Pubdate: Tue, 29 Apr 2014
Source: Prince George Citizen (CN BC)
Copyright: 2014 Prince George Citizen
Contact:  http://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/350
Author: Neil Godbout
Page: 6

DON'T PUT MARY IN A CORNER

Since it seems in vogue for local government to pass bylaws and then
revisit or repeal them months later, here's hoping the Regional
District of Fraser-Fort George will have some sober second thoughts on
its zoning bylaw for facilities to produce medical marijuana.

As it stands now, anyone wanting to produce marijuana for Health
Canada in the Prince George region would need a parcel of land 259
hectares (640 acres) or larger. A copper smelter, an oil refinery or a
nuclear power plant could be built on a smaller piece of land, yet
setting up some greenhouses to grow a product licensed by the federal
government to ease the pain and suffering of sick people needs more
than a square mile of land or more than half the size of Stanley Park
in Vancouver.

Prince George city councillor Dave Wilbur argued that the regional
district needed to set a property size limit, rather than having none
at all, which could suggest that any size of property in any space,
including residential neighbourhoods, could be considered for such a
facility.

As it would for any industrial production facility, the middle of a
residential neighbourhood would be an inapporpriate location for a
large-scale marijuana production operation.

But why does it have to be in such a remote location? Why can't it be
near residential property and even in city limits?

Prince George city council was considering its own pot production
policy Monday night and was looking at putting similar onerous limits
on setbacks from the property line, land already within the
Agricultural Land Reserve and so on.

Instead of putting medicinal marijuana operations in the middle of the
bush, where it will be hard to monitor manufacturing and secure the
facilities and the product from theft and/or damage, it actually makes
more sense to put them in highly-visible locations close to the
community, where they can be easily and closely policed.

Mink farms provide an example of this. These facilities also produce a
highly-coveted product that are also targets for radical
environmentalists. Denmark and Sweden continue to have large mink
farms where the animals are raised and then slaughtered for their fur.
The waste produced from the animals, combined with the bodies disposed
at slaughter time, smells far worse than any marijuana crop. These
mink facilities, however, are mostly in semi-rural areas, not too far
from residential communities so they can be closely monitored for
production violations but also kept secure and safe. Furthermore,
police officers are closer at hand to intervene as needed.

But even if Wilbur and his colleagues, both at the regional district
board table and in city council chambers, insist on the agricultural
designation, they should look ahead at what's happened elsewhere in
B.C. Rapid population growth in the Okanagan Valley and the Fraser
Valley has pushed subdivisions right up against what was once remote
farming operations. The fragrances from those pig and chicken farms in
the Chilliwack area don't respect property lines and neither does the
spray from pesticides when orchardists in Kelowna are spraying their
fruit trees.

Well-meaning community planners and politicians from prior decades
never imagined subdivisions next to these farms but now here they area.

A significant spike in the local population could put the marijuana
production operation built in 2015 as a neighbour of the rural
acreages built in 2035.

By then, hopefully, producing pot for medicinal purposes won't have
the stigma it does now. Hopefully we'll have more civic leaders like
Valemount mayor Andru McCracken and Area F director Kevin Dunphy who
see medical marijuana as the cash crop and job creator it could be for
semi-rural and rural areas of the Prince George region.

Like any other legitimate business opportunity, the regional district
and city council should be finding ways to encourage, not discourage,
these operations and the economic activity that would come with them,
while also protecting and enhancing residential neighbourhoods.
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MAP posted-by: Matt