Dear editor,
Hoping the public is in a stupor with this heat wave, the BC Liberals have dealt the provincial agriculture sector two more deadly blows.
First they sacked the well-respected Kelowna orchardist, Richard Bullock, as the long-standing chair of the Agricultural Land Commission and replaced him with failed Liberal candidate Frank Leonard.
Then to avoid any further roadblocks to the Site C dam project, they bypassed allegations of the impact on northern arable land by simply removing the fertile bottomlands of the Peace River valley from the Agricultural Land Reserve. Farmland, what farmland?
Bullocks’ dismissal was not entirely surprising. He had pushed back against his political masters when they split the province into two development zones for the ALR. It was clear the Liberals were going to ram through the changes and Bullock would have been in the way.
His replacement speaks volumes about the political rather than agricultural orientation of the Commission. Leonard is a businessman with 20 years’ experience on Saanich council and many other government boards and committees, but little dirt under his fingernails.
Harold Macy,
Merville