Mid-Week Post

Your Lenten post ...

The more recent bribe is getting fast-tracked:

A one-time top-up payment will be coming to Canadians who receive the GST credit.

The “Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit,” which was first announced late last month as part of a number of the government’s affordability measures, passed the final vote in the Senate on Thursday. ...

The finance department says the benefit will provide a one-time top-up payment “as early as possible this spring” worth 50% of the credit.

The regular value of the benefit, which is paid to lower-income Canadians, will also see an increase by 25% starting in July and continuing for five years.

The top-up is expected to help more than 12 million Canadians so when combined, the measures mean a family of four will receive up to $1,890 this year — compared to the annual $1,100 current credit — and about $1,400 annually for the next four years.

Meanwhile, a single person eligible for the new benefit would receive $950 this year compared to $540.

The Conservatives have called the top-up a “Band-Aid solution,” but nevertheless, helped speed the bill through the House last week.

(Sidebar: then you're not really helping, are you?)

Fool me once, shame on me.

Fool me more times than have been counted ...

Somewhat related:  

In November 2025, Canada’s supply management system deliberately destroyed millions of litres of perfectly good milk in Ontario, even as grocery prices remained high and food banks reported record demand.

That destruction was not an accident or a processing failure. It was the predictable outcome of policy.

We don't have to trade with China:

While Russia remains a military threat in the Arctic, Canada’s security officials told a House of Commons committee this week that they remain primarily focused on China’s threats to economic security in the North.

“Russia has a tremendous interest and focus in the Arctic,” Paul Lynd, assistant director at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), told the foreign affairs committee on Thursday. “However, they are of less concern than, say, the activities of China and other hostile state actors at this time.”

**

Carney’s new trade partner -what else did he commit to ?? pic.twitter.com/lii5f0hgtX

— Concerned Canadian (@Concern70732755) February 13, 2026

Canada the cruel:

Feminist and development groups are urging Canada not to turn its back on funding reproductive health and gender initiatives, as Canada focuses its foreign aid cuts on global health programming.

"A bold diplomatic voice is really crucial," Oxfam Canada executive director Lauren Ravon told a panel she hosted on Parliament Hill earlier this month.

No, you're just killing black people off.

Racist.

**

Canadian doctors are considering euthanizing newborns under certain circumstances as a form of “healthcare.” When Dr. Louis Roy advocated for this in 2022, it sparked widespread outrage and the proposal appeared to be dead. It wasn’t. When the Daily Mail pressed the CMQ last year, it confirmed it still endorses the recommendation. It recently stated that euthanasia for babies with “severe deformations” or “extreme pain” may be medically justified. Public outrage, as usual, has faded in the shadow of Canada’s euthanasia bureaucracy.

Infant euthanasia isn’t yet law, but given the expansion of Canada’s euthanasia laws, it soon could be. In 2016, Canada legalized “Medical Assistance in Dying,” or MAiD, for terminally ill adults. Five years later, its Parliament lifted the requirement that a patient’s death be “reasonably foreseeable.” By 2022, lawmakers were discussing euthanasia for minors and in psychiatric cases, and next year MAiD for mental illness will become legal.

When a government grants permission to end a life, where does it stop? “Once you start legalizing, there is a risk that a significant number of physicians normalize this practice. It’s like putting fuel on the fire,” says Trudo Lemmens, a law professor at the University of Toronto, who now regrets supporting Canada’s original MAiD laws. Wesley J. Smith of the Discovery Institute think tank asks the question: “If killing is an acceptable answer to suffering, why limit the killing to adults?”

The new under-dogs:

It’s been a long journey, but for the first time in history Israel has sent a bobsled team to the Winter Olympics — the 2026 Games in Milan-Cortina, Italy.

The team is led by American-Israeli AJ Edelman, who has poured in years of sweat and sacrifice to make this possible, even fundraising on his own to secure the resources necessary to compete.

Edelman was also the first Orthodox Jew to compete in the Winter Olympics, representing Israel in the one-person skeleton sled at the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea.

Affectionately named Shul Runnings after the 1993 comedy film about the Jamaican bobsled team, Cool Runnings, the nickname plays on the Yiddish word shul, meaning synagogue.

Also - not a good look:

This is a watershed moment in Canadian history.

