The Decibel - How a group of Buddhist monks bought up a chunk of PEI

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

Over the past few years, the Buddhist organization Bliss and Wisdom has been buying up several parcels of land in PEI. So much so, residents have begun to question how their acquisitions are legal in a province with strict rules around how much land individuals and organizations can own. Meanwhile, the monks insist they haven’t broken any rules.Investigative reporter Greg Mercer explains how some legislative loopholes have created a conflict in the eastern part of the province.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

You're an investigative reporter here at The Globe, Greg, and I know earlier this year you were in PEI. And while you were there, you went to a meeting. What was happening at that meeting? Yeah, so this was in the middle of the provincial election in March in a town called Montague, now known as Three Rivers. And it was jam-packed. It was a public room above the hockey rink, and it felt like everyone in town was there. There was probably 400, perhaps 500 people in this space. They were lined up in the stairwell when they couldn't fit into the room. One of the things that we have learned is that there is tension and fear in the

community. Some islanders have even been threatened, and that's really sad. And they were there because they're concerned about what's happening with. And they were there because they're concerned about what's happening with land in PEI and what they see as a land grab. A group of citizens organized this meeting because they're concerned about recent land purchases and also about a Buddhist organization that's at the center of this story.

And what was the mood that night at the meeting? It was tense. People are angry. I was surprised at how much concern and worry there is in PEI over this issue. So we have declared as an organization zero tolerance for any accusation or expression of racism and zero tolerance for any accusation or expression of hatred. This story has a lot of tentacles, but it goes to the heart of the political tension between Taiwan and China. It goes to the heart of the fight over land in rural Prince Edward Island and the concern about housing and the housing crisis. It goes to the concerns over Chinese interference in Canadian affairs. It's a question about a province struggling with growth,

struggling with newcomers, and people trying to wrap their head around, you know, what the future looks like for them. Today, Greg Mercer will explain how these tensions have boiled over between a PEI community and a group of Buddhist monks. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Greg, thanks so much for joining me today. Hey, Mainika. Thanks for having me. So at the center of this outrage, it seems, is a Buddhist organization called Bliss and Wisdom. Tell me about them.

Yeah, so Bliss and Wisdom is an umbrella name for. Yeah. So Bliss and Wisdom, it's an umbrella name for a group of Buddhist institutions and monasteries. They do a lot of things, but sort of one of their core businesses are these religious schools that are in Prince Edward Island where hundreds of students, many of them from Taiwan, come and they live there and they study, they translate Tibetan texts. But there's also a business side to Bliss and Wisdom. Many of its senior members are involved in jewelry or electronics. They're doing land development. They're involved in exporting.

So there's a lot of pieces of the Bliss and Wisdom umbrella. And so I understand this is a Buddhist organization based in Taiwan, but there are links to China as well, right? Yeah. So increasingly, more and more of their members are coming from mainland China. Their leader, a woman they call Master Zen Ru, is Chinese born. And she has increasingly drawn in more Chinese nationals into this organization as it has grown. And she, as I understand it, is also Canadian as well, right? That's right.

What do we know about her? She's really led this growth strategy of making PEI kind of the new global headquarters for Bliss and Wisdom, sort of moving the energy and funding away from Taiwan and to Canada. She was notable because she wasn't traditionally educated as a monk or a nun. She was a lay person, and that was notable within Bliss and Wisdom. And there were some people who were concerned about that, that she had sort of risen to the top and was appointed as the next leader about 15 years ago. Is that common? I would imagine that's not very common for an organization like that, no? was a lay person who did not have the sort of the Buddhist traditional education behind her. She's often surrounded by an entourage. In PEI, she's been spotted driving in luxury vehicles with a long caravan of cars behind her. She's known to globetrot to a number of properties around the world. And some people who have walked away from the group point to that and say,

the way she's living does not jive with our teachings, that she has sort of gone away from our core beliefs. Do we know how she got her position as leader? She essentially befriended the former leader and became very close to him. And he appointed her on his deathbed, much to the surprise of a lot of the group's followers as his successor. I can see that there might be some tension there within the organization. And I guess we should just remind people, of course, when we're talking about China and Taiwan, this is a heated issue, right? Because of the potential always for China to invade Taiwan, which is independent, claims is independent, right? So there's that kind of tension in the background here.

