Debates of March 1st, 2002

Property Rights

[Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral, Bloc, Laval Centre, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Motion M-426, moved by my colleague, the member for Yorkton--Melville. The motion reads as follows:

That the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights fully examine the effectiveness of property rights protection for Canadian citizens as provided in the Canadian Bill of Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and report back to the House whether or not the federal laws protecting property rights need to be amended in order to comply with the international agreements Canada has entered into, including Article 17 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights that states: “1. Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. 2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.”

At first glance, this topic may seem rather agreeable. In fact, measuring the very liberal principle of property rights against the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and international conventions Canada has ratified seems harmless and genuine.

If the bill were to measure certain Canadian laws against international conventions on human rights, those set out in the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, or on refugees, or even on protecting the environment by respecting the Kyoto protocol, there is no need to say that we would be enthusiastic in our support for such objectives. However, the motion deals with the threat to property rights. This, by the way, is not the first time our colleague has drawn the attention of the House of Commons to his concerns on this matter. He mentioned this fact himself at the very beginning of his speech. He most certainly is consistent in his ideas, and I would like to congratulate him for that.

Obviously, the purpose of Motion M-426 is to give property rights better protection than to all other rights mentioned in the Canadian charter of rights. We think that private property rights, as enshrined in the Canadian Bill of Rights, enjoy adequate protection. Why then should a committee be asked to examine this issue? If everyone agrees that the freedom to enjoy one's property is a democratic freedom, then one question can come to mind: is this freedom unconditional? For most of us, property refers mainly to our home, but it also includes a lot of other things: car, bicycle, land, firearms, camera, just to name a few. I am excluding women from that list, Mr. Speaker.

Even though I am not a constitutional expert, I know that the provinces have authority with regard to property and civil rights. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the provinces to legislate in any areas involving private property. The member should be defending provincial prerogatives instead. However, his motion is rather aimed at recognizing property rights in federal legislation under the Canadian Bill of Rights, since the latter applies strictly to federal laws and institutions.

The right to enjoy property is already included in section 1( a ) of the Canadian Bill of Rights. One is entitled to wonder about the meaning of the motion before us. What scope does the member want to give to the motion?

I think the member wants to open the door to a general debate on the right to private property based on the premise that it is a natural right that exists above and beyond the law. It is a sacred right. Yet, every day, we see many situations showing that collective rights often require that individual rights be restricted, including the right to private property.

We must recognize that, in reality, rights sometimes clash. This is true when it comes to protecting the environment and the health of the public, which requires us to pass laws which sometimes limit the right to private property, by imposing stringent regulations on companies, for instance.

Another example, familiar to everyone and certainly to all parliamentarians here, is the speed limit on highways. These rules limit the extraordinary pleasure I derive from my car's performance. But reckless behaviour could deprive me of its use. Imagine the disaster. Furthermore, I am delighted to tell you that I have just earned back one point.

Another example is the Firearms Registration Act. Far be it from me to impute motives to the member for Yorkton--Melville. From what he said, it seems clear to him that the amended Canadian Bill of Rights could make private property—such as a revolver-- inalienable. Firearms regulations would therefore be impossible to enforce. It is already quite difficult to enforce them; the costs would be prohibitive because anyone could demand a court hearing and argue that the provisions limiting use of a firearm go against the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, because it gives the right to property precedence over other rights.

Perhaps the hon. member has been taking his inspiration from author Thomas Hobbes, who viewed private property as being part of natural laws. Hobbes defended the pre-eminence of lords over serfs, but that was in the 16th century. We have now entered the third millennium.

In the 19th century, the era of diehard economic liberalism, certain rulings denied the various parliaments of Canada the right to interfere with private property, either to confiscate it or to destroy it without compensation. Times have changed, and for the better.

Now, finally, we come to the 21st century. Parliament has the power to make laws and the public has the right to judge their legitimacy or morality. This can be easily illustrated. If we think about the surplus in the EI fund, the current government made it legal to use it for purposes other than those originally provided for. It will ultimately be up to the public to judge the legitimacy and morality of such a misappropriation of funds.

The rights and freedoms recognized by the charter are not limitless when it comes to protecting certain fundamental values and rights. For example, the freedom of expression is limited by laws prohibiting hate propaganda or pornography. It is prohibited to own pornographic material depicting children. No one has any doubt that we are entitled to the peaceful enjoyment and free use of our property, within the confines of the law.