This is when the rest of the world realized what Canada’s true national character was: not the polite, friendly nation we pretend to be, but entitled, thin-skinned cheaters who scream “how dare you film us!” the second our… pic.twitter.com/YR2uASaOte

— Erik Thorvaldsson (@erik_thorvalds) February 17, 2026

And now for something completely different:

Your Autocratic Government and You

To wit:

Some members of Parliament are slamming the Liberal government's plan to give new powers to cabinet to temporarily exempt individuals or corporations from some federal laws.

The exemptions are being referred to as "regulatory sandboxes" and are contained in a clause in the government's omnibus budget implementation bill, currently being debated at a House of Commons committee.

The clause would allow federal ministers to exempt individuals or corporations from any federal laws they are responsible for, except the Criminal Code.

The Conflict of Interest Act would also still apply, the Treasury Board said.

Several MPs raised concerns about the clause at a House of Commons committee Thursday. Some asked whether the move could lead to conflicts of interest and whether the projects would be beneficial for the public.

Bloc Québécois MP Marie-Hélène Gaudreau raised concerns about transparency and oversight and potential "ethical derailments."

In French, Gaudreau said the "regulatory sandboxes" are "more like a beach and there will be collateral damage."

Conservative MP Kelly Block questioned the point of having legislation in place if ministers can bypass it. She said the plan is "at best ambiguous" and that exemptions would allow ministers to "pick winners and losers."

 

Or, you know, get away with a crime.

 

**

It was never about a virus:

On Feb. 2, 2026, Blacklock’s Reporter confirmed that Canada’s Liberal government has now “sealed internal reports on vaccine and drug injuries for 15 years” and revealed that the hastily buried documents shockingly “run to several million pages.”

 Unfortunately, the Liberal government’s recent effort to further conceal the unspeakable damage wrought by the COVID vaccines in Canada is merely the latest sordid example of the fascist left-wing politics and open human rights violations that have plagued Canadian society since the onset of the COVID pandemic.

 In fact, although it has shamelessly attempted to conceal its treachery, it is clear that the Liberal government’s response to the COVID pandemic has long been exposed as an exercise in fraud and a ghoulish masquerade that was utterly predicated upon the abuse of the Canadian people.

 Firstly, throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the Liberal government colluded with various provincial and municipal governments across Canada in order to inundate Canadian society with a litany of ruinous political policies and mandates that decimated the Canadian people and failed to protect against the outbreak of any “pandemic.”

For example, at the behest of the Liberal government, various provincial governments openly rejected trusted medical data and epidemiological evidence, as well as pre-established pandemic response protocols, in order to, instead, implement their own fundamentally flawed initiatives and numerous policies that were already commonly known to be ineffective, such as forced business closures and government-mandated “social distancing.”

Furthermore, post-COVID, a slew of studies and reports have confirmed that, although “Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs), like closures and social restrictions … had a limited effect on reducing infection growth,” the NPIs all “incurred significant social and economic costs.” In fact, the Alberta COVID-19 Pandemic Data Review Task Force’s Final Report itself explicitly states that Canada’s provinces imposed extreme ‘containment measures’ upon the Canadian people, despite the fact that all of the extant data and information simply “did not justify such aggressive actions.”

Moreover, during the COVID-19 pandemic and even post-COVID, the Liberal government and Canada’s provincial governments all lied to Canadians about the safety, purpose, and efficacy of the various COVID-19 vaccines, in an effort to deceive the Canadian people and, effectively, coerce Canada to adopt the largely untested COVID-19 vaccines.

For instance, post-COVID, a diverse array of national data-sets and provincially mandated reports have confirmed that “The COVID-19 vaccines were not designed to halt transmission of the virus” and that “there is limited data on their effectiveness in preventing severe illness in children.” In fact, numerous studies have been “unable to identify any well-conducted comparative studies demonstrating that vaccines provided better protection from severe disease than natural exposure to circulating variants.”

In truth, the various COVID-19 vaccines did not meaningfully protect anyone from the COVID-19 virus and were oftentimes fatal. Even the Province of Alberta’s own COVID-19 Pandemic Data Review Task Force has “identified reports of deaths and injuries attributed to the vaccines, as well as a known risk of myocarditis” and vigorously implored the Province of Alberta to immediately “[halt] the use of COVID-19 vaccines” as a result of the countless “deaths and injuries attributed to the [COVID-19] vaccines.”

Finally, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trudeau government and Canada’s provincial political structures eagerly violated the fundamental human rights of every Canadian who even inadvertently disagreed with the Liberal Party’s fascist politics and policies.

