Quebec’s general farm organization is calling for a freeze on any rezoning of agricultural land in the greater Montreal and Quebec City areas until they draft new metropolitan development plans.
Speaking last Thursday to the province’s land planning commission, Christian Lacasse, president of the Union des producteurs agricoles (UPA), said it was out of the question to rezone any more farmland for urban or suburban development in the province’s biggest cities to make up for what he called their lack of planning.
The UPA said in a release that Bill 170, adopted in late 2000, required Montreal, Quebec City and the Outaouais region (Hull, Gatineau, Aylmer) to adopt metropolitan development plans.
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But those jurisdictions all missed their December 2005 deadlines, UPA said, leading to “anarchic” development and urban sprawl, costing the province thousands of acres of ag-zoned farmland.
The farm group said that in 2007-08 and 2008-09, in the greater Montreal area alone, about 2,040 acres were lost to exemptions and new or expanded zonings of what it called “exceptional” farmland.
Meanwhile, UPA said, almost 52,000 non-agricultural acres within the metropolitan area were considered abandoned or unused.
About 2,500 acres of farmland in the greater Quebec City area were lost in the same way in the same time frame, UPA said.
The group recommended a stronger focus on higher-density urban land use and infill development where possible.
Lacasse, a dairyman from St-Vallier, urged that a freeze on dezoning of farmland continue for as long as the cities in question continue operating without a sustainable, coherent and binding development plan.
Otherwise, he said, another 10 years will pass and the residents of the province will find themselves with dozens more shopping centres and down thousands of acres of farmland.
