moved:
That, in the opinion of the House, the government should ensure that full, just and timely compensation be paid to all persons who are deprived of personal or private property or suffer a loss in value of that property as a result of any government initiative, policy, process, regulation or legislation.
Mr. Speaker, Motion No. 227 is a straightforward proposal.
In the year 2003, the Supreme Court reminded all Canadians that they have no rights whatsoever when the federal government decides to take their property.
On July 17, 2003, the Supreme Court delivered its judgment in the class action suit Authorson v. Canada. The Supreme Court ruled in favour of the federal government and against mentally disabled war veterans. The government had amended the Veterans Affairs Act to avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars in interest on pension benefits the government had held in trust for about 30,000 veterans. The Supreme Court ruled:
Parliament has the right to expropriate property, even without compensation, if it has made its intention clear and, in s. 5.1(4), Parliament's expropriative intent is clear and unambiguous.
The Supreme Court's ruling also stated:
Lastly, while substantive rights may stem from due process, the Bill of Rights does not protect against the expropriation of property by the passage of unambiguous legislation.
If a government will take millions out of the pockets of 30,000 mentally ill war veterans, what hope does the average citizen have? It is obvious that something needs to be done to protect the rights of citizens to what the government rightfully owes them. This is why I introduced the motion and the intent of my motion is to start strengthening the protection of property rights in federal law for all Canadians one step at a time.
How can any member of the House be against providing proper legal protection to provide full and just compensation to anyone who has been ripped off by their own government?
Just last month, Polara Research conducted a telephone survey of 1,260 Canadian adults and an Internet survey of 8,000 consumers on behalf of the Canadian Real Estate Association. Question one asked: “How important is it to you that the government fairly compensates a property owner if their property is expropriated?” Ninety-two per cent of telephone respondents and 96.7% of Internet respondents thought this was either very important or important.
Question two asked: “How important is it to you that the government fairly compensates a property owner if restrictions are imposed on how their property is used?” Eighty-eight per cent of telephone respondents and 93.2% of Internet respondents thought this was either very important or important.
That is what the polls are telling us, but what are the people saying? I can tell this House that it is not pretty.
Over the last few months I have participated in a grassroots movement of landowner associations that are springing up across rural Ontario. These are good, honest folks who are angry at the government for being in their face, in their backyards and in their front yards. Government overregulation is driving them nuts. The government's refusal to listen is driving them out of their farmyards and on to the highways and on to Parliament Hill.
Mr. Speaker, if you could have gone with me to some of these meetings and heard firsthand accounts of how government is taking their property or devaluing it to zero by some of the regulations and some of the laws that are being passed, you would have been flabbergasted. These people are being driven off their land and are being deprived of their livelihoods. They are angry and they are looking for some redress to this gross injustice.
How bad can it get? If robbing the bank accounts of 30,000 mentally ill war veterans is not obscene enough for the federal government, hon. members should listen to this.
A small booklet was provided to me last week by the Canadian Real Estate Association that reprinted a very sad story from Jean-Paul Raymond's book, La mémoire de Mirabel . It is about Mr. Cardinal who had his home expropriated by the federal government to build the Mirabel Airport. Mr. Cardinal's home was among 35 homes and 20 farms that were expropriated to make way for a quarry to service the construction of the airport.
I want to quote from the booklet:
In La mémoire de Mirabel, Mr. Raymond says Mr. Cardinal decided to move south to nearby St. Eustache to build a new home. 'A strike interrupted construction and he was unable to return to his old home to finish moving out all his belongings. When he finally did return, he was struck with the sad surprise of seeing his house in flames. The federals had set fire to his house and it burned with his household things and personal belongings inside. A life worth of things had stupidly disappeared'.
The book also describes the story of Mr. Campeau. 'He had a poor heart and the strain from the long exhausting process of expropriation put him in the hospital. As he lay sick federal officials paid him a visit. They offered him $55,000 for his farm. Knowing that his land and all his buildings on it were worth more, Mr. Campeau declined. But the government came back with an offer that was lower; they said he would now only get $50,000'.
These examples are poignant because they are part of a double mistake. The homes were taken to make way for a quarry. But the government itself came to realize the quarry was not needed, and it was abandoned. Hundreds of families faced heartache as their heritage was stripped away. They faced painful, difficult and humiliating experiences.
Approximately 97,000 acres of Quebec's best farmland was expropriated. Despite the fact that 3,200 farm families were displaced only 5,000 acres were ever used for airport operations.
In the 1980s, the Mulroney government acknowledged that Mirabel was a mistake and that far too much land had been expropriated. Roughly 80,000 acres of expropriated land were returned to the original owners.
Now that the airport is completely closed to passenger traffic and may never expand the expropriated landowners believe that the 11,000 acres of land outside the airport perimeter should be returned to farming. They have formed a citizen's group called “The Commite du 11,000 Acres” to fight the case.
