4 Back to the future


BC’s worst wildfire season on record in terms of acreage burned continues, almost in step with the province’s longest election drama on record.


Since the writ dropped in April, the same month as the BC Wildfire


Service began tallying wildfire damage, voters have watched as the BC Liberals encountered obstacles first at the ballot box, then at Government House. Meanwhile, the thunderbolts of criticism the BC NDP hurled from Opposition benches have sparked a shift in fortunes fanned by the winds of change. On the one hand, it looks like a controlled burn designed to put


the NDP’s stamp on government. Just as the BC Liberals tapped the dreams of their Socred forebears to revive Site C and other infrastructure megaprojects, the BC NDP, with the support of the Green Party, have taken steps to review – and likely ditch – several policies of the past 16 years. Adieu, Buy Local; welcome back, Buy BC! A single approach to protecting agricultural land will once again be the norm, rather than two zones and a system of six regional decision-making panels. Anyone who has concerns about the changes can provide feedback through a revived Standing Committee on Agriculture and Food. Once the initial changes are past, however, will the controlled burn


take on a life of its own? Voters in rural BC largely applauded the former government’s


focus on economic development. Many producers fear the prospect of hikes to the carbon tax and minimum wage, not to mention the environmental emphasis of the NDP-Green coalition. Greenhouse growers in particular know from experience in Ontario what higher costs could mean to investment. Rather than growing, farms would shrink and potentially relocate. The new government in Victoria seems sensitive to many of the concerns of


producers, and willing to listen. Speaking to Country Life in BC regarding the concerns producers have regarding the troubled groundwater licensing initiative, Popham said she would request a briefing on the issue to see how it could be addressed. She also emphasized the importance of renewing highway fencing to protect cattle, first in fire-affected areas, then in the rest of the province. While this year’s political turmoil saw BC absent from discussions regarding


COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • SEPTEMBER 2017


a new policy framework to replace Growing Forward 2 next year, Popham enthusiastically engaged federal agriculture minister Lawrence MacAulay on August 15. Plenty of talk is an effective smokescreen for a lack of concrete action. But


where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire. We can only hope that the passions of the new government remain a flame focused on the work at hand. Once the accumulated deadfall of the past 16 years is gone, the NDP will need


to show it can blaze a path forward that supports BC agriculture’s growth at home and abroad.


Support can’t come soon enough for ranchers


2017 will be remembered in much of the country as the 150th anniversary of Confederation. In BC, it will be remembered as the year the interior of the province went up in flames – the year when a


The Back Forty BOB COLLINS


winter of protracted cold turned slowly into a cool, wet, dismal spring.


Eventually, the rain stopped, the temperatures soared and records started to fall. Records for highest temperatures, records for the least rainfall and the record for area consumed by wildfire. So far (by mid-August), more than 2.2 million


acres have gone up in smoke and there are still 160 active fires. Of those, 28 are considered “fires of note” by the BC Wildfire Service. More than 7,000 British Columbians are under evacuation orders and the residents of 15 more communities are under evacuation alerts. Some 3,900 personnel are fighting the fires at a cost of more than $315 million. It might well end up exceeding the $382 million spent in 2009. The burned area is already 100,000 acres more than the previous record year of 1958.


Curiously enough, 1958 was also a year of celebration as the province marked the 100th anniversary of its creation as a Crown colony. I was nine years old in the summer of 1958 and was living 25 miles south west of Williams Lake. I recall how hot that summer was and I recall the air was thick with wood smoke. What I remember most vividly, though, is baloney sandwiches. My parents operated a very rural general store which contained a five-stool coffee bar. The forest service enlisted my mother to provide box-lunch meals for several fire crews. She made sandwiches for days on end. The menu was limited: peanut butter or baloney, wrapped in waxed paper and shipped out in big flat cardboard boxes along with packets of Dad’s oatmeal cookies, which were one of the few individually wrapped food items available at the time. It all sounds like pretty basic fare in this day and age, but I’m betting it was welcome on the fire line back then. The Fraser Valley, Sunshine Coast and Vancouver Island gained an appreciation for just how much was burning in the Interior this summer when winds pushed a thick blanket of smoke their way for a 10-day stay in early August. With no apparent end in sight, it will be months before a comprehensive accounting of the wildfire


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impact on ranches and farms will be possible. Immediate damage is – or will be – readily apparent: burned homes and structures, destroyed fences and missing livestock. Immediate crop losses might also be obvious but the effect on range and crop land may not be fully evident for a year or more.


The current burn is more than one and a half times the size of Prince Edward Island. That comparison should give a strong indication of the size of the challenge that lies ahead. If the wildfire season carries on to the middle of September, some producers will be returning to their ranches and farms within weeks of the arrival of winter.


Daunting


The task of getting everything up and running again will be daunting at best, and probably impossible in some instances. Feed will be in short supply and time is of the essence. Federal agriculture minister Lawrence MacAulay and provincial minister Lana Popham appear to be on the same page in providing the support the industry will need to survive the immediate crisis and rebuild to full capacity in the longer term. It would be hard to overstate just how quickly they will need to get started.


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