$73 Million Crown Land Sell-off Revs Up

Locals call it the Lannan forest, a small chunk of crown land between Comox and Courtenay that draws hikers and birdwatchers . and now a bitter battle over its fate.

If developers and the B.C government get their way, the 16 hectares may become a privately owned golf course and housing development. If that happens, say activists fighting to save the grove, more than a bit of nature will be lost. You can also say goodbye, they argue, to local
residents' control over the use and preservation of public land in their midst.

The Lannan forest sell-off fits into a broad pattern of impending crown land sales to private concerns all over the province. People in Comox Valley have been pushing hard to halt the trend in their own backyard.

Messy public relations

In a small room known as the "community action centre," in downtown Courtenay, a handful of people strategize how to keep Land and Water B.C. Inc., the Crown Corporation that sells and leases crown land, from closing the golf course deal.

Sixteen hectares may seem small potatoes when you consider the province's vast crown land holdings, some 89 million hectares, or 94 percent of the province. But it means a lot to people like Terry Fright and other area residents who have been visiting Lannan forest for decades. So long, in fact, that people treat the land like a commons shared by the community.

The first that Fright heard it might be peddled to a golf course developer was in November of 2002. That's when LWBC suddenly announced that it had signed a memorandum of understanding to sell to a company called Silverado, which owns and operates the splashy Crown Isle Resort and golfing community next door. Alarmed that the government was springing this deal on locals without soliciting public opinion, Fright and others formed the Comox Valley Crown Lands Coalition in December of that same year.

The sale was to be contingent on the City of Courtenay annexing Lannan thereby making it possible for Silverado to apply for re-zoning for a proposed housing development. In late May Courtenay council acquiesced, voting in favour of a bylaw that would allow the city to swallow up the Lannan property. It looked like the deal would go ahead.

However the coalition put on the boxing gloves, dusted off the municipal act and started gathering signatures on a petition that would force council to rescind the bylaw (they needed 10 per cent of eligible Courtenay voters and easily surpassed this number). On June 30 when the coalition submitted its petition, Lannan was saved - at least for the time being.

LWBC had suffered an embarrassing defeat at the hands of the crown lands coalition, and the whole Lannan issue was starting to become a messy public relations debacle.

In the meantime Chris Walther, a Comox Valley professional forester, volunteered his time to conduct an in depth inventory of the Lannan forest, discovering two red-listed and one blue-listed plant communities, including an extremely rare occurrence of Aspen-crabapple and slough sledge. After Walthers submitted his report to the Conservation Data Centre, hoping it would add weight to the case for preserving Lannan.

'I'm a citizen and I take that seriously. Public assets here in Canada mean a lot to me," says Walther, who emigrated here from Germany 20 years ago.

LWBC allowed Lannan to simmer on the backburner for the summer and fall. Then late in 2003, the crown corporation announced its intention to list Lannan for sale in a public bidding process.

The winner: Silverado. In January of 2004 LWBC accepted the developer's new offer of about $1,000,000, outbidding by $400,000 an offer from the Regional District Comox Strathcona that wanted to keep the property as parkland; an offer that was enthusiastically endorsed by the crown lands coalition.

Crown land sales target: $73.5 million

According to Fright the deal, which is expected to close March 26, stinks.

He points out that any public consultation conducted by LWBC over the Lannan forest happened only after local citizens beat the war drum and made a noise about the proposed sale. "This is a big issue. They [LWBC] don't have a mandate to sell off public land. The public has to have first shot at it or we'd be out-bid every time," Fright says.

Fright believes the crown corporation is flouting some of its own principles that are supposed to guide management of Crown land, especially the one that states: "Projects and developments which benefit the general public or local communities are seen as important uses of Crown land. The Ministry is committed to the principle of using Crown land for community projects, parks, public works, and institutions."

With time running out for the crown lands coalition, members have resorted to swamping the LWBC and the Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management,  which oversees LWBC, with so-called section 63 objections. Section 63 is an obscure provision in the Land Act that allows citizens to ask for a review of a crown land sale.

Mark Hallum, LWBC's development and marketing manager for Vancouver Island disagrees with Fright's assessment.

"I don't know if more public consultation would have made any difference at all if they [the coalition] didn't get what they wanted," Hallum says, adding that the coalition would have been happy only if the property was left wild and untouched in perpetuity.

As for the section 63 objections, it's up to the deputy minister of Sustainable Resource Management to order a review, but Hallum warns people not to hold their breath. "It's not common to proceed with these," Hallum says.

