Potential Solutions for BC’s Property Rights Crisis

Potential Solutions for BC’s Property Rights Crisis

• Court decisions, government legislation, and bilateral agreements with First Nations have given Aboriginal title priority over private property rights in British Columbia.
• This collected series starts with an essay by Fraser Institute Senior Fellow Matthew Mitchell on the importance of private property and its connection with economic well-being. The series includes three essays by noted legal scholars offering different solutions to the current and growing property rights crisis in the province.
• Professor Dwight Newman of the University of Saskatchewan proposes a focused constitutional amendment using a special amending formula in Section 43 of the Constitution Act, 1982, that would clarify the relationship between Aboriginal title and private property in British Columbia. This Section 43 solution allows for an amendment to the Constitution that affects just one province and requires a resolution by the province’s legislature and recognition by the federal Parliament.
• Thomas Isaac, chair for Aboriginal Law at the law firm Cassels, proposes that governments recommit to clear, transparent, and principled treaties as the primary tool to negotiate the recognition of constitutionally protected Aboriginal rights. Treaties are agreements that are constitutionally protected and that create binding, enforceable obligations between the Crown and Aboriginal peoples.
• Professor Bruce Pardy of Queen’s University suggests a much larger—indeed a sweeping—set of constitutional reforms, including repealing section 35 of the Constitution, which guarantees “the existing Aboriginal and treaty rights of the Aboriginal peoples of Canada”; revising the charter; and repealing other statutes that treat Aboriginal people differently than other Canadians so that there are no special or distinct Aboriginal rights in Canada.