Robert Michael Maitland Stewart
Canada Bill Debate, March 23, 1982.
Statement to the British House of Lords.
“There is one omission which noble Lords will notice. There is no quite clear and explicit assertion of the right not to be deprived of your property. Very commonly in constitutions such a matter is set out very plainly indeed. It is true that there is the paragraph: Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure”.
This may be a matter for lawyers to argue. But, if the Government requires, say, one’s land for a public purpose, is that an unreasonable search or seizure? Would you be able, by quoting this paragraph, to prevent the Government acquiring your land? Moreover, nowadays Governments never will put themselves in the position in which they could never acquire a piece of land, because circumstances they cannot foresee may make it extremely desirable in the public interest that they should.
What one would expect is an assertion of the right not to be deprived of one’s property except after a due legal process and with proper compensation. Rather surprisingly, an explicit provision of that kind is lacking. It is the more remarkable as we have good reason to suppose that the Canadian Government, both the federal and the provincial Governments, will in the future be desiring to acquire lands now regarded as belonging to Indians. In view of the amount of feeling that there is on this whole question, one would have expected the Act to contain an explicit provision that people, whether they be in origin European or of the aboriginal peoples of Canada, cannot have their land taken away from them unless there is good reason, a legal process and proper compensation.
I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, can help us at all about this, because it is a puzzling omission. Many of us, I think, would be reassured if he could say that he has good reason to suppose that despite this rather surprising omission of wording the lands of the Indian peoples will be protected.”