B.C.’s Agricultural Land Commission should have to undergo a full review of its board compensation before it starts laying off staff due to budget pressures, according to the Opposition B.C. Conservatives.
The call comes as ALC chair Jen Dyson announced terminations to the tribunal’s 42 full time staff this week after failing to get an increase to its $5.5 million annual budget.
“We don’t have any fat, we have no vacancies and we have an insane workload that never ends,” Dyson told the CBC.
And yet, a comparison of board compensation shows Dyson to be unusually highly paid for what is classified as a part-time role at a small-scale tribunal.
She has earned an average of almost $92,240 annually over the last seven years in the role — higher than the board chairs of BC Hydro, ICBC and Powerex, whose organizations are orders of magnitude larger than the ALC and deal with thousands of employees and billions of dollars in investments.
“It’s strange to hear there’s no fat to cut from a part-time chair who’s taking home more than the chairs of much larger crown entities,” said Opposition critic Gavin Dew.
“It’s time for a serious review of the ALC – starting with the chair’s meeting fees, continuing with the red tape and delays they’re imposing on farmers due in part to chronic short staffing, and finishing up with how they’ve managed to drag their heels for years on processing reforms.”
Mayor warns against staff cuts
Mayors and farmers are warning against cuts to ALC staff, because it could mean less enforcement against farms breaking the rules and longer wait times for farm land decisions. The commission oversees B.C.’s protected farmland under the Agricultural Land Reserve, and any development or major alteration of farms requires its approval.
“The challenge being that the ALC needs proper funding to ensure that the ALR doesn’t become stagnant, doesn’t become: you can’t get a permit,” Township of Langley mayor Eric Woodward told CKNW this week.
“You have to wait such a long time for something as simple as maybe building a barn to actually farm, and so it’s really concerning to me that we continue to create these regulations and regimes and mandates from the provincial government, but then don’t resource their ability to perform their responsibilities, and in the end, that tends to mean that local government has to end up paying for it.”
ALC board expenses exceed those of bigger agencies
Dyson claimed $89,265.66 in 2024-25, according to the most recent available ALC figures. She is a water buffalo dairy farmer from the Alberni Valley, in addition to the part time ALC role.
Catherine Roome, the chair of Powerex, billed $80,894 during the same year. Powerex, the power-trading subsidiary of BC Hydro, has more than six times the number of employees as the ALC, and generated 27 times more revenue that year than the entire budget of the ALC.
ICBC board chair Catherine Holt billed $53,871 that year to oversee a Crown corporation with more than 5,000 employees and a $1 billion annual budget.
BC Hydro chair Glen Clark billed $29,930 to oversee a vastly larger agency than the ALC — though he was appointed mid-year. A better comparator would be $74,999 for departing chair Lori Wanamaker. BC Hydro has more than 8,000 employees and a 10-year capital plan for the board to approve that is more than $36 billion.
In her letter warning of staff cuts, Dyson wrote that: “Over the past year, the Commission implemented extensive cost-containment measures, including significant reduction to Commissioner expenses, staff travel, office supplies, and general project and meeting expenditures.
“Despite these efforts, salary and benefit costs now exceed available funding, leaving staffing reductions as the only remaining option to ensure fiscal compliance.”
Twenty commissioners billed $341,558 in meeting fees at the ALC in 2024-25.
ALC commissioners bill at a rate of remuneration of between $450 and $725 per day.
Agricultural ministry says ALC chair could be paid more
Agriculture Minister Lana Popham is facing calls to examine the budget of the office and how it is spent. The freeze on the ALC comes as part of widespread cuts to internal government spending as part of a provincial budget with a forecasted record deficit of $13.3 billion.
Yet Popham’s ministry said it has no concerns about Dyson’s compensation — in fact, it pointed to rules that said she or future ALC chairs could be paid even more if they wanted, up to $880 per day, and are entitled to higher pay than chairs of larger Crown corporations.
The government pointed to treasury board guidelines that say if Dyson was a full-time chair of the ALC, she could be eligible for up to $196,140 in maximum compensation.
“The daily rate of $725 shown in the public disclosure for the Chair is within the approved range,” the ministry said in a statement. “The ALC is not comparable to BC Hydro as the ALC is an independent tribunal, and BC Hydro is a crown corporation.”