Mr. Speaker, certainly I do not believe in the constitutional entrenchment of property rights. As I pointed out in my speech, the construction of infrastructure, whether it be pipelines, railroads, or highways, typically requires the expropriation of some land. Giving a veto power to every private landowner along the route would result in no such infrastructure being built.
The argument suggested by the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan is that these property rights would be subject to section 1 of the charter. A judge could decide that an expropriation was a fair and reasonable limit on those property rights, but the Conservatives really want to hang their position of entrenching property rights in the charter on their faith in activist judges.