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Hillier leaves Landowners feeling 'confused and deserted'

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

A founder and former president of the Ontario Landowners Association has thrown a bombshell into the debate over land patents and property rights, a festering topic in rural Ontario. 

“Crown Patents are of little use in defence of property rights except in the most nuanced, rarest and unique of circumstances,” Randy Hillier, now a Progressive Conservative MPP, wrote in a statement published on Monday. “It is time for people to recognise the reality that the law is not on their side regarding property rights.”

However, Tom Black of Ottawa, the current OLA’s president, says the organization will not be deterred. “We are very resolved in our push to search out the value of patent grants.”

Two hundred years ago, Crown patents conveyed land grants to settlers. The Ontario Landowners Association believes that the Constitution Act of 1867 limits provincial authority to public or Crown property and interests.  Therefore the province can’t require them to adhere to what the OLA refers to as “an overwhelming number of statutory environmental restrictions and conservation practice initiatives in the name of ‘the public good.’”

The Ontario Landowners Association has been encouraging its members to apply for their Crown land patent documents and also selling CDs on the topic. The OLA will release a statement today “with our side of the story.”

Hillier’s statement condemning land patents was published on the Rural Revolution website, under the heading “Crown Patents- I Wish It Were True.” That website has been mostly inactive for several years. Hillier wrote that he was quoting from opinions of three lawyers that weren’t named.

“I feel I have an obligation to caution you regarding much of the information that’s out there and provide you with some facts and informed positions on Crown Patents,” Hillier wrote.

Black described members’ reactions as “somewhere between confused and feeling they have been deserted. . . . They feel like he has let them down.” He says he received a number of angry phone calls from OLA members yesterday.  “I can understand that.”

Black says the OLA leadership kew that Hillier was not in favour of property rights for seven or eight months but the general membership likely didn’t know that. “I knew he was going to release some kind of a statement,” Black says.

Hillier “feels it is something he can’t support,” Black said. “He doesn’t think they are worth what we feel they are worth.”

He wants to step away from it. …. he doesn’t want it to affect his political career. He can’t justify it in his own mind.”

Black says it’s important to remember that “we wouldn’t be here,” if not for Hillier’s leadership.

Black says the OLA remains convinced that Crown patents “are valid documents . . . They have a certain amount of property rights embedded in them. The trouble is that we have to take them to Superior and Supreme courts to get these rights identified.”

Hillier could not be reached last night. A posting on the Rural Revolution website, with a link to Hillier’s Facebook page says “I will continue advocating to entrench property rights in the constitution to provide real protection from unjust government legislation.” BF

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