Martin Snyder on his family's farm near New Hamburg, Ontario on September 12, 2024.Alicia Wynter/The Globe and Mail
A plan to clear a handful of farmers off 770 acres in Ontario’s Waterloo Region to create an industrial megasite, in the hopes of attracting a future multibillion-dollar factory and thousands of coveted manufacturing jobs, has turned into a pitched political battle.
A group of farmers in the region’s rural Wilmot Township, about 150 kilometres southwest of Toronto, say they were told without warning in March that they had just days to agree to sell their properties to the municipality of Waterloo Region for future development – or face potential expropriation.
The area’s long-standing designation as agricultural land, outside the region’s “countryside line,” had just been reconfirmed in the region’s latest Official Plan.
After a meeting in a local barn, some of the landowners decided to fight back. They mounted a grassroots campaign, founding a group called Fight for Farmland that has earned 40,000 signatures on an online petition, distributed thousands of lawn signs and arranged for a convoy of tractors to roll up in protest at a recent Waterloo Regional Council meeting.
Baden
ONTARIO
Wilmot
Centre
ONTARIO
Land targeted
for potential
industrial
“megasite”
500 m
the globe and mail, Source: openstreetmap; Fight for Farmland
Baden
ONTARIO
Wilmot
Centre
ONTARIO
Land targeted
for potential
industrial
“megasite”
500 m
the globe and mail, Source: openstreetmap; Fight for Farmland
Baden
ONTARIO
Wilmot
Centre
Land targeted
for potential
industrial
“megasite”
ONTARIO
500 m
the globe and mail, Source: openstreetmap; Fight for Farmland
They say the land-acquisition process has been secretive and unfair. Local politicians in Waterloo were silenced by non-disclosure agreements – with whom, they would not initially disclose. (They were with Ontario, the province has acknowledged.)
Adding fuel to local outrage was the fact that a developer in the area, who had heard rumours of the plans, had made his own offers to some of the landowners, just weeks before the region came knocking.
Only recently did Ontario’s provincial government confirm that it is funding the land acquisition. It is part of a provincewide drive to assemble “shovel-ready” potential megasites it says it needs to compete with other jurisdictions and attract global companies seeking to build projects such as electric-vehicle and battery plants. Neither Ontario, nor Waterloo, currently have one like this available, they say. Waterloo’s business leaders have supported the move.
It would resemble the 1,500 acres assembled in St. Thomas, Ont., where Volkswagen announced plans for a heavily taxpayer-subsidized battery “gigafactory” last April. But both the province and the region say the Wilmot site was not being prepared for any specific company. So far, the region says it has been able to purchase almost one third of the land.
The other landowners are digging in for a fight. However, the farmers of Wilmot are not really facing off against just Waterloo Region and the Ontario government of Premier Doug Ford. They also stand against an array of geopolitical and economic forces.
One is the current wave of what is known as “friendshoring,” as liberal democracies seek to regain manufacturing jobs that had moved in decades past to China. Plus, the province and the federal government were scrambling to match multibillion-dollar U.S. subsidies for new electric vehicle and battery plants.
The affected farmers in Wilmot point to other land in Waterloo already earmarked for industrial use, but sitting empty. And they warn that supply of prime farmland across the province continues to erode, under constant threat from encroaching urbanization.
Stewart Snyder standing in his soybean patch on his farm in Waterloo Region.Alicia Wynter/The Globe and Mail
In addition, Mr. Ford’s Progressive Conservative government, which has weakened rules meant to conserve farmland, remains under RCMP investigation for its aborted move to open parts of the protected Greenbelt that arcs around the Greater Toronto Area to developers.
Farmer Stewart Snyder, 69, whose family has worked other land in Waterloo Region for more than 150 years, has 100 acres inside the area targeted for industrial development. That’s where he grows crops to feed his 90-cow, 200-acre dairy operation, which is just across the road from the potential future megafactory. He says his farm, which he had hoped to pass on to his son, is not for sale.
