A few months ago I called a salesperson from another brokerage to make an appointment to show a rural property she had listed. As she recited a list of features, she told me that – with the exception of the house and outbuildings – virtually all of the 60-acre property was exempt from property taxes because it was classified as “conservation lands”.
That intrigued me enough to go looking, and sure enough, with the help of Google, I found this on The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources website: “The Conservation Land Tax Incentive Program (CLTIP) is designed to recognize, encourage and support the long-term private stewardship of Ontario’s provincially significant conservation lands by providing property tax relief to those landowners who agree to protect the natural heritage values of their property. The current tax relief offered is 100-per-cent tax exemption on that eligible portion of the property.”
Now, that got me pretty excited, because with 120-odd acres of bush, brush and fields, I figured this would be a pretty simple way for Weezie (my wife) and me to carve a few grand off our tax bill! But a little voice or two stopped me.
One of them had something to do with ethics. You see, I know that our municipality needs “x” amount of dollars per year to operate. And if I dodge two grand, and my neighbours all dodge two grand, it doesn’t change the fact that my municipality still needs “x” amount of dollars. And there is only one source of replenishment for the taxes that we would duck: the pockets of our fellow citizens. I prefer to shoulder my own societal responsibilities instead of transferring them to the shoulders of other Canadians who, because of age, infirmity or employment, may be a lot less able to bear the burden. Why should senior citizens, perhaps already struggling with their own escalating property taxes and electricity bills, have to pay my way?
The other little warning was just the nagging feeling that the monetary (and momentary) advantages of today’s tax exemption would be poor compensation for tomorrow’s land-use restrictions and the attendant property devaluation. The process of obtaining a tax exemption entails visits to the property by government representatives, who record the natural heritage features of the land to determine its suitability for CLTIP designation.
There are several pieces of provincial legislation – The Clean Water Act and The Endangered Species Act immediately come to mind – that authorize bureaucrats to “protect” natural features such as limestone outcroppings, frog ponds and old fields. Protection in this case means that landowners have surrendered their rights to do a host of things on their lands – everything from ploughing and planting an old field, to building a recreational trail through a cedar swamp that may shelter wintering deer. And even if the current property owners are happy with the restrictions-in-lieu-of-taxes tradeoff, I can’t help but wonder if they have given any thought to moving-out day.
All properties eventually come up for sale, and every real estate practitioner in the country knows that 100 acres with no land use restrictions has more value that a similar property where development is curtailed or prohibited. So if you want to let the nice folks from the Ministry of Snatch Your Resources tiptoe through your tamaracks taking photos and making notes as they go, you go right ahead… I’ll pass, thanks. There’s quite enough property rights predation going on already – no need to invite the varmints into my hen house.
The entire CLTIP program is based on the dishonest claim that all this natural habitat is being preserved for the “greater public good”… and that just doesn’t pass the sniff test. If that was really true, all the No Trespassing signs would be torn down and these lands opened up for the enjoyment of the very public that subsidizes them.
Jamie MacMaster and his wife Louise Secours-MacMaster are sales representatives with Storm Realty in Cornwall, Ont. Jamie is also a director of the Canadian Landowner Alliance, a property-rights advocacy organization.
