Farmland-development debate sorely needs transparency

When Vicki Huntington was little, her father took her to Delta and told her, 'You're standing on the best soil in the world, second only to the Nile.'

That was long before Ron Huntington, an agrologist, became a federal Progressive Conservative cabinet minister or head of the Canada Port Corp. It was also long before Vicki, a former Delta councillor, rode a populist, anti-government wave to become the first Independent elected in the B.C. legislature in nearly 60 years. The very soil that her father took her to see and touch is at the centre of a perfect storm of issues that resulted in her extraordinary success.

While Delta's Tsawwassen community is under more pressure than many in B.C., these development issues are being played out in community after community from the Lower Mainland through to the Okanagan and out to the Rockies. Over the years, thousands of acres of the best farmland has been taken out of the Agricultural Land Reserve across the province to make way for homes, streets, schools, parks.

In Delta, farms have made way for a ferry terminal, a coal port, railway lines, high-voltage power lines and the South Fraser Perimeter Road (which is part of the Gateway project to link all of the Metro Vancouver ports). Agricultural land was used to settle treaty claims with the Tsawwassen First Nation, which is now building an industrial park.

Delta council is trying to decide whether to allow a 500-acre, 1,900-home development in Tsawwassen's Southlands on farmland taken out of the ALR 20 years ago or ask the provincial government to put it back into the land reserve.

Development issues are complicated and too often they are reduced -whether in Delta, Cranbrook or Summerland - to sloganeering.

It's industrialization vs. preservation; no growth vs. economic development and jobs.

At all political levels, there is a growing sense that critical issues are being decided without proper consideration for citizens -including business people. It's because what's missing at all levels of government is information and transparency.

The result is polarization, leaving no room for compromise, which (like it or not) is pretty much what democracy is about.

At the municipal level, election financing rules are such a mess that individuals and groups have been able to get away with secretly financing whole campaigns, leading to suspicions that politicians can be bought. A provincial government-appointed panel is working on fixing that before the 2012 provincewide elections.

Delta residents might still have opposed the Gateway project had the B.C. government not broken it down into small pieces in order to skirt the requirements for a comprehensive environmental assessment. But there might not be so much anger.

The same would be true if politicians told us during election campaigns exactly what they plan to do if they're elected.

Many voters and even elected officials (including some New Democrats and Huntington) are signing on to former premier Bill Vander Zalm's anti-HST petitions even though British Columbia's contract with the federal government to forge ahead with the harmonized sales tax can't be undone for five years.

But the campaign would have no traction had the Liberals bothered to mention their plans for it during last spring's election or if they could provide evidence that this is more than a shifting of the tax burden on to individuals from corporations.

It's also hard to argue with citizens who question the value of voting when the party system has effectively silenced all but a very few of those elected to the governing party.

As Delta residents are seeing, Independents may well speak on their behalf. But there are few opportunities to be heard. Question period is divided up among the parties and many legislative committees haven't met for years.

Voter turnout is down, politicians are held in ever declining regard.

We need to address the root causes of that because there are so many critical decisions that citizens want, need and deserve to be involved in making.

But we need to be careful what we wish for.

We've been ruled by populists and poll-watchers before. We've been stymied by never-ending studies, commission hearings. We've been paralysed by NIMBYism and activists who want nothing to change in their backyards as well as by splintered legislatures and Parliaments.

We've seen what happens in places like California, which is now nearly bankrupt because referendum votes have taken away almost all of legislators' power to govern.

We don't want governments to tell us this is an incredible place with enormous riches, including the very soil on which we live.

What we need are politicians who respect citizens enough to give them the information they need to participate as fully as possible in making wise decisions for now and the future.