to do the same.
Done Corky. Thanks. I read recently that foreign intrests see the value of BC farmland, yet the BC Liberals are so quick to have the ALR ruined.
Thanks for your call to action!
Done
Done.
Hey Corky….:)
I’m on it !
I understand that there is a farm on ALR in the Cowichan Valley that is wanting to become a gravel pit. It sounds as if it’s a go, in spite of the surrounding farms.
Thanks, Corky. Done!