Bridge City News: This message cannot be emphasized enough: Canadians do not truly own their land outright. Property, explains law professor Bruce Pardy, is merely a collection of legal rights—and those rights exist only as long as governments and courts choose to uphold them.
A growing power struggle between Indigenous title claims and private ownership has left Canadians unsure who ultimately controls the land beneath their feet as the country drifts further into constitutional uncertainty. Challenging the philosophical core of Canada’s modern legal framework on Indigenous rights, Prof. Pardy argues that Canada abandoned the principle of equal treatment under the law and opened the door to permanent legal conflict and social division when it assigned different legal rights based on ancestry and identity. The result is a steady dismantling of the centuries-old principle that a person’s home is their private domain, free from outside interference. Not in Canada.
Bruce Pardy is executive director of Rights Probe and professor of law at Queen’s University.
Contact us to book Bruce Pardy for an interview or appearance, or to subscribe to our newsletter: rightsprobe@protonmail.com.