Farm owner fumes after business ruled illegal
A Delta farmland owner will have to sell his 16.5- hectare property after the B. C. Supreme Court ruled he could no longer use it as a storage lot for hundreds of vehicles.
“What a bunch of bullshit,” Bob Robertson told The Vancouver Sun on Friday. “Everyone else is doing it, too.” The Agricultural Land Commission and Delta municipality went to B. C. Supreme Court after Robertson continued to commercially store others’ vehicles — a non- farm use — on his property.
Justice Deborah Kloegman ordered a prohibition on the storage of “vehicles, boats, recreational vehicles, trailers and any other non- farm- related property” not owned by Robertson or authorized by the land commission.
Robertson, 60, said he got out of the cattle business on his Ladner property 14 years ago because he couldn’t make any money, and shifted to the more lucrative vehicle- storage business.
“There’s no money in cattle. That’s why I went into storage. … They’re all upset that I’m making money.”
A prominent green building on the property reads: R. Robertson Cattle Company Limited.
Robertson said he grossed about $ 330,000 last year based on the income from storing 360 vehicles on his property on a six- to- 12- month basis.
“It’s a big business,” he said, arguing his success prompted the enforcement action. “What prompted the action is just pure envy of the money.”
Robertson said he has already removed the vehicles well ahead of the Sept. 1 deadline imposed by the court order. Now he is selling the property on his own, complete with two houses and 64,000 square feet of buildings, for an asking price of $ 4.8 million.
“I’m selling because they won’t let me fill my barns up,” he said, arguing he never placed any of the stored vehicles on soil used for crop production.
Thomas Loo, the land commission’s compliance and enforcement officer, explained from his Burnaby office that court action was initiated only as a last resort after a “lengthy investigation and effort” that included a stop- work order that Robertson ignored.
Loo said no monetary penalty has been issued.