“The whole thing is a joke, I’m sorry,” he said in interview with The Globe and Mail. “It’s playing with our lives. It’s playing with our livelihoods. It’s playing with our physical, our mental and our financial health, big time.”
In March, Mr. Snyder said, a real estate consultant retained by the region knocked on his barn door and told him that he could buy three or four farms with the money they would offer. But the offer that he eventually received would only put up $35,000 an acre, Mr. Snyder said – a low-end of the going rate for farmland – and came with a document that warned of expropriation as an option.
An outraged text he sent in the summer to the Premier’s well-publicized cellphone number prompted a call back from Mr. Ford, who spoke to Mr. Snyder’s wife.
“He said the process has been done wrong. He blasted the region for it,” Mr. Snyder said. “But he didn’t say it could be stopped.”
Despite funding the plan and encouraging municipalities to assemble megasites, Mr. Ford’s Economic Development Minister, Vic Fedeli, and the local PC MPP, Mike Harris, issued a statement in August calling the region’s process “disappointing” for its “lack of transparency” and threats of expropriation.
In an interview with The Globe, Mr. Fedeli said these megasite negotiations with landowners are up to municipalities. The VW land in St. Thomas, he said, was identified long before Ontario courted the German automaker’s massive plant. And he said it was purchased by the local municipality, with provincial funding, without resorting to expropriation.
In Waterloo’s case, Mr. Fedeli said, the region’s approach seemed “a bit more abrupt.” He also said the non-disclosure agreements were only meant to keep the amount the province was willing to spend a secret.
In an interview, regional chairwoman Karen Redman would not rule out expropriation if necessary. However, she said the region’s representatives had been instructed, if asked, to tell landowners that expropriation was “not our preferred option.” Talks with landowners, she said, were continuing, adding that it is normal to keep such negotiations confidential.
“There has been an amazing amount of misinformation to go out there,” she said in an interview. “We have never said that expropriation was where we wanted to go.”
The Waterloo Region is planning on building industrial mega factories in the area that would make farming impossible for Snyder. It also makes the future of his farm being passed down to his son Martin a distant dream.Alicia Wynter/The Globe and Mail
Veteran Toronto expropriation lawyer Shane Rayman said the government clearly has the power, even for a future private-sector factory, to use expropriation. But under the law, landowners are entitled to a fair-market price for the land, as determined before it is developed. They may also be entitled to compensation for business losses and relocation costs.
He said that while not knowing the details of the situation, he would have advised Waterloo to ensure that it avoids having to pursue any expropriation by entering into deals with landowners that grant them a significant premium for their land. Governments, he said, should use a “transparent and fair process” to try to purchase land they need without making landowners feel “pressured” or “bullied.”
Fast-growing Waterloo Region says it needs to attract jobs to keep up as its population is projected to go from the current 670,000 to one million. The region’s director of innovation and economic development, Matthew Chandy, says the region has a study showing that a lack of large industrial sites has cost it 5,000 potential jobs in the past three years. The targeted area is also close to high-capacity power lines and the four-lane Highway 7/8, which links to the key Highway 401 corridor about 30 kilometres away.
Among those involved in the push to find megasites is Gregg Wassmansdorf, senior managing director of global corporate services for the real estate company Newmark and an expert in “site selection” for global companies.
His company has been retained both by the Ontario government to help scour the province for potential megasites, and also by Waterloo Region for its search that landed on the properties in Wilmot.
In an interview, Mr. Wassmansdorf acknowledged that there had been “communications challenges” in Waterloo. But he said Ontario is in a fierce race with many U.S. states, including competitors such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and New York, looking to assemble land and fast-track feasibility studies for new megasites.
He also said that these kinds of sites are so large they inevitably require farmland on the outskirts of urban areas. And without megasites at the ready, he said, thousands of jobs and billions in investment will go elsewhere.
“The whole goal is just to be more responsive to the fact that there are more large or mega industrial projects looking for a place to land than at any time in human history.”