Tsawwassen golf-course development 'thin edge of the wedge', says Agricultural Land Reserve activist

Harold Steves believes developer Ron Toigo’s plan to redevelop the Tsawwassen Golf and Country Club is the “thin edge of the wedge” as far as the continued erosion of regional farmland goes.

A long-time Richmond farmer and city councillor, Steves helped draft the Agricultural Land Reserve government policy in 1972. Now Toigo’s development will remove an 11.5-hectare parcel north of the existing course from the ALR.

“The Toigo thing is very small, but when you put it all together, it is going to hit Delta like a sledgehammer,” Steves told the Georgia Straight. “When you add that to the loss to the Deltaport expansion and the loss to the South Fraser Perimeter Road, you end up with a huge, vast area of farmland in one block that is certainly going to affect the productive viability of the Delta area.”

Toigo’s Vancouver-based Shato Holdings purchased the golf course a year ago and plans on making it full-size and, controversially, adding 442 housing units. The Agricultural Land Commission ruled in Toigo’s favour in November, approving the land swap subject to Delta council approving the plans and sending them to a full public hearing. At the January 7 meeting, Delta council did just that and voted in favour of proceeding to the meetings step. The public meetings begin at 7 p.m. on January 22 and 23 (and 24 if needed) at the South Delta Recreation Centre.

Outside the council chambers, Toigo responded to Steves’s “thin edge of the wedge” claim by stating, “That is an old cliché.”

Steves referred to the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands’ 2007 B.C.’s Food Self-Reliance report, which claims that farmers in 2025 will need 281,000 acres of irrigated food-producing land to ensure British Columbians have access to healthy diets. The report adds that the amount of land must increase by 92,000 hectares over 2005 levels. Steves said that “any loss of agricultural land is going to be on the negative side rather than the positive in terms of trying to find more land.”

“In the next 15 to 20 years, we are going to be looking at converting golf courses back to farms, and horse farms and stables back to food-producing lands,” Steves said. “That’s if we are going to be feeding ourselves. If we are not going to be feeding ourselves, well, I guess we will probably have to grow our food in our own back yards.”

The Straight asked Toigo if he thought British Columbians could grow enough food in the region to feed themselves.

“One of our companies, White Spot restaurants, gets the majority of its food from this region,” he said. “We have as big an interest as anybody in being able to grow food in the region. We are a very strong proponent of it, and every French fry that you eat in a White Spot anywhere in the region comes from right here in Ladner, so we are as strong an advocate of this as anybody is. The best way to support farmers is to buy what they grow.”

Speaking to the Straight in December, Delta mayor Lois Jackson singled out Brunswick Point—located north of Tsawwassen First Nation lands—as another potentially divisive issue in her municipality.

“There is a big peninsula there and it has been farmed by farm families for four generations,” Jackson said. “The provincial government has said that they [the Tsawwassen First Nation] can purchase that land, and my feeling is, if that land is purchased by the band—just the same as what they have got there now—it will all go. It will all go. It will go to housing, it will go to casinos, and it will go to all kinds of things.”

B.C. agriculture and lands minister Patrick Bell did not respond to messages by the Straight’s deadline.