Baranyai: Public good questionable when farmland expropriated for industry

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Expropriation is a drastic measure. In acquiring land for public benefit, even when property owners are well compensated, it should be a tool of last resort. When negotiations do break down and governments forge ahead, we expect them to demonstrate their acquisitions are driven by reasonable necessity, and not unreasonable haste.

Municipal authority to expropriate land is granted by the province. People grudgingly abide such power when exercised with restraint. Most folks can understand the necessity of siting a new hospital in a central location, or the commitment to reroute rail lines away from Lac-Megantic.

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It’s a different story when governments threaten to expropriate protected farmland, paving over crops and bulldozing barns not for critical infrastructure or public safety, but to attract industry.

This is the threat facing Wilmot Township, on the outskirts of Kitchener, where the Region of Waterloo is moving to acquire about 312 hectares (770 acres) of prime agricultural farmland to rezone for industrial use. There is no particular buyer waiting in the wings, nor any clue what type of industry might situate itself amid the local cheese makers and rolling farmlands striped with corn and cabbage.

The initiative is a response to Premier Doug Ford’s call for “shovel-ready” land to attract investors, who prize quick building approvals and easy access to services such as water and gas.

In March, several landowners were approached with an offer through a private-sector land consultant. They say they were told if they did not negotiate, their land would be expropriated, and they should not bother planting crops because the deal would be done by August. (It was not.)

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Efforts in Wilmot have proceeded with a singular lack of transparency. The province says it is providing funding but not involved in negotiations. Even Ford’s own ministers have criticized the threat of expropriation so early in discussions.

The Premier has made faster approvals for housing and infrastructure a signature policy initiative, with legislation to build transit faster (ditching expropriation hearings), build more homes (eliminating third-party appeals), and the Get It Done Act, which allows expropriation of land before environmental assessments are completed.

“We are fully aware the province is driving the bus,” says Alfred Lowrick, a retired food executive who now leads the grassroots group Fight for Farmland. In an interview Tuesday, he relayed concerns about the lack of public engagement, and development beyond Countryside Line, contrary to the region’s own Official Plan.

“The Countryside Line is basically our Greenbelt in this area,” he says. “You don’t have encroachment of developers buying these lands for future use.”

Lowrick also questions the basic fairness of purchasing land at dramatically lower agricultural prices for the benefit of a for-profit industry, a difference of hundreds of thousands per hectare. No expropriation notices have been served to date.

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In April, Ford said the province was looking for willing participants. “A lot of smaller towns, like for instance Wilmot, they need money. So what better way than clear some land and create some development?”

Lowrick says town councillors don’t feel they have enough information about potential land use to declare the township an unwilling host. By the time an investor is identified, he worries, it may be too late.

Industry may indeed be good for small towns expecting population growth. However, it’s not clear factories need to sit on prime agricultural farmland for any better reason than the premier is in a hurry.

“The Ford government is going to do what the Ford government does,” Lowrick says with some resignation. “We’re looking at this as ground zero. If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere.”

write.robin@baranyai.ca

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