Alberta Property Rights Initiative

I really want to show my appreciation to you folks for trusting me with such a topic as property rights. It’s something that we all think that we understand and know, and have strong feelings about. And to be quite honest with you, I think when they phoned me up and asked me to speak on the topic, I answered too quickly and said, “Yes I would.” I think that it was pride talking because I was proud to come here and do that. But when I looked at the subject and saw how extensive it was, I was wishing the hell I’d said no.

Subsequently, I think it’s a topic that’s dear to our hearts and I really didn’t know how to tackle it. It’s a big, big topic and it’s one that has evolved through the ages. I think it is going to have three results here: it’s going to put some of you to sleep; it might cause some of you to sell your assets and move them off to a tax haven somewhere; or it might cause the rest of you—and I hope this is what happens—that it angers us enough that we stand up as citizens of this country and demand the rights that we were never given. My conclusion will hopefully help guide you to that position, if you’ll bear with me.

This topic is one that I thought I knew so well, but it is really so unfamiliar that I have to read a lot on it. The thoughts and ideas that come out of this are not my own thoughts and ideas. They are ideas that were researched and studied by economists, philosophers, and politicians through the ages that knew a heck-of-a-lot more about it than I do, and really what I am relating is just going to be a collection of their thoughts. I am going to try to lay before you the actual situation that we have here in the province of Alberta based on history.

I’d like to start off by causing you to think about what they call the “boiling frog syndrome.” It’s a biological fact of life that if the water in a pond is gradually heated, a frog in that pond will never know it or react until it literally boils to death.

Our pond—our big frog pond here called Canada—has changed, constitutionally speaking, very gradually over a long period of time and not in any way giving assurance to Canadians of any true protection of their basic primary rights.

Rights, in their God-given sense, are really the rights to life, liberty, personal property, and the enjoyment of the same. These rights, in terms of the foundation of our western civilization, may well have begun with Moses and the tablets.

The interesting thing is that past civilizations rose and flourished with the recognition and political acceptance of these rights, which, by today’s description, are termed natural laws. I want you to remember “NATURAL LAWS.”

Accordingly, western civilizations weakened and decayed as the ruling elite, religious and/or political replaced natural law with the politically expedient, smotheringly deceptive control over events by means of man-made statute laws. I also want you to remember “STATUTE LAWS.”

All through history there has been a small contingent of human beings, human frogs, who felt the water temperature rise. They are the valiant few who jumped out of the pond in the name of freedom and changed history forever more—and allowed for the advancement of freedom to proceed based on two rights only:

• the right to life of an individual;
• and the right to property of an individual.

Liberty is the result of these two rights!

Democracy is to protect these rights by the will of the majority. Democracy is to protect the rights of the individual. Minorities have no rights, only privileges granted by the majority. That’s a fundamental fact of life, no matter what you hear.

All other rights referred to in man’s futile effort to control the human spirit have through the ages been recognized as natural duties and obligations to your country; privileges and concessions that you are prepared to make; privileges and concessions that you are prepared to receive—not rights.

In a study of history one clearly finds out that natural laws, with their duties and obligations, will soon diminish and will be replaced by man’s manipulative “STATUTE LAWS.” This is when nations crumble and decay.

The best examples in recent history are:

The United States where property rights have until recently been held sacred. There are a number of good frogs jumping out of the pond in the United States and I hope that it is just in time.

The other example is Russia, where the state owned and controlled all. It would seem that all the frogs in the Russian pond cooked and the ones that jumped out were shot because they had no human rights, they had no right to life. But just the same, there were a couple of fast-hopping frogs in Russia that may salvage the place. There is reason for hope.

Ben Franklin stated that the American Constitution was built on the painful recognition of the folly and mischievous nature of man; hence the checks and balances that we see in their Constitution.

He said that we recognized that there are only two legitimate sources of the power to govern: THE CREATOR and THE PEOPLE.

He went on to say that whenever men have acknowledged any other power, they have submitted themselves to one form or another of tyranny. It is really quite that simple.

Henry Grady Weaver in his famous book The Mainspring Of Human Progress refers to Moses and the Ten Commandments as the greatest document of individual freedom in the recorded history of man.

