Kelowna Capital News, May 24, 2012

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MOUNT Boucherie Secondary principal John Simonson is moving on to take a new job with the school district.

TWO LOCAL swim clubs made the most of swimming in their home pool at the 2012 Canadian Masters Swimming Championships last weekend.

JUNE 2, 2012, will mark the 100th anniversary of the Ellison Community Hall, which columnist Maxine DeHart reports was first built as a schoolhouse for the growing rural community.

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82 serving our community 1930 to 2012

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THURSDAY May 24, 2012 The Central Okanagan’s Best-Read Newspaper www.kelownacapnews.com

â–ź AGRICULTURE

Orchardists need help to protect land Judie Steeves

STAFF REPORTER

BALANCING ACT‌Grant Anderson jumps a log on his skin board in Sutherland Bay on Kelowna’s waterfront. ▟ B.C. CONSERVATIVE PARTY

Cummins: ‘The Liberals’ goose is cooked’ Alistair Waters ASSISTANT EDITOR

B.C. Conservative leader John Cummins says he’s not out to play spoiler to the Liberals in next year’s provincial election.

He says he’s in it to win it. Cummins’ resurgent B.C. Conservative Party— long dormant on the political scene here—has seen its popularity grow since he quit federal politics last year to lead the prov-

incial party. And, he says dissatisfaction with the Liberal government of Premier Christy Clark is helping his party grow in popularity, especially in the B.C. Interior. “Areas like this (the Okanagan) have always

been a natural fit for the Reform Party or the Conservatives,� said Cummins, a former federal Reform Party, Canadian Alliance and Conservative MP who represented ridings in the Vancouver suburb of Delta from 2003

Okanagan Valley only Cadillac Dealer Since 1977 JACOBSEN EXCELLENCE

to 2011. “People here are natural conservatives.� Similar to the emergence of the B.C. Liberals under former leader Gordon Wilson in the late 1980s, which led to

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McCurdy Rd.

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While not ungrateful for the $2 million provincial contribution toward a replant program—an announcement staged in his orchard Wednesday afternoon—local orchardist Steve Day says what’s needed to keep agriculture afloat is far more support from both government and consumers. Standing among rows of young apple trees, with an apartment building under construction in the background on what was once farmland, Day admits that future generations will damn us for putting concrete and asphalt over such good growing land. But, he says it should not be on the farmer’s shoulders to protect farmland for future generations. “We should be supported. We’re protecting farmland for the future,� Day said. Yet farmers have to pay to protect their crop from the weather by buying crop insurance to preserve some income against whatever Mother Nature throws at them, he says, adding that farmers also have to compete in global markets and at home against fruit that doesn’t have to be grown under our labour laws, with our environmental regulations. “We compete against fruit that’s grown cheaper and with less regulation than ours is,� he said. “If we’re going to grow fruit in Canada and sell it in Canada there needs to be support for a Canadian market.� Instead, Day notes that imported fruit is brought in, even though it’s not grown under the same restrictions, and it competes in the market with locally-grown fruit, which costs more to produce. That results in inadequate returns for Canadian farmers. B.C. farmers are tied to the Agricultural Land Reserve and have to pay for a government-supported pest control program, the Sterile Insect Release program, instead of it being fully government supported, he noted. Despite being tied to the land, farmers also have to pay taxes on irrigation to farm it, and then on packing facilities to pack the fruit, while growers in other countries receive subsidies for such services.

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