Two groups divided the room between them at Shire Hall last week. 

On the one hand the County’s grain farmers, who have every interest in seeing grain silos and grain shipping at the historic port on Picton Bay. They represent the old County, traditional farming families that extend back, some of them, to the Loyalist settlers. 

On the other, the County’s newer residents, the people generally Come from Away. They represent a growing population of both retirees and new families, as well as the County’s  tourist economy, which in many cases draws people “to live where they love to visit,” as legendary real estate agent Libby Crombie puts it. Ms. Crombie was also there. 

The meeting, as reported in our News section, was a Committee of Adjustment hearing about a request for a minor variance for the grain shipping terminal Parrish & Heimbecker is building on land it has leased from ABNA Investments, owners of Picton Terminals on Picton Bay. 

Committee of Adjustment meetings are normally small affairs. They are generally held in a boardroom at the Edward Building. 

The committee has five members, two councillors and three residents. Two of them couldn’t make it last week, but quorum is three, and quorum we had. 

This application for a variance, which requires a public hearing, was, I believe, the only opportunity members of the public have had to comment on — or even see — Picton Terminals development plans since the great Council Meeting of 2020. 

That meeting is known as the Regent Theatre meeting, because that is where it was held, in a venue large enough to accommodate all who wanted to come. That was when Council denied the Terminals’ application for rezoning to allow container shipping. A decision that entailed taking ABNA Investments to court to enforce it. 

Since then, as we know, Council has reversed that decision, secretly and behind closed doors. For five years, no input from residents has been sought on any of its increasingly unaccountable, even incomprehensible, decisions. Including the one to get Picton Terminals an MZO so it could double its size and do even more of what it is currently doing. 

And what is that, exactly? What is it that Picton Terminals is currently doing? That’s another thing that goes on in secret, in this case behind berms and giant shipping containers and Private Property / No Trespassing and Danger signs. 

Four residents have undertaken to investigate what our Council has not just ignored but enabled: five years of what looks like illegal rock quarrying on Picton Bay. The rampant destruction of the actual limestone cliffs we’ve all been watching in horror since October has just been the part we can see. 

They brought a legal challenge in January, filing affidavits to support their contention that more than one million tonnes of limestone have been taken from the cliffs of Picton Bay for contracts worth at least $50 million dollars. The owners of the Terminals now face charges of operating a quarry without a permit.

So what happened at this public hearing? To begin, the Doornekamps’ lawyer, James McCarthy of Cunningham Swan, sent the usual disclaimer: 

“I am writing to confirm that our client, ABNA Investments Ltd., provides its consent to Parrish & Heimbecker Limited to apply for a minor variance with respect to our client’s Picton Terminals Property,” he wrote. 

“Nothwithsanding our client’s consent to this application, I reiterate our position that Prince Edward County does not have jurisdiction over matters related to shipping, including any construction necessary to facilitate the port uses of the property. Our client’s consent in this matter represents its continuing efforts to cooperate with the County, and does not constitute attornments to municipal or provincial jurisdiction.”

This reads like “sorry not sorry,” or, in this case, “we agree without agreeing because we don’t have to agree even though we are.”

Let us be clear: PT is a private company on private property. It is nowhere listed as a federal port. Yet it insists that neither the County nor even the province has any authority over its operations. 

The Canada Marine Act defines the terms port authority, public port, and public port facility, and lists those designated under the Act. Picton Terminals does not fall within any of these definitions under the Act, nor is it named as a public port or port authority in any federal schedules. 

This saber-rattling was what determined the County to take the Terminals to court in 2022. It filed an injunction to stop it from stacking shipping containers on its property, and applied to the courts to determine legal jurisdiction. 

That case was to be heard in October 2024. But, inexplicably, Council decided this summer — behind closed doors — to settle out of court. And offer an MZO — the zoning to continue its rock quarrying on an even grander scale. 

How does any of this relate to the question of a variance for P & H? Perhaps just in the fact that none of this destruction was allowed to enter the consideration of the question at hand. 

It was, as they say, the elephant in the room.

The hearing opened, as we report in our news story, with the municipal lawyer, Sarah Viau, jettisoning the application for a variance to build the silos at water’s edge. The County and Quinte Conservation simply decided to move the height of the water to the height of a new dock that QC had already approved. That took care of that. 

That left only the application for Permission to Expand a Legal Non-Conforming Use. According to the provincial Planning Act, approval must pass a two-part test, which asks, is the application an appropriate development of the property; and, will it result in undue adverse impacts on the surrounding properties and neighbourhood.

The two questions are good ones. They seemed designed to accommodate the major interests of both groups Shire Hall last week. Farmers want access to local shipping options, and grain shipping is an appropriate use for a bulk cargo port. But what about the second question? Nearby residents are suffering adverse impacts; not from shipping or storing grain, that’s not the problem. If anything, the proposed shipping traffic for the massive development on the cliff seems low. P & H estimates about one shipload of grain will leave the new Picton port every month, a quantity that hardly seems to justify the development.

The real problem, of course, is the sheer amount of rock that will have to be quarried in order to set eight concrete grain silos into the escarpment. They are to be installed inside the limestone cliffs on Picton Bay. 

That means all the quarrying will continue. For how long? Nobody asked. How much stone will have to be removed? That didn’t come up either. How much will it all be sold for, and where will it be shipped? We don’t know. 

And what about all the adverse impacts on all those who live and work on the Bay? 

That question was never answered.