MAY 2017 • COUNTRY LIFE IN BC
15 Worker housing concerns growing in Okanagan
With no clear direction from the province, regs vary around BC
by PETER MITHAM KELOWNA – The lack of a
single, consistent standard for farm worker housing in BC is creating headaches for farmers. “Right now, we have a
patchwork quilt that’s working, but it’s not working as effectively as it could be,” says Rhonda Driediger, president of Driediger Farms Ltd. and co-chair of the BC Agriculture Council’s labour committee.
While other provinces have
taken the lead in regulating worker housing, BC has one standard for domestic workers and has left industry to establish guidelines for foreign workers employed through the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). “We’re really providing the
oversight,” Driediger says. “It really should be a ministry activity. And it’s all on-farm housing – whether it’s temporary foreign worker program or domestic [worker] housing.” SAWP began in Ontario in 1966 and expanded to BC in 2004. Today, all 12 provinces participate, with 42,973 foreign farm workers across Canada last year; 7,550 worked in BC. The provincial programs
are subject to the terms of the federal program as well as provincial labour regulations, which aren’t always in harmony. SAWP guidelines prohibit the use of tents, something BC regulations governing work camps – including in the agricultural sector – allow for domestic workers. The guidelines allow bunkbeds for foreign workers, but the province’s work camp regulations prohibit them for domestic workers. Uniform registration of facilities would also be nice. Complicating matters, municipalities have jurisdiction over what gets built in their boundaries. “All municipalities can do is discuss how something is built; is it following the building code?” Driediger says. “But they can’t do the rest of it – is this a suitable site to have workers in the first place? Is it maintained at the level it needs to be maintained? Are there televisions and access to telephones? … So we’re still having to go back to our own guideline, which is produced by industry and agreed to by the different consulates. But there is no one oversight.”
BC Ministry of Agriculture
staff directed Country Life in BC to its guide, Bylaw Development in Farming Areas, when asked what the provincial standard is. That document, released in 2015, establishes a minimum farm parcel size of 10 acres for any property hosting farm worker accommodation. It stipulates a minimum ceiling of 40 workers for all farming operations except greenhouses, for which the minimum ceiling is 130 workers. It further recommends requiring temporary farm worker housing meet industry’s guidelines for housing SAWP workers.
The ministry knows of 11
local governments, both municipalities and regional districts, that regulate farm worker housing, at least for temporary foreign workers. All are in the Lower Mainland and Okanagan Valley. It hasn’t stopped heated debate from occurring in Kelowna – one of the municipalities regulating housing for foreign workers – which faces an increasing number of applications for permanent worker housing on farmland, something not recommended under ministry guidelines.
Since the province gives
local governments permission to allow extra dwellings for
Rhonda Driediger says the province should take the lead regarding worker housing. PETER MITHAM PHOTO
farm workers “if the number of residences is commensurate with agricultural activities being undertaken on the parcel,” this has put Kelowna in the cross-hairs of residents and farmers alike. “The number of workers that they need is more than the five or six they might have needed in the 1970s,” explained Melanie Steppuhn, a land use planner responsible for suburban and
rural planning with Kelowna, last summer. “So the farm worker housing is becoming concentrated. They want them on one farm rather than having them all on five farms.”
Flashpoint
This has generated pushback from local residents, who don’t want to see farmland developed. Kelowna gave first reading to a new farm worker housing
bylaw on April 10, which will now proceed to public hearing and second reading on May 2. The bylaw exempts accommodation for 40 workers or less from municipal approval processes; farms seeking to house more will require a zoning variance. Kelowna claims the new bylaw was developed with
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