Who owns? the Crown? and its Land? QE2?
Dear Ed,
Re : Government garage sale could boost bottom line
James Cowan, National Post Published: Saturday, November 15, 2008
Thanks to James Cowan for the background on a few interesting Crown "land ownership" tidbits.
In the past few days we've heard some jokes about selling the CN Tower etc, but I hope to advance some facts and reasons why we should encourage the Min of Fin to get serious about discussing the disposition of some extremely valuable and vitally important Crown Real Property Interests that no one seems to know about.
While everyone is familiar with Crown Land, few of us (even in the business) know and/or appreciate the significance that no Canadian property is OWNED, we just have an INTEREST in the Crown's property - title always has "belonged" to the Sovereign who claimed it after discovery and/or conquest (check the abstract of title if you don't believe me- see attached Ontario example) NB some autochthonous peoples hold that their claims supersede this concept, but that is another question.
I assert that if Canadians were truly serious about:
1) improving the ConFederal Bottom Line,
2) establishing and then entrenching property rights in the Constitution,
and
3) finally "patriating" Canadian Sovereignty (a much different concept and process from the legal charade that was acted out back in 1982) see Canadian spin on sovereignty too ,
we'd demand the orderly and proper sale of the Crown's underlying ownership held in all lands in Canada (NB this "proper sale" would only be to the registered grantee/ fee simple estate holder.
We could accomplish a great deal towards solving those three "issues" (ie problems that everybody talks about but never DOES anything about) by having the Crown sell its ownership "interest" in our freehold/fee simple real property. (Getting popular understanding of who/what that office/thing/person actually IS is another question, for another day).
IF you actually had the legal right AND the full title (called allodium) to your land, your relationship to government would be much different (now it's similar to serf/ on a fief subject to the whims of the lord of the manor), you'd not be subservient in any way to the clerk who told you about the regulations-prohibiting-blahty-blah uses, you'd realize that if enough of you landowners got together you could overturn that regulation, by changing the council's minds or just changing the council's composition.
In short we'd all act and feel like active, involved citizen-proprietors, not like the docile subjects-of-the Crown we've become now.
Further, if as a secondary consideration to eliminate the Debt principal that generates the Public Debt Charges that are gobbling up Crown revenue (and thereby forcing up taxation rates), if we did sell (some of) the Crown lands - forests, mines, rivers and lakes ... do you think the NEW proprietors would do any worse of a job of conserving the monetary value, ecological integrity or harvest quality/quantity, never mind the beauty of these "tangible non-financial assets" of the Crown?
How much are these Real Property assets worth? Don't ask the current (woefully inept) stewards of these assets because these lands ARE NOT EVEN MENTIONED, NOR GIVEN A VALUE on the Confederal statement of Assets and Liabilities!! (Table 1.2, Pg 19, 2007 Public Accounts)
With all the recent accounting fiddles to beef up the asset side of the Balance Sheet by adding a new category of Crown wealth - "non-financial assets" - still NO MENTION of the Crown's interest in Real Property.
No wonder they squander the forests and mining lands - give it away for a song --- it's on the books at ZERO Dollars - any return that the stewards garner is huge (as a percentage). But a pittance is still a pittance in dollars-to-offset-expenditure terms.
Care about the Budget? Taxation? Property Values and Uses? Property Rights? or Sovereignty/Ownership within the country with the absolutely greatest potential of any in the world?
Demand that these forgotten little items of immense power and value be discussed by the person next asking for your vote.
Respectfully yours,
--
Re : Government garage sale could boost bottom line
James Cowan, National Post Published: Saturday, November 15, 2008
Thanks to James Cowan for the background on a few interesting Crown "land ownership" tidbits.
In the past few days we've heard some jokes about selling the CN Tower etc, but I hope to advance some facts and reasons why we should encourage the Min of Fin to get serious about discussing the disposition of some extremely valuable and vitally important Crown Real Property Interests that no one seems to know about.
While everyone is familiar with Crown Land, few of us (even in the business) know and/or appreciate the significance that no Canadian property is OWNED, we just have an INTEREST in the Crown's property - title always has "belonged" to the Sovereign who claimed it after discovery and/or conquest (check the abstract of title if you don't believe me- see attached Ontario example) NB some autochthonous peoples hold that their claims supersede this concept, but that is another question.
I assert that if Canadians were truly serious about:
1) improving the ConFederal Bottom Line,
2) establishing and then entrenching property rights in the Constitution,
and
3) finally "patriating" Canadian Sovereignty (a much different concept and process from the legal charade that was acted out back in 1982) see Canadian spin on sovereignty too ,
we'd demand the orderly and proper sale of the Crown's underlying ownership held in all lands in Canada (NB this "proper sale" would only be to the registered grantee/ fee simple estate holder.
We could accomplish a great deal towards solving those three "issues" (ie problems that everybody talks about but never DOES anything about) by having the Crown sell its ownership "interest" in our freehold/fee simple real property. (Getting popular understanding of who/what that office/thing/person actually IS is another question, for another day).
IF you actually had the legal right AND the full title (called allodium) to your land, your relationship to government would be much different (now it's similar to serf/ on a fief subject to the whims of the lord of the manor), you'd not be subservient in any way to the clerk who told you about the regulations-prohibiting-blahty-blah uses, you'd realize that if enough of you landowners got together you could overturn that regulation, by changing the council's minds or just changing the council's composition.
In short we'd all act and feel like active, involved citizen-proprietors, not like the docile subjects-of-the Crown we've become now.
Further, if as a secondary consideration to eliminate the Debt principal that generates the Public Debt Charges that are gobbling up Crown revenue (and thereby forcing up taxation rates), if we did sell (some of) the Crown lands - forests, mines, rivers and lakes ... do you think the NEW proprietors would do any worse of a job of conserving the monetary value, ecological integrity or harvest quality/quantity, never mind the beauty of these "tangible non-financial assets" of the Crown?
How much are these Real Property assets worth? Don't ask the current (woefully inept) stewards of these assets because these lands ARE NOT EVEN MENTIONED, NOR GIVEN A VALUE on the Confederal statement of Assets and Liabilities!! (Table 1.2, Pg 19, 2007 Public Accounts)
With all the recent accounting fiddles to beef up the asset side of the Balance Sheet by adding a new category of Crown wealth - "non-financial assets" - still NO MENTION of the Crown's interest in Real Property.
No wonder they squander the forests and mining lands - give it away for a song --- it's on the books at ZERO Dollars - any return that the stewards garner is huge (as a percentage). But a pittance is still a pittance in dollars-to-offset-expenditure terms.
Care about the Budget? Taxation? Property Values and Uses? Property Rights? or Sovereignty/Ownership within the country with the absolutely greatest potential of any in the world?
Demand that these forgotten little items of immense power and value be discussed by the person next asking for your vote.
Respectfully yours,
--
posted by Walk a Kb or Two in my cassins | 11:19 pm
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