Foreign Land Ownership in Nova Scotia

If you've ever though of buying a nice piece of oceanfront property in Nova Scotia, you'd better have a very thick wallet. And if you currently own some, or your parents do, you'd better have a thick wallet to pay the outrageous taxes.

The major reason for this - foreign ownership of our coastline areas. This has driven up the value of seaside property making it unaffordable for most Nova Scotians. In the past, our low dollar made property relatively cheap for Germans and Americans, who have bought up the prime land in our province.

PEI discovered that something had to be done, and instituted laws to prevent non-residents from buying up their province. Efforts to do the same in NS resulted in a task force that published its final report in Dec 2001. See http://www.gov.ns.ca/vp/nonres/fr.pdf

Here is a quote from the report - "The provincial government’s background information on non-resident land ownership in Nova Scotia identified non-residents as owning 6.4 per cent of the Province,16 per cent of the coastline and 6.8 per cent of non-coastal waterfront land. On the high side of the range, Digby, Annapolis, and Shelburne counties report non-resident ownership approaching 30 per cent of the coastline."

The outcome of this report was a complete disappointment for Nova Scotians who want to limit the detrimental effects of unchecked foreign ownership. Any measure to control foreign ownership was shot down.

I spoke to a German about buying 14 acres of undeveloped land he owned near Margaretsville in Annapolis County. This man also owned land in Lunenburg Co. He told me he is holding it as an investment, "Money in the bank" he said. Well, it sits there unused until he sells it to another German. It does not generate any economic activity, and denies Nova Scotians the opportunity to build and live there. And if it does get developed, the Germans will only visit it a few weeks a year, then go back home. This provides very little economic benefit for Nova Scotia for the rest of the year (supporting businesses, paying taxes, etc).

It's time our leaders stand up for Nova Scotians, to ensure foreigners are limited in the amount of acreage they can own, and to make them pay much higher taxes to compensate our province for lost economic activity. It is also important to ensure existing Nova Scotia landowners are protected from skyrocketing property assessments due to the deleterious effects of foreign landowners .