Our Constitution, the “Crown” and Letters Patent by Tom Black
The Landowners have taken our constitution (British North America Act of 1867) that included the rights laid down in the Magna Carta and through much research, have concluded that the folks who write our laws do a very good job of respecting the old contracts (the Patent Grants). But the people that take them to the next step, often don’t know or respect that law, and pass bylaws that are not applicable to private property.
Yes, we in the Landowners do stand on our private property rights and our right to use our property for our own enjoyment and profit, without restriction, except that we respect the equal rights of our neighbours. This fact, however, does not mean that we opt out of society. We all pay taxes to run our governments, to serve the greater community, with roads, schools, health, fire services, police and defense but that does not give away property rights. When our public officials take office they take an oath to the ‘crown’, that is, they take an oath to uphold the ‘honour of the crown, defend it with their lives and protect it from all who would tarnish or dishonour it in any way’. Politicians do not take an oath to a political party, police do not take an oath to a particular government, they make that oath to the crown. The ‘crown’ is not the king or queen. They are the sovereign and they take an oath called the “Coronation Oath” swearing to defend the crown. The crown is us. All the people of the land. Not the land. When we speak of ‘crown land’ we are talking about land kept in trust for the people of the country. This land does not belong to the government! The government does not own any land. They only manage the crown land, in trust for the people of the country.
The Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) in Ontario is the arm of government that is tasked with selling crown land to individuals. When they do, they do so by issuing a patent grant and on their own website under “Sale and Issuance of Letters Patent”, they state clearly (as of March 2014) that they retain no future options for the land and do not control use. Since a river can never rise higher than its source, neither can any piece of legislation rise higher than the constitution from which this country was created. As with the native treaties that were signed long before confederation, so too each Letters Patent that established the root of your deed, was an individual treaty with the crown and not on the table for negotiation at confederation.
Governments are incorporated entities, set up to manage the affairs and make rules for that incorporated body so as to limit liability, but private property is not part of the incorporation. We do business with corporations like Canadian Tire or Sears but we would never think of letting them write laws for us on our own property. Government corporations are no different, and in the eyes of the law, it states that corporations have no more power in law than an individual person. The only time the state can cross that private property line is in the case of criminal activity and only then, with a warrant.
I know these statements are very black and white, whereas in reality, the lines are often blurred, but we must strive to hold our representatives, the government, to the true intent of the law and not let them steal away those hard fought for rights by default just because we don’t know and understand what our rights are.