Section 1 of the charter provides that the other rights set out in it may be subject to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. If Article 17 of the Declaration of Human Rights states that “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property”, everyone will recognize that the term “arbitrarily” has a political weight that implies an analysis before passing judgment.

States exist to give themselves laws and to implement them. In the case of the right to private property, ultraliberalism seeks to exclude it from the sovereignty of the states, from the governments' authority to legislate this matter, thus opening the way for businesses.

We do not intend to support this motion, because we believe that one person's freedom stops where other people's freedom begins. This is the price to pay to live in a harmonious and responsible society.

The Canadian and Quebec societies will never opt for the law of the jungle.

[Gerald Keddy, Progressive Conservative, South Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, certainly I listened with some interest to the member who presented the motion, the hon. member for Yorkton--Melville. I think it is worth reading to the House the intent of the proposed legislation:

That the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights fully examine the effectiveness of property rights protection for Canadian citizens as provided in the Canadian Bill of Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and report back to the House whether or not the federal laws protecting property rights need to be amended in order to comply with international agreements Canada has entered into, including Article 17 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights that states: “1. Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. 2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property”.

As well, I listened to the other members who spoke to the motion, which is non-votable, and particularly to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice. To give credit to the member for Yorkton--Melville, he has raised other issues in the House on and about gun control and has admitted that this motion distinctly was brought in to deal with gun control. I noted that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice never once mentioned the words firearms or gun control in his reply. I thought it was quite an interesting discussion. I do not know quite how he managed to avoid it.

Certainly I would agree with the member for Yorkton--Melville that this is worthy of taking to the committee, worthy of looking at, worthy of debate, and worthy of a vote in the House. Whether or not that vote would be passed, whether or not given more information the majority of members in the House would support it is yet to be seen. Certainly a couple of things came to mind as I was listening to the debate.

The first thing that leaped out at me in the discussion of firearms registration was that the member stated he had presented bills to the House before that had been well researched and well drafted and he thought this was another good motion to bring to the House. I am not as certain, after listening to the debate, that this is as well researched and as well drafted as some of the other motions and private members' bills.

Certainly I listened with some concern when I heard reference to the American constitution and the fifth amendment. We can debate, and probably should, and that would be the point of taking this to committee, the provision of the fifth amendment and the American constitution, but the first thing that comes to my mind is the Enron scandal in the United States. The perpetrators of that crime, and it is a crime, are appearing at the inquiry, which is dealing with $100 billion of private investors' money in the United States, and they have all claimed the fifth amendment. It certainly looks as if they will walk, scot-free. It is absolutely scandalous that we would allow such a provision in the charter of rights in Canada, a provision that would allow perpetrators of a crime to claim something similar to the fifth amendment and walk away scot-free.

Also mentioned were the social limits on the ownership and use of property. The member from the Bloc raised a very good point about the fact that many people would claim that child pornography is property and therefore they should be allowed to own it, distribute it and use it as they see fit. I would disagree with that. The Bloc member has made a very good point.

On the issue I take this to be about, the issue of firearms control and some misguided, poorly used and poorly implemented legislation brought in by the Liberal government, certainly I would agree that we need to find an avenue to change it. The only avenue I see before the people of Canada to change that particularly spurious piece of legislation, Bill C-68, at this stage in the process would be to change the government and bring in legislation that effectively gets rid of long gun registration. Until that happens, I do not expect any other changes to be made. We can continue to raise the issue. We can continue to explain to Canadians why it continues to be an important issue, but at the end of the day there is only one thing that will change Bill C-68 unless suddenly there is a great amount of calcium found in the spines of the Liberal backbench members which would actually force the government to bring in some meaningful legislation to deal with firearms registration.

I will just take a few minutes for this because we are talking about property and in this case I am talking about firearms and not about other types of property. With regard to Bill C-68, which was implemented and passed in 1995, I think it never hurts to just spell out one more time the cost of this poorly crafted piece of legislation. The government promised, as we all remember, that it would cost $85 million, and $50 million to $60 million per year to run the registry. That operating budget has soared from a projection of $60 million to $100 million a year. As of November 21, 2001, the cost of the program was confirmed as of that date at $689 million.

I suspect that the legislation may have been brought in with some good intentions. Unfortunately those good intentions have never done what they were supposed to do. The only thing that has occurred from the onset of that legislation is that the government has refused to give out information, has refused to give out statistics and has refused to engage in realistic debate in the House of Commons on the issue, and it has steadfastly refused to amend it. As a matter of fact, the few times it has been amended have probably made it worse.