For example, throughout the COVID-19 pandemic the Liberal government and Canada’s provincial governments relentlessly oppressed the Canadian people and precluded all of Canadian society from countless fundamental human rights, such as the “right to freedom of expression,” the “right to religious freedom,” and the “right to peaceful assembly.”

In fact, in 2022, the Liberal government needlessly enacted Canada’s Emergencies Act and violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms itself, in a shameful effort to oppress the Freedom Convoy and its bevy of right-wing supporters during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Even Canada’s Federal Court has explicitly confirmed that Prime Minister Trudeau “violated the Charter right to freedom of expression and the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure,” ultimately concluding that, “The federal government’s decision to declare a public order emergency under the Emergencies Act in early 2022 … [was] unreasonable and … not justified [by] the facts or the law.”

Unfortunately, the Liberal government’s recent decision to seal away and ignore the shattered lives and society that the COVID vaccine left in its wake is merely another echo of the fascist politics that have been casually imposed upon the Canadian people since the onset of the COVID pandemic and justified under the guise of “flattening the curve.”

In fact, although it has shamelessly attempted to conceal its treachery, it is clear that the Liberal government’s response to the COVID pandemic has long been exposed as an exercise in fraud and a ghoulish masquerade that was utterly predicated upon the abuse of the Canadian people.

More importantly, despite the fact that it decimated countless nations and peoples, it is readily apparent that the COVID-19 pandemic has also forced every Canadian to confront the globalized era’s most profound truth: Their human rights are now utterly inconsequential.

**

Extraordinary pandemic-era infringements of Canadians’rights were justified in the name of public safety, says the Supreme Court of Canada. Judges by a 5-4 decision upheld a Newfoundland and Labrador order that prohibited outsiders from entering the province: “These were difficult times.”

 **

Whatever you do, don’t use your time to take down school-shooters or anything:

RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme assigned a total seven officers to policing hate crimes in seven provinces, records show. Most were part-timers. The disclosure followed complaints of weak protection of Jews, the leading target of hate crimes in Canada, by official estimate: “What are the risks?”

Why, It's Like There's A Pattern

Would that I could put my finger on it:

A shooting during a high school hockey game at Dennis M. Lynch Arena in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, left three people dead, including the suspected shooter, and three others critically injured, police said.  

A WJAR News report identified the suspect as Robert Dorgan, who it said also goes by Roberta Esposito. 

The station’s reporter, citing a law enforcement source, said the suspect “dressed in women’s clothing.” 

Police have not publicly released the names of the other victims.   ...

Gunfire erupted in the early afternoon during a crowded game, sending players and spectators running for safety, authorities said. 

Police said the victims were in the stands and arena area, and no players on the ice were reported hurt.

Police Chief Tina Goncalves said the shooting appears to have been targeted and linked to a family dispute, not a random attack. 

The suspect is believed to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and police said officers were not involved in the suspect’s death.  

**

Let's not talk about any of this:

The teenager who carried out a mass shooting in British Columbia, Canada, may have intended to “finish off” her siblings, a witness said.

On Tuesday, the suspect, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, allegedly shot her mother and step-brother before entering a secondary school in Tumbler Ridge, a small mining town at the base of the Rocky Mountains.

**

Jesse Van Rootselaar, an 18-year-old high school dropout, carried out the second worst school shooting in Canadian history Tuesday, first slaughtering his mother and stepbrother at home and then storming into Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, where he killed six people and injured 25 more before turning the gun on himself.

Jennifer Strang expressed serious concerns about the grade-schooler’s behavior more than 10 years ago, according to posts in a Facebook parent group.

“He shows intense empathy when he sees anyone hurt not by his own hand but has a devious grin when he hurts his siblings,” Strang confessed in Parent Life Network Canada in 2015, according to a screenshot shared on social media.

Hold On!

It's all going to get worse:

It's Like There Is A Pattern

The plot, it does thicken:

CTV News initially reported that the shooter was identified as Jesse Strang. The RCMP later confirmed that the 18-year-old goes by the name Jesse Van Rootselaar and was “born as a biological male” and “identified as female, both socially and publicly.”

So, an actual gunman, then?

Good to know.

**

He has a knife over his left-hand wrist. Jesus wept. @fancypants_s https://t.co/M9w3gr4wOQ

— Auntie Polly (@auntie_polly) February 12, 2026

**

They are already sanitizing him.

