If the Cowichan decision holds up on appeal, it would mean private property is not secure anywhere a claim for Aboriginal title is made in Canada including B.C. and New Brunswick. In November, a judge of the New Brunswick King’s Bench suggested that where such a claim succeeds, the court may instruct the government to expropriate the private property and hand it over to the Aboriginal group. Don't dismiss these decisions as isolated or not having national implications. They are the logical extension of the Supreme Court of Canada’s extensive Aboriginal law jurisprudence.
They are also consistent with core Canadian beliefs. Special status for Aboriginal people is deeply ingrained in Canadian culture and enshrined in the Constitution. Aboriginal rights are widely regarded as the natural and proper order of things. But in fact, they are the opposite. In a free country governed by the rule of law, Aboriginal rights should not exist.
Invasion, migration and mixing is the history of humanity. The Romans invaded the British Isles in 55 B.C. and conquered the place about 100 years later, on their second try. By 500 A.D., Saxons had established themselves as the dominant power. In 1066, the Normans overthrew the Saxon kingdom. Today, British law does not have different rights for descendants of Romans, Saxons and Normans. The people are British.
It wouldn’t have seemed that way in 1066. When aliens force their way into a territory, the inhabitants understandably resist. They try to preserve the memory that the place belongs to them. But over centuries, things change. People mix, culturally and genetically. Descendants of inhabitants and invaders marry and procreate. Their offspring do the same. More people from other different places arrive and mix, too. Everyone born there is native to the place. The culture is neither what existed before the invasion nor what the invaders brought with them. No one alive remembers either. The culture in which they live is a distinctive derivative.
Once upon a time, legal rights depended on who your parents were. The ruler was the son of the ruler before him. If your parents were serfs, you were a serf, too. Lineage was destiny. But like the culture, the law evolved. Eventually, everyone got the vote and the right to run for office. Everyone could own property and was free to buy and sell it. Everyone could marry who they chose, and divorce as they saw fit.
But in Canada, this old idea has been reconstituted as a progressive imperative. Under section 35 of the Canadian Constitution, the legally privileged group is Aboriginal, not European. Indigenous people have the same legal rights as any other Canadian citizen. But they also have rights no one else may claim. Depending on their lineage and group affiliations, they may have treaty rights. They may be entitled to tax exemptions. They may receive exclusive benefits. They may claim positions on governing bodies and in institutions reserved only for them. They may be entitled to procedures and considerations in criminal sentencing that no one else receives. Their group may be granted Aboriginal title on land from which other Canadians are excluded.
This special status has not benefited most Aboriginal people. But it has enriched their elites who administer the substantial largesse that flows from government coffers. Aboriginal property is a group right controlled by Aboriginal leaders. Individual Indigenous people do not own plots of land on reserves or on lands subject to Aboriginal title.
Dependency endures because governments and many Indigenous leaders want it that way. Former Mount Royal University professor Frances Widdowson, among others, has argued that we can trace persistently poor social conditions experienced by many Indigenous people to a thriving “Aboriginal industry.” Indigenous and non-Indigenous institutions and individuals—chiefs, leaders, consultants, managers, bureaucrats, politicians, lawyers and others—have a vested interest in the existing system of Aboriginal rights and status as special groups. Section 35, as interpreted by the Supreme Court of Canada, constitutionally entrenches this system. The recent Cowichan decision is just one of its consequences.
Let’s say the truth out loud. The British and the French conquered the territory now known as Canada. They weren’t invited, and they couldn’t have been persuaded to leave. They came with numbers and technology that overwhelmed the cultures that were there at the time, many of which were engaged in violent conflicts with their neighbours. Many people on the continent were not the first inhabitants of their territories. Treaties made with the Crown made the best of a bad situation. Lands not surrendered by treaty were no less subsumed by the new people, culture and country.
Most importantly, none of this matters now. Generations have passed. We are all Canadian citizens mixed together. Some people have Aboriginal lineage, some have British or French, some have both, and many have none of the above. It’s time to reject the idea that legal rights depend on lineage. In a free country, laws apply not to distinctive peoples, but to people.
