39th Parliament, 1st Session
(April 3, 2006 - )

Edited Hansard • Number 156
Thursday, May 17, 2007

PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS

Property Rights

Mr. Dean Allison (Niagara West—Glanbrook, CPC)
moved:

http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Pub=hansard&Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=39&Ses=1

[SNIP]

(1810)

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz (Yorkton—Melville, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to address Motion No. 315.

This will be the last speech I will deliver that Dennis Young in my office has helped me prepare. I want to publicly say that I will greatly miss him, as will the Conservative Party and Canadians right across Canada. I will miss the tremendous work he has been doing and the fantastic research he has put together on countless issues for almost 14 years. He has helped me prepare many speeches over these years. I will miss him greatly and I thank him very much.

I will begin by thanking the hon. member for Niagara West—Glanbrook for introducing this motion. As everyone knows, property rights were intentionally left out of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It was a big mistake and now this House has an another chance to correct this major oversight.
I say that we have another opportunity or chance to change this because since 1983 property rights bills and motions have been debated 10 times in this House. I know that because five of those debates were on private members' bills or motions that I introduced. Sadly, Conservative MP John Reimer's property rights motion of 1987 was the only one that was passed by this House.

Now that China has put property rights in its constitution, I believe it is time for us to do the same. This is why I support Motion No. 315. And the vast majority of Canadians agree.

In 2005, the Canadian Real Estate Association commissioned an extensive survey involving almost 10,000 respondents. Ninety-two per cent of the telephone respondents thought it was important that the government fairly compensate property owners if their property was expropriated. Eighty-eight per cent thought it was important for the government to fairly compensate property owners if restrictions were imposed on how their property was used.

I am sure many Canadians are asking: “But doesn't that already happen?” Sadly, it does not.

We just need ask the grain farmers in the prairie provinces who grow their own wheat and barley but still cannot sell their grain to the highest bidder. When they try to take their grain across the border because they cannot sell it in this country, the federal government throws them in jail just for trying to sell their own crops. This is a fundamental economic freedom that grain producers in Ontario and Quebec take for granted, but not out west. By the way, the court challenges program has not helped these people one bit and all the examples that I will cite have not helped.

We just need to ask farmers who have had their land taken out of production by the Species at Risk Act. This federal law does not even guarantee them to be compensated for their own loss at fair market value.

Finally, we just need to ask the 30,000 mentally disabled war veterans who were denied payment of the millions of dollars of interest on their pension benefits by the federal government when they lost their case before the Supreme Court of Canada in July 2003.

The Supreme Court ruled in favour of the government's amendment to the Veterans Affairs Act by stating:

We just need to ask the tens of thousands of law-abiding gun owners who have had their legally registered firearms banned, completely devalued by Bill C-68 in 1995. These owners never did anything wrong or unsafe with their property and yet it was banned anyway. They have also been denied permits so that they cannot even enjoy their property at the range. They have been denied compensation for the loss and value of their property, many of which are family heirlooms. In the case of a few hundred owners of section 12(6) handguns, the government is taking them to court because they want to register their firearms but the law that was passed, Bill C-10A, by the previous government was never implemented fast enough to take effect.

(1815)

The Supreme Court went on to say:

At that time I asked: “If property rights guarantees in the Canadian Bill of Rights do not protect an individual's fundamental property rights, what good are they?”

Proper constitutional protection of property rights by amending section 7 of the charter, as proposed by my hon. colleague, would prevent all of the above injustices.
It would also prevent a colossal waste of time and money by our citizens and by the federal government. It would also go a long way to protect the environment because people take far better care of our land and resources than the government ever has or ever will.

Section 7 of the charter states:

Section 7 needs to be amended to include property rights because the right to life and the right to property go hand in hand. We cannot have one without the other.

I urge all members of this House to support this motion, so that we can give Parliament the opportunity to fix one of the major flaws in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Prime Minister spoke in December of last year in favour of adding property rights to the Constitution. However, if it were passed by this House, we would still need the approval of seven provinces and 50% of the population. It is not an easy thing to do, but it is high time we approve this and start that process.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms came into force on April 17, 1982, and as has been mentioned, we marked the 25th anniversary of this. A striking omission is the absence of the right to own and use property, and that is why I would like to give the House three reasons why this must be included.

First, property rights are crucial for the building of a just and prosperous nation. The right to own property, to enjoy one's property, and the right not to be unfairly deprived of one's property, is fundamental to a free and democratic society. Property rights are essential to a Canadian way of life, to political freedom and autonomy, and to a well-functioning economy. These protections in themselves are not enough.

If property rights are essential for the well-being of our economy and our way of life, why do they have so little protection? The Bill of Rights is second best and it has been referred to already. We need to include these in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Second, property rights have been at the centre of the human rights movement from the beginning. Since the 17th century, people have understood that the right to own and use property is necessary for political freedom.

After the English civil wars, John Locke famously argued that the rights to life, liberty and property were natural, inalienable rights, and if the state was to have legitimacy in the eyes of the people, it had to secure these rights.

People are disillusioned with government today. One of the ways we can correct that is by adding these to the charter, so their rights will not be run over roughshod by government.

Against this background, the charter appears to be an anomaly. As a document that guarantees rights and freedoms in a free and democratic society, its silence about property rights is clearly an omission that has to be corrected.

There is a third reason why the absence of property rights in the charter is an omission. Property rights were originally supposed to be in the charter. Early drafts of the charter naturally included the protection of property rights. This is what we would expect in any bill of rights. The Conservative Party at that time supported including these property rights in the charter. I could go on and explain many other things that we need to do in regard to this.

I am hoping that all members in this House will not be distracted by some of the things that I have heard here in the last hour. We need to focus on property rights, why they are important, why they need to be included in the charter, and then work together to try to accomplish this.

I appeal to all members to have an open mind on this and not listen to some of the distractions that I have heard already in these arguments.