Ontario abandons proposal to sever farmland lots in response to farmer opposition

Ontario has backed off a housing proposal that farmers say would have had a “catastrophic” impression on farmland and livestock operations.

Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark proposed a collection of rules alongside with a invoice that will permit for extra housing to be constructed past city boundaries and in rural areas.

But farmers expressed issues a few proposed transfer to permit as much as three new heaps on parcels of farmland, saying it might hamper progress of livestock farming, fragment the agricultural land base, and danger inflating farmland costs, shutting out potential new farmers.

More than a dozen teams together with the National Farmers Union — Ontario, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, the Beef Farmers of Ontario and the Dairy Farmers of Ontario issued a joint letter urging the federal government to desert the proposal.

Clark has now instructed farmers in a letter that he has heard their issues, and the federal government won’t be shifting ahead on the lot severance proposal.

The authorities initially steered the severances as a strategy to assist multigenerational farm households, however Clark says he’s now extending the general public remark interval for the opposite rules, to present him extra time to contemplate alternative routes to do this.

This report by The Canadian Press was first printed May 30, 2023.