Each of the ten commandments is addressed to the individual as a self-controlling person responsible for his own thoughts, words, and acts. And each of them recognizes liberty and freedom as inherent in the nature of man. For example:

• The sixth stresses the sanctity of human life the individual’s right to life: a right that must not be violated by any other person.
• The seventh establishes the principal of contract: how a contract must not be broken, whether written or spoken.
• The eighth recognizes the individual’s right to own property.
• The tenth commandment emphasizes again the right of ownership: not even in thought should a person violate the property rights of another.

Weaver goes on to say that these great statements of truth found difficult acceptance in the time of Moses and really not much has changed to this day.

Weaver states that we, as human society, have moved a long way from the Stone Age and today almost everyone depends for his welfare—for his very life—upon exchanges of ownership of property.

In the last analysis, a thing is not property unless it is owned—and without ownership, there is little incentive to improve it.

To define property rights…..What are they? Property rights are human rights. We hear a lot of talk about human rights. The rights don’t belong to the property, they belong to the people who hold them with respect to the property. Private property rights are a fundamental and necessary condition if people are to be prosperous and free. Private ownership induces an attitude of stewardship. Without private ownership of property, individual freedom of choice can have no meaning—freedom becomes hollow and meaningless.

Back to natural law…..Natural Laws are the unwritten, fundamental laws and principles set out to guide human existence. They are morally and culturally based. John Locke, an English philosopher, believed that the rules that government creates for civil society must correspond to the law of nature (which he also termed to be the will of God). Many economic/political philosophers based their thoughts on the essential nature of man being a creation of God. Natural Law was believed to be written by God alone. Today, perhaps, God is not widely enough recognized and, therefore, the foundation of Natural Law has diminished.

Natural Laws, again, are the unwritten laws. The other—Statutory Laws–are the written laws established by enactments expressing the will of the legislature. These laws are created by humans, for humans.

In today’s society, and in most civilizations, a symbiotic relationship of those two concepts would develop. In most cases, a new nation seeking freedom for the individual and the will of the majority would establish rules of government based on natural law and, as time passed, they are usually enhanced (or replaced) by statutory laws. As natural laws deteriorated within a society, so did the moral foundation, since both are intrinsically related.

We looked at private property rights, or property rights, on a philosophical basis.

Going back to Greek philosophy…..Ancient and medieval philosophers were primarily concerned with political freedom rather than economic freedom. But to the Greeks, freedom described a fully independent polis that was not subject to the control of any outside power. The citizens of the ancient world had duties and obligations, not rights and privileges. Aristotle is quoted as saying, “What is common to many is taken least care of, for all men have greater regard for what is their own than for what they possess in common with others.” Aristotle also said, “with every man busy with his own, there will be increased production all around.”

The Romans…..Cicero stated that the state ought not to interfere with private property because the state was founded principally for the purpose of protecting the property of the individual. What a refreshing thought that is!

In the course of human history, the idea that citizens have the unfettered right to express themselves is relatively new, owing its genesis to the Age of Enlightenment. Prior to that, it was generally assumed that either the state or the church had ultimate sovereignty over one’s life, liberty, and property; and that the individual had no prior claim over such rights. Thus, the great struggles which bloodied the pages of history before the Age of Enlightenment were between the conflicting claims of church and state over the soul and property of man.

This conflict that developed between the state and the church, manifested itself in the Magna Carta in 1215. And I think that every one of you has heard of that and remember studying it in school. It really was the suppression of a revolution. The lower class in England and in Great Britain at that time, were in such dire straits that they were prepared to die for what they knew not. And the Church of England recommended to the King that people be given certain rights to prevent the revolution. So, the King conceded and we had the proclamation of the Magna Carta in 1215. There are thousands of medieval charters in England and continental Europe as a result of it. It is in statements and restatements on civil rights, and in the procedural safeguards of person and property, that developed in what is known as the common law. We have heard of common law.

There is little to dispute that in the prevalent concepts of property throughout the ancient and medieval eras of the Western tradition that the institution of private property was justified as a means to some ethical end. Whether the institution was seen as natural, which Aristotle claimed, or God-given, which Augustine claimed, or both, it was justified as a necessary means to the good life of the citizen; or as necessary to counteract the avaricious nature of fallen man; or to provide for peaceable and orderly relations between individuals.

Hegel, another English philosopher, stated, “In his property, a person exists for the first time as reason.”

