Grimsby event focuses on how judges now favour native rights over the guy with the land title
Farmers Forum staff
OTTAWA — A group of local researchers is sounding the alarm over the erosion of private property rights in Canada, and they’ve lined up two prominent legal experts to address the serious concerns of rural landowners at an April 11 conference in Grimsby, Ontario.
Queen’s University Professor of Law Bruce Pardy and constitutional lawyer Shawn Buckley will speak at the Grimsby event, near Hamilton, titled, “Who Really Controls Your Land?”
Pardy, who also serves as executive director of Rights Probe, argues that property rights are the bedrock of a free society, yet they are increasingly treated as secondary to government agendas, even taking into account that Canada never formally enshrined property rights in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Looming large over the planned gathering is last summer’s headline-making court decision recognizing an aboriginal land claim on existing privately owned homes and properties in part of Richmond, B.C. In a recent online column, Pardy points to another key case underway in New Brunswick in which a judge has already set a disturbing precedent by ruling that the court has the authority to order the government to expropriate private land on behalf of a native group. “We have built a constitutional menace,” Pardy wrote last month. “Property rights, abandoned for political expediency, have no constitutional status…. In contrast, aboriginal rights, thanks to our courts, have become more powerful than any Charter right.”
Buckley, known for his work with the National Citizens Inquiry that took a critical look at Canada’s pandemic response, views the current landscape as a “full-blown information war.” He argues that the federal government frequently oversteps its jurisdiction, using “criminal law power” and massive budget bills to regulate aspects of life, from health treatments to land use, that should remain under individual control.
“We’re in this legal-philosophical prison where we’re only allowed to use treatments (or land) that Big Brother says we can,” Buckley remarked in a podcast last year, drawing parallels between bodily autonomy and the right to control one’s property.
The seminar is intended to be a non-political day of information for those concerned that their “source of wealth” and livelihood is at risk, according to Joan Olech, an Oakville-based realtor specializing in agricultural land and a co-organizer of the conference with the Upper Canada Land Titles and Patent Research Initiative.
The event runs 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Mountainview Christian Reformed Church, 290 Main St. East, Grimsby. Admission is $25 per person and doesn’t include lunch. Tickets will be available at the door but can be purchased online now by emailing gefurney@gmail.com.
