PROPERTY RIGHTS IN CANADA ARE ERODING AND IT’S TIME TO TAKE ACTION

PROPERTY RIGHTS IN CANADA ARE ERODING AND IT’S TIME TO TAKE ACTION PROPERTY RIGHTS IN CANADA ARE ERODING and our governments are about to face a political tsunami they alone are responsible for. At the same time, there appears to be a growing public awareness of the threat to private property in this country – resulting from court decisions and government legislation, particularly in British Columbia where indigenous claims are involved. We are now facing a real and very direct threat to our economy, our living standards, and our peaceful society. Men like Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations published in 1776, have tried to capture the fundamental reasons why some countries prosper while others fall so far behind, and they include culture, religion, resources, and geographical advantages. But at the end of the day there appears to be one explanation that modern-day economists keep returning to time and again - private property rights. Almost everyone who has taken the time to study the matter agrees that private property is a necessary condition for long term prosperity. As Adam Smith himself wrote, “Commerce and manufactures can seldom flourish long in any state which does not enjoy a regular administration of justice, in which the people do not feel themselves secure in the possession of their property.” A private property right necessitates the exclusive authority to own, use and transfer an asset. Each of these characteristics plays an important role in economic growth. When citizens are allowed to use an asset however they wish, they’re incentivized to put it to its most productive use, again adding to a nation’s overall wealth. And most importantly, when they have the ability to transfer it to others on mutually agreeable terms, it tends to be reallocated to those who can create the most value out of it. That’s important. I have had had legal title to land and buildings in my lifetime, and I enjoyed a degree of confidence in having ownership of those assets. I harbored a willingness to maintain them, invest in them, and to see their value increase. All of that adds to a stock of private capital in this country that allows us to become more productive and therefore wealthier as individuals and as a society. This doesn’t happen by accident, but rather it is the direct result of a set of laws and institutions structured to ensure that property rights are unambiguous - so that it’s easy to determine who owns what - and widespread, so that rights are enjoyed by everyone and not just a select few. These are not just theoretical considerations. Decades of economic research demonstrate that private property is all-important for a nation to truly flourish in all its aspects. In his study of more than 1,000 years of economic development, Dutch historian Bas van Bavel documents a recurring pattern. From Northern Italy, to Iraq, to the Dutch Republic, secure property rights led to economic growth and prosperity, and conversely, when property rights were eroded, economies stagnated or even declined. In extensive fieldwork throughout Latin America, Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto found that when private property rights are well recognized, owners are able to breathe new life into otherwise “dead” capital, turning it into collateral for loans and investment, leading to real increases in living standards. In their Nobel Prize-winning work, economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson point to the “natural” experiment on the Korean Peninsula. While the two Koreas share similar histories, culture, and natural resources, the South has instituted well-defined, secure and general private property rights while the North has attempted to centrally plan a communist state with almost no protection of individual private property. While their incomes were once comparable, South Koreans now earn about 26 times what their North Korean neighbours earn. Here in Canada, we must make ourselves aware of the broader implications of weakened private property rights. Recent court decisions and legislative initiatives by governments appear to be promoting a sort of new, collective Aboriginal rights and land-title reality that overrides existing property ownership. If Canada’s longstanding tradition of strong property rights protection continues to be eroded like this, our long-term prospects for peace and prosperity will certainly be put at risk. That is an unescapable reality. This Canadian-made property upheaval has two distinct sources. The first is Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982. The second is the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). British Columbia is particularly susceptible to both, but the rest of the country is not immune from them either. What is very important for readers of this column to remember is that the Courts control Section 35, but it is our elected representatives that control whether UNDRIP applies in their various jurisdictions throughout Canada. Section 35 was the basis of the recent Cowichan decision from the B.C. Supreme Court in which Aboriginal title, the court said, is “prior and senior” to fee simple property. Seriously, this actually happened. The B.C. law that eventually enacted UNDRIP now forms a part of the NDP government’s socialist mandate to make agreements granting title and/or management rights to specific Aboriginal groups over specific territories. That is absolutely frightening and a recipe for civil unrest in the years to come. Over on the east coast, in New Brunswick, Wolastoqey First Nation claimed the western half of the province, including large tracts of land owned by seven private companies. In 2024, those companies brought a motion to be released from the claim. The Court of King’s Bench of New Brunswick dismissed the action against them, but not because the claim for their land could not succeed. Striking the claim against the private defendants “does not mean that the Aboriginal group will be denied the possible remedy of repossessing [the defendants’] land,” the judge wrote. Where the Aboriginal claim is made out, the court could instruct the government to expropriate private property from its owners and hand it over to the Aboriginal group. All of this began in 2021 when the federal Liberal government under Justin Trudeau passed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, which legally obligates the Canadian government to ensure its laws are consistent with that Declaration. Now we’re beginning to pay the price for yet more Liberal Party stupidity.