John Locke again went on to be the first to say that life and property of man resided in each individual, not in the church or state. Thus, he maintained that private property rights are the cornerstone of all other rights. Limited government…..Locke believed that the true role of civil government is the protection of private property under the rule of law (we’ve all heard of the rule of law). He was the proponent of English law, which is the proponent of Canadian law.

David Hume, another philosopher, insisted that the stability of possession of property was essential to the establishment of human society and that fixing and observing this rule fosters humanity, harmony, and accord.

The Magna Carta really established English common law. Basically, that remains an unwritten law to this day. I don’t know how many folks know that. English common law is essentially unwritten and has functioned through the ages based on natural law that has been carried forward from generation to generation. English common law stated that every Englishman had an “absolute right of property, which consists in the free use, enjoyment, and disposal of all his acquisitions.” By the 14th and 15th centuries, we had the law of equity or “conscience.”

The source of common law is rather an interesting one. Listen to this: 16th century England was comprised of “commons,” or commonly held pastures for all of the villagers to graze their animals on. Obviously, grazing was of an individual benefit to each villager, but managing the grassland was external and corporate and thus overgrazing occurred frequently. Doesn’t that sound like community pastures! There was little incentive for the individual to conserve grass for future growth as they were only concerned with the here and now. Without private ownership, what was good for the individual, was bad for the village as a whole. Thus came the enclosement movement, which established private ownership. Fences were built and overgrazing no longer occurred because each owner had a strong incentive to protect the land.

This was the basis of British common law, the law we functioned with for seven hundred years.

In the great era of the British Empire, 19th century England was governed by the principles of Locke and Adam Smith: free trade, laissez-faire, low taxes, low state expenditures, and a minimally interventionist government. However, the English also noticed that, since the proclamation of the Magna Carta, statutory laws were being relied on more so and, thus, strict rules of proof began to cause hardship. The High Court of Chancery—usually the leading bishop or archbishop, which in other words is the church—was then established to administer equity. I expect that is why judges today wear clothes similar to the clergy. They were then the judge.

Britain did well to govern herself, but with respect to her colonies, not as well. On a transference of things to the Americas, we have another interesting look at private property rights and incentives.

We go back to the pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620 and established the first American colony under communist values (i.e. food and resources were shared commonly). The people began to starve and die and during the third winter, Governor Bradford got together with the remaining members of the colony and said: “This coming spring we are going to try a new idea. We are going to drop the practice of ‘from each according to ability, to each according to need.’ We are going to try the idea of ‘to each according to merit.’” Upon saying this, he outlined, better than any economist could have, the private property principle of the individual enjoying the fruits of his own labour. Next spring came and not only the father was in the field working, but also the mother and children. Governor Bradford records, “Any generall wante or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day.”

It was out of this philosophical heritage that America’s founders created a new nation, based on the principle that each individual is a sovereign within his own right—free to enjoy the blessings of liberty and free to realize his true potential without interference from the church or state. Property rights then became the acknowledged foundation upon which other constitutional freedoms rested. The assurance of secure property rights is what drove Americans to work, create, and invest. People were willing to make extreme sacrifices to acquire property rights, to engage in undertakings with distant pay-offs—from clearing lands to building steel mills—in the hope of personal or family gain from property ownership. The American system of secure private property rights has given the U.S. greater social stability than that of most other countries.

What happened in Canada?

Of all this constitutional writing political and judicial one British law, the British North America (BNA) Act of 1867, was indisputably the most important for Canada. So fundamental was it to the Canadian system of federalism that for nearly 115 years, the BNA Act alone was popularly referred to as "The Constitution." The BNA Act did four things:

• It created Canada as a separate and nearly sovereign nation with a Constitution similar in principle to that of Great Britain.

• It set out the type of government by which Canada would be ruled by establishing the House of Commons, the Senate, the provincial legislatures, and the offices of the Governor- General and the Lieutenant-Governors as well as the basis of a judicial system and the general rules governing election or appointment to those institutions.

• It divided lawmaking power in Canada between Ottawa and the provinces.

• It set out rules in a number of other areas: languages, education, ownership of natural resources, prisons, and new provinces and territories.

But not a doggone thing on property rights or private property.