Bruce Pardy is professor of law at Queen’s University, senior fellow with the Fraser Institute, and executive director of Rights Probe (rightsprobe.org). This article was first published HERE
They are also consistent with core Canadian beliefs. Special status for Aboriginal people is deeply ingrained in Canadian culture and enshrined in the Constitution. Aboriginal rights are widely regarded as the natural and proper order of things. But in fact, they are the opposite. In a free country governed by the rule of law, Aboriginal rights should not exist.
Invasion, migration and mixing is the history of humanity. The Romans invaded the British Isles in 55 B.C. and conquered the place about 100 years later, on their second try. By 500 A.D., Saxons had established themselves as the dominant power. In 1066, the Normans overthrew the Saxon kingdom. Today, British law does not have different rights for descendants of Romans, Saxons and Normans. The people are British.
It wouldn’t have seemed that way in 1066. When aliens force their way into a territory, the inhabitants understandably resist. They try to preserve the memory that the place belongs to them. But over centuries, things change. People mix, culturally and genetically. Descendants of inhabitants and invaders marry and procreate. Their offspring do the same. More people from other different places arrive and mix, too. Everyone born there is native to the place. The culture is neither what existed before the invasion nor what the invaders brought with them. No one alive remembers either. The culture in which they live is a distinctive derivative.
Once upon a time, legal rights depended on who your parents were. The ruler was the son of the ruler before him. If your parents were serfs, you were a serf, too. Lineage was destiny. But like the culture, the law evolved. Eventually, everyone got the vote and the right to run for office. Everyone could own property and was free to buy and sell it. Everyone could marry who they chose, and divorce as they saw fit.
But in Canada, this old idea has been reconstituted as a progressive imperative. Under section 35 of the Canadian Constitution, the legally privileged group is Aboriginal, not European. Indigenous people have the same legal rights as any other Canadian citizen. But they also have rights no one else may claim. Depending on their lineage and group affiliations, they may have treaty rights. They may be entitled to tax exemptions. They may receive exclusive benefits. They may claim positions on governing bodies and in institutions reserved only for them. They may be entitled to procedures and considerations in criminal sentencing that no one else receives. Their group may be granted Aboriginal title on land from which other Canadians are excluded.
This special status has not benefited most Aboriginal people. But it has enriched their elites who administer the substantial largesse that flows from government coffers. Aboriginal property is a group right controlled by Aboriginal leaders. Individual Indigenous people do not own plots of land on reserves or on lands subject to Aboriginal title.
Dependency endures because governments and many Indigenous leaders want it that way. Former Mount Royal University professor Frances Widdowson, among others, has argued that we can trace persistently poor social conditions experienced by many Indigenous people to a thriving “Aboriginal industry.” Indigenous and non-Indigenous institutions and individuals—chiefs, leaders, consultants, managers, bureaucrats, politicians, lawyers and others—have a vested interest in the existing system of Aboriginal rights and status as special groups. Section 35, as interpreted by the Supreme Court of Canada, constitutionally entrenches this system. The recent Cowichan decision is just one of its consequences.
Let’s say the truth out loud. The British and the French conquered the territory now known as Canada. They weren’t invited, and they couldn’t have been persuaded to leave. They came with numbers and technology that overwhelmed the cultures that were there at the time, many of which were engaged in violent conflicts with their neighbours. Many people on the continent were not the first inhabitants of their territories. Treaties made with the Crown made the best of a bad situation. Lands not surrendered by treaty were no less subsumed by the new people, culture and country.
Most importantly, none of this matters now. Generations have passed. We are all Canadian citizens mixed together. Some people have Aboriginal lineage, some have British or French, some have both, and many have none of the above. It’s time to reject the idea that legal rights depend on lineage. In a free country, laws apply not to distinctive peoples, but to people.
