An industrial land reserve is needed, says Port Metro Vancouver president & CEO Robin Silvester.
"Just as the Agricultural Land Reserve protects B.C. farmland, an industrial land reserve should protect industry and the jobs industry creates," Silvester said at a Delta Chamber of Commerce luncheon last Thursday.
He said industrial land is where good jobs are nurtured and grown. It's also where billions of dollars of goods are housed as they move to and from our shores, generating billions more in tax revenue, he told the audience at the Delta Town & Country Inn.
"Metro Vancouver already has the most expensive industrial land and some of the lowest vacancy rates on the continent. The problem is getting worse, not better."
In the last 30 years, about 3,000 hectares of industrial land have been lost, he said, costing "untold billions" in future economic opportunity.
An industrial land reserve would protect current land and look at ways to create new industrial land, he said.
It would also set out clear rules for everyone to follow, he said.
"I firmly believe now is the time to apply the same principles to industrial land that we apply to agricultural land. There's no time to waste."
Silvester also touched on the $10-million secondary channels dredging project, a collaboration between Port Metro Vancouver, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans,
the B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, Delta and Richmond, currently underway.
The Optimist reported last week the entire budget, which was also supposed to include funds for maintenance dredging in the future, will be used up for the first round of dredging.
After the presentation to the chamber, Silvester told the Optimist that Port Metro Vancouver's contribution was part of a $7-million commitment to secondary channel dredging it made several years ago.
It's pleasing the project is happening and it marks the first time in over a decade those channels will be dredged, he said.
"But there will be some more funding needed and we would expect the other participants to work their way through that because we're contributing, already, $7 million over and above what we're required to do."
