CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. — P.E.I.’s Agriculture Minister Bloyce Thompson has tabled legislative changes to laws governing land ownership in P.E.I.
Thompson introduced amendments to both the Lands Protection Act and the Business Corporation Act in the legislature on Tuesday afternoon. He said the amendments would increase penalties for companies that contravene land ownership limits and would make the names of corporate shareholders publicly available to Islanders.
"The decisions we make today, Mr. Speaker, they will need to ensure that our children and our grandchildren have the opportunity to live and work and play," Thompson told MLAs.
In an interview, Thompson said the changes would help strengthen enforcement of the existing Lands Protection Act. The act was introduced in the 1980s amid concern that off-Island landowners may strain the supply of arable land on P.E.I.
The act limits the amount of arable land that can be owned by individuals to 1,000 acres and by corporations to 3,000 acres.
“We’re a small Island. We’re not making any more land,” Thompson said in an interview.
Changes introduced by the previous government, which exempted corporations from providing the province with information about their shareholders, will be reversed. This will mean Islanders will once again be able to search for shareholder names online via the corporate registry.
The lack of transparency around shareholders was raised as a concern by J. Scott MacKenzie, chairman and CEO of the Island and Regulatory Appeals Commission, during an October standing committee meeting.
Under the proposed changes, shareholders of land-holding corporations would be required to disclose the names and addresses of each shareholder who owns five per cent or more of the shares, as well as the total number of voting shares held by each shareholder.
Shareholders would also need to disclose their interests in other inter-linked businesses.
The proposed changes state that two or more corporations that are “directly or indirectly controlled by the same person, corporation or group” would be deemed as one corporation.
Fines for contravening the LPA would also be increased. The maximum fines would go up from $250,000 to $500,000.
In addition, another piece of legislation will be introduced called the Lands Ownership Transparency Act.
"It's going to address land ownership and land transparency and to cover several different things from tax fraud to money laundering," Thompson said, adding money laundering was not a large concern on P.E.I.
"We just want to be prepared. This works well with the LPA to identify beneficial ownership," he said.
The Lands Protection Act has been a popular and sometimes controversial topic in P.E.I. for decades. Farmers’ groups have expressed concerns about possible loopholes that could allow large corporations to own more than their allowed 3,000 acres of arable land. Some farming companies have argued the land size limits need to be expanded in order to allow for viability amid three-year crop rotation cycles.
More recently, the sale of 2,200 acres of arable land from a family-owned farm to an Irving-affiliated corporation has drawn criticism from farming groups. A sale of the land to three Irving-affiliated companies had been denied by IRAC in March, but the same land was later sold to another Irving-affiliated company in the spring. Critics had argued the sale exposed “loopholes” in the LPA.
IRAC is currently reviewing the land sale.
Thompson said he would be consulting with Islanders about the proposed changes to the LPA over the winter.
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