More smoke and mirrors from this government on land protection 🙁
P.E.I.’s program to protect farmland from development a ‘mirage,’ report says
‘It’s a merry-go-round of process.… We’re not accomplishing anything’
by Kerry Campbell
A program meant to protect P.E.I.’s farms, forests and shorelines from being subdivided is “at best, a 10-year (or less) mirage,” according to a report.
The P.E.I. Land Identification Program was introduced in 1995. It allows cabinet to attach a condition to a land sale to a non-resident person or corporation, such that the land in question be put under a non-development agreement. That means the new owner can’t develop the land beyond a single home, business or vacation property, with the rest of the land preserved for agriculture, forestry or recreation.
But in 2015, the provincial government changed the program so that all non-development agreements would automatically expire after 10 years. The change was made retroactive.
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According to the 2013 Horace Carver report on P.E.I.’s Lands Protection Act, as much as 121,400 hectares (300,000 acres) were included in the Land Identification Program as of Dec. 31, 2012.
In his interim review of the Island and Regulatory and Appeals Commission released last month, commissioner Rory Francis calculated a further 61,500 hectares (152,000 acres) were protected from 2016 through to July 2026, with those protections all set to expire by 2036.
That means even without totals from the years not covered in those two reports, more than 182,000 hectares (450,000 acres) — equivalent to about a third of the Island — will have been protected, then have lost that protection by 2036.
In his report, Francis said the Land Identification Program “has created a false impression among Island residents that some degree of land use planning in rural areas has been in place, with emphasis on protection of agricultural land, other resource lands, [and] subdivision control.”
“It’s a merry-go-round of process,” Francis told CBC News. “We’re not accomplishing anything.”
Disappearing farmland
According to Statistics Canada data, P.E.I. lost 12 per cent of its farmland between 2016 and 2021, with an average rate of loss over that period of 39 acres per day.
The P.E.I. Federation of Agriculture has warned the province could lose half its farmland by 2050 without more protection.
Executive director Donald Killorn told CBC News the Land Identification program was never the right tool to preserve P.E.I.’s farm fields.
“I don’t know if that’s how it was initially designed, but it does nothing to change the fact that Prince Edward Island doesn’t have effective land use planning or protection of its resource land,” Killorn said.
The P.E.I. Federation of Agriculture has received ‘no meaningful response from the government’ about progress on a provincewide land use plan, says executive director Donald Killorn.
CBC News asked for an interview with P.E.I. Land Minister Darlene Compton, but she was not made available.
When asked why government continues to allow protected land on P.E.I. to automatically lose protected status, given concerns around the decline in agricultural lands and the lack of protected and public land in the province, the Department of Land and Environment provided a written statement.
The department said it’s responsible for the Lands Protection Act and the Land Identification Program, but the program is administered by the Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission. Thus, the department said it doesn’t have records on how much land has been identified for non-development or been removed from identification.
The department said it remains “focused on protecting the Island’s land for future generations and strengthening policies and tools that support responsible land use and long-term land protection.”
The recommendation to allow non-development agreements to automatically expire was made in Carver’s 2013 report on the Lands Protection Act. It was meant to remain in place “until the provincial government decides how it will address the issue of provincewide land use planning.”
A provincial land use plan still hasn’t been introduced.
A follow-up report in 2021 urged government to “immediately implement” interim regulations to limit subdivision and development in areas without an official plan until a land use plan is in place. Government hasn’t put those measures in place.
‘As far away as it’s ever been’
Last year, Green Party Leader Matt MacFarlane introduced a private member’s bill to protect farmland from subdivision development. The bill passed, but cabinet has yet to set a date for it to come into effect.
MacFarlane said it should never have fallen on IRAC — a regulatory body — to determine what parcels of land should be protected. IRAC makes recommendations under the Land Identification Program, but cabinet has final say on which properties are protected.
“That’s a very discouraging amount of acreage of land that at one point IRAC deemed was sensitive enough to protect that has now fallen out of protection,” MacFarlane said.
“We’ve had 50 years of governments in this province who have failed to do the work necessary to put the land use plan in place that would have the necessary regulatory protection.”
Heritage cattle graze on green pastures of a family farm in Belmont, PEI.
Calls for a provincewide land use plan go back to the 1973 report of the Royal Commission on Land Ownership and Land Use. (Shane Hennessey/CBC)
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Up to 90 per cent of P.E.I.’s land has no applicable land use plan. Most of that area is under provincial jurisdiction, with no municipal council.
Calls for a provincewide land use plan go back to the 1973 report of the Royal Commission on Land Ownership and Land Use.
In 2023, the Progressive Conservatives said they were beginning the process and would have a land use plan ready by the end of 2026.
CBC News asked the province whether the plan would be ready this year and didn’t receive an answer.
Killorn said the P.E.I. Federation of Agriculture has received “no meaningful response from the government” on progress.
“Actually getting that plan over the finish line feels as far away as it’s ever been,” he said.
