[All] Foreign owned Land Banking and the need to protect Canada's farms and water.

[Louisette Lanteigne]

Hi folks.
I shared this email with federal MP's MPP's and premiers from all provinces and territories . Figured I'd pass it to GREN for their info too. The concerns are framed around local observations regarding quarry pits and foreign land acquisitions in the Grand River Watershed and how they relate to the need to protect A1 farmlands and water supplies to protect Provincial and National interests. 
I figured if  the PM won't speak with all the provinces willingly there's nothing stopping me from doing so.
Lulu :0)
_______________________________________________________
Dear Premier
I'd like to raise concerns about land banking schemes in Canada and the need to protect A1 Farmlands and watershed from unsustainable land uses. 
I live in Ontario and we are seeing prime A1 farmlands and water supplies being dug up for quarry pits or paved over by urban sprawl or bought up for unsustainable use by foreign land banking schemes. Farmlands only make up for 5.6% of Ontario's land base yet they generate direct employment of 31,500, an additional 127,000 for food processing and grossed $50 billion. More money than our automotive sectors which grossed $43.6 billion. This is based on 2010 Provincial values. 
Ontario Federation of Agriculture President Mark Wales stated "Canada will be one of only 6 nations able to be a net exporter of food." This is mainly to climate change and global population expansion issues. Our nation is blessed with farmlands and the water to support them. We can't afford to destroy these globally limited resources for short term aggregate schemes or urban sprawl. These industries are the backbone of our future economy and vital to protect to assure Canada's food and water security. 
Currently in Ontario we have multi-national firms buying up massive tracts of farmlands for quarries, dumps, development and land banking schemes.that place our long term agricultural prosperity and water supplies at risk. Here are three quick examples all within my own Grand River Watershed area in southwestern Ontario. 
1. Seth Klarman's Baupost Group in Boston purchasing the lands for the Melancthon Mega Quarry that would have destroyed 937 hectares, basically one third the size of downtown Toronto. The crater planned would have been 1.5  times as deep as Niagara Falls. This was in the headwaters of 5 different watersheds (including the Grand River) over top some of the most productive farmlands in Canada.  Due to overwhelming public opposition this project was stopped. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/mega-quarry-in-southern-ontario-won-t-be-built-1.1187522 2. In Oxford County, Calgary based Walker Industries wants to build Canada's forth largest mega dump below the water table putting farmlands and local water supplies at risk. http://www.woodstocksentinelreview.com/2013/02/07/peer-review-panel-appointed-to-watch-guard-walker-environmental-assessment 3. In Brant County, Walton International Group  (linked to investors from Singapore) has already purchased 4,400 acres of prime farmland for unknown reasons.http://www.brantnews.com/news/brant-residents-voice-concerns-over-development
In an article published by Watershed Sentenial it states the following:
-Professor A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi, Chair of the Department of International Development Studies at Trent University and author of Hungry for Change: Farmers, Food Justice and the Agraian Question, told the Watershed Sentinel, that access to water is a motivating factor in these land grabs. “Around the world a lot of land grabbing is actually about gaining control of water, which is far more scarce than land; without water, you cannot farm, and a lot of land grabbers are from water scarce countries. This has been acknowledged by the head of Nestle.” 

-Currently  Ontario, British Columbia and other, smaller Canadian provinces have no restrictions on foreign ownership of farmland. An unnamed investor with a US management company already acquired almost four per cent of Nova Scotia’s land mass. 

-Land grabs in Canada have not been well-documented. Provinces do not keep inventory on large-scale land acquisitions. This blind eye approach has some people, particularly farmers, worried.

-The prairie provinces, though, keep individual foreign investors from owning any more than 10 to 40 acres. In Saskatchewan, where restrictions are the toughest, land is seen as a natural resource that should not be controlled by outsiders, said Mark Folk, general manager of the provincial Farm Land Security Board. 
-Fueling the farmland price pressure are large real estate investment syndicates, such as Calgary-based Prairie Merchant, controlled by former Dragon Den multi-millionaire Brett Wilson. “I see Saskatchewan farmland as a long-term hold,” Wilson told Western Investor, “with a limited supply of good, arable farmland and ever-increasing demand for food on a global basis.” 

-Edward Sagan is a third generation Saskatchewan farmer and the Saskatchewan Regional Coordinator of the National Farmers Union. Over the years he has watched as farmland prices rose and farmland was bought and leased back to farmers, which he compares to  “the return to serfdom.”

-There are also speculations that buying Canadian farmland may be a smokescreen for access to fields of potash, oil and gas.