Most definitely. For a lot of Taiwanese members of this group, the idea of having someone who's from China as your leader, they've really struggled with that. And of course, this whole thing is set to the backdrop of concern that some people have that China's using Buddhist organizations to influence other countries. And they point to the leader, Master Zen Ru, and they say her strings are being pulled by the Communist Party of China. Bliss and Wisdom denies this. They say, look, she is not an operative for the Communist Party. And they also say she hasn't been in China in 15 years. They vehemently deny that allegation. But there are some folks who cannot let go of that suspicion. You mentioned an interesting turn of phrase there, Greg. You said that Master Zenru is kind of, I guess, in a way, building up PEI as the new global headquarters for this group.

Why choose PEI, like this tiny island on the East Coast of Canada, why choose PEI as a location for this monastery? It's bizarre when you first look at it, right? And why would you move your headquarters to the other side of the world? The way Bliss and Wisdom responds to that question is that they say, look, PEI is neutral territory, right? If we have both Chinese and Taiwanese followers, they can both be in the same place. It's difficult for Chinese followers to travel to Taiwan for these gatherings to study. But PEI is neutral. The land is, compared to Taiwan, is cheaper there.

They also encountered a municipal and a provincial government that they said was more welcoming to them, that was, in the early days especially, happy to have them come, happy to have them bring new money into this area. And when we say early days, when are we talking here? About 15 years ago is when they first began arriving and began buying up property. And they actually started by buying an old motel called the Lobster Shanty. That was sort of the home base for Bliss and Wisdom arriving in PEI. The Lobster Shanty. Okay, so we've got this group of monasteries here in PEI, which is maybe unexpected, but what exactly is the problem here?

Why were the people that we heard off the top, why are they so upset? Because I think they're concerned because it didn't stop with monasteries. Many of the followers of Bliss and Wisdom have kind of bought up hundreds and hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of acres around these monasteries. They're buying development companies, which on the surface, that would seem like a good thing. What Islanders concern is that the scale of this growth has gotten so out of hand that they're worried it's completely changing the character of their community, that they're saying it's inflating land prices. They're buying hundreds of homes that are in many cases being left abandoned or vacant for much of the year.

So in the middle of a housing crisis, this doesn't look very good to islanders. They're not happy to see it. And they also feel that a lot of the land purchasing has been done outside of the law. They're using loopholes to buy some of these places. There's a lot to unpack here. Let's just start with the amount. Do we know how much land have they bought? That's the tricky thing to get a firm figure on it. Certainly, bliss and wisdom is quick to say all of our individual institutions and schools fall under, there's a 3,000 acre limit in PEI. They all fall under that.

What islanders say is you have to take it collectively. They say this is a coordinated effort to buy this land. This is not a bunch of individual independent transactions. This is one concerted effort to buy this land, and it goes against our legislation. So the citizens group that came out for the public meeting, they estimated it's 15,000 to 17,000 acres of land. It's hard to confirm that number because in many cases, the land registry might have a Taiwanese surname, but how do you confirm without a membership list that that person is affiliated with Bliss and Wisdom? Can we put that into context? If it is 17,000, PEI is not massive, but I don't know what is that in the context of the island? I mean, it's something like four or 5% of the entire county's land, which may not seem like a lot, but it would make it the largest private landowner in the county of Kings County in eastern PEI.

And you said there was a 3,000 acre limit that you can buy. Why is that? That's right. So PEI has this really unique piece of legislation called the Lands Protection Act. And there's really nothing else like this in Canada. And it's meant to preserve kind of small family farms and limit the amount of land that individuals can own. So you can buy, as a person, you can buy a thousand acres maximum. If you have a corporation, you can buy 3,000. So the allegation here is that they're using loopholes in this to use associates or not being upfront about who's buying the land as a way to get around some of those limits. Let's dive into these loopholes. What are people talking about when they're saying they're using loopholes to buy this land? So for one, there's a very specific limit on

