PORT COQUITLAM, British Columbia (LifeSiteNews) – A Canadian mayor said he will “vigorously defend” the property rights of residents in light of a recent court ruling that gave a portion of a municipality to aboriginals via a title claim they won in court.
Mayor Brad West of Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, vowed to residents, “We have, and will continue to, vigorously defend public ownership of these lands, along with private property rights in our jurisdiction.”
“We will ensure the public is kept informed,” he promised in a post on X.
Port Coquitlam is fighting a Kwikwetlem First Nation’s claim made in 2016 that, if successful, would see the aboriginals in essence be given large swaths of land owned by the city.
The city said that at this time that there are “no civil claims initiated by any First Nations involving private property within the City of Port Coquitlam.”
The city promised in a statement that if the changes are made, it will notify residents immediately.
“While the City recognizes public concern resulting from recent media coverage of the Cowichan/Richmond case, it is important to note that no private lands within Port Coquitlam are currently the subject of litigation,” the statement read.
West’s comments come in light of a recent court ruling in British Columbia affecting property rights, Cowichan Tribes v. Canada (Attorney General), which saw the provincial Supreme Court rule that decades-long land grants by the government were not valid and violated a land title held by the tribes.
The ruling included large parts of Richmond, British Columbia, which is in the Vancouver area, essentially given to local tribes.
There are many other similar legal battles taking place in British Columbia, which, unlike the rest of Canada, has no official treaties in place with local Indigenous peoples but only agreements without legal clarity.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, John Carpay, founder and president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), noted the court “told the people (of various ethnicities) who live in some parts of Richmond, B.C., that the money they paid for their own properties does not guarantee them the right to own and enjoy their own homes.”
Carpay noted that “the fact that aboriginal ethnic groups arrived in Canada earlier than other ethnic groups should be completely irrelevant when it comes to the application of the law.”
“Nobody disputes that different aboriginal tribes lived in this land before the arrival of Europeans, Africans, and Asians. The question is: Why should this fact matter?” he noted.
Carpay observed that when officials and courts apply the “law” differently to come after “Canadians because of their race, ancestry, ethnicity, or descent,” the predictable and inevitable outcome “is strife, resentment, and fear.”
In 2021 and 2022, the mainstream media ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some Canadian residential schools. The reality is, after four years, there have been no mass graves discovered at residential schools.
However, as the claims went unfounded, since the spring of 2021, over 120 churches, most of them Catholic, many of them on indigenous lands that serve the local population, have been burned to the ground, vandalized, or defiled in Canada.