The Statute of Westminster, which was established in 1931, was intended to complete what the BNA Act began by bestowing on Canada final legislative independence. With one exception, it did so. Only the power to amend Canada’s Constitution remained in Britain after the passage of the Statute of Westminster. In fact, the power to amend the Canadian Constitution was a colonial link that Britain specifically asked Canada to sever. Westminster wanted to make Canada’s independence complete. Canada never did sever that independence until 1982 because the provincial premiers were afraid of the powers of the Prime Minister and they wanted to retain that hold of the British system.

One common thread ran through many parts of the old Constitution, the old BNA Act: Of all the hundreds of clauses of British and Canadian statutes and of all the hundreds of pages of judicial pronouncements, only a handful dealt directly with the people of Canada. The sorts of personal guarantees and protections that are so fundamental to the Constitution of the United States of America, for example, were conspicuous in their absence. No property rights or reference to the same are written within Canada’s old Constitution.

There was a champion that came along in the late 1950s. Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, in an effort to properly address the apparent deficiencies of the BNA Act, drafted and subsequently enacted the Canadian Bill of Rights of 1960. It is the only real written reference to any concept of property rights in Canadian history.

Section 1(a) goes on to state: “the following human rights and fundamental freedoms, namely: the right of the individual to life, liberty, security of the person and enjoyment of property, and that right not to be deprived thereof except by due process of the law.”

The "enjoyment of property" is a nebulous statement: it never did clearly state the ownership of property.

Thus the Bill of Rights provides some protection for property owners whose property is to be taken or otherwise injuriously affected under the authority of federal law, but there is little else. It is evident that Diefenbaker never gained the opportunity to fully complete his Bill of Rights.

In 1982, Prime Minister Trudeau was successful in getting through the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada. The Charter consists of thirty-four brand new constitutional provisions that, for the first time in Canadian history, placed in the written Constitution a list of fundamental rights and freedoms. The list contains a number of familiar human rights and protections, such as the rights to life and liberty and the right to vote in elections, but it also goes beyond the familiar.

The Fundamental Freedoms are all ones that you have heard before but there is no mention of property rights. Not once does it make a direct reference to private property as being a fundamental freedom. However, it does show the division of power between the provincial legislatures and the federal parliament.

Section (92) of the Charter states: "In each Province the Legislature may exclusively make Laws in relation to Matters coming within the Classes of Subjects next herein-after enumerated, that is to say, (13) Property and Civil Rights in the Province." Thus the burden of acknowledging the rights of the property owner lies on the provincial level in Canada—I think that most of us knew that.

The one thing that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms did, and it was unwittingly, was something that Trudeau was very much in disfavour of. It really balanced the power of the federal government in Ottawa against that of the province. Provinces in Canada don’t seem to realize their power, other than Quebec. Quebec does realize their power! Alberta has the same power as Quebec does constitutionally. We have rights to change legislation and to change our Constitution almost at whim—rights that are entrenched within that Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Alberta Bill of Rights Act was introduced in 1980 and it essentially mirrors the Canadian Bill of Rights as drafted by the Diefenbaker government. It also includes the “enjoyment of property” clause but how it regulates such “enjoyment of property” is to be questioned. Land usage in the province of Alberta is supposedly governed by the Planning Act. “Instead, it serves to create a number of regulatory bodies and delegates to these bodies certain duties and powers that are designed to assure reasonably rational use and development of land in the Province” (Alberta Bar, IX-1). Nothing in this Act gives the person a right to compensation if private property is confiscated or altered for the public good.

Another point to note is that the private owner of land has little if any rights to appeal provincial or federal decisions. That came as a shock to me that as an owner of land, or as an owner of any property, we don’t directly have any right of appeal in this province. Our appeal can only be taken through a body that is an appointed board or through an elected council who may or may not (at their discretion) choose to pursue it for you. Thus, a private owner of land has no status to apply for an amendment or a direct appeal.

The ambiguous nature of each individual’s rights on their property raises many questions and concerns. How, then, are we supposed to understand the rights in controlling waterways, wildlife, leased public lands, natural resources, and property access? If we are not guaranteed to reap the benefits of the products of our labour, then why labour in the first place? Once again, statutory laws are steadily suppressing natural law.

“Life, faculties, production—in other words, individuality, liberty, property—this is man.” And this a statement that you want to listen to. “In spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.” That was a statement by Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850).

I hope that I am not boring you to death with this little exercise in history but I just couldn’t come to grips with property rights until I had gone back into history and tried to boil all this froth forward to find out why we are at where we are today.

