Canada, the second largest country in the entire world. Numerous provinces, 30 million inhabitants. A wealth of every type of terrain from semi-tropical rain fores, to desert, to prairie and tundra. Also, 95% uninhabited. But why? Surely in a country so utterly expansive, it would be easy to find land there to settle! Not so, and I will explain why. In this article, I will be focusing on Rural rather than Metropolitan real estate, for reasons that will become clear.

Part 1: An Overview of British Columbia.
BC is a lush province. Wild, untamed, filled with the bounty of nature. A land of opportunity for those willing to move here and settle. At least, that’s what the Tourism advertisements would have you believe. In reality, BC has the lowest minimum wages in Canada, the lowest standards of living, and the highest real estate prices.

A search of the MLS listings will reveal the shocking reality that the cheapest land
parcel currently for sale in rural BC is $50,000 for less than 1 acre. Above that, the prices can vary from $100k for 2 acres to as much as $1.4m for a single half-acre lot on Vancouver Island. This might be understandable if this was, for example, France with its 700 years worth of overlapping title deeds. In fact, an online search of Real Estate will demonstrate that for the price of a decently sized rural land parcel or a 4-bedroom family home in a Vancouver suburb, one might obtain a Castle with several dozen acres in France.

How can this be? BC has a total population of just over 4 million people, half of that contained in the sprawling coastal city of Vancouver. The total Landmass of BC is more than that of Oregon, California, & Washington combined. To put this into perspective, the population of those 3 states is 47 million people. As you can see, that is a drastic amount of free land!
So, with the perspective set, how can land be so ludicrously expensive in BC when the province is literally empty?

Part 1: A Conspiracy to keep the land for the corporations.
The short answer is, the vast majority of the province was simply never allowed to enter into private ownership. Unlike the US which experienced a massive land rush throughout the opening of the various Frontiers, BC was cut off from the rest of Canada by land until the opening of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the early 1900’s. The Trans Canada Highway did not gain a stable and safe connection to BC until the opening of Rogers Pass in the late 1980’s. Most of the Interior remains tenuously connected to the major arteries.

Thanks to this, much of it was never homesteaded. With BC’s heavy snowfall, who would want to trek into the wilderness aside from the lure of gold? Much better to stay by the established towns. Thus, when the Homesteading act was repealed in the 1970’s, a staggering 95% of the province remained under the control of the Crown (the provincial government).

Since then, less than 400 sales of crown land to private individuals have occurred, and for staggeringly ludicrous sums of money when you consider the relative isolation of existing crown parcels. To understand why, we need to look at BC’s two primary industries: Mining and Lumber. The crown does not wish to sell any land to individuals to develop, because at this time it holds a veritable monopoly on the leasing of Mining and Lumber rights to corporations. Any large reduction in crown land holdings will reduce the amount of resources that it can barter with corporations in return for favors, and barter it has.

Despite the isolation of the vast majority of BC’s interior, one need only take a flight across it to see the damage wrought by the lumber barons throughout the past century. There is not a single spot between Vancouver and the Rocky Mountains that has not had a slender logging road driven into it so that the mountainsides can be stripped bare. By conservative estimates, a staggering 67% of the mature lumber in British Columbia has been logged in the past 100 years.

As a result, the Crown is loathe to remove its grip on the land it holds lest it lose precious resources that it can sell the rights to, plain and simple. There are no parcels of more than 1800 acres for sale in British Columbia, and no large parcels for less than $1million. The Crown does not even consider applications for purchase or granting of large land parcels unless you are a corporate interest. I know, I have tried.



[edit on 30-9-2009 by D.E.M.]

[edit on 30-9-2009 by D.E.M.]

as long as it's not a national park or wildlife refuge, then go settle that land!

I guess you'd have to rent a mailbox in a nearby town because the post office doesn't deliver unless you have a street address, as far as I know.

It's beautiful in BC, I'd love to visit

As a BC citizen I thank you for this article, it might be needed later in the future as ammunition.

You're right, it's meant to control us and keep us in debt so we continue to serve.

I think I saw somewhere that certain lands couldn't be sold unless you were a developer with millions... It's an awful fraud.

Ok I live in BC, and a family member recently purchased two, 160 acre parcels in a very rural area for $380,000 each.

These deals are found everywhere, and I have never heard of anyone paying 50,000 for a blank acre in rural BC. The only time something like that happens is if your in a metropolitan area that is being developed, then a single blank acre could go for a million +.

A interesting post but try to look at it from another perspective.

Crown land is the property of the citizens of BC as a whole. The tenures, mineral rights, water rights, licences, endless amounts of red tape, permits, blah blah blah generates quite a tidy sum of money for the province. To go and take that land for yourself is, quite simply, stealing from your fellow citizens. Why should I take a one time cash payout (or nothing, in the case of squatting) instead of ongoing royalties that will only increase over time? That seems fiscally shortsighted to me.

Think Campbell sucks now and hate the HST? Just imagine him with several billion dollars less revenue in resource royalties and thank your lucky stars we have plenty of crown land.

I’m not prepared to prove up or dispute the veracity of the article, but it certainly fits in with what we’re seeing in North America when it comes to keeping people out of the countryside and concentrated in the cities.

The institution of property tax is the worst offence against property rights IMO. It means that you are literally renting the land from the gov. There should be no avenue by which property can be taken from it’s rightful owners. Ownership of property is the beginning and end of being free and independent.

There's a little problem with your assertion that we just go out and claim free land in BC.

There is no free land in BC. ALL of it is being disputed by the Aboriginals and the claims are sitting in the courts.

So you might go and pick a piece of prime real estate in the middle of nowhere, but if the government doesn't get you, the natives will.