When members of the Agricultural Land Commission visit Richmond’s Garden City Lands on August 14-before they step into a hotel to hear a new application to shear off the land from the Agricultural Land Reserve-activist Michael Wolfe will be there with wild blueberries.

“My message will be, ”˜Here, I’m going to share my blueberries with you, they were grown on the Garden City Lands, you can grow food there and it already grows, and for you to make a decision to remove these from farmland shows how corrupt the system really is,’ ” Wolfe told the Straight.

Wolfe is coordinator of the Garden City Lands Coalition, a group that has been opposing attempts to take 55 hectares out of the ALR and develop portions of it for residential and commercial uses.

In 2006, the commission rejected an application by the federal Crown corporation Canada Lands Company to take the property out of the ALR because it was quality agricultural land. The CLC had struck an agreement with the City of Richmond and the Musqueam band, which asserts aboriginal title to the land, to divide and develop the property.

This time, the City of Richmond applied to the ALC, on behalf of itself, the CLC, and the Musqueam. In July, ALC chair Erik Karlsen formed a special six-member panel chaired by himself to hear the application.

Karlsen informed Cecilia Achiam, Richmond’s senior coordinator for major projects and development applications, in a July 30 letter that the August 14 meeting is “not a public information meeting where presentations are made by third parties”.

Commission members will hear city representatives explain the application, and, according to Karlsen, the public may observe the proceedings. Wolfe said that the commission’s decision not to hear from the public is an “erosion of democracy”—a claim strongly disputed by Colin Fry, an ALC executive director. In a phone interview with the Straight, Fry said that the commission hasn’t made a decision yet on whether it will conduct a public hearing on the application.