Nova Scotians have voiced real concerns about rising property tax bills, higher land prices and reduced access to ocean and inland waters,” said Mr. The following year the province set up a “voluntary planning board on non-resident land ownership” to carry out those consultations, because, as the press release at the time stated: In 2000, the province proposed legislation that would have enabled municipalities to levy additional taxes on non-resident property owners, but the government didn’t proclaim that part of the Municipal Government Act, “pending further discussions with the public.” The question of whether those who own land, reside and pay taxes in Nova Scotia should pay lower property taxes than those who do not has been debated, discussed, and disagreed on since the 1960s. Non-resident land ownership in Nova Scotia has been a contentious issue for decades.Ĭanadian Pioneer Estates sign in Richmond County, Cape Breton. This happened back in the mid-1990s, but Jan remembers it as if it were yesterday, especially her visceral reaction to being told that Canadians were not welcome to buy land in … Nova Scotia. Jan, a fifth generation Nova Scotian, was in tears. Jan and Paul turned around and headed back to the main road. She said the lots were only for Europeans. The woman, who had a strong German accent, was still angry, and proclaimed loudly, “We don’t sell to Canadians.” “We said we were sorry but that we had seen a sign that there were lots for sale, and we told her we were potential buyers,” Jan said. The woman driver stopped her car, slammed the door, and approached their open window, angrily informing them they were on private property. Suddenly another vehicle came out of nowhere and cut them off. “And we saw this sign that said ‘lots for sale’ on a dirt road that seemed to lead to the waterfront. “One day we were driving out near Terence Bay,” Jan recalled for the Halifax Examiner. For many years, the South Shore had been popular with American and European buyers who had no problem paying hefty prices for oceanfront properties. They had been scouting out properties for weeks, and had yet to find a place they could afford. It was a spring day, and as they’d been doing for some weeks, Jan and Paul (not their real names) were driving around looking for land on the South Shore of Nova Scotia, where Jan had spent a good part of her childhood.īoth were living and working in Halifax, and wanted a property they could call their own, where they would settle down and eventually retire. This, the final of three articles, looks at previous efforts to come to grips with the question of land ownership regulation in Nova Scotia, what it means for affordability of properties, and why it’s all been so contentious for so long. This three-part series follows up on its 2020 coverage and looks into some of these questions it raises, even as the province prepares to change the property tax rate for non-resident owners. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a real estate boom in Nova Scotia, including most rural counties, as people from urban centres, elsewhere in Canada and abroad, looked for ways to escape crowded urban areas.Ī few months into the pandemic, the German magazine, Der Spiegel, broke the story that some right-wing conspiracy theorists were marketing Cape Breton to like-minded German-speaking Europeans, which added yet another dimension to long-standing questions about non-resident land ownership in Nova Scotia. įor decades, scholars and successive governments have debated the issue of non-resident land ownership in a province with relatively little Crown land, with waterfronts being carved up into private properties that reduce public access to Nova Scotia shorelines. Nova Scotia has long been a popular place not just for settlers, but in the last century it also became a popular place for non-residents - including many well-heeled Americans and Europeans - to purchase properties.
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