Prince Edward County has sent a recommendation to support provincial Bill 21 back to the Agricultural Advisory Committee.
Council discussed the recommendation during Monday’s council meeting.
Bill 21 “Protect Our Food Act 2025” is an effort to protect farmland by preventing agricultural zoned land being rezoned to non-agricultural uses without an agricultural impact assessment to be carried out.
The recommendation from the advisory committee claimed that Prince Edward County was losing 3,000 acres of farmland every year, which multiple councillors called into question. Councillor Phil St-Jean was one of them, and said if that was true, it would be equal to losing over 1% of the county’s total land every year.
“When I saw the 3000 acres, I went, whoa, that’s near to impossible. So I do believe that, well, at the very least, this needs to go back, verify those numbers,” said Councillor St-Jean.
Councillor John Hirsch said that this act would add more bureaucracy for people without adding more protection for the county’s farms.
“In 2021 we put into place an official plan which has very strong protections for farmland,” said Councillor Hirsch. “Developers wanting to buy 100 acres of farmland, turned into development, that will not happen in the county under our official plan. It cannot happen.”
After some debate, council voted to send the recommendation back to the Agricultural Advisory Committee to verify the claims of how much agricultural land the county is losing.
