Prince Edward Island farmers won’t be getting the land ownership increases they were looking for after a report on the Lands Protection Act recommended keeping the limits the same.
That was one of 29 recommendations Lands Protection Act commissioner Horace Carver made in his report he released Thursday, which came almost a year after his appointment last November.
After releasing the report Thursday, Carver said he has heard from various members of government that they plan to follow through on many of those recommendations.
“I believe that this report will turn out to be the law of the land within a relatively short period of time,” he said.
Carver’s mandate was broad as the terms of reference for the review included looking at the adequacy of the existing land ownership limits, options for reducing red tape and any other matters he deemed appropriate.
Under the current legislation, which was introduced in 1982, individual Islanders can own up to 1,000 acres of land while corporations can own up to 3,000 acres.
Although Carver recommended keeping the limit the same, he suggested applying that only to arable land suitable for farming, up to a certain amount.
The Lands Protection Act also includes a section that deals with double-counting, which involves land leasing that counts toward total land holdings.
Carver recommended removing that section so anyone leasing out land to someone else would not have that acreage count toward their holdings, up to a certain limit.
As for whether that will be enough to help farmers who called for higher land ownership limits, Carver said that’s not for him to decide.
“It’s far better than before the report was issued because we’ve heard the government say they’re going to support that,” he said.
Carver said people in rural P.E.I. need to have a sense of togetherness and community, but too much of that has disappeared.
He illustrated his concerns in the report with two separate maps that showed non-residents owned 48 per cent of a large portion of the coastline in part of western P.E.I.
Non-residents owned 45 per cent of the coastline in the example he used of a large section in the eastern part of the province.
“If the people who own the land don’t live there and exist there, guess what, the sense of community is gone,” he said.
Carver also addressed the issue of land grabbing and recommended the government monitor purchases and sales involving large tracts of farmland by people who aren’t farmers and restrict future transactions if deemed necessary.
That would help keep agricultural land in production and keep ownership in the hands of Islanders or people who want to become residents.
To help protect land, Carver recommended setting up a farmland bank that could be sold or leased back to farmers in order to keep it in agricultural production.
He also recommended the creation of an Island Viewscape Trust to buy and preserve land in P.E.I.
Carver said one of P.E.I.’s best features is its scenery and if that’s not protected there will come a day when someone with “bags of money” will buy that land.
“Never will we get that back,” he said.
Along with land ownership issues, there were also several recommendations related to reducing red tape, including dealings with the Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission.
Premier Robert Ghiz, who commissioned the review, said he planned to introduce legislation in the spring to follow up on some of Carver’s recommendations.
“The first ones we’re gonna do are gonna be around land limits in the province and we’re going to deal with some of the red tape,” he said.
Ghiz said some of the recommendations that have financial implications might not happen right away, but his government will consider them in the future.
When contacted Thursday, Alvin Keenan, president of the P.E.I. Federation of Agriculture, said his group hadn’t had a chance to review Carver’s report, but he thought the recommendations dealing with non-arable land, double counting and red tape reduction were good ones.
The federation had been asking for a review of the Lands Protection Act, which is what happened, Keenan said.
“I hope the outcome that comes from that is positive.”
The full report can be found at www.gov.pe.ca/lpa
