The City of Chilliwack never told the agency that guards protected farmland about plans to subdivide and build large homes on farms in Chilliwack -- despite a demand from the provincial government to disclose what they approve, CTV has learned.

When CTV News told the province's Agricultural Land Commission about certain deals, it was the first they'd heard of it -- and now the agency is also investigating whether those deals followed provincial regulations.

The City of Chilliwack has to take the process seriously and stop going it alone when they approve developments, said the Farmland Defense League's Harold Steves.

"How this has been allowed to devolve to the city of Chilliwack or any other city in the region I don't know, it shouldn't have happened," he said.

Steves says rules that allow development in special cases are being abused.

"There's a loophole big enough to drive a farm truck through to create these new estates," said Steves.

Chilliwack issued a statement saying that it has since provided the information on the properties to the Agricultural Land Commission.

When reached at a city council meeting, Mayor Sharon Gaetz wouldn't specifically talk about the properties, but said details of all the properties had been provided.

"We're fully co-operating with the Agricultural Land Commission," she said.

Some 4.7 million hectares in B.C. are included in the Agricultural Land Reserve, where farming is encouraged and non-farming uses are restricted. The area is administered by the Agricultural Land Commission.

It's become a familiar refrain in Chilliwack: houses popping up on farmland supposed to be protected by provincial law.

A similar deal involving John Les, the former Chilliwack mayor and former Solicitor-General, has been included in the provincial investigation, and prompted the ALC to investigate all such land deals in Chilliwack. John Les maintains he has done nothing wrong.

The Commission has refused to comment on the investigation pending its outcome, but in a recent statement (PDF) said that it wanted to review all boundary adjustments in Chilliwack farmland from "the mid-1990s to the present time."

To that end, it asked Chilliwack to forward those properties, and the city replied with 176 of the properties.

But CTV News learned that one property deal that allowed the construction of three large homes on Yarrow Central Road wasn't included.

In that deal, an old apple orchard was split into three three-acre properties, which now have one large home each.

And in another deal, the city of Chilliwack itself was the landowner that transferred a title which allowed a farm to carve away a residential property and sell it as a house.

"That's the common thread in the Chilliwack region, is that country estates are being established at the cost of farmland," said Steves.

With a report from CTV British Columbia's Jon Woodward