Within hours of the massacre at Tumbler Ridge Secondary, the usual machinery kicked into gear. Politicians offered “thoughts and prayers.” Flags lowered. Prime Minister Mark Carney “suspended” his schedule. Pierre Poilievre tweeted his condolences, and meant them, because that is what decent people do when a community is gutted.

But nobody said what Jesse Strang actually was, transgender.

Locals identified him. Eighteen years old. Quiet kid. Sat alone in the corner. 

Allegedly murdered his mother and younger brother before heading to the school. And according to his own family, Strang identified as transgender. 

A YouTube account believed to be his displayed the transgender pride flag and used “she/her” pronouns. Reports say he wore a dress during the mass shooting.

This is now a pattern.

In Nashville, in 2023, transgender Audrey Hale murdered three children and three adults at Covenant School. Police found more than 200 pages of writings, years of planning, and a shooter who rated mass murderers based on body counts. 

In Minneapolis, in 2025, transgender Robin Westman shot two children at a Catholic school and fantasized about being “that scary, horrible monster standing over those powerless kids.”

And now Tumbler Ridge.

How many dead children before we say what everyone in that community already knows?

Transgenderism, in its clinical reality, is gender dysphoria. The American Psychological Association classifies it as a condition marked by persistent distress over one’s biological sex.

It is a mental health diagnosis. While the Left insists we celebrate every self-declared identity, the evidence piles up like bodies in a school hallway.

A 2024 study in Acta Paediatrica examined 14 longitudinal studies on hormonal interventions for gender-dysphoric youth. It found no consistent improvement in depression or suicidality. The largest study showed negative outcomes. 

Translation: We are affirming young people into deeper psychological turmoil, and calling it compassion.

The standard Leftist response to shootings like these is twofold. First, they blame the gun. Second, they blame the bigots who “forced” the shooter into despair.

Neither holds up to scrutiny.

The federal Liberals’ Bill C-21, passed in 2023, created a national handgun freeze, expanded “red flag” confiscation orders, and banned future assault-style firearms through a convoluted technical definition. 

It accomplished nothing that would have stopped Jesse Strang. Handgun freezes don’t matter when the shooter was 18 and allegedly used his mother’s firearms. 

Red flag laws are useless against a quiet kid who hid his intentions from everyone.

No law, no gun registry, no confiscation order can prevent that. Only an honest diagnosis and early intervention.

Then there is the discrimination excuse.

The Left will tell you shooters like Strang, Hale, and Westman snapped because society refused to accept them. They will point to minority stress theory and cite statistics about transgender suicide rates.

But Hale targeted a Christian school specifically because he believed Christians would be “meek and afraid.” Westman posted long diatribes admiring the Sandy Hook killer and scrawled “Free Palestine” on his magazines. 

These were not confused victims of social exclusion. They were deeply disturbed individuals whose disorders were not merely untreated. They were celebrated by the Left.

Every teacher who affirmed a confused child’s gender identity without questioning the underlying distress has blood on their hands. 

Every politician who fast-tracked “gender-affirming care” without demanding rigorous, long-term healthcare study has blood on their hands. 

Every journalist who refuses to state the obvious, that another mass shooter was transgender, shares in this complicity.

You do not cure a patient by validating his delusion. You do not heal the mind by mutilating the body and calling it liberation. 

You do not prevent the next mass shooting massacre by pretending these three shootings did not share the same pathology.

Tumbler Ridge will hold its funerals. The victims will be named, mourned, and eventually reduced to statistics in another gun-control advocacy pamphlet. 

Strang’s gender identity will be footnoted, if mentioned at all, followed by the obligatory reminder that most transgender people are not violent.

That is true. Most are not. Most are themselves trapped in a system that refuses to give them the actual psychiatric help they need.

But some are violent. Some, like Strang, like Hale, like Westman, descend so far into the fog of their own disordered minds that murder and suicide become the only remaining acts of meaning.

The next one is out there right now. Quiet. Alone. Being told he was born in the wrong body. Being told his discomfort is everyone else’s fault. Being armed with ideology instead of being helped by doctors and therapists.

We can keep pretending this is about firearms. We can keep pretending this is about bigotry.

Or we can finally speak the truth the therapists are afraid to say: gender dysphoria is a mental illness, and until we treat it like one (again), the bodies will keep piling up.

