Photo courtesy of the City of Richmond

CG: What is the agricultural community’s biggest concern about the treaty?

HS: The problem with the Tsawwassen Treaty is not with the Tsawwassen First Nation as much as it is a problem with the Vancouver Port Authority. The Delta and Richmond farmland at the mouth of the Fraser River is the very best soil with the mildest climate in British Columbia and probably in all of Canada. In the 1960s the B.C. government expropriated much of this land from farmers to build a port in the estuary. The farmers fought back unsuccessfully. The Lower Mainland Regional Planning Board (a group of representatives from each local city or municipal council) exercised their regional zoning powers and refused to rezone the land - the provincial government disbanded the board and took away their zoning powers. Environmentalists opposed the loss of fish and waterfowl habitat. It became an election issue that helped elect the NDP in 1972. It was also one of the reasons the NDP government set up the Agricultural Land Reserve to protect farmland in 1973.

For roughly 35 years, the land was protected. Farmers were able to lease their land back and some were allowed to buy it back. Then the Vancouver Port Authority made a deal with the Tsawwassen First Nation. The Port Authority would lease and develop the land from the TFN for Delta Port expansion if the TFN could get it out of the ALR as Indian Reserve. As settling land claims was politically correct there would be little public opposition and the Port would finally get the land it wanted for over 30 years. This also would save the Crown millions of dollars in land claims by converting farmland worth about $123,500 per hectare to the crown into industrial land worth about $2 - $2.5 million per hectare to the TFN. Tsawwassen First Nation has been given first right of refusal to acquire land from another group of farmers adjacent to the TFN reserve at Brunswick Point. Those farmers initiated court action in an attempt to keep their land.

CG: A StatsCan census of agriculture from 2006 says the number of farms in B.C. decreased by 2.2% over the previous five years, does this compound the problem?

HS: The number of farms decreased by 2.2%. However, the amount of land in the ALR has increased. Unfortunately, the farmland that is being lost is the highly productive class 1 to 3 soils in the Metro Vancouver area. They are being replaced by much poorer soils in the north, where the climate is harsh. Metro Vancouver has a Mediterranean climate that is the mildest in Canada. The loss to future food production is far greater than the numbers would imply.

CG: What are the long-term implications of giving away this land?

HS: As more and more farmland is lost, we lose the ability to feed ourselves now and in the future. Further, every time a farm is lost, the remaining farms are increasingly stressed, support for the farms that remain dwindles. Services to farms move away and non-farm uses and objections to farming increase.

CG: What alternatives are there to giving up land from the ALR but still providing the Tsawwassen band with land?

HS: The Tsawwassen band could make a substantial income from farming operations such as greenhouses and blueberries instead of providing container storage for port expansion. Tsawwassen is ideally located for greenhouses with much more sunshine than Vancouver and one climatic zone warmer than anywhere else in B.C. or in Canada.

CG: How does the removal of this land for industrial uses impact the wildlife in the area?

HS: The TFN could help provide for waterfowl if the 105 hectares of land fronting its reserve was farmed with forage crops. Overall, the Delta Port and Tsawwassen development will remove roughly 405 hectares of upland feeding area that is used by snow geese and widgeon ducks. As upland habitat is already stressed this will impact on all of the farms that remain. It will encourage more farmers to grow non forage crops, such as blueberries, or build greenhouses and the problem will get worse.

According to my understanding, there is very few fertile land in the world. The population is increasing, but the fertile land is decreasing day by day. Canada occupies 7% of the world's land but we have limited fertile land. Tsawwassen land is one of the most fertile lands in BC. If we use such a fertile land for other purposes than farming, there will be negative impact in ecosystem. Infrastructure like an airport, port, housing, roads, railway etc should be constructed on a non-fertile land. We have to think sustainable development. So Tsawwassen Treaty is concern only for business purposes - it only tried to make money by constructing a port instead of farming.

The treaty was driven by the Gateway - the provincial plan to expand the port and connect it with new and wider highways. This ignores the collapse of the US dollar, the steep decline in cross Pacific container traffic, the availability of new routres such as the North West passage and the widened Panama Canal and the key role played by the railways in moving transcontinental freight. All these issues are dealt at length in my blog - stephenrees.wordpress.com and on the Livable Region web site
livableregion.ca.

This is typical of the short term thinking that bedevils our political system. We need to take a strategic view of how our world is changing - and how to cope with that. Unfortunately, the appeals to justice in the TFN process have been ignored by the grab for the quick buck. A sad day for Canada and the Tsawwassen, who both deserve much better leaders with real vision

The TFN treaty was done without proper consideration of the Semiahmoo First Nation treaty, the protection of our Agricultural Land Reserve, or the Environment. This is not about giving TFN its due... its about expanding DeltaPort at the expense of our farmland, the Fraser River estuary, and our air quality in a area that shouldn't have been considered for a port in the first place. Tsawwassen First Nations accepted individual cash payouts from the government for signing the treaty and now we will all have to live with the blight of container sprawl on some of the best farmland and most important wildlife habitat in the world.