One thing is certain, LWBC takes its marching orders from the Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management, an arm of the government on a mission to raise more money from crown land sales and leases. LWBC advertises some properties for sale on its website, other property deals, including the Lannan forest sale, it pursues quietly, without notice on its website.

After the last provincial election the victorious B.C. liberals took a close look at the government agency, then called B.C. Assets and Lands. First they changed the name to Land and Water B.C. Then they set some goals: LWBC has been given strict revenue targets and is expected to generate $73.5 million per year from crown land sales over the next three years.

The official theory is that by freeing up vacant crown land, government can use this public asset to stimulate economic growth in the private sector. Critics see it as a short-term, shortsighted way to make up for budget shortfalls.

More Crown land battles heating up

It would be easy to dismiss issues like Lannan as classic NIMBYism. However wherever crown land abuts communities, any attempts by government to sell these parcels will be contentious because some people perceive them as a public resource, woven into the fabric of their community and its history.

While it may be too late for the Lannan forest, crown land battles are heating up elsewhere in the province. Places like Williams Lake (where LWBC wants to remove crown lands on the Horsefly River from the forest land reserve); Egmont near Sechelt, (where people are alarmed by a proposal from Pacific North Woods Resources to purchase crown forest on Egmont Point;) and particularly the east coast of Vancouver Island where the real estate market is booming, property prices have jumped 10 to 15 per cent in the last 12 months and LWBC appears keen to cash in.

Currently the government is embroiled in two controversial land deals, one in Qualicum Bay, the other in Nanoose. LWBC recently announced its intentions to seek rezoning within the Qualicum Bay-Bowser official community plan to allow it to pawn 650 hectares of crown land, currently designated resource land, to an undisclosed private developer with plans for four golf courses and 2500 commercial and residential units. To say the least, it's a major proposal for this sleepy seaside village.

In Nanoose Bay, citizens are fighting hard to prevent one of the few parcels of undeveloped land left in Nanoose Bay, home to rare Garry oak, onion grass and Douglas fir ecosystem, from becoming a golf course. LWBC wants to sell the 175 acres to the owners of the nearby Fairwinds golf course and high-end housing development, however Diane Pertson, president of the newly minted Nanoose Bay Conservancy Society, says residents have decided "they would never let this happen." After finding out about the proposed sale at an April, 2002 public hearing, Nanoose residents kicked up a fuss. In a matter of days, 400 residents in this community of 5,000 turned out at the meeting to protest. The deal remains on the books.

"We want the property out of government hands and managed by the Nature Conservancy of Canada," Pertson says, who was awaiting a private meeting with Sustainable Resource Management minister George Abbott to discuss the issue.

Andrew Gage, a lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law, says his office gets a steady flow of phone calls and info from citizens trying to defend crown land in their backyards. Their objections vary. They're attached to a place because it has ecological significance, there's a tradition of public recreational use or it's simply the only chunk of relatively wild land left in a heavily developed area.

Gage believes all these complaints raise important issues. Namely, what is the mandate of LWBC and in whose interest is the government managing crown land - the public or private developers?

"We've created a crown corporation that's not accountable, we've given them a mandate to maximize revenue from crown lands and its budget is dependent on how much money they bring in. There needs to be a public consultation process before any land is sold," Gage says.

Ministry higher ups refuse interview

WCEL is planning to compile a case study of a few land issues, including Lannan forest, and hopefully get B.C.'s auditor general interested in examining LWBC.

"The legislation needs to be changed," Gage says, calling the Land Act under which LWBC was created, outdated and obsolete.

Requests for an interview with senior management at LWBC to discuss these issues were turned down. In an e-mail response, LWBC communications manager Lynne Kailan said simply: "We will not be providing an interview on the topics you have raised."

Back in the Comox Valley, the crown lands coalition isn't waiting around for answers from LWBC. It also hasn't yet given up the fight and has filed a last-minute writ with the courts stating its plan to pursue legal action based on the argument that the LWBC did not follow proper procedure in the sale of Lannan.

Fright advises citizens in other communities to "organize well, organize early and to get to know the status of crown land near your community."

He's also realistic about the odds of mounting a successful challenge to one of LWBC's land deals.

"We've done pretty well at getting the word out, doing media outreach but it hasn't made much of a difference. It tells you that Land and Water BC doesn't seem to care," Fright says.

Vancouver Island-based journalist Andrew Findlay [email protected] recently returned from an assignment covering Canadian doctors and
nurses volunteering in Guatemala. His last piece for The Tyee was on Bute Inlet's fight to remain fish farm free.