Jesse Strang killed 10 people. He was not failed by gun laws. He was failed by everyone who looked at a suffering child and called him brave for being transgender.

**

🚨BREAKING

Canadian journalist misgenders transgender mass-killer Jesse Van Rootselaar as a "him"

and RCMP inspector corrects her live on the air.

says the police had attended the home for "mental health issues" in the past. pic.twitter.com/DyPCxLzoos

— Tablesalt 🇨🇦🇺🇸 (@Tablesalt13) February 11, 2026

** 

The mother who was murdered by her school shooting transgender son in Canada defended trans rights and urged her followers to stop “spewing bulls–t” online in a resurfaced Instagram post.

Jennifer Strang, mom of 18-year-old Jesse Van Rotselaar and a self-described “conservative leaning libertarian,” unleashed a profanity-fueled rant in a July 2024 Instagram post – less than two years before the teen launched the Tuesday rampage that left 8 dead.

Strang blasted online critics and warned that hatred is pushing transgender kids toward suicide — adding that such rhetoric makes them look “dumb.”

“As a conservative leaning libertarian who lives in the north and loves living in a small town. I really hope the hate I see online is just bored old people and not true hatred,” Strang raged, urging people to “evolve” and “do better and educate yourself before spewing bull—t online.

“I normally don’t say anything and I normally don’t go on s–tbook to see the keyboard warriors and I know I can’t control everything or shield my kids from everything but please for the love of f–k can you get your sh–t together so we don’t have to bring our kids up in a world full of hatred.

“Do you have any idea how many kids are killing themselves over this kind of hate. Please STOP the bulls–!”

Oh, are they, the late Mrs. Strang?

Are they really?

And for those who willing to die on this particular hill, let's clear a few things up:

People deny their obvious biological nature are delusional.

You can only pretend that gravity isn't real for so long.

Some delusion was fed in one or another and now they believe something that is not so.

If they can't accept themselves, why should I?

But my willingness or coercion to accept their fantasy isn't what made the long string of trans mass killers shoot unarmed children.

They wanted to do this.

What purpose would that serve? Why innocent third-parties?

Because evil is never practical nor logical.

It's not enough that one or two people accept ugliness. The entire world must do so, as well, and thus be corrupted.

By wasting your precious breath on fictious bogey-men who state the bleeding obvious (or even sending them to prison), you only set the stage for future mass killings we're going to have to ignore at some point.

You are part of the problem.

Quelle Surprise

On the heels of a tragedy that didn't have to happen:

At least ten people are dead and upwards of 25 injured following a mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, a small community located 300 km northeast of Prince George.

The suspect, who was also found dead with what appeared to be "self-inflicted" wounds, has been identified by residents as 18-year-old Jesse Strang.

Among those who confirmed to the Western Standard that Strang was the shooter were Liam Irving and Juan van Heerden, both of whom grew up seeing him at school. They'd spoken with eight different people who were at Tumbler Ridge Secondary when the massacre took place.

"He was a couple of years younger than us grades wise," Irving explained. "He was a chill kid, he was alright, but he definitely gave off that, you know, quiet one out kind of kid ... Like, he wasn't, you know, destructive or obnoxious."

Van Heerden echoed his sentiments, labelling Strang "a quiet kid."

"We always seen him by himself," he said, "sitting by himself in the corner, always quiet."

The pair confirmed that Strang identified as transgender.

Before heading to the school, Strang allegedly murdered his mother and younger brother, both of whom were well known in the community.

**

He was taking SSRIs, anti-psychotics, mushrooms (which caused psychosis), DMT, and smoking weed.

Was he also taking estrogen?

A deeply troubled young man, and to make things worse, people affirmed he was a girl.

Our medical authorities are forced to affirm this delusion or… https://t.co/v5W3dV01L1

— Billboard Chris 🌎 (@BillboardChris) February 11, 2026

 **

3 years ago, Redditors on r/VaushV lost their minds over Matt Walsh quoting Males of Reddit's screenshot of jesseboy347.

u/jesseboy347 just shot up a school in Tumbler Ridge, Canada yesterday. pic.twitter.com/Sv9LE6WrRV

— Reddit Lies (@reddit_lies) February 11, 2026

 ** 

Trent Ernst, publisher and reporter at the local news outlet Tumbler Ridge Lines, told The Epoch Times in an interview that community members received alerts on their phones in the afternoon.

The alerts seen by The Epoch Times described the suspect as “a female in a dress with brown hair.”

