Richmond city councillor Harold Steves says that building the South Fraser Perimeter Road will destroy agricultural areas that could feed local residents.
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PrintHarold Steves decries potential loss of farmland with South Fraser Perimeter Road project
Veteran Richmond city councillor and long-time farmer Harold Steves believes the B.C. Liberal government’s proposed South Fraser Perimeter Road is a “crime against humanity”.
Steves, a former Richmond MLA and cofounder of the Agricultural Land Reserve, was addressing a January 16 town hall meeting organized by the South Fraser Action Network, an umbrella group incorporating opponents of both the road and the Gateway Program, of which the road is a part.
Richmond city councillor and farmer Harold Steves tells the crowd at a January 16 townhall meeting in Delta that the South Fraser Perimeter Road is a "crime against humanity" because it paves over land that could be providing food for British Columbians.
“The fact that we are building this road, the fact that we are destroying this land—destroying our ability to feed ourselves—is a crime against humanity as great as any of the other ones that we have witnessed in the previous 100 years or so,” Steves told the crowd of about a hundred. “By not coming to grips with climate change, by not coming to grips with the loss of our farmlands and the loss of habitat, our politicians today are every bit as guilty as every one of the despots that has gone before.”
B.C. transportation minister Shirley Bond refused an interview with the Georgia Straight.
The South Fraser Perimeter Road is a planned 40-kilometre transportation route that would run along the south side of the Fraser River from Highway 1, then around Port Kells in Surrey to Deltaport Way in South Delta. The provincial government claims it will reduce truck traffic and increase the movement of goods and services throughout the region.
Steves said peak oil means global oil production will soon go into decline—some analysts claim this has already happened—because the resource is finite. He told the Straight that the Vancouver Port Authority told Country Life in B.C. newspaper that it needs 1,070 hectares for its expansion. Add that to the 100 hectares for the highway and that’s almost 1,200 hectares of land that could be used to provide food for British Columbians, Steves said.
“The onus is on us to preserve as much of the land as we can and to provide as much of our food production at home so we are not…[buying] food from other countries where that food is needed by other peoples,” he said.
Stephen Rees, who ran as the provincial Green candidate in Richmond East in 2008, told the crowd that so far sand has been used to stabilize the marshland on which much of the proposed route sits. Construction has not started yet, Rees noted.
Rees said civil disobedience might work to stop the road if it mirrors the huge outcry that led to the shelving of the proposed private-power projects on the Upper Pitt River.
“If they can do it, we can do it, and they [Gateway] must be stopped,” Rees said to huge applause.
An oft-repeated refrain during the meeting was “It’s not a done deal.” This was in reference to comments made by former B.C. transportation minister Kevin Falcon that Gateway was a “done deal”.
Independent Delta South MLA and former Delta councillor Vicki Huntington talks to the Straight about her opposition to the South Fraser Perimeter Road. Huntington, daughter of late Progressive Conservative MP Ron Huntington, said the road is nothing more than a "behind-the-scenes effort to develop land".
Speaking to the Straight outside the meeting, independent Delta South MLA Vicki Huntington said the road “is a project that can still be stopped”.
“The road doesn’t have the necessity for moving goods that [Greater Vancouver] Gateway Council has pretended that it has, and I tend to agree with those people who think that the primary reason for the road is a behind-the-scenes effort to develop land,” she said. “They can do so with massive profits, because what they are doing is buying relatively inexpensive farmland and industrializing it—flipping it—at enormous profit.”
Responding to Steves’s “crime against humanity” claim, Huntington said, “We might look back in history and say that it is, or it was, if it’s allowed to be completed.…We haven’t learned a thing. We haven’t tried to do anything differently with less impact. We’re doing it the easiest way, the cheapest way—the most profitable way to very few people.”
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For those of you who don't know Jeff Rubin, the former chief economist of CIBC has been at the cutting edge of peak oil theory/evidence for at least 6 years. In this speech, he talks about why transportation projects like our Gateway and the SFPR are all doomed to be out of date before they are built. That transportation costs, because of their integral oil dependence, are going to change our economies back to local ones where the more locally reliant businesses are the ones that have a chance of surviving.
Peak oil doesn't mean we will move around less, it means new fuels will replace oil as they become economically viable.
Farming in our backyards isn't what keeps up what most people would consider a 'Canadian' standard of living. We're a first-world country, rich in resources, and we need roads to get stuff from A to B to Asia. The increase in productivity from new port facilities will probably be three orders of magnitude higher than the loss of 1000 hectares of farmland (a whopping 0.02% of our 47 000 km^2 ALR).
Maybe you'd rather that we just cut ourselves off from the world, and instead of trading and being productive, we can all sit around in a field of organic hemp and knit each other macrame ponchos...
There is a huge excess of port capacity in BC right now. We have modern port facilities sitting almost idle, such as in Prince Rupert and Surrey Fraser Docks. It would be very stupid to build more now. And roads are not an efficient way to move containers of goods - that is what short sea shipping and electric railways do best.
And yes we can stop the South Fraser Freeway - see
http://www.livableregion.ca/blog/blogs/index.php/2010/01/17/south_fraser...
For the full explanation, watch the above YouTube.
By 2014, just in time for the Gateway project to be open, the Panama Canal will have completed its widening program, to allow 'super' container ships.
