Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today in the House to the motion put forward by the hon. member from the Conservative Party. This is the third attempt at tabling this type of motion. In 1998 and 2005, the hon. member for Yorkton—Melville put forward similar initiatives in the House.
In 1998, the hon. member for Yorkton—Melville, who was then in the Reform Party, introduced Bill C-304 to amend the Canadian Bill of Rights to include property rights. One of the arguments in support of this bill was that such reform would help protect handgun owners from laws to limit the use and possession of such guns.
I will try in all this ambient noise, which is being caused by a discussion between colleagues on the other side of the House, to quote what was said at the time.
In 1998, the mover of this motion said:
I have only time to cover one arbitrary taking of property by the federal government. I will use the example I know best. ...chapter 39 of the Statutes of Canada arbitrarily prohibited an estimated 553,000 registered handguns: 339,000 handguns that have a barrel equal to or less than 104 millimetres in length, about 4.14 inches, and 214,000 handguns that discharge 25 and 32 calibre bullets.
The original intention, which goes beyond the virtuous principle of protecting property, was, among other things, to weaken legislation and provisions that limit the right to possess firearms, because the right to property, as an unlimited concept, is quite broad.
In 2005, the same member, with the same idea, but now a member of the Conservative Party, put forward Motion M-227, which was worded as follows:
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.
This is not the first time that this issue has come before this House, and it is before us today by virtue of the motion that is before us. Obviously, it is well intentioned. In my opinion, few people are opposed to property rights in our society. Moreover, this protection already exists.
There are a number of sections of the Criminal Code pertaining to property, including section 346 on extortion, sections 343 and 344 on robbery and section 322 on theft. We could go further with more subtle references, such as section 430, which punishes mischief relating to property; sections 361 to 364, which pertain to false pretence; and section 380 on fraud.
The member who introduced this motion could also consult the Canadian Bill of Rights, a quasi-constitutional document whose first section reads as follows:
It is hereby recognized and declared that in Canada there have existed and shall continue to exist without discrimination by reason of race, national origin, colour, religion or sex, the following human rights and fundamental freedoms, namely,
(a) the right of the individual to life, liberty, security of the person and enjoyment of property, and the right not to be deprived thereof except by due process of law;—
The civil laws in place on this in the various provinces would be too numerous to cite. Article 952 of the Quebec Civil Code, for instance, states as follows:
No owner may be compelled to transfer his ownership except by expropriation according to law for public utility and in consideration of a just and prior indemnity.
This relates to fair compensation in the event of an expropriation for public utility. This is, therefore, a concept related to arbitration and requires a degree of equilibrium already in place in the legislation. We fear that the proposed Charter amendment would affect that existing equilibrium.
The intent of the motion is perhaps not stated clearly but is certainly present: to institute property rights as an absolute right to which all others would be subject. The text offers no nuances or conditional applications for this property right. Also worthy of note are the perspective and location of this proposed addition of property rights as set out in the motion. Reference is made to section 7 of the Charter, which reads:
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.
I would respectfully submit that putting property rights on the same level as the rights to life, liberty and security of the person strikes me as somewhat overdoing it. It indicates a certain lack of perspective. Everyone of course wants to see his possessions protected and is attached to his worldly possessions, but to claim that citizens place this right to material possessions on the same footing as their rights to life, liberty and security is completely unreasonable, ill-advised even.
In any state, a necessary balance must be maintained between rights and the administration of the state. Constitutional recognition of property rights in such an absolute manner without any nuances or conditions opens the door in the most unbelievable way to all manner of legislational challenges, thereby essentially benefiting the most well-off members of society. One might, for example, think of environmental legislation, which often places restrictions on how people can dispose of, or make use of, property in their possession. Or the Income Tax Act, which allows the government to appropriate assets which are the property of citizens. Would declaring property rights to be virtually divine, absolute and near-sacred mean that the government could no longer legally appropriate the assets of an individual by virtue of the Income Tax Act? I will leave hon. members to imagine the consequences this would have for our society, if such were the case.
This government ought to have a look at a few other rights it is diminishing at the moment: the right to be presumed innocent, the right not to be deprived of one's freedom arbitrarily, the right to live in a society that recognizes judiciary independence. All of these have been diminished by the present government. Legislation should be beefed up before rights—