No government wants to be overly negative in its legislation. No cabinet wants its legislative package to be seen as a long list of “thou shalt nots.”
So unless it’s absolutely necessary, bills are often written to accentuate or encourage the positive, rather than dwelling on prohibitions and restrictions. They’ll often emphasize the attractive vision of what the government is trying to achieve, rather than what it’s trying to stamp out.
Agriculture Minister Lana Popham adopts that approach as much as any cabinet minister down through the ages. Maybe even more so, as she’s relentlessly enthusiastic and upbeat about her portfolio.
This is a minister who recently tweeted a favourable mention of rutabagas.
“So many ways to prepare a rutabaga but for a really quick fix you can peel it, boil it just until tender, and eat it! Looking for a vegetable to add to your repertoire, try a rutabaga! A great grown-in-B.C. vegetable, so look for one farmed near you!”
She has taken that same zest in drafting an amendment to the Agricultural Land Reserve law that’s a fascinating exercise in semantics.
Popham is committed to protecting the Agricultural Land Reserve and has been dedicated since she was sworn in to undoing all the changes the previous B.C. Liberal government made to the ALR. Those changes had the effect of relaxing some of the blocks against getting land removed from the ALR.
The most effective way to protect the reserve is simply to lock it down and outlaw any further subtractions. That’s essentially what her bill is attempting.
She wants to bar anyone from ever trying to get their land taken out of the reserve.
But writing it down that way makes it sound draconian. It raises questions about property rights. It gets people agitated.
So the clause in the bill covering removal of land from the ALR is written in the gentlest, most non-threatening way possible.
It’s headed: “Exclusion Applications.”
Right away, that’s comforting to anyone who might consider they have a legitimate reason to get their property out of the reserve.
They’d be thinking: “So there is a process to apply for an exclusion.”
The section continues: “A person may apply to the commission to have land excluded from the ALR if … ”
That further validates the idea that if owners think they have a case for exclusion, they’ll be able to make it.
It’s when you get into the subsections following the word “if” that it gets complicated.
The person can apply if the person is a) the owner and is “the province, a First Nation government or a prescribed public body.”
Or b) “if the person is a local government or First Nation and the land is within the local government’s jurisdiction, or within the First Nation’s settlement area.”
The upshot of those clauses is under intense debate. But the working understanding by many is that a person can apply for exclusion if the person is a government or First Nation of some sort.
Flowing from that is the dawning understanding that the landowners don’t qualify as the “persons” specified in the bill as being allowed to apply for exclusions. It’s a masterpiece of permissive wording that purports to allow something, while actually banning it.
Those are the points the Liberals are keying on while trying to rally opposition to the bill.
Popham, on social media, dismissed the attempt, and the Liberals. She said they “have sunk to personal attacks” by claiming that: “I think farmers aren’t persons.”
“We are not proposing a change to the definition of the word ‘persons.’ ”
But she did confirm: “The change we are making is that local government will now be the ones to submit exclusion applications to the commission for consideration.”
Applicants used to have to go through local government to get their land out of the ALR. The bill changes the onus. It’s the governments that will have to apply on owners’ behalf.
So farmers or landowners are still persons. “Farmers are some of the best persons I know!” she tweeted this week, after handling every query in question period.
But can they still apply for exclusions from the ALR?
No.
They aren’t the right kind of persons.
