Mr. Speaker, bands that purchase lands under the treaty land entitlement act apply to the provincial government for reserve status, which takes it out of the tax system. As I mentioned, there is a set-aside, an amount paid into a fund which is held in trust, the interest of which is supposed to pay for services.
However, there is another problem. If the province grants reserve status to farmland, what happens is that the amount that is paid is based on the current assessment, which is quite low for farmland. If they convert it to country residential, let us say, and it is subdivided into 20 acre parcels, on 160 acres that would be eight separate parcels. That means that eight families may end up living there. There would be more bussing costs, education costs and health related costs. The costs would escalate and the rural municipality would still be left building roads for the extra people and making sure that services were delivered.
The re-zoning is not subject to the rural municipality's objections. That of course goes to the federal government because it is now federal crown land. There is a definite loading of expenses onto this level of government in the rural areas of Canada without commensurate tax revenues.