RURAL PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT 103 



resources are established. It is in this latter form that speculation 

 in Canada in recent years has produced deplorable moral and finan- 

 cial results, in rural as well as in urban areas. 



Farmers, whose land is contiguous to urban areas, have occasion- 

 ally enjoyed large profits from inflated speculative values, but, pro- 

 bably in more cases, they have suffered serious injuries from the 

 effects of speculation. In any event it is not open to question that the 

 speculation in suburban lots has been an unmixed evil to agriculture 

 in the neighborhood of towns. The planning of the suburban areas 

 of cities and towns, and proper regulation of building development 

 under statutory development schemes, could have prevented this 

 evil. But there has also been excessive speculation in farm lands, 

 as such, and this has been the chief factor in causing absentee owner- 

 ship and other evils which are threatening to undermine the prosperity 

 of great parts of the agricultural territory of the Dominion. The great 

 achievements of the Federal and Provincial Governments in building 

 up the population of the country during the past twelve years have 

 in large part been rendered nugatory by the speculation which has 

 followed the settlement and arrested the development of the land. 



ABSENTEE OWNERSHIP 



The form of the absentee ownership in Canada makes it much 

 more injurious to the country than a similar degree of absentee owner- 

 ship in old land-owning countries like England. In the latter case 

 the absentee owner has usually a social or family interest in his pro- 

 perty; if he has the means to maintain it in good condition he does 

 so, and, as he depends to a large extend for a livelihood on the income 

 he derives from it, he makes sure that a deputy is left in charge to 

 maintain good relations with the tenants and keep the farm premises 

 and improvements in repair. In any circumstances there is always 

 the tenant to cultivate the land and to keep on producing from it. 

 In Canada there are few cases in which family traditions form a link 

 between the owner and the land, and the absence of any general sys- 

 tem of tenancy often means that when the land is owned by an ab- 

 sentee it is not cultivated at all. The idle lands held by speculators 

 greatly increase the inconvenience and the lack of opportunities 

 which are so effective in causing the settler to leave the land. The 

 taxing of wild lands has not, so far, proved sufficient to arrest the evil. 



The holding up of large areas of idle lands for speculative pur- 

 poses also results in inflating the values of improved farms within easy 

 reach of transportation facilities, owing to the idle territory forming 



