BCFGA endorses policy changes
The city says after taking its time, it's made needed changes to the policy on housing temporary foreign farm workers – and council agrees.
On Monday, council signed off on the policy which was discussed at a public hearing back in May, but lead to plenty of opposition raised by local farmers and orchardists.
But over a month later, city staff say their proposed changes have gotten full endorsement from the BC Fruit Growers Association.
The plan has seen over a half dozen changes, which include allowing farms that are bigger than 8 hectares to add housing for up to 60 workers, without having to go through a public hearing.
If farms require more than 60 workers, they would go through a public hearing at council, no matter the size of the farm.
Councillor Ryan Donn says he likes the plan, but is sad to see that public meeting threshold increase.
"People come to us for public hearings over an inch that they're building (a structure) in one direction, and now all of a sudden somebody will have like, potentially 60 temporary farm workers next to them, and they won't have a public hearing process?" he said.
"I'll vote for it today, but I have some pretty significant concerns in regards to, how do I explain to the public that they don't have an opportunity to a public hearing, when there's potentially 60 temporary farm workers right next door to them?"
Another change sees outside workers now allowed to live in temporary housing for up to 10 months per year, instead of eight.
Staff say along with the consultation, the changes were made through further research and evaluation of local farms.
Councillor Brad Sieben says he likes how things have come together.
"I think if anything, this is a win for the political process, to show that there's checks and balances along the way. I think we missed some consultation at the beginning – these are my own personal thoughts," he said.
"I think through the public hearing process, and engaging with staff and council, we've made more robust policy that meets the needs of industry and citizens."
Councillor Luke Stack says that while he likes the end result, he believes it'll be up to local farmers to show council that their changes are going to work.
He says that like the policy on carriage houses, this can be fixed if it doesn't work.
"Over the years, we try different policies on from time to time, and that's what we're doing with this one. But it doesn't preclude us, somewhere down the road, (from) re-visiting something if we find it's not really working," he said.
"If some of these come forward, and we get a huge amount of pushback, it doesn't mean we can't re-visit this at some future date. So I think the onus, in many ways, falls upon the farming community to do this right."
Following council's expected approval of the resulting changes to zoning and the Official Community Plan, the policy would be forwarded to the province for a final sign-off.
