When Will We Get The Message About Land Use?

(Aired March 24, 2010)

We still are under the belief in our country that we can continue to simply spread out housing more and more and eat up more and more farmland from our reserves. I don't know how long we think we can do that, but at some point, we're going to have to realize what they realized centuries ago in Europe, that you have to start going up instead of out.

The latest dispute in Vancouver would have over 200 hectares of farmland in Tsawassen turned over to housing. It's been a potato farm for many years. The Greater Vancouver area is probably one of the best examples of what not to do in planning growth. So much valuable delta farm land has been taken over for housing that it is shameful.

People will ask-where will we live if we don't have more development? The same places you would live if you were in Denmark, or London or Amsterdam. Growth is up, not out, and in those places there's plenty of green and there's plenty of farmland still in production.

I wonder what the Lower Mainland will look like in 100 years, when there will be no farmland left in the Fraser Valley and people will be wondering how they are going to eat. We continue to do the same on a lesser scale in the Interior, and if you look at how all the benchland in the Okanagan has been decimated by homes, all the fruit trees that have been destroyed for spread out housing, you wonder what will be the eventual fate of food production.

We have so much artificial in our food now, and it will only get worse. I remember hearing 30 years ago that we don't have to worry, that we'll have new production techniques in place that we will be able to a lot more in a smaller space. That hasn't proven to be the case. And I believe we are not far away from having to make some serious decisions on how we use land in the future. We apparently haven't got the message yet.