Performance Plan

The Agricultural Land Reserve is primarily intended to preserve British Columbia's limited agricultural land base for food production and to provide land use certainty to encourage agricultural businesses.

The Agricultural Land Reserve should be based on agricultural land capability and suitability for a diverse range of agricultural products.

Consideration of applications to exclude land from the Agricultural Land Reserve for community needs should be based on detailed assessments and, over time, thorough comprehensive planning processes undertaken in partnership with local governments that address both ongoing food production and community needs. These processes should emphasize alternatives to the exclusion of Agricultural Land Reserve to meet community needs, such as infill and redevelopment.

The nature of the agricultural resource, the agricultural economy and community needs vary considerably from region to region. The Commission will implement new business practices that recognize these differences and balance them appropriately with the provincial mandate to preserve agricultural land and encourage farming. These practices will provide clarity around decision-making considerations. In addition, new business practices will facilitate approaches to subdivision and non-farm development that benefit agriculture.

Several changes to current business practices will be required to in order to improve key decision making processes, improve information management, maximize the effective use of Commission and staff time and enable Commission members to focus more on strategic issues.

Responding to priorities such as the increase in applications means that the Commission has been unable to dedicate sufficient resources to enforcing land use regulations and following through on decisions to ensure they are implemented. The Commission must allocate additional resources to enforcement and compliance and make more effective use of partnerships with other agencies and local governments. As part of the Commission's periodic review of the Agricultural Land Commission Act and regulations, the existing compliance and enforcement-related provisions for issues such as soil deposit and fill will be reviewed.

The Commission participates in local planning exercises including official community plans and by-laws and regional growth strategies to ensure that growth management policies minimize the long-term impact on the Agricultural Land Reserve and to encourage farming. The Commission can increase its overall effectiveness by shifting more of its resources from the review of all applications to earlier and more in-depth participation in pro-active land use planning processes.

The Commission, in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, reviews the plans and by-laws of local governments and participates in the development of provincial regulatory and policy processes to ensure that farm businesses are supported. The Commission must continue to focus resources on participating in these processes as well as tailoring its approach to respond to the varying needs of agriculture within each region.

There are a number of specific strategies that the Commission will employ to achieve its goals and objectives. The strategies are interrelated and the success of key strategies depends on making progress on other strategies.

1. Identify opportunities to engage local governments, particularly within the northern and eastern portions of the province, in planning processes that incorporate specific strategies for preserving agricultural land, for ensuring the continued ability of the land to supply food, for bringing additional agricultural land into production, and for strengthening the regional and provincial agricultural economy. These processes may include targeted reviews of specific Agricultural Land Reserve areas.
2. Define the information required for the Commission to assess local government proposals to designate land within the Agricultural Land Reserve or to apply for the exclusion of land to meet a community need.
3. Adopt business practices that will reduce time spent on applications and inquiries and refocus the Commission on pro-active land use planning and strategic issues, such as creating a specific process for significant applications, implementation of an audit-based system of review for official community plans and the delegation of routine matters to staff.
4. Increase compliance and enforcement effectiveness by refining regulations and processes where appropriate, allocating sufficient resources and through closer partnerships with local governments and other agencies including the appointment of officials from other ministries and local governments to assist with enforcement and compliance.
5. Improve information management, mapping and statistical analysis capabilities to improve decision making, ensure public accountability and improve client service, including the implementation of a new application tracking and statistical analysis software.