Ernst, who formerly taught at the town’s high school about six years ago, said people in the small community likely know who the shooter was but can’t publicly report it. The RCMP have said they are not releasing further details at this time due to privacy concerns and because the matter remains under investigation.

 

Bull. Sh--. 

 

This gets shoved down the memory-hole before one can say: "It's not a good idea to cater to delusions." 

Suckers!

Canadians really do believe that they live in some mirror universe where they have the same rights as Americans but can still be socially liberal.

Nope:

Why do governments exist? There must be a better reason than simply providing well-paid jobs for people who enjoy bossing others around.

Philosopher John Locke offered one of the clearest answers when he wrote in 1690 that the “great and chief end” of government is “the preservation of … property.”

And by this most basic standard, Canadian governments are failing badly. Nowhere is this failure more obvious than in Richmond, B.C. The recent Cowichan Tribes v. Canada case has shaken the very foundation of home ownership in Canada. The finding that aboriginal title can exist on the same piece of property as fee simple ownership, and that this native claim is a “senior and prior interest,” has created property rights chaos.

Local homeowners have been warned they cannot sell, renovate, or alter their properties without indigenous approval. A major commercial development collapsed as lenders fled the legal uncertainty. The case has even attracted international attention, with The Wall Street Journal recently asking, “Do Property Rights Still Exist in British Columbia?” No one has yet provided a convincing answer to this troubling question.

It’s not as if Canadian governments were following Locke’s prime directive before the latest court ruling. “Cowichan is not a break from the past,” said Queen’s University law professor Bruce Pardy in an interview. Rather, it is the latest evidence of a much bigger problem in Canada regarding the ongoing diminution of property rights.

Across the country, governments routinely treat private property as a tool for improving their own finances or to carry out political agendas. Eight provinces, for example, permit civil forfeiture, allowing the state to seize property without a criminal conviction. This vast power is open to abuse. In Quebec, recent changes to forfeiture law mean any cash sum over $2,000 is automatically considered evidence of illegal activity unless proven otherwise.

Housing policy in Canada is almost entirely an exercise in depriving owners of their rights. Rent control removes the ability of landlords to charge market rates. “Renoviction” bylaws prohibit landlords from removing tenants in order to renovate apartments they own. Vacant homes taxes deliberately punish anyone who wants to own more than one home for whatever reason. Inclusionary zoning requirements force developers to build below-market apartments against their wishes.

“We are doubling down on a dumb idea: that restricting property rights is the best way to get more housing built,” said Pardy of Canadian housing policy. “As soon as you start interfering with those rights, you no longer have a real market.”

 During the 2022 Freedom Convoy protests, the federal government froze bank accounts and financial assets of protesters and their family members. As University of New Brunswick law professor Paul Warchuk observed in a recent report for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, this was “a complete deprivation of property based on suspicion alone.”

What makes all these policies and government actions possible is the fact that Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms is silent on property ownership as a fundamental right. Most other Western liberal countries have constitutions that protect both the right to own property and defend against its unjust seizure by government. Among OECD nations, only Canada and New Zealand lack this sort of explicit constitutional protection.

The reason for this omission is political. When Canada’s Charter was created in 1982, liberty and individual rights were not top-of-mind topics. Further, some provinces worried that the inclusion of property rights would interfere with their interventionist policies, such as the Saskatchewan NDP government’s plans for nationalizing the resource sector. As a result, property rights were not included in the final version of the Charter.

Section 33 of the Charter, now referred to as the notwithstanding clause, would have addressed these provincial concerns. But in a case of unfortunate timing, Section 33 was added after property rights had already been removed.

Placing property rights alongside all the other rights currently protected by the Charter—including freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly—could have a big impact on the lives of Canadians.

As University of Saskatchewan constitutional scholar Dwight Newman noted in an interview, a Charter that includes property rights would be “a very different thing” from our current version. Governments would likely have to go to greater lengths to justify policies that infringe on private ownership rights; judges would also be required to balance these competing rights more transparently.

While the process to amend Canada’s Constitution is complicated and time-consuming, adding property rights would rectify a long-standing problem and provide Canadians with much greater security for their property and possessions.

For decades, Canadians have thought their property was secure by default. The Cowichan ruling has shattered that illusion. If Canadians want to ensure what they own is truly theirs, now is the time to speak out.

 

That won't happen.

Ever.