“The whole idea of our government is this: if enough people get together and act in concert, we can take something and not pay for it."" P.J. O'Rourke in Parliament of Whores FORT LANGLEY was the first capital city of British Columbia when the colony was proclaimed in 1858, but that only lasted for a few months and nothing much has happened here since. The community sits on a pile of sand heaped up by the Fraser River while the glaciers of the Ice Age were melting. Surrounding this little hill, which is now completely covered with houses, is the river on one side and a horseshoe of farmland on the other three sides. Part of the farmland has been turned into two golf courses. Well, at least they’re green places. Our community shelters behind quiet farmers who make hay, old duffers who play the ball and _ Stick game and several bunches of ” Canadian geese. | They separate us from Langley City, which we call commercial, - and Mortgage Heights on the hills to the East of Fort where build- ings are so close 1ogether that people can jump from their upstairs bedroom into the neighbor's and sometimes do. '.. Every now and then a rumor starts that Yuppieville is going to flow dewn the hill and across the green belt and smother Fort Langley iui its sleep. © Panic spreads. Public meetings are called. . ‘Leave us alone,'’ we shout. “We don’t have boulevarded streets or sewers, but we don’t care; we are accustomed to ,. squalor,”” Truth is, what really protects us is the provincial Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR), and we, like most ”” British Columbians, cling to it like lamprey eels, which ‘< happen to _ OSTERSON’S FRAMING & ART n. “ % aes DGE CENTRE 266-3613) a HOWE 662-7a90 » PARK "ROYAL SOUTH 925-00 66: WEST 2TH AVE. 732-3521 =" St. PAULITICS resemble in another way — both _we and the lampreys are parasites. City people, and even migrants from the city like those in Fort Langley, have unreasonably warm and rich feelings of satisfaction about their preservation of British Columbia farm lands from wicked developers. We like to tell ourselves that we are concerned, we are caring. We have social consciences, we say. What we have are very conve- nient consciences because we do Not spend our own money to sup- port the agricultural land reserve. We pass the bill to the farmers. We couldn’t have done this in the 1930s when more than half the Canadian people lived on farms and most of the rest came from egal Incoming framing order min. §30 THE SALE PRICE. OF ANY | WEAR ELSE? SESS ELIS SS 5 ana a a Fn . See a mex, ae SSSA me, aS NE - a SS the farms sa recently that they were still scraping their boots with sticks. They would easily have voted down discriminatory legisla- tion. The political balance changed. By the time Dave Barrett came to power in 1972, the farm vote had become almost inconsequen- tial. In 1973, the legislature passed a law that effectively prohibited farmers from selling to anybody except other farmers. The price of farmland plum- meted. As it turned out, the ordinary home buyer wasn’t helped much. Almost overnight prices of build- ing lots outside the reserve jumped 25%. There was probably never such a bonus handed to land speculators anywhere. Fortunes were made. For quick capita! gains, it was only rivalled by major heroin busts by police in the early days of trafficking. This would create windfall profits for the traffickers who hadn’t been caught. Nothing beats the rumor of . short supply for creating a sellers’ market, and that is what the B.C. government did for land speculators. We had, of course, plenty of Jand for housing and still do. These are lands Jocked up in forestry reserves which are releas- ed to the buyers in such small dribs and drabs that we have ar- tificially created and maintained the most expensive real estate in North America in this province. Just across the border in Washington, prices are half of ours. But that’s a different scan- dal. Regarding the ALR, two ques- tions are seldom asked and should have been, One is, don’t we believe in market forces any more in this country? According to the free market theory, farmland will seli as farmland if it is profitable enough. If it isn’t, let it be sold and used for other purposes. If foreign produce is cheaper, why not import it and reduce our grocery bills? If in future we are denuded of farmland, then let the houses be bulldozed, as they are now for in- dustrial development, and let the land ve returned to growing things again. Market forces can be remarkably efficient. Ask the Communists in Eastern Europe. Probably most people would object to letting Adam Smith set our agricultural pelicies from his grave. Farming, they may say, must be preserved by community action. It's a good argument, but it should be brought to a logical conclusion. If the entire com- munity benefits by preserving farmland, let the entire communi- ty pay for it and not steal it from people who don’t have enough votes to fight us off. 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