Dear CVRD directors and Premier David Eby:
The folly of using our Agricultural Land Reserve to meet soaring housing demands is a textbook catch-22.
Details of this morass are read in the Cowichan Citizen’s timely June 20, 2024 website story.
Farmland must trump housing demands. Period.
Vancouver Island arguably has just three days of food if stranded from the Mainland.
We believe the answer must be a firm ‘no' to pulling land out of our ALR to build profit-driven housing, plus other projects such as industrial activities.
Ultimately, we have neither water- nor sewage-treatment capacity for more growth — despite our provincial government’s absurd edict to build more housing. Build for whom? Where? How? What is the food source?
The big elephant in the CVRD boardroom is called limits to growth.
How many people can our valley support: 200,000; 500,000; one million? Apparently we have no idea despite decades of growth pressure.
Our directors are fumbling for answers to control development and contain ugly sprawl such as Langford’s.
It’s time for CVRD to seek solutions from other regions, provinces and countries already facing such complex growth problems.
We demand the CVRD start studying limits to growth now. That means setting realistic, creative goals to protect our beloved valley.
Yours in setting limits to growth,
Peter W. Rusland
North Cowichan