non-residents, how much land they can own. It's five acres in Prince Edward Island, but they're cobbling together the names of say monks. In one case, there was 15 monks who were cobbled together to buy a large parcel of land. None of the monks lived there, and it's not clear that the money came from the monks. Once this land is bought, it's often changing hands very rapidly among members of the group. And that when there have been larger plots of land that are subdivided, islanders say that they're not able to buy that land. It only is ever sold to other members of Bliss and Wisdom. Okay. So there's limits to how much each individual can buy, but if a whole

bunch of individuals are buying all this land next to each other, this group seems to be amassing that kind of land. Exactly. And in many cases, monks and nuns bought significant chunks of land around the monasteries and then essentially given the use of that land to the monasteries. So for all intents and purposes, it's monastery land. It just, the deed has a different person's name on it. The group's chief executive, he's not a monk, but he kind of runs the business side of things for Bliss and Wisdom. He told us in an interview that all land purchases, the group defers to Master Zen Ru.

So that suggests a certain level of central coordination over this effort to build a global headquarters in PEI. We'll be right back. You said something about the impact of them buying all this land on people who are living in the area. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? What about the impact of them buying all this land on people who are living in the area. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? What is the impact? Yeah, housing prices have soared in this part of the province, as they have in many parts of Canada. But in particular, it seems to be driven by the presence of a very aggressive buyer who is often going above and beyond what the market normally is getting for that land. Just so we really understand, I guess, what's happening here, Greg, can you give me an example

of how this organization went about buying one of these properties? Yeah. So to get a better understanding of that, I spoke to Norma and Lawrence Miller, and they were a couple who lived across the street from one of the monasteries. And they described how in the span of about five years, they watched their neighbors around them slowly sell until they were eventually surrounded. They said that it felt like a very aggressive plan to buy up all the land to the point they felt like they had no choice but to sell. And I imagine this land is not cheap, right? Like how are people in this Buddhist group

affording this? Where the money comes from is a really good question. Bliss and Wisdom says that this is donations from their followers overseas. And it's to the tune of tens of millions of dollars every year that's coming in. We heard stories of monks showing up on doorsteps with briefcases of cash, buying up farms and buying up dozens and dozens of farms. So the problem with verifying that is that as a religious organization, they're a charity, they have to declare this money to Revenue Canada. But international donations are really a black hole in this country. We have no way to audit or verify the source of that money. So where it's ultimately coming from, we don't know. Just bliss and wisdom says these are donations and you have to take them at their word. But

it creates a situation where individual monks who've taken a vow of poverty are buying for millions of dollars, significant amounts of land in rural PEI. Do we know how this would work? Are the donations being given to the individual monks? How is this happening? The money situation is very bizarre, but essentially their explanation is that in Taiwan and China and elsewhere, people will give donations to a specific monk and that the organization may help that monk or help donors kind of get that money to Canada. But yeah, there's a lot of questions about how that money is being moved into the country. We spoke to a man named Jian Qinghua, who was a former senior monk who was in Prince Edward Island in the early days for Bliss and Wisdom. We went to Taiwan and met with him. He showed us his bank accounts and they showed a lot of unusual transactions that were being accessed

by senior members of Bliss and Wisdom. He says without his approval, without his consent, that essentially when he became a senior member, he handed over his banking access to the organization. And he said they used it to move money out of Taiwan and into Canada without his knowledge. Whoa. So did he have a choice there? Did he have to hand over his banking info? He said that was the norm. That's how when you become a monk in this organization, they, according to him, they

request or require access to your bank. So it sounds like there's money coming out of Taiwan into the bank accounts of these monks, and then that's being used to purchase land and PEI. Yeah. And on the surface, it is hard to understand. These are large, sophisticated organizations. Why you need to use people's personal bank accounts to move money doesn't make a ton of sense. What does Bliss and Wisdom say in response to all of this?

They say all of their institutions and their affiliated companies are buying land legitimately. They say all of them taken individually are under the threshold for land ownership and PEI. I got to wonder though about those briefcases full of cash that you mentioned before, right, Greg? Because I think a lot of people would have questions about that. Yeah. So I went to one of the main monasteries in PEI and I put that question to them. I said, what about the cash? And they said, hey, look, early on, we did make mistakes. They said that we come from a cash-based culture in Taiwan and our members and our monks did not fully understand that in Canada, that's not typically how you would buy a property or a farm in cash.

