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When the British navy arrived in new lands during the era of
colonial expansion, local populations were regarded either as
subjects to the king of England or invaders who had to be driven out
by military force. Such was the case in some of the islands in the
Caribbean where native populations were decimated. Resources that
were found in the colonial lands were regarded as being the property
of the crown. This included salt that was left on the beaches of
India where seawater had evaporated. That people who lived in a hot
climate needed salt for their survival was irrelevant.
Indians could be jailed
for theft if they helped themselves to any salt they found on any
beach. Only certain privileged people of British ancestry who were
known as peers to the crown were allowed access to such resources
and for their own economic benefit. Many acquired their wealth by
trading in such resources as well as in spices that grew in the
colonies. Nazi theorists recognized that precedent when they
asserted that Germany had a right to the resources of other nations
as well as a right to claim what was rightfully theirs. Storm
troopers subsequently marched across international borders to
exercise that right and occupy (and enslave) formerly sovereign
nations.
A version of British law that gave the king dominion over the
resources of the earth still exists in Canadian provincial law. The
mineral resources that lie under the privately owned property in
Canada are regarded as the property of the crown. That is spelled
out in the Mineral Resources Act of every province and denies
private property owners the right to the resources that lie under
their land. The crown asserts a right to sell those mineral rights
to persons other than the landowner and without advising private
landowners of its intentions in this regard.
Landowners who live west
of Ottawa recently became aware of this after they discovered
prospectors' markings on their property. They discovered that they
did not own the resources under their land and had little recourse
under Canadian law to keep outsiders off their land. Canadian courts
still uphold a version of the same British law that gave the king
dominion over all existence while it denied private property rights
to native people who lived in British colonies. Canadian provincial
politicians had earlier repealed private property rights from
provincial laws while both federal and provincial politicians
removed it from Canada's constitution prior to its repatriation into
Canada.
The landowners who live
west of Ottawa may have little hope of delaying heavy machinery from
arriving on their land to access the uranium that is believed to lie
under it. Ontario needs to build new electric power
stations and has chosen to go the nuclear route. The federal
government owns a company that makes nuclear reactors and has not
made a sale in many years. It urgently needs a customer for a
technology that can only operate on one kind of fuel and that is
uranium that can be found in Ontario near Ottawa. Accessing that
uranium could devalue the surface property, without any recourse
for the landowners.
The prospect of a
customer for nuclear technology could help Ottawa finally sell the
federally owned nuclear group to private interests. It is unlikely
that any federal politician would make any mention of re-installing
private property rights back into Canada's constitution. Including
private property rights into Canada's constitution could otherwise
precipitate a challenge to the Mineral Resources Act and
would be politically contentious. Provincial authorities may
raise a protest at such a prospect and instead be motivated to bully
the landowners into submission "for the greater good" of Ontario.
Prospectors could then have a field day on somebody else's property.
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Prospecting Under Property Rights |
Prospecting in Canada under a regime of constitutional private
property rights would change the nature of prospecting. Prospectors
would need to obtain permission from interested landowners to do
some testing on their lands. Modern seismic testing techniques are
non-invasive and may be able to reveal what lies at great depths
beneath the ground surface. Interested landowners could grant
permission to prospectors to deep drill multiple test-wells on their
property to discover what resources lie deep in the earth. If the
test-wells yield nothing of significance, the landowners could
subsequently use such wells to geothermally heat and cool their
homes.
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