Bruce Pardy is professor of law at Queen’s University, senior fellow with the Fraser Institute, and executive director of Rights Probe (rightsprobe.org). This article was first published HERE
9 comments:
Similar things are being said in NZ, particularly in academic work from Waikato and AUT law schools. TPM's policies are made on similar assumptions. It will only be a matter of time before the Waitangi Tribunal and some of our woke judges adopt this as a precedent.
And if so, NZ's feeble Parliament would be bowing to the woke judiciary and universities.
Will they also adopt it as a precedent in Britain and award land to indigenous British people, such as those with Celtic ancestors? No, they will not, because indigenous British people are White. The distinguishing feature is not indigeneity but race.
Were the same thing to happen here, it would be very interesting to know how owners of land obtained legally might prevent occupation of their property. Irrespective of any court ruling.
I for one, can imagine many bloody scenarios.
Canadians and NZers have a lot in common!
And endless law suits - NZ will become one giant unproductive court case. A tragic scenario.
The same thing is already alive and well in NZ. All Crown land is fair game for Māori claims. This includes land sold with a Memorial on the Title enabling purchase of said property by the Government if the Waitangi Tribunal so decrees. When is the media going to be upfront about the selling out of NZ to mixed race con artists?!
‘I’M SORRY FOR BEING WHITE!’
The Western world is plagued by a raft of post-colonial-guilt-tripping “I’m sorry for being white” liberals who reflexively rat out their own race and culture for the warm glow that comes from lining up with supposedly “oppressed” peoples.
Let’s just call them “Ethno-Masochists.”
Like all Western countries, New Zealand has a raft of these self-despising, West-hating socialist traitors-- both in our universities and amongst the tertiary-educated -- who have been helped by their Communist lecturers to see that whites are to blame for all the evils of the world.
These are people who told us five decades ago that apartheid was a social and moral evil in South Africa.
Now, they’re telling us that it’s a social and moral good in New Zealand.
Whether apartheid is to be decried or endorsed is based entirely on the skin colour of its beneficiaries.
Whites always deserve a good kicking.
Leftists despise their own race and culture. They’ve been schooled to hate Western civilisation and regard Western countries as racist, sexist, colonialist oppressors.
They desperately want to see other cultures as somehow morally superior to our own.
They’re not.
The Judeo-Christian culture that originated in Athens, Rome and Jerusalem, then took root in Europe before being exported worldwide by white Europeans, is vastly superior to other cultures.
Many non-whites have also benefited massively in adopting Western cultural norms and values.
This fact is undeniable to anyone except a moron.
West-hating socialist traitors have learned that the highest status in our society goes to anyone who can claim to be a member of a Marxist-designated race, gender, class, or sexual preference-based "victim” group.
This explains why so many Pakeha with a touch of the tar brush are falling over themselves to assert a “Maori” identity.
Indigenous pretenders.
For those who can't claim such membership, the next best thing is to be a totally supine, groveling and penitent member of a "victimiser" group – an ‘ally.’
That's why liberal guilt-trippers like Andrew Judd and Gareth Morgan seek moral preening opportunities for "saving" the [part-] Maori.
And everyone else must be made to wear the hair shirt.
There is no reason to elevate Maori culture to an undeserved pre-eminence.
By any objective standard, the sum total of its contribution to human felicity is an ugly, gesticulating, tongue-poking, eye-rolling, thigh-slapping war dance of limited curiosity value when deployed before a rugby match.
If anyone can show otherwise, let them step up to the plate.
Open challenge to all Treatyists: point to a single discovery or invention that has come out of Maori culture to the benefit of humankind.
I bet you can’t …
Still, feel free to "accentuate the primitive" over "elevating the civilised" if that's what blows your hair back.
Just keep your hand out of my pocket and don't expect me to kiss your white liberal ring-piece or barely-brown backside on the way past to somewhere useful.
Do it in your own time and on your own dime, not on mine.
ENDS
The British owe the Maori nothing
Beads and blankets pacify
The Maori owe the British everything
Tribal warfare kills.
The Stone Age meets the 19th Century
It goes on.
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