Walk a Kb or Two in my Moccasins- Nobody 'splained it to me like that!

Simple answers to Complex Questions and Complex Answers to Simple Questions. In real life, I'm a Greater-Toronto (Canada) Realtor with RE/MAX Hallmark Realty Ltd, Brokerage. I first joined RE/MAX in 1983 and was first Registered to Trade in Real Estate in Ontario in 1974. Formerly known as "Two-Finger Ramblings of a Forensic Acuitant turned Community Synthesizer"

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Location: Province of Greater Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Un-'Reliable' Land Titles system (2?3? Systems of Ownership)

Re: Two distinct systems of land ownership
Bob Aaron,'s column, Toronto Star Sat May 27/06, K10

Dear Mr Aaron,

Your column today on the legal conflicts between 'aboriginal title' and our Crown-grant-based Land Titles/Registry systems is spot on!

"It is clear to me as a real estate lawyer that Ontario's 12.5 million citizens need a land registration system that can be relied on as absolute and final. When the government registry office issues a deed to a citizen, whether the recipient is a corporation or an individual, the public must be able to rely on the assurances in that document."

Indeed!

The Treaty Rights and Aboriginal Title rights of s. 35 & 35.1 and the decisions you refer to since the Calder case of 1973, compounded by the possible implications of courts interpreting Household Realty v. Liu/Chan to apply to frauds perpetrated by non-titled, un-married individuals (to me the case was expressly about a married couple who held title as joint tenants and whose testimony was NOT believed) and then exacerbated by the nonsensical computer-created interest in Ontario lands now termed Land Titles Conversion Qualified (LTCQ) and the complex process to establish Land Titles Absolute Plus (LT+) make our Land Tenure system's "fee simple interest" quite a joke.

I totally agree with you, we all need a reliable land registration system - that everyone understands. The higglety-pigglety history of the Douglas Creek Estates tract is a unique & terrible example of colonial, administrative loose ends and human greed made worse by a series of incompatible land systems laid one atop the previous.

Unfortunately, the rest of Canada suffers from the same problems but to varying degree.

The Royal Proclamation of 1763 reserved a 'Hunting Grounds' territory beyond what Britain claimed by conquest and Treaty from France and since that date much outside of 'New France' has been acquired by many treaties of varying quality, with written & unwritten provisions, signed by Chiefs of varying-authority, by agents of the Crown with varying degrees of forthrightness (except B.C where no colonial Treaties were signed) and upon THIS foundation we lay our property ownership system(s).

In my mind solving our land title and registration problem is key to coming to grips with Canada's #1 issue - how do we settle the historic claims of 600+ Autochthonous Nations/Indian Act Bands and their 1+ million members?

How do we settle Land Claims? in Groups/Bands/Nations? as individuals? with fee simple Aboriginal Qualified? Land Titles (still fee simple) Absolute Plus? another Crown grant? Allodial title? self-government-as -a Nation? self-gov't-as-a-municipality? self-gov't-as-a-province?

But how dare we try to settle these land claims, based on occupancy & rights from the pre-European era, when today, right here in Ontario (as you've so ably outlined) we "Europeans" cannot rely on our "European" system?


More By Bob Aaron
Toronto Subject to Land Claim - Star Sat Jun 10/06

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