Aéroports de Montréal, ADM, continues to administer the 11,000 acres. A Bombardier Inc. factory is situated on part of the airport land outside of the 11,000 acres in question. Bombardier has indicated the land it now occupies is sufficient for its needs. But ADM and the federal government argue the land should be retained in case it may be needed by Bombardier in the future.
The Conservative opposition introduced a motion in the House of Commons on November 25th, 2004, calling on the government to sell back the surplus land.
That is the end of the quotation from the Real Estate Association booklet.
Talk about a heartless federal government. The Conservative Mirabel motion passed the House of Commons despite opposition from the Liberal government.
Now let us take a look at another Liberal bill rammed through Parliament without a guarantee of full, just and timely compensation. It is called the Species at Risk Act. Section 64(1) of the act states:
The Minister may, in accordance with the regulations, provide fair and reasonable compensation to any person for losses suffered as a result of any extraordinary impact of the application of
(a) section 58, 60 or 61; or
(b) an emergency order in respect of habitat identified in the emergency order that is necessary for the survival or recovery of a wildlife species.
Fair and reasonable compensation is not full, just and timely compensation, nor does fair and reasonable guarantee that property owners will get fair market value for their land taken out of production by the power given to the minister under the Species at Risk Act.
Then we have the unfair monopoly of the Canadian Wheat Board, which is inaccurately named because it only applies to prairie grain producers, not all grain farmers in Canada as the name suggests.
A Saskatchewan farmer, David Bryan, grew a crop of wheat on his own land. He got into trouble when he tried to sell his wheat for a better price than what the Canadian Wheat Board would pay him. The federal government charged Mr. Bryan with exporting his own grain to the United States without getting an export licence from the monopolistic, dictatorial Wheat Board.
For violating this Soviet-style decree, Mr. Bryan spent a week in jail, was fined $9,000 and received a two year suspended sentence. Mr. Bryan, with the help of the National Citizens Coalition, appealed the conviction on the grounds that it violated his property rights as guaranteed in the Canadian Bill of Rights passed by Parliament in 1960. On February 4, 1999, the Manitoba Court of Appeal ruled against David Bryan's right to sell his own grain that he grew on his own land. I ask the House to listen carefully to what the Manitoba Court of Appeal stated on page 14 of the ruling:
Section 1(a) of the Canadian Bill of Rights, which protects property rights through a “due process” clause, was not replicated in the Charter, and the right to “enjoyment of property” is not a constitutionally protected, fundamental part of Canadian society.
It is shocking that in a modern democratic country like ours property rights are not protected. I know of no other country in the modern world that does not protect property rights. I would ask anyone who is listening to this debate or reads the record of this debate whether they can believe that those words came out of a Canadian court of law. I repeat: “the right to 'enjoyment of property' is not a constitutionally protected, fundamental part of Canadian society”. I seek to change that.
Another concern for property owners was the Liberal government's proposed animal cruelty legislation that would have seen the animal cruelty provisions moved out of the general classification of property offences and into a section of their own; that would remove these provisions outside of the scope of the legal protection of section 492(2) of the Criminal Code. Ultimately this proposed legislation could open up the possibility that farmers, sporting groups and scientific researchers will be unjustly prosecuted. Animal rights groups in Canada will certainly use this new legislation as the basis for such prosecutions and in fact have already stated their intention to do so.
The cost of these prosecutions is one thing that farmers cannot afford, but the fact is that this legislation could affect billions of dollars worth of property without providing any legal means for those affected to receive fair, just and timely compensation for the manner in which their operations will be affected by this legislation and by the regulations that implement it.
These are just four examples of the Liberal government running roughshod over each person's right to own and enjoy property and to receive full, just and timely compensation if the government takes that property away from people, prohibits them from using and enjoying their property or reduces the value of their property by the regulations they impose upon us.
Chinese property owners have a better chance of getting full, just and timely compensation for their property rights taken from them by the government. At least property rights are entrenched in the Chinese constitution. But not in Canada's.
China has just recently put this in place and yet we in Canada do not recognize how important this is in a free and democratic society based on a market economy. If we want a strong economy, we must put property rights into the Constitution.
I can see people's eyes glazing over. They may not understand the importance of property rights, but I assure everyone that it is absolutely essential in a country like ours that they be properly protected. That is why I have brought this motion forward. I hope that people will approach this with an open mind, examine the issues, scratch beneath the surface and see how absolutely essential this is. Then I think the glaze in their eyes may fade away, because they will see that each one of us in Canada suffers because we do not have the proper property rights protection.
Because the Liberals will not fix this injustice, it will be up to us as Conservatives to do it. We can take the first step tonight by supporting Motion No. 227.