It is with great sadness that I respond to a letter that was sent to the Ontario Landowners Association (OLA) members on Sunday, March 11, 2012. In this letter, Randy Hillier MPP for Lanark, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington and one of the original founders of the OLA informed the membership that he no longer supports the direction of the OLA and specifically our quest to discover the value of the Land Patent/Crown Grants as per our property rights.
I will always hold Randy in high esteem for teaching many of us how to protect our rights and freedoms and for helping us grow enough backbone to stand up to any and all who would challenge the rights and freedoms of Ontario landowners.
The constitution of the OLA states that we will defend and promote the cause of individual property rights within its jurisdiction by all legal and reasonable means, and from the OLA perspective the Land Patent/ Crown Grants are legal contracts that are still valid in today’s modern world. The Ministry of Natural Resources still takes our money and sends us certified copies that state, in fact, that the grants duration and effects are “forever”.
Property Rights have been referred to as a “bundle of rights”. This bundle of course, includes our personal rights and freedoms. I believe that in the context of a free and democratic commonwealth country, with our laws springing up from the Magna Carta, that property rights are “inalienable rights” that all mankind are born with, like the right to breath. In 1948, the Canadian Bar Association produced a report that dealt with inalienable rights.
Here is a key paragraph:
If then the freedoms and rights with which we are concerned are really inalienable, it must be because they are or ought to be beyond the reach of legislative action. The real problem then is to put them beyond legislative reach. Therefore it becomes immediately apparent that if those freedoms and rights are inalienable it must be because they are already part of the constitution and cannot be conferred by legislative enactment. The moment it is conceded that they are within the power of gift by the legislature it must be conceded that they are vulnerable to further legislative action and can be withdrawn at any time.
As the President of the OLA, speaking with the unanimous support of the executive, I pledge that the OLA will continue to use all legal and moral means possible to protect the rights of private property owners. Randy has taught us well.
Tom Black
President
Ontario Landowners Association