There are new provisions in the safety act, Bill C-42, which raise real questions about whether or not black powder advocates in Canada, people who either enjoy black powder hunting or belong to re-enactment groups like the King's Orange Rangers, will be able to have access to black powder to use in their muskets. Black powder is an explosive. In Bill C-42, under the section dealing with natural resources and the Explosives Act, there would be some question of whether or not these people would qualify to actually purchase that explosive.

It just goes on and on. We all know about the constitutional challenge to the gun registry. We all know that it was denied at the supreme court. I think we have to go back to the basics. We have to try to understand why the government would bring in such a poorly crafted piece of legislation and why millions of Canadians have still refused to register. The registration date has been changed, first from 1998, then to 2001 and now it is in 2003 that we will have the last opportunity to register on the last minute of the last day. Again the government has come out with a bunch of magical numbers, saying that of 2.2 million firearms owners 90% of them have complied, so that is 1.8 million or something like that. These are ridiculous numbers.

We know there are 7 million to 8 million firearms in the country, mostly long guns, used by people like myself for hunting, or trapping or for varmint control. It is time that we absolutely stopped setting penalties against legitimate firearm owners. We have to do something about it and reverse the legislation.

[Bill Blaikie, NDP, Winnipeg—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to participate in the debate about property rights which has been initiated by the hon. member for Yorkton--Melville.

This is not the first time I have had the opportunity to hear a debate in the House about property rights. My mind harkens back to the debate about whether or not property rights should be included in the charter of rights and freedoms at the time when the House was seized with the question of the charter of rights and freedoms.

It is ironic that the debate originates with an Alliance member, although I understand it is a private member's bill and he is entitled to his own views on this. The Alliance Party has always demonstrated a great respect for provincial jurisdiction and for the views of the provinces.

I simply remind the hon. member, as I have in another forum, that when property rights was suggested as something to be included in the charter of rights and freedoms in the debate in this place and across the country between 1980 and 1981, when the patriation package was finalized, it was the provinces that objected very strongly to including property rights in the charter of rights and freedoms because they saw that as a matter of provincial jurisdiction.

One can hold that view and still not be in disagreement with article 17 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which says:

Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property...

I suppose even the United Nations declarations need to be updated. Probably this should read his or her property. We will forgo the gender based analysis of United Nations declarations at the moment and say that really the debate here is about in some respects whether or not this should be included in the charter of rights and freedoms.

I might also say that at the time the NDP was opposed to the inclusion of property rights in the charter of rights and freedoms. We did not see it as an appropriate right to be included in the charter at that time, regardless of questions of jurisdiction.

Since then, it seems to me that the rights of property have hardly suffered. Since 1981 the rights of property, in spite of the fact that they are not included in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, have done nothing but advance in ways that, frankly, I find regrettable and questionable.

I am thinking of the way intellectual property rights have advanced to such a degree that Canada had to abandon its generic drug laws on the basis of agreements entered into between Canada and the United States and ultimately at the global level with respect to the intellectual property rights of brand name drug creators and producers.

This is an occasion where property rights trump all kinds of human needs. They trump the needs of the health care system, and we all know it is that property right and the consequences of having it enshrined in the way that it was that is one of the cost drivers of our health care system. It is one of the reasons we are having the debate about the future of medicare today. It is because of the private property rights that were enshrined in the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, sometimes called TRIPS.

I would think it would have been more appropriate for members of parliament not to be concerned about the alleged erosion of property rights by virtue of the absence of property rights in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms but to be more concerned, indeed alarmed, about the way property rights are being enshrined everywhere. They may not be enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms but they are certainly enshrined at the World Trade Organization and in the NAFTA where the property rights of corporations trump the environment, labour standards and almost anything we can think of. Are property rights under attack? They are hardly under attack.

Thinking about the advancement of property rights, we now face the possibility of our very genetic material being regarded as corporate property. I remember one of the first debates in the House I was ever in. The hon. member opposite was probably involved in the National Farmers Union at the time and talking like a New Democrat. When plant breeders' rights were an issue in the late seventies and had not yet been instituted by the House of Commons I took part in a debate in the fall of 1979 in which the NDP expressed concern about the institution of plant breeders' rights and the consequences it would have for our agricultural system and for various forms of vertical integration and corporate control.

We lost that debate and have lost a few others since then. Most of them had to do with property and the role property rights have had in determining the kind of agricultural policies we would have, the kind of health care policies we would have and a myriad of other policy sectors that have been affected not by the erosion of property rights but by the ever accelerating entrenchment and expansion of property rights.

