More than 65 property owners have applied to the Municipality of North Cowichan for permissive tax exemptions in 2025 that, if all are approved, would see approximately $649,000 in potential tax revenue redistributed among the remaining taxpayers.
The groups and organizations eligible for permissive tax exemptions in North Cowichan include places of worship, environmental organizations, recreational and cultural groups, and community organizations engaged in improving their properties.
But some of the larger organizations came under the spotlight at September’s committee of the whole meeting.
Coun. Bruce Findlay said he went through the balance sheets and income statements of every applicant for permissive tax exemptions and noted that the municipality regularly allows tax exemptions for a number of organizations that, while they have impressive mandates, are far from struggling financially.
He said Ducks Unlimited has $200 million in cash and investments, the Nature Conservancy of Canada has $310 million in cash and investments, the Nature Trust of BC has $50 million, and the Freshwater Fisheries Society of BC has $20 million.
“I struggle with the idea of giving [up to $25,000] worth of tax exemptions to organizations that obviously have significant resources,” Findlay said. “It’s not like there’s a struggle to raise money for these organizations and that’s why I want to discuss them. I don’t know if it’s fair to our community to offer a $25,000 tax exemption to the Nature Conservancy of Canada when they have $310 million in the bank.”
Coun. Chris Istace said that if North Cowichan wasn’t supporting organizations dealing with ecological and environmental goals in the municipality through tax exemptions, it’s likely that North Cowichan would have to fund a lot more land acquisitions and maintenance, which these groups typically do, through North Cowichan’s parks budget.
He said for the small social equity leverage that the tax exemptions provide, North Cowichan is seeing huge leaps forward in both its environmental and climate-adaption and mitigation goals at a fraction of what it would cost for the municipality to do it.
“Such small tax permissive grants help with our natural asset management,” Istace said. “We’re getting a good bargain for the investments on these ones.”
Mayor Rob Douglas added that the groups named by Findlay are national and province-wide organizations that have significant land assets which they steward on behalf of many communities across the province and country.
He noted that the Nature Conservancy of Canada owns and stewards approximately 37 million acres across the country, and the Nature Trust of BC has about two million acres in the province.
“Maintaining land bases of those sizes obviously requires significant resources and my understanding is that when these organizations do raise funds from communities to acquire these lands for conservation, they are doing so with the expectation they are going to get permissive tax exemptions from municipalities and regional districts,” Douglas said.
“I would caution everyone to think about what the repercussions of turning down [the tax exemptions] could mean for some of these organizations, especially as we’re embarking on a biodiversity-protection policy and we’re going to be looking to perhaps partner with these organizations on the conservation of certain properties, or encouraging them to take on more properties for conservation.”
Douglas said that if these organizations were told they were not to get permissive tax exemptions, they could be a lot less interested in assisting North Cowichan with its goals.
He told council that if the committee decided to approve the tax exemptions, they would not be final as the board would still have to approve them at a later stage in the budget-building process for 2025, so council members will have the opportunity to debate them again.
The committee unanimously voted for 61 of the tax-exemption requests, while Findlay and Coun. Tek Manhas voted against the ones singled out by Findlay.
