Feds may still want to oversee city farm

From The Charlottetown Guardian, Monday, October 23rd, 2006:

Feds may still want to oversee city farm
Speaker says potential native land claims could impact future of major property.
By Nigel Armstrong
The Guardian

Agriculture Canada may want to remain owner of the 80-plus acre Experimental Farm in the heart of Charlottetown after all.

“I have the feeling that they do,” said Doug Shouldice, president of the citizen’s group that supports Ottawa’s Central Experimental Farm.

He was guest speaker at the annual meeting of Friends of the Farm P.E.I.

Shouldice said after the meeting that he has never been told on or off the record that the federal department wants to back away from plans to abandon the over 80 acres of land in the centre of Charlottetown. Rather it was a gut feeling he gets when dealing with his group’s issues in Ottawa.

For one thing, any change of ownership in the Charlottetown land could well open up aboriginal land claims as suggested by John Joe Sark in 2002.

“At one point, (Agriculture Canada) was going to close it, close it down,” said Shouldice of the Charlottetown farm lands.

“That was three, four years ago but it’s still here. Nothing, at this moment, is going to be closed.

“We went through that same thing in Ottawa.”

Sitting in the heart of urban Ottawa, the nearly 400 acres of the nation’s main experimental farm was being considered as surplus by Agriculture Canada officials.

A group of concerned citizens formed a support group for the Ottawa farm in 1988.

It offered to find groups and people to maintain parts of the farm and soon there were volunteer teams and organizations looking after the arboretum, the peony beds, the lilac trees and now there are plans of hand-planting 23,000 trees in the coming years. Books have been or are about to be published, there are fundraising events, Victorian tea socials, trails and public gardens.

“The most important thing we offer is the daily work we are doing, the labour, all volunteer,” said Shouldice.

In 2003, Agriculture and Agri-food Canada revitalized some research programs at the Ottawa farm and the group feels the land is now more securely in public hands as a working farm and public green space for the long term.

The same could happen in Charlottetown, said Shouldice.

“You can’t just say ‘I want the farm,’ ” he said. “You have to come with something you can add to (the uses for the land). They say no to us, as well, but there is a lot that they let us do. We are giving them 15,000 hours of labour a year and that counts for something.”

There was a strong hint at the meeting that the University of Prince Edward Island may want to use the Charlottetown land in some agricultural capacity.

“We have had meetings with the university and we are keeping our fingers crossed, hoping we will be included in their plans,” said Connie MacKay-Carr, a member of Friends of the Farm.