P.E.I. legislative committee subpoenas 2018 land report as IRAC urges MLAs to reconsider
Report’s release could undermine current land holdings investigation, says regulator
by Ryan McKellop
A long sought-after 2018 land report from the Island Regulatory Appeals Commission IRAC may soon be in the hands of politicians after a legislative standing committee issued a subpoena for the document.
The IRAC report into land holdings on Prince Edward Island, including those of Buddist groups in eastern P.E.I., was never released by the regulatory body.
There has been some controversy about those holdings in recent years, with some groups saying the Buddist groups own more land than what’s allowed under P.E.I.’s Lands Protection Act.
Some MLAs believe those rumours could be cleared up with the release of the IRAC report.
Georgetown-Pownal MLA Steven Myers has asked for the report to be released in the past. Earlier this year, he instructed IRAC to conduct a new investigation into the Buddhist group’s land holdings.
“I can’t really grasp how it all came about, but it stopped abruptly,” Myers told CBC News: Compass host Louise Martin on Thursday of the 2018 report.
“To my knowledge I’m not sure that there’s a report, and I think the government of the day may have been the ones to end it — which wasn’t us, it was the previous government.”
If IRAC hands over the 2018 report to the standing committee, it will go to politicians in private. The MLAs will then decide if it should be released in full to the public, or if some parts need to be redacted.
Green Party Leader Matt MacFarlane said he wants to see the full document.
“An investigation was done, apparently a report was issued. If it was done, let’s just have the report. We’re elected representatives,” he said.
“We’re elected to represent our constituents across Prince Edward Island, we need to see the report to determine if laws were broken and, if so, what we can do to fix them.”
A man in a black suit, a brick wall is behind him.
P.E.I. Green Party Leader Matt MacFarlane says IRAC’s offer to provide the committee with an in-camera briefing was denied because the MLAs would not be allowed to speak publicly about the information gathered during a closed-door meeting. (Cody MacKay/CBC)
IRAC has warned against releasing the report. It said doing so could undermine its current investigation in to the Buddhist groups’ land holdings — an investigation Myers ordered earlier this year in his capacity as land minister.
MacFarlane said he doesn’t buy IRAC’s explanation.
“Whenever you have an investigation into whether our laws have been breached, broken, violated or otherwise… and you’ve got public dollars being spent on that investigation, I think it does a real disservice to Islanders…. To have those results kept under wraps,” he said.
