File consists of a speech given by Gary Runka to the BC Provincial Seed Fair in Fort St. John entitled "Land Use Planning and the Farmer".
Commentary on this speech by Barry Smith of the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands:
"Given the title and the audience, this speech reads like a wake-up call to farmers to pay attention to land use planning issues and get involved. Despite the available copy of the speech appearing as a draft the nature of the topic - farmers needing to get involved in land use planning - establishes a point that GGR obviously feels is important in the overall effort to preserve agricultural land.
The speech includes several examples of land use planning that can affect the agricultural industry including:
- Rural zoning by local governments and the provincial ALR zoning;
- Hydro-electric planning (a reference in all probability to Site C);
- Preparation of regional, community and particularly settlement plans;
- Industrial land development strategies;
- Federal fisheries legislation;
- Transportation planning;
- Crown land lease proposals;
- Water resources;
- Various other land use initiatives involving wildlife habitat, open space recreation, historic and archeological sites; and
- Taxation and assessment policy
Stapled to the original typed speech is a set of hand written notes (not copied) that are largely identical to the typed version. The typed version does have a few mysterious blanks but when checking the handwritten version the blanks may simply represent illegibility problems with the hand writing at the time of typing. Given these blanks, this may in fact have been a first draft of the speech with a cleaner copy typed up prior to delivery."