-Oxfam states that at least 15 Canadian companies have acquired agricultural or forest land in developing nations since 2000, including the Alberta Investment Management Corporation and the Quebec Pension Plan. A statement signed by over 60 environmental, development and farming groups call for pension funds and other financial institutions to stop land grabbing. Pension funds are reported to be the largest institutional “investors” in farmland worldwide and many pension contributors are not happy about how their savings are invested.
To view the complete article visit here: http://www.watershedsentinel.ca/content/land-grabs-canadian-connection#sthash.HWxSP5Ge.dpuf
I would like to request that we proceed in securing both a National Water Strategy as well as a National Farming Strategy to secure long term protection of these key resources.
The points I would like to raise in regards to these issues includes the following: 
- Laws to protect water can vary dramatically between communities from one end of a river to the next. Often times one community's actions or failure to act upstream can create serious risks for the folks downstream so we need to standardize protective policies watershed wide.
-Currently in Ontario, our Source Water Act protects municipal well heads and intake areas but fails to protect natural primary recharge areas. There's not much good in protecting the well or river if it goes dry so we need to protect infiltration zones to assure local water supplies for generations to come.  
- Provinces are the promoter, regulator and largest user of aggregate materials. That is a conflict of interest. Can't we at least secure an independent environmental enforcement agency?
-In Ontario old quarry pit applications can create significant risks in areas they would never be permitted in today but there is no expiration dates on these permissions. Some pit operators never extract the last bits of gravel simply to avoid restoration costs. Permits need a deadline by which restoration is mandatory. We also need policy tools to cancel old permits for undeveloped quarries where they post an obvious risk to existing municipal water supplies, A1 farmlands and other significant areas such as the critical habitat of endangered species.   
-We need to have regard for cumulative impacts of multiple aggregate projects in a given area to avoid air quality issues and to protect the integrity of watersheds, water supplies and farmland. Currently in Ontario, there are no limits to how many quarries can be in a given area. Communities like North Dumfries in Waterloo Region have 80 pits and counting. 
New data shows exposure to diesel exhaust for 2 hours can harm the human body. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/diesel-exhaust-a-danger-after-2-hours-indicates-ubc-study-1.2893849   What are the cumulative health impacts of 80 quarry pits generating air born silica and related diesel fumes in a small demographic area?
 According to data from the Ontario Medical Association's local premature smog deaths in 2008, we had 348 deaths in Waterloo Region linked to smog. The number of pits and related diesel fumes might have something to do with that. Is it possible to put restrictions on quarry activities to protect the public during high smog alerts? https://www.oma.org/HealthPromotion/Smog/Pages/default.aspx
-We need to facilitate dialogue between farmers and investors to explore international investment opportunities in a manner that will secure the ongoing function of A1 farmlands and watersheds in an environmentally sustainable and mutually beneficial manner. We need to create that vision with farmers not just real estate or investment speculators. 
-We need a national inventory of large scale land acquisitions by foreign companies and put a moratorium on further purchases of this nature until we have a National strategy or criteria in place to reasonably analyse the consequences of such foreign ventures on Canadian soil. Is this in the National interest? How does this impact farm real estate prices?  Will it make farmland acquisition unaffordable for future generations of Canadian farmers? For what function are these acquisitions being made and how will that impact our nation's economy? What are the impacts for municipalities involved? We need to review these issues before allowing this otherwise we could be creating significant national security risks. 
In 2007, the Region of Waterloo created a ground-breaking policy and planning framework to protect more than 15,000 hectares of Environmentally Sensitive Lands (ESLs) The Regional Official Plan has special policies for ESLs to make sure the land uses and activities in these areas won't damage the environment. The policies help preserve the unique rural features of these areas by limiting the type and amount of development that is allowed. Stewardship is encouraged by recognition programs, tax and fiscal incentives. The system functions similar to the Ontario Greenbelt Act however, but it is a non provincial legislation, so these sensitive areas are still vulnerable to quarry pits because the Provincial Ministry of Natural Resources does not recognize local policy as a restriction to quarry pits. If we craft new policy to have ESLs provincially recognized this could enable local governments to have the ability to define quarry pit free zones where risks are reasonably identified. Either way it's a good tool that we need to develop to give local governments the right to protect the public and key environmental features, including A1 farmlands, for the long term. 
For more information on the ESL policy visit here: http://www.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/abouttheenvironment/environmentallysensitivelandscapesesls.asp   
Thank you kindly for your time.
Louisette Lanteigne700 Star Flower Ave.Waterloo Ont.N2V 2L2
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://gren.ca/pipermail/all_gren.ca/attachments/20150109/b9e98a07/attachment.html>