We can no longer count the disastrous examples of protected heritage buildings abandoned to their fate until they fall into ruin. Thanks to the national consultation on the protection of agricultural land, we are discovering these days that the fate of our protected arable land is hardly more enviable. To the point that it is relevant to ask what state protection is worth against ordinary evils such as greed, customary pragmatism or resigned disengagement.
There’s nothing like an image to force you to open your eyes. In 25 years, the government has knowingly diverted from their primary vocation the equivalent of 1,800 football fields (more than 1,100 hectares) of arable land, we read on Monday in The duty. These were torn from the collective heritage despite contrary opinions from the Commission for the Protection of Agricultural Territory of Quebec (CPTAQ). In terms of government example, we will come back.
Taken in isolation, these punctures may appear benign. But you should know that our territory with its thousand riches nonetheless remains fragile on an agricultural level. The cultivable area only accounts for 4.7% of all the kilometers that pass at our feet. And again, this portion does not exceed 2% if we stick strictly to the cultivated or pastured portion. Worse, among these soils, less than a third has strong potential for all types of crops. This makes a nice little pantry.
While climate change threatens food balances everywhere on the planet, this carelessness with regard to our cultivable heritage seems ill-advised. Even more so when we know that the CPTAQ itself has often had a light hand when it comes to “rezoning” protected areas. Our watchdog received and processed no less than 38,000 requests in this regard between 1998 and 2022; he gave his blessing to three quarters. Another enlightening figure: between 2006 and 2021, 63,000 hectares of land ceased to be cultivated, which is more than the size of the island of Montreal.
These are the figures that we must keep in mind when we are told that, on paper, the total protected agricultural area has changed little. This is true, but this area has also in fact become impoverished, in particular due to a legislative modification of 2021 which allows plots of land to be nibbled away to compensate them financially or replace them elsewhere. The inclusions made over the years have mainly been made for lower quality soils. The best agricultural lands have melted away.
This is not how we will be able to face the next food chapters which will be written in the context of global warming. To do this, we must stop seeing our agricultural areas as something outside of us. It is indeed a collective heritage. However, the scarcity of this land, coupled with the appetites of municipalities and developers while the housing crisis is raging, calls for more than a revision of the Act respecting the protection of land and agricultural activities.
What it also needs are better barriers, like those of the green belt which is the pride of Torontonians. The Ford government learned this the hard way. Trying to blow up one, even a small one, is expensive. So expensive, in fact, that Doug Ford retreated, not before seeing ministers’ heads roll.
These barriers are all the more essential as agricultural land, once sold, never comes back. Even when we took the trouble to attach everything in this direction, apparently. The example of the repurchase of Rabaska lands is obvious. Here, it is the collective memory which seems to have been lacking. As The duty timely reminded Monday, an addendum had been added at the time in order to protect an approximate cultivable area of 271.7 hectares in the event of the abandonment of the project.
These rich cultivable hectares (transferred against the advice of the CPTAQ) have been stuck in the limbo of this stillborn project since 2013. The Legault government committed in June to acquiring them. He seems to have everything in hand to pull them in and lock them. He shouldn’t hesitate for a second to do it.
Gone are the days when laziness and efficiency justified us taking bites here and there from our reserve. We saw it again on Monday in the file for the future Vaudreuil-Soulanges hospital site: lightness no longer applies. There, the rezoning of agricultural land by decree had already been poorly received. Now, Radio-Canada is telling us that the initially planned multi-level parking lot will be converted into conventional surface parking, to the great discontent of elected officials and citizens.
Our decision-makers must stop turning a blind eye or giving absolution to this kind of nibbling. As holes appear, the agricultural territory becomes more and more foreign to itself. It is not because it is peaceful that this dismantling is any less serious. Let us pull together before its cumulative effects suffocate the agricultural community.