They said they've been educating their followers ever since to have more conventional means to buy properties to, I guess, improve transparency around how this land is being bought. So they said, yes, we did use a lot of cash and we learned from those mistakes. And are they still buying up land? Is this still happening? It has slowed down and slowed down in recent months, I think because there's a spotlight on it. But certainly, I mean, even this summer, there was still a lot of land changing hands among members.

All right, let's dive into the legislation here, Greg. We already talked a little bit about this. And you mentioned how there are some loopholes here. So is Bliss and Wisdom the first, though, to use these loopholes in the legislation to their advantage? No. A lot of people point to Irving-owned Cavendish Farms, and they own a lot of potato fields in Prince Edward Island. There are a lot of ways around the legislation. You know, it could be as simple as you create another corporation. As long as you register the corporation, that then allows you to go and buy more land or using a family member to register the land in their name.

Although essentially, you're still using it. It's leased back to you. So there's a lot of ways around it. It seems like it's fairly well known that there's ways around this legislation. Why would the PEI government allow this? Wouldn't they want to try to enforce these rules? Bliss and wisdom has brought in a lot of new money into Kings County. There's hesitation to stop that flow of cash that the province is frankly happy to see this money coming in. And has the government said that they'd fix these loopholes in light of how angry the residents are right now? The province has been strangely silent. The premier's office has declined to comment for the story. They've declined to even respond to any kind of question after the fact. Off the top, Greg, we heard from the moderator of that meeting that you went to,

and she explicitly stated that she didn't want to hear any racism or hear accusations of racism from the people there at that meeting. So I have to ask you, because it seems like this may be a little bit of the elephant in the room, right? Like, has race played into this story? You have people from China and Taiwan showing up in rural PEI. Has race played a part? I think it's a fair question. And I think in response to that, I'd say early on, islanders, by all accounts, were happy to see members of Bliss and Wisdom arrive. They seemed to be welcoming of these upstart monasteries. I think the concerns started becoming evident. It's when it grew and grew and grew.

And then they didn't realize how big it was getting. So there may be people that for them, this is an issue of race. I think, you know, and everyone that I spoke to, this is about something else. This is about a way of life, this sort of small farm, this rural character that they see changing very rapidly in Prince Edward Island. For them, it's about housing affordability and about the loss of farmland. So, you know, bliss and wisdom is quick to say, hey, look, if we were Catholic, if we were not Buddhist, there wouldn't be this level of concern. They've actually said this.

They have said that. Yeah. And that's a common defense, but I do think the concerns people are raising have more to do with land than race. Did you get a sense of the community at all, Greg? Like were people from the monasteries interacting with other individuals in the county? Like is there kind of this, yeah, I guess interaction between the groups? And that's another point of contention is that they say we're all for immigration. But they say this is not what we think of when we think of immigration. They say that these monasteries are very self-contained. They bring in their own food. They don't shop in our stores. We don't see them in the community. They don't interact.

They said, essentially, we're not getting sort of an economic boom or a cultural benefit from these new folks coming in. They're really keeping to themselves within kind of the bliss and wisdom bubble. There's an interesting thing there, if you're looking to themselves within kind of the bliss and wisdom bubble. There's an interesting thing there if you're looking at the right kind of immigrants. There's ways that could be interpreted. Let's just say the government does fix the loopholes in the Lands Protection Act. That won't actually force bliss and wisdom to give back any of the land. So I guess ultimately, what do people want for a resolution here in this community, Greg? What are people asking for?

They've been asking for a public inquiry. They say a public inquiry is probably the best way to lay everything out on the table and just say, okay, what has happened here? Has this gone too far? And are there things we can do to fix the legislation that would give them the power to call witnesses and to look at the evidence and to force people to testify to answer some of these questions that frankly have gone unanswered for a long time. And does it look like they're going to get that? It's hard to say. There are a lot of people who want it, but there's no indication from the province that they really have any interest in shedding more light on this or digging into this issue in a serious way.

So meanwhile, this situation just kind of continues as you've laid out then? This is it. Yeah, it continues to fester and the frustration grows. Greg, thank you so much for being here today. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. That's it for today. I'm Maina Karaman-Wellms. Jay Coburn contributed in the editing

and mixing of this episode. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrienne Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.