| MPP MACLEOD STANDS UP FOR LANDOWNER RIGHTS |
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| Wednesday, 18 October 2006 19:00 |
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Speaks in support of Conservative private member’s bill. QUEEN’S PARK, October 19, 2006 – Nepean-Carleton MPP Lisa MacLeod stood up in the Ontario Legislature today to support Bill 57, An Act to amend the Expropriations Act and the Human Rights Code with respect to land rights and responsibilities. “If the Legislature decides that it wants to take your property and not pay compensation,” said MacLeod, quoting noted legal expert Karen Selick, “then there’s nothing—absolutely nothing—to stop it from enacting legislation which explicitly disentitles you to compensation.” Bill 57, tabled by Official Opposition Agriculture and Food Critic Toby Barrett, would enshrine certain protections for landowners in Ontario law. Along with other protections, Bill 57 would amend the Ontario Human Rights Code to recognize, subject to specific limitations at law, the right to peaceful enjoyment of one’s land, the moral responsibility to maintain it and the right to freedom from search of one’s property and home and from seizure of anything from it. “It is increasingly important that this piece of legislation passes,” said MacLeod, “so farmers in my community who are farming on the Jock River or on provincially designated wetlands in Goulbourn won’t ever have to worry again whether or not their lands will be expropriated and their livelihoods destroyed by this government.” Currently, Alberta, Quebec, and Yukon are the only jurisdictions in Canada in which property rights have been enshrined in law. - 30 - For more information: Stephen Gilman, Executive Assistant Phone: 613-823-2116 Cell: 613-297-2051 |