I hope all is well with you and yours as we head into the New Year, 2016
Property Rights is again in jeopardy in the hallowed halls of Queen’s Park. Bill 118, the Great Lakes Shoreline Right of Passage ACT was presented as a private members bill in 2015 by Niagara MPP, Wayne Gates, the NDP member for that riding. The bill has passed second reading and now has gone to committee for early 2016. The bill will grant the right of passage for walkers and un-motorized vehicles between the homeowner’s house and the water’s edge. The properties that will be affected are all the properties along the shores of all the Great Lakes, the St. Laurence River as well as all the properties along the rivers flowing into those waterways. In other words, most communities in Ontario will have some properties affected by this bill. This should set off thunderous alarms in every property owners head, with the recognition that, if this passes, then no private property in Ontario is safe from the intrusive whims of those who see their neighbours property and lust to have it for their own, and if they can’t have it, they lobby certain politicians, (who themselves believe that government should control all property), to pass laws removing the private control of that property a little at a time.
People who live far away from the water’s edge should not feel safe, because removal of property rights for one is removal of property rights for all. This is the thin edge of the wedge and it is the proof that the NDP and the Liberals presently in power in Toronto, have no respect for property rights or for the letter of the law that has been passed down to us, from the Magna Carta. Now the lobby for walking trails and bike trails around the province will have open season on all private property. Watch your back yard, folks, you could soon have a trail across it, because if your neighbours with waterfronts don’t have rights, neither do you.
Adam Smith, Scottish author and moral philosophy, explained the role of government when he said, “the first and chief design of every system of government is to maintain justice; to prevent the members of society from encroaching on one another’s property, or seizing what is not their own. The design here is to give each one the secure and peaceable possession of his own property”.
Now instead of the government standing up to defend property rights, it is the one instigating the removal of said property rights, led by an NDP member that fails to recognize how the removal of property rights has worked in the rest of the world. He should take a long look in the mirror and hopefully recognize that this will eventually destroy this country and then do the right thing and withdraw Bill 118.
If you have any opinions to pass on to this MPP regarding this Bill, you can reach him by phone at 905-357-0681 and leave a message or write to him at:
MPP Wayne Gates
Unit 1, 6746 Morrison Street
Niagara Falls, ON L2E 6Z8
Make sure you copy your own MPP on this matter.
Happy New Year,
Tom Black