And now, back to the boiling frog…..

The failure of the Alberta Legislature to clearly constitutionally identify property rights as an historically proven and absolutely required premise of a viable, peaceful, long-lasting, and secure future is a huge tragedy—one that we may never survive in our present form. Our courts fortunately still recognize natural law, the unwritten law that was established in Great Britain before the Constitution was patriated to Canada in 1982. They recognize it to a much higher degree than does the ruling legislature.

Canadians, in general—and Albertans, in particular—do not have any property rights that they can rely on in any ongoing sense.

As much as in any country in the free world, Alberta property owners are at the mercy of uncontrolled greed, jealousy, envy, injustice, moral decay, and big government want.

Like frogs, we may be cooked and don’t know it yet. I feel rather warm about it.

With regards to property rights and the environment, let’s think about our situation.

• If we believe, as Stock Grower members, as landowners and as property owners, that private ownership, and not government regulation, best assures the maintenance of favourable environmental conditions;

• If we believe that from both an economic and an environmental standpoint, private ownership can produce incentives to preserve property for the long term, while government regulation can and has produced inefficiencies that are both frightening and real;

• If we believe that private ownership fosters efficient production;

• If we believe that wildlife are destroyed because no one owns them; and

• If we believe that private property assures accountability;

Then we can correctly assume that what causes environmental destruction is the lack of private property rights: when resources are owned in common or by the government. And thus, strengthening private property rights will improve the chances for wildlife and forests and environment.

And therefore, private ownership is not irreconcilable with environmental objectives and is in fact harmonious with efficient, rational use of natural resources.

The most vocal environmentalists have merely assumed government to be the necessary custodian of the natural environment. Environmentalists need to understand that the decision makers must have a personal stake in the consequences of their decisions. Examples are:

• Cattle on private ranches thrive, while the wolf nears extinction. No one owns wolves; people own cattle.

• Lion populations in private game reserves flourish, while their numbers are threatened in the wild.

• Hawk populations on public lands dwindle, but domestic birds on private land flourish.

The best example that you can give of private ownership of wildlife, is what occurred in Africa with the wild elephants. How many have heard the elephant story in Africa? Elephants were becoming extinct in Africa. In 1989, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) attempted to save Africa’s elephants from extinction by voting to end the ivory trade. Those in favour of the ivory trade ban argued that it would eliminate the ivory market but others felt that banning ivory would simply create a black market for elephant products.

Leaders of Zimbabwe, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, Namibia, and South Africa all felt that banning ivory would be the surest way to cause the elephant’s extinction. Thus, these countries established an elephant management program, which has had a 10-year record of success in Zimbabwe. These leaders believed that the villagers could do more to protect the elephants and ensure the longevity of the species than costly centralized government programs could. Thus, ownership of the elephants was transferred to the villagers and since these programs have commenced, the numbers of elephants in those countries have increased 40 per cent in the last decade.

It is the opposite scenario in Kenya. The Kenyan government manages their elephants the way the East Germans tried to manage their economy: with armed guards, electric fences, and central planning. Kenya’s elephant population has declined 75 per cent since 1981 according to statistics published by the World Wildlife Fund. The Kenyan government considers the elephant to be “property of the people,” but symbolic ownership is not the same as legal ownership.

Advocates of the ivory ban don’t dispute the statistics indicating that countries supporting trade in ivory are also seeing a rise in their elephant populations. “We recognize that the status of the elephant is not the same everywhere in Africa,” said Michael Sutton of the World Wildlife Fund in an interview.

Until such time as the judiciary, politicians, and the public at large recognize that property rights include all things to do with their personal freedom—from their toothbrush, to their home, to their university degree, to the tools of their trade, and (in the case of agricultural people) to their land—no progress will be made and only confrontation and conflict will ensue.

In today’s political climate, the issues before us, as property holders and members of the Western Stock Growers’ Association, may never be resolved to anyone’s satisfaction. We are faced with a number of issues that we can discuss and talk about and worry about, but in my opinion, we can do nothing about them until we resolve the major issue in this country and in this province as to the establishment and the entrenchment of the rights of property.

You’re all sitting there wearing your blue jeans and your hat and shirt. We have a government that has the power to take those from you right now. You don’t own them, you just think you own them. We can talk about the Water Conservation and Management Act, we can talk about Endangered Species Conservation in Canada, we can talk about the Public Lands Act.

