Mr. Speaker, before starting my speech, I just want to mention the media reports saying that the Liberal Prime Minister is once again promising a new law to speed up projects, a year after he promised the very same thing. It is déjà vu all over again.
We passed Bill C‑5 in five days almost a year ago. The Prime Minister said he was going to build at speeds not seen in generations. A year later, he has not used his powers once to approve a single new project in Canada. Now, he is repeating the same promise. Five hundred projects are waiting for federal approval. The only thing he needs to do for them to move ahead is to get out of the way.
The Prime Minister needs to get out of the way by getting rid of the carbon tax. He needs to get out of the way by granting permits. He needs to get out of the way by legalizing oil and gas shipping off the West Coast. He needs to get out of the way by allowing a pipeline. That is the way to start letting builders build, investors invest and businesses create.
Before starting, I just want to address that the Liberal Prime Minister is again spreading illusions. CBC ran a big headline that he is going to introduce a new law to get projects built. Where have we heard that before? Eleven months ago, the House gave him unprecedented legal powers under Bill C-5 to approve projects quickly. He said these powers would allow him to build at unimaginable speeds. Eleven months later, he has not used them once to approve a single solitary project. There are 500 of them waiting for his approval.
There is only one thing in the way, and that is the Prime Minister. We do not need an announcement, a symbolic signing ceremony or any other illusions. We need him to get out of the way, get rid of the industrial carbon tax, approve the 500 projects waiting, grant a permit for a pipeline to the Pacific and legalize shipping oil off the West Coast. We need him to let builders build, workers work and investors invest.
To do that, though, we also need to protect private property, which is the foundation of any economic civilization. Last August, the B.C. Supreme Court ruled in the Cowichan case that aboriginal title had prior and senior status over private property rights, what is called “fee simple.” Fee simple is the legal term for the title one has to own their home. This is an unprecedented ruling, and it changes everything.
We have to acknowledge how this ruling came to pass. It was the result of the Liberal government refusing to defend property rights in court. The federal government is the defendant in this case. It is named, and frankly, it is the only defendant. The Liberal government passed litigation guideline 14, an instruction from the Liberal cabinet that federal lawyers were not to argue for the seniority of fee simple property rights. The judge noted in her 800-page ruling that this is one of the reasons she could not protect property rights in her decision. That guideline is still on the Liberal government's website, meaning the Prime Minister has kept it in place.
Eight months went by after this ruling, which affects 800 acres and over $1 billion of private land, and the Prime Minister, who is the head of the government that is the defendant in the case, said absolutely nothing. He said nothing; he did nothing. Then the other day, he stood up and spread the illusion that he suddenly supports property rights, all while instructing his lawyers, through an explicit guideline still on the government website, not to defend those same property rights. Already there are reports of over $100 million in investment being cancelled because land title cannot be secured, as a result of the fact that there is no guaranteed collateral for the investors and the lenders.
To make matters worse, the Prime Minister directed his Liberal government to sign the Musqueam agreement, which began the process of granting title to the Musqueam over lands that include metro Vancouver, Delta and even the same Richmond lands that the Cowichan decision granted to the Cowichan people, causing an even greater mess.
The Liberals claim that their framework agreement with the Musqueam has no legal force and it does not matter, which raises the question of why they signed it at all, but what is clear and what legal experts say is that there is no protection for private property rights in that agreement either.
All of this raises big concerns not just for Richmond and the Lower Mainland but right across British Columbia, because there are claims on almost the entire province. British Columbia is not a province where land cession has happened through the treaty process. There are going to be countless other claims that will come forward from other nations using the same precedent that came from the Cowichan ruling, which could literally threaten millions of homeowners. In the meantime, investment is paralyzed and suspended.
Liberals across the way are trying to downplay the concern, but let me quote Mayor Malcolm Brodie of the City of Richmond, who said, “Property owners in Richmond and throughout the province can no longer rely on their title confirming a fee simple interest as conclusive evidence of absolute ownership of their land. The Court’s untenable decision cannot remain unchallenged.”
Clearly, the mayor of the City of Richmond would not be raising the prospect that his own residents do not have clear title over the homes they bought if it were not truly a concern. Frankly, I do not know how the Liberals can deny the consequential impact of a court ruling that says there is one form of title that takes precedence over home ownership fee simple land title. Of course, that is a revolutionary change and an unprecedented change. It threatens the very economic foundations of our entire land-owning system.
Without property rights, there are no economic rights. There is no country in the world where people are able to feed themselves, to house themselves, to prosper and to start businesses without having secure title. It is literally the single biggest determinant of economic prosperity. The great economist de Soto even pointed out that there are literally trillions of dollars of wealth that is deprived of people in third world countries simply because the people who live on the land do not have title of that land and, therefore, cannot build anything, including a home for themselves, on that land. To have a property-owning, free-market democracy, we need to have secure land title.
That is why Conservatives have come forward with a solution to clean up the mess the Liberal Prime Minister has made. This motion today calls for the following action.
One, it calls for the Prime Minister to cancel litigation guideline 14, the guideline that bans federal lawyers from defending property rights, and replace that guideline with a new one that requires they defend property rights in all such disputes.
Two, it calls for a policy that the federal government will not sign anymore agreements with any first nations that do not explicitly protect fee simple property rights as having seniority over all other claims.
Three, it calls for the Liberal Prime Minister, within 30 days, to present his plan to protect the property rights of British Columbians. It has been a month since this ruling. This is a federal issue where he is the federal defendant. He is the head of the federal government. He, by now, should have come up with a plan to defend the property rights of the people of British Columbia.
Four, it calls for immediately convening a parliamentary committee to begin studying how we can save the property rights and the home ownership of the people of British Columbia and all of Canada.
It is a four-step action plan that will immediately allow us to step up, do our jobs and defend homeowners. These are people who, in good faith, bought the land, paid down the mortgages and followed the rules. They deserve to have the security and the certainty that they own the homes they live in.
Conservatives will fight for them. We will fight for their home, for their land, for their property and for all Canadians.
