Dossier: Agricultural rezoning in Quebec

Our agricultural land is what feeds us and what will feed future generations. The destruction of our farmland imperils our food security, as nearly everything we eat comes from agriculture. Protecting them is therefore crucial.

Cultivable farmland makes up only 2% of Quebec’s land mass. This scarcity drives up prices, causing additional speculative activity on these lands and putting them further out of farmers’ reach. Once farmland has been paved over, we can no longer recover the living, fertile soil lying underneath. It is a non-renewable resource, since it takes several centuries to regenerate once it has been developed.

Beyond the threat that rezoning exerts on this land, agriculture is also one of the sectors most affected by climate change. Protecting our farmland is therefore a win-win, in that it not only protects our food security but also plays a proactive role in helping mitigate climate change. Learn about climate agriculture and how the agricultural industry can play an important role in tackling the climate crisis by capturing GHG’s in Quebec’s agricultural soil.

There is heavy demand for agricultural rezoning in a number of areas: housing developments, municipalities’ need for increased property tax revenues, various economic projects, land occupancy by non-farmers, etc.

There is a demand across Quebec, but especially around the greater Montreal area. A few recent examples of successful or attempted agricultural rezoning initiatives: in the RCM of Montcalm (160 ha), Beauharnois (94 ha), Ste-Marie (84 ha), Vaudreuil-Soulanges (24 ha), Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu (187 ha), Quebec City (200 ha), Boisbriand (137 ha), Saint-Constant (8.5 ha), Granby (23 ha) and Saint-Hyacinthe (14 ha), to name only a few!

Équiterre’s position is that we must stop viewing agricultural land, farmed or not, as zones waiting to be urbanized.

The province of Quebec is subject to the Act Respecting the Preservation of Agricultural Land and Agricultural Activities, which took effect in 1978. The aim of the act is to prohibit the use of farmland for purposes other than agriculture. The Act also created the Commission de protection du territoire agricole du Québec (CPTAQ).

The CPTAQ’s mission is to preserve the land that is suitable for agricultural development and activities for future generations. The CPTAQ therefore has a major role to play in protecting Quebec’s farmland. It essentially has the decision-making authority to either include or exclude land from an agricultural zone. Any rezoning must be authorized by the CPTAQ or otherwise decreed by the government of Quebec. Since the early 1990s, the CPTAQ has refused to rezone nearly 80,000 hectares (ha).

In 2017, however, the CPTAQ approved three-quarters of the applications submitted, resulting in the disappearance of 2,000 hectares of farmland in a single year. Most of these requests came from the government, municipalities and real estate developers across Quebec.

The CPTAQ is therefore not a panacea when it comes to protecting our farmland. The government can sidestep it by issuing orders or enacting special legislation. In some cases, projects have been allowed to go ahead even against the advice of the CPTAQ and even when experts from the primary ministries concerned have deemed them unacceptable.