Please forward this article to any Lawyer, Realtor or Landlord that you may know. They need to know and they probably do not have a clue. I welcome all comments. Let’s start a national discussion.
By Shawn Buckley | Substack.com/@ShawnBuckleyLaw
Most Canadians have never heard of UNDRIP, The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It is a treaty that the federal government signed on behalf of Canadians without any meaningful public debate, without any referendum, and without any honest disclosure of what it actually obligates Canada to do. What this treaty requires is so consequential that if Canadians understood it clearly, there would be a national conversation that those in power have no interest in.
At its core, UNDRIP obligates signatory nations to vest property ownership back into the hands of the Indigenous Peoples who preceded European colonization. In British Columbia, we are already watching this play out in real time. The federal government has moved to transfer land in the Vancouver metro area to the Musqueam Nation. We are talking about a band with fewer than 2,000 members receiving jurisdiction over land that is home to approximately 2 million Canadians. The government has not released the terms of the agreement. Canadians are being asked to accept a seismic shift in property rights without being permitted to read the document that governs it.
To understand why this is happening, you have to understand the legal architecture underneath it. The King of the United Kingdom owns all land in Canada. The King has allodial ownership. Allodial ownership is ownership of land free from a superior landlord. The King owns your land and is your superior landlord. Even when you pay off your mortgage, you do not own your land. What you hold is called a fee simple, which is a grant from the King permitting you to use the land without restriction. The King remains the owner. The King remains your superior landlord.
That is why the King can take your land, such as through expropriation. That is why the King can put restrictions on your land. That is why the King can grant to others property rights to land you think you own, but do not own. UNDRIP is a treaty obligation on the King to transfer ownership of most of our populated areas to Indigenous Peoples.
