Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) chair Garry Nohr says the regional district’s resolution on changing the Agricultural Land Commission’s rules for breweries that want to operate on ALR properties got “strong support” at the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Com-munities (AVICC) AGM last weekend.
The resolution asks that “the Ministry of Agriculture and the Agricultural Land Commission be requested to revise the Agricultural Land Reserve Use, Sub-division and Procedure Regulation to allow breweries, distilleries and meaderies to contract with another B.C. grower to meet the 50 per cent farm product requirement.”
That would put them on the same footing as wineries and cideries.
The resolution now has to get the endorsement of the Union of BC Muni-cipalities before being sent on to the provincial government for consideration.
The SCRD-sponsored resolution was a result of Persephone Brewing Company’s effort to keep operating on ALR land on Stewart Road in Area F.
SCRD directors had supported a non-farm use application from Persephone that was later denied by the Agricultural Land Commission.
Persephone president Brian Smith said he was happy to see the support of local governments in the Island-Coastal region.
“This is really important. In fact the minister of agriculture said to us ‘if I get elected again, part of our consultation to update these [regulations] will have to be checking in with local governments,’ so it became a part of our goal to get local governments expressly supporting this.”
Smith said the Columbia Shuswap Regional District is taking a similar resolution to the local government association for communities in the Interior.
Meanwhile, Persephone is continuing with a petition drive and working with the province’s craft brewers to lobby for changes. Smith said he’s also encouraged that brewing and hop farming get a mention in the BC Liberal platform.
Liberal, NDP and Green candidates in Powell River-Sunshine Coast have all come out in support of the sort of changes Persephone has been asking for.
Sunshine Coast delegates at the AVICC meeting also put their support behind a late resolution on derelict and abandoned vessels, put forward by Victoria, Oak Bay and Ladysmith.
The resolution endorsed a private member’s bill from Nanaimo-Lady-smith NDP MP Sheila Malcolmson. She expected to introduce the legislation in the House of Commons this week.