As I mentioned before I got off on the plant breeders' rights tangent, I am now concerned that the human genome or our very DNA and genetic material will become the object of the same property rights fixation so that we will be buying and selling gene therapies in the marketplace and our health care system will be affected once again.

None other than Premier Mike Harris, who is not exactly known for his left wing views, has expressed concern about the cost this might pose for the health care system and the fact that these things are being patented and held in abeyance by various corporations. The Canadian health care system will be put in the position, if it has not already in certain circumstances, of having to pay enormous sums of money to have these gene therapies available.

I frankly think this is wrong. If we want to talk about an axis of evil this is where we find real evidence of wrong, in the way corporations want to own the very structures of our biological existence and piece them out to us on a cost-plus, profit basis.

If the hon. member from the Alliance is worried about property rights he should be able to sleep soundly tonight. I can tell hon. members that property rights are not exactly under threat anywhere. Quite the contrary, it is the human race and the global environment that are under attack by a far too strong entrenchment of property rights in the various ways that I have had this brief opportunity to describe.

[Ken Epp, Canadian Alliance, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. In view of the fact that this motion is so important and is driving such great interest, I would move that the time of the House be extended by 20 minutes during which time the Speaker may accept no motions other than the motion to adjourn.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Does the House give its consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[Garry Breitkreuz, Canadian Alliance, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, it is regrettable that on a topic which is so fundamental and so important to our society that we cannot even speak an extra few minutes. We cannot vote on it. We cannot refer it to committee. We cannot even talk about it at length here. That is really unfortunate.

I would like to thank all those members who spoke in support of my motion. I would like to quickly counter some of the arguments that the government put forward as to why we should not refer this to committee.

First, it argued that it is a waste of time of the committee. It argued that it was a waste of time of the House. Many people in the country are very concerned that Bill C-5, a bill that is presently before the House, could clearly be a violation of their rights. We need to discuss these things.

We have provinces in Canada that of course have property rights protection. However we need protection in federal legislation against the violation of the rights of private citizens by the federal government. It is not engrained in our laws, as the federal government has tried to intimate. Nor are they in our charter. Some speakers have said that it is in our charter. If they were to read the charter, it is not in there. Even judges have said in their rulings that we do not have property rights protection in our charter. Provincial and environmental laws could clearly violate this and in fact would have serious implications.

Also, I really want to pick up on something else the government said. It said that it would disrupt the current democratic rights. The only thing it would disrupt is the power of the Prime Minister's Office to legislate at will, violating our fundamental rights. We have built these up over 800 years and they are being seriously violated.

The UN declaration of human rights says “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property”. The voters in this country have to know that the federal government, by its own legislation, the legislation government members have supported, condones the arbitrary taking of property in direct contravention of article 17 of the UN declaration of rights. It is hard for Canadians to go to other countries in the world claiming to be defenders of fundamental human rights, when our own country does not defend one of these most fundamental human rights and does not have any constitutional legislative protection for property rights in federal law.

In 1903, Pope Pius X wrote to his bishops. He said:

The right of property, the fruit of labour or industry, or of concession or donation by others, is an incontrovertible natural right; and everybody can dispose reasonably of such property as he thinks fit.

Today we have all heard the proof that our fundamental property rights are under attack and we should not ignore that. Just because a bill is passed in parliament does not make the use and abuse of government force to violate the fundamental property rights and freedom of contract of its citizens a good thing.

I would like to quote one more item here. This is from a book by Ayn Rand entitled Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal . It states:

The concept of a right pertains only to action—specifically to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by others. The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has not right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.

Czech President Vaclav Havel also hit the nail on the head when he said “Human rights rank above state rights because people are the creation of God”.

My colleagues, property rights are our most important human right because they allow each of us to provide the necessities of life for our families and ourselves.

Therefore, I respectfully request, with the unanimous consent of the House, to refer my motion to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights for further consideration. That is the whole intent of this. We need to discuss this further. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the committee examining this. I am sure everyone here would agree. Therefore, I would like to seek that consent.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Does the House give its consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The time provided for the consideration of private members' business is now expired. As the motion has not been designated as a votable item, the order is dropped from the order paper.

It being 2.30 p.m., the House stands adjourned until Monday, March 11, 2002, pursuant to Standing Orders 28 and 24.

(The House adjourned at 2.30 p.m.)