BC’s New Agriculture Minister Pam Alexis

By Gary Symons

BC now has a new Minister of Agriculture and Food, as Pam Alexis was appointed to the cabinet post on Dec. 7, 2022.

Alexis replaces long-time Ag Minister Lana Popham, and has been charged by BC’s new premier David Eby with achieving food security for the province. Popham is now the Minister of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport. “Food security – where we get our food, and how much it costs – is front of mind for all British Columbians,” said Eby in his appointment letter to Alexis. “Climate change, supply chain issues, and policy changes in places far from BC can impact our food supply and costs here at home.

“As Minister, your job will be to support farmers, ranchers, and seafood producers in the critical work they do for all of us, to ensure food security for British Columbians by establishing policies to use our agricultural land wisely, increase production, and add processing capacity,” Eby added. “Your role also involves building on our strong export sector by promoting the clean, safe, high-quality food produced in BC, creating jobs and growing our economy sustainably while supporting our communities and our neighbours.”

Alexis comes to the role as a former city councillor and mayor for the city of Mission, where she worked extensively with the region’s large community of farmers.

Alexis was also involved in the provincial response to the devastating flooding in the Fraser Valley due to the atmospheric river in 2021. For that reason, providing more support to farmers has become the new cabinet minister’s first priority.

Orchard & Vine got a chance to get to know Alexis better, as we conducted our first annual interview with the Minister of Agriculture and Food just weeks after her appointment.

O&V: What are your top priorities as minister?

Pam Alexis: Well, I suppose food security is top of mind, and I come at it because, as we’ve talked about emergencies before, we’ve lived through a few and my experience through the atmospheric river, and be - ing immersed in, of course, the issues that the farmers faced, certainly were extremely impactful.

I think at that time, BC also looked at the atmospheric river as what then Premier Horgan said, that climate change was on our doorstep. For a lot of folks, access to food was top of mind and as mayor, I can tell you that we went through that exercise in a big way, in the beginning of COVID, where, you know, we saw the stores being emptied, and it was that whole nervousness began about access to food, and then having that access cut off from the rest of Canada I think people at that point really questioned, ‘okay, what are we doing to protect our food, so that we can feed our communities?’

To me, that was highly impactful, and it certainly figures front and center in my mandate letter from the premier that food secu- rity is a top priority for our government. For food security, it means of course that I’ll be working closely with the new minister, Bowinn Ma, who’s the new Minister of Climate Change and Emergency Preparedness.

(Editor’s Note: That cabinet post is a new position created by the New Democrat government in response to the 2021 floods, the catastrophic heat dome earlier that year, and successive years of disastrous wildfires)

We’ll be looking at initiatives and certainly issues that impact the farmer because also in the mandate letter it says I’m not only to support farmers in what they’re doing now, but we have an expectation that we want to produce more, we want to produce certainly more locally, and increased exports are even in the mix with that too.

So that’s clear in my mandate, but that food security umbrella certainly encompasses so much. I think that’s where BC is going and where they want the emphasis, so it’s really important to me.

O&V: Speaking of climate change and emergency preparedness, is there anything happening specifically with the Sumas Prairie region to prevent that kind of thing from happening again, such as improving the current pumps and levees?

Pam Alexis: Certainly, the City of Abbotsford has submitted their priorities to the province, and outside of those priorities and the listing of the dikes that need to be addressed are the funds that will be necessary to upgrade the Barrowtown pump station.

(Editor’s Note: During the 2021 flood, the flood waters came very close to inundating the Barrowtown pump station, which would have caused even more catastrophic flooding. The disaster was averted when hundreds of volunteers showed up to sandbag the area, preventing a massive breach of the levees.)

So all of that is in the works as far as what will be tackled first, and it’s really the only way to ensure that doesn’t happen again.

And you know, it was just a miracle, to be honest, that those pumps stayed operating, and it was because of those 300 volunteers that put those sandbags in place that night to ensure that those pumps could keep going and that was it.

That was the scariest night of all for me and it was just horrific to go through that. One thing I believe is that the atmospheric river proved it to be true that farmers will always help other farmers, and even farmers who had lost everything, were still helping other farmers. And it was those stories that would make me cry because I just thought, you know, given you have nothing left and you’re still giving.

O&V: I wanted to ask about the status on The Path Forward project, the Blueprint for the BC Tree Fruit Industry. I talked to your predecessor quite a lot about that over the years. I know a lot of the changes have happened, but what is the overall status of that project?

Pam Alexis: So the stabilization plan, it has been produced and it does list a number of recommendations. And I will be working with Peter Simonsen, the head of the (BC Fruit Growers Association) to go through those recommendations.

I’ve already met with Peter once, and I’m in the process of meeting everybody for a one-on-one kind of thing for the first time. I have pledged, of course, to work with Peter and go through those recommendations, so that’s where we are but in addition, or as part of the plan, we recently announced a $2.5 million funding announcement. I don’t know if you saw this announcement in November to support four strategic areas crop health, fruit production, Apple marketing, and skills training. So that’s in addition to the recommendations that are part of the plan.”

O&V: Do you have anything specific for the apple growers going forward, who seem to be the ones suffering the most at the moment among the tree fruit farming community?

Pam Alexis: I’d have to defer that question until I sit with Peter a second time and go through those recommendations to see where we need to work a little bit differently perhaps, but I’m here to support the sector 100 per cent, and it’s not just the apple growers that are faced with succession issues. I talk to a lot of farmers whose kids are just not interested. And it’s a problem. And I totally get that but you know, I think what I am optimistic about is that I am meeting young farmers who may not have the family history and you know, that plan of following the path of you taking over the farm as a family member, but that they’re interested in and willing to start this business. So I am cheered by that for sure.

There are a lot of young people out there that really want to do this, and I feel that’s great, but you know, I was talking to this woman who’s got 700 acres in Deroche (near Mission) and she’s a dairy farmer. She has had her two brothers and herself that run it and so she said, my kids just look at me and say ‘No way, don’t even think about asking me because I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to do what you do’.”

O&V: We’ve had ongoing labor shortages, some of which were caused by COVID and the related travel issues, of course, but are there going to be any changes or improvements to the SAWP program? Are you looking at that area to improve the seasonal worker supply?

Pam Alexis: Certainly, we have had a number of applications come forward to the province to actually allow those seasonal workers to come in and we have prioritized those applications because we’ve got a bit of a backlog right now. Right now we have no changes to announce at this second but moving forward, maybe ask the question again in six months or so,

I don’t know if there’s changes coming. It’s possible but I just know that we are dealing with the backlog of applications right now, and certainly addressing those is a priority for us for sure to make sure farmers have the workers they need this year.