Farmers pressure Doug Ford government to reverse course on housing plan

Under pressure from farmers, Premier Doug Ford's government is considering backing off from proposals that would allow more housing to be built on Ontario's dwindling farmland, CBC News has learned.

Leaders of a range of farming and agricultural groups met with senior government officials last week to raise their concerns about proposed changes to provincial land-use policy that Ford and his ministers have said will spur new home construction.

The contentious proposals are part of the government's overhaul of Ontario's land-use guidelines, floated last month by Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Steve Clark.At the time, Clark called his plan "housing-focused" and said it would create more homes in both urban and rural communities.

On Monday, Clark told the Ontario Federation of Agriculture in a letter obtained by CBC News that he "clearly heard the concerns" and promised "to look at alternatives" to the changes he'd proposed.

Farmers say the proposals as they currently stand have the potential to lead to hundreds of thousands of homes on prime farmland.

"That is an awful lot of urban people moving to the countryside and having to deal with the issues of farming that they're not used to," said Mark Reusser, a turkey farmer in Wilmot Township, less than a 10-minute drive from the western edge of Kitchener.

Reusser says farmers are concerned that putting more homes on and adjacent to farms would lead to conflict with new non-farming residents over the odour, dust and noise that comes with raising livestock or growing crops.

"Agriculture works better when it is somewhat distanced from people, especially people who are from an urban setting originally and who are not used to those things," Reusser said in an interview on his farm.

"We're also concerned that (building housing) is probably not the best use of farmland," he said. "It will never be farmland again once there's a house on it."

Concerns homes won't stay in farming families

The most contentious change would allow the owners of agricultural land to carve out up to three housing lots on each farm parcel, a policy known as severance.

Ford and Clark indicated their intent is to make it easier for farmers to build homes for their adult children on their land.

"The number one complaint that I get when I go to the farms is, 'I want my kids to stay on the farm,' and there are certain jurisdictions that won't allow you to build an additional residence," Ford told the legislature on Monday.

"It has never been our intention for severed lots to be transferred or sold to non-family/farm owners," Clark said in his letter Monday. "Any ambiguity regarding our intentions will be clarified, eliminated and resolved."

People in the agriculture sector say the trouble with the policy as proposed is there's no way to ensure such homes stay in the farming family. They also say it would have the ripple effects of pushing up the market value of farmland, enticing more farmers to sell off housing lots to profitand shrinking the amount of land available for agriculture.

"I don't think it's a really smart plan," said Zac Cohoon, who grows corn, soybean and wheat on his family farm near Port Perry in Durham Region.

"It doesn't make a lot of sense to me when we have urban centres that are well serviced, that can handle public transit, sewage disposal and water to move [housing] into a rural area," Cohoon said in an interview.

Cohoon says current planning policies are already "destroying some of the best farmland in Ontario and Canada for housing."

Putting more homes in agricultural areas would put pressure on farm ecology because of new wells and septic systems, he says.

Quarter of Ontario's farmland could be gone in 25 years

Ontario lost more than 580,000 acres of farmland in the five year period from 2016 to 2021, according to Statistics Canada. If that pace continues, 25 per cent of the province's existing farmland will be gone in 25 years.

Cohoon says a far better solution is to put housing on marginal land near cities, closer to the services that can handle an increase in population.

"Moving into agricultural land with [housing] lots doesn't solve the problem. All it does is spread it out," he said.

The Ford government has set a target for 1.5 million new homes to be built in Ontario by 2032. The proposals that have drawn the ire of farmers are currently out for public feedback. On Monday, Clark said he will extend the consultation period, which was due to end next week, until early August.

The proposals prompted an uncommon show of unity from the major farming organizations in the province. The associations representing beef, chicken, dairy, egg, pork, sheep, turkey and veal producers joined with the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario and the National Farmers Union in condemning the planned changes to land-use policy.

"We do not support policies that will increase residential lot creation in prime agricultural areas or in rural areas that are actively farmed," said their joint statement, issued on May 19.

"Ontario boasts some of Canada's richest and most fertile farmland and these policy changes put the sustainability of that land and the food system it provides at great risk."

While that statement came from the organizations representing farmers, individual farmers like Cohoon and Reusser wanted to speak out too.

"Farmers, like everyone, recognize that there's a need to find places for people to live," said Reusser. "It shouldn't be on farmland, it should be somewhere else. The ability of a country to feed itself is incredibly important."

Still, Reusser says he's encouraged by the signs that the Ford government is willing to reconsider its plan.

"I'm looking forward to working with the government and finding a way to accommodate a place for people to live and protect the business of agriculture at the same time," he said. "I think that's a doable thing."