That was an interesting thing for me this morning... I was kind of going through this and looking at this Public Lands Act and my brother-in-law, who is a lawyer, came along. I was complaining to him about things in this Act and we were having a hot debate about the philosophy of it all, and he said, “That’s a funny damn thing, you know. Twenty years ago, your Uncle Clarence came to me right out of the legislature when they were debating this Act in the Provincial Legislature and he was madder than hell about it. And here you are, madder than hell about it too.”

Another example is the Alberta Fish and Wildlife Act; the Petty Trespass Act; the Occupier’s Liability Act—are any of you aware of that? It scares you to death. You are liable for everything that happens on property that isn’t yours.

To sort of wind this up, a Dallas lawyer, David Witts, wrote a publication in the Western Stock Grower Magazine here about in 1993, I believe. He pointed out that private property, not natural resources, is the basis to the creation of wealth. He gave the example that South America and Africa are the richest in natural resources in the world but also have the world’s poorest people. He suggested that Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore have absolutely no resources, but they own their property and they are the richest people in the world.

Witts noted:

“History is the struggle between those who create property rights and those who take them away. In history, private property is the exception, not the rule...

“The solution is we must become activists in our own rights, defending our land and our livestock. We must become better informed and more vocal...

“We have beat every threat of the past, but the present dangers don’t come from some far off place. The dangers now are here, all around us some noisy and visible, and some subtle and shadowy.”

Like the Canadian Constitution, like the Alberta Constitution, like the Planning Act in Alberta, like your provincial by-laws.

The answers will not be found by electing the right MP or MLA. It’s not that easy. It’s a vicious, personal, and individual scrap that we have got to get involved in. The answer lies in each of us understanding what is happening, understanding what has happened to us, understanding why we got to this unfortunate position, and we must develop the personal dedication to do something about it.

In Canada, we can look at our system of government. That’s the best place to start looking. And say “Why? What happened?” When they brought the BNA Act to Canada, why, why did Sir John A. McDonald react quite the way he did? Why? Why didn’t we adopt the same constitutional principles as they had in Great Britain, which they are functioning with today? That is, an unwritten, but recognized set of laws and standards, that holds sacred, property rights. Why can’t we continue to openly use and recognize the common law system in our written laws in this country? And it is interesting to note that fact, if you talk to lawyers, judges, and politicians. It is interesting to hear their comments. These people don’t always agree with us. These people don’t want to change things that much.

What we are faced with is the great fear that Thomas Jefferson had over the American Constitution. Any of you who are familiar with the formation of the American Constitution know how the founding fathers got together and deliberated and deliberated and deliberated and did a masterful job of putting together probably the finest Constitution that the world will ever see. Things got hurried in the end, according to Thomas Jefferson, and they didn’t establish the right powers to the judiciary, where the ultimate judicial appointments to the higher courts in the United States are political appointments. That affects the way that the United States are governed and probably, and I hope that my American friends agree with what I am saying, probably have caused some of the problems that you are encountering today.

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada has done the very same thing to us, in that they have taken the power away from the hands of elected politicians and have put it into the hands of the judiciary to make final decisions, which are recommended back down. But remember, these are political appointments.

We have to think about how things happen in Canada; we need accountable politicians. Parliament has always seen elected political Parties saying, in effect “You vote the way I vote, or I’m going to kick you out of the caucus.” If one of those people got kicked out of the caucus who was supposedly representing me, I’d be very disappointed. What’s the use of sending a representative to Ottawa, if he has to vote the same way that the dictator—the Party—wants to vote. Canada functions under the greatest dictatorship in the western world!

Most of you people have heard of Hector McElroy. Hector McElroy is a warrior, first-class. And I don’t want to hear anybody ever belittle Hector McElroy. He’s put up a fight for private property rights in this province like no other individual. Hector McElroy is a World War II veteran. He has gone to war for this country, he’s put his life on the line. He saw his friends shot and destroyed and lives taken needlessly for the very principles that we are fighting for today.

My message is maybe not one that is very encouraging, it certainly wasn’t encouraging to me and we’ve got a long way to go but we’ve got to do it. The only other choice is to be like everybody else and give it up and become the next Russia.

Thank you.

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