The railway grades out of Vancouver increase shipping costs.
With global warming it will be cheaper to ship Chinese containers North, through Russia and ship them to Churchill Manitoba.
In short, all the money being spent on Gateway and Port expansion will be for naught and the taxpayer will be left with big bills to pay for redundant highways and empty berths.
Oh by the way, if the US dollar collapses, so does the Canadian dollar.
In 20 years time people will scorn our so so short sighted politicians.
His point about not having 15 years to develop new technology is a bit moot, because it would probably take longer to build up factories for, and to train and employ people for them, all the products that we get from Asia right now. Has everyone completely forgotten that in the boom times before the recession hit we were already facing a labour shortage??
Burns Bog, the "lungs of the lower mainland" will be ruined with the building of the SFPR. Another ecological disaster.
Maybe protecting the environment is too big a concept for some. But breathing clean air, drinking pure water and eating safe food is something we can all wrap our heads, hearts and lungs around.
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I realize Harold is an old trooper as a political speaker, not averse to a bit of hyperbole at times, but when I look at this quotation I have to wonder what the context is. If the context is understood to be purely provincial, that's one thing. If the context is understood to be the entire globe, that is world history during the 20th Century, well, ... where does that lead us? Is this still an acceptable rhetorical device?
Rod Smelser
Miguel
i'm sure anyone reading any of your comments would realize that you are a well-educated man. however being well educated does not imply that a person has any good common sense or that a person can communicate effectively with the public in a manner that the majority of people will understand.
our population in b.c., canada, and around the world keeps increasing, which means we need more farmland to feed people, yet in b.c. we are paving over our farmland. many people are realizing that we do not need all the cheap junk being imported from china, most of which ends up in our landfills, and are downsizing. if a human beings life in canada is in danger we do everything possible to save that life, yet every year thousands of people in canada are killed or seriously injured by automobiles. still we continue to build more freeways, which means more vehicles, which means more unneccesary deaths. how can we as a civilized country pretend this is normal. this is insanity.
in b.c., the #1 reason for children visiting emergency rooms in hospitals is due to asthma attacks caused by pollution from automobiles.
millions of dollars are being spent each year to find a cure for cancer. how about preventing cancer and saving lives by taking more pollution causing vehicles off the road and instead improving b.c.'s much needed transit system which in turn will require fewer freeways.
fewer highways= fewer polluting vehicles= fewer loss of life due to automobile accidents=fewer health problems such as asthma and cancer= less destruction of our farmland and wildlife.
if i can help you understand any part of that equation, please let me know.
stopping gateways sfpr and nfpr will save many lives and will help to keep b.c. beautiful and green and healthy.
fewer highways= fewer polluting vehicles= fewer loss of life due to automobile accidents=fewer health problems such as asthma and cancer= less destruction of our farmland and wildlife.
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The demand for automobiles is a function of incomes and the prices of cars, fuel and other car operating costs, not a function of the number of lane kilometres of highways. Fewer highways, in the presence of a growing population with rising incomes and dispersed, freely chosen work and residence locations, will mean more congestion and delay and more pollution.
As I pointed out in other threads on similar subjects, Anthony Downs of the Brookings Inst, the author of Stuck in Traffic, told the Metro Vancouver area planners when he visited here in 2007 that their goal of avoiding any and all increases in road capacity over the next two or three decades was not realistic. The planners didn't listen, because Downs advice was contrary to received doctrine.
European cities, as you well know, have both extensive rail based transit systems AND extensive freeway and trunk road systems. China is building the largest freeway system in the world.
I agree that the SFPR as presently designed and situated is a mistake because it consumes too much farmland and impinges on Burns Bog. The same cannot be said of NFPR or PMH1, which are sensible and necessary projects in my opinion. The notion that there is already enough capacity at Port Mann for any reasonable purpose is easily seen to be a case of Vancouver insularity when you compare us to Toronto. The average daily volumes at Port Mann are about 130,000 cars a day compared to nearly half a million on parts of Hwy401 across the north of Toronto.
Rod Smelser
you are agreeing that the sfpr is a mistake. progress is being made.
nfpr is also a mistake. the pollution caused by the nfpr running closely beside several elementary school is sure to cause increased health problems for our children.
most countries in europe cherish their rivers and make the surroundings beautlful. nfpr will follow the river and make the surroundings, polluted, ugly and noisy. no more beautiful trees and wildlife will disappear. do you know that we have several beautiful beaches here in north surrey, which will be more difficult to access with nfpr seperating residents and the fraser.
i would like to ask you a question, if we had more affordable transportation and fewer vehicles on the road,in your opinion, would there be fewer traffic accidents causing death or serious injury.
i am not suggesting that those individuals who wish and can afford to drive stop doing so, but many of us, especially children and seniors, would like the option of safe affordable transportation. much needed public transportation could very easily downsize the 2 or more cars per family to 1 car per family.. parents might feel more comfortable sending their children to school by means of safe public transportation. that would certainly free up some of their time and the need for the 2nd car, which in turn would create less traffic on our roads.
i am not very familiar with the transportation methods in europe and china, although i believe countries in europe travel by rail a lot.
i do know that the sfpr and nfpr will do more harm than good.
if it weren't for the likes of him and his efforts over the years, there would be no ALR, and probably hardly a scrap of farmland left in the lower mainland let alone richmond.
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