The provincial government is planning to take a South Bruce landowner to the Ontario Municipal Board.
The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing is appealing a Bruce County Official Plan amendment to allow Wayne and Laureen Huber to sever a piece of property south of Mildmay in order to build a new home.
Chris LaForest is the director of planning for Bruce County and he says the province likely takes issue with the fact that the land had been severed once before in order to build a surplus farm dwelling, and the provincial policy statement does not encourage retained farmland to be severed multiple times.
"They have an interest in restricting another house from being built on the retained vacant farmland," says LaForest. "And so the PPS has a restriction and it says you can do this as long as the restriction is placed on the back [vacant] land."
The notice of appeal also states the province believes the Huber's land is prime agricultural land, but South Bruce Mayor Bob Buckle suggests that isn't the case.
He says it came as a surprise that the province would appeal the decision to allow the severance, pointing out the land is on the southern edge of Mildmay and is marginal farm land.
"I am deathly against everybody building out in agricultural land that is top agricultural land, I'm definitely against that," says Buckle. "But we have a lot of marginal land in South Bruce and it would be nice to see more homes on them."
Buckle says he will support the Huber's if the issue proceeds to an OMB hearing.
But LaForest says he will recommend against spending public money to defend a private land use amendment to the county official plan.
