Good Canadians suffered, fought and died for our country and to protect us from living under governments that rule by force rather than accepting the rule of law. We admire their heroism and we are thankful for their sacrifice. And so we find it very offensive that our governments are simply derisive of our rights. In BC the Government has casually taken away our rights. What foreign armies were unable to do on the battlefield, a few zealots in the BC Government were able to take away with a few clicks of a mouse. This is a dark time in our history that has may people asking, what about our rights?
Right to private property
In older English law, from which Canadian and American law gain their essential source, a right exists not to be deprived of property without due process of law. This was recognized in Magna Carta as part of ancient law that existed before 1215. The Americans made it part of the supreme law of the land in 1868 in the Fourteenth Amendment to their constitution. The US law is that “no State shall… deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
“Due Process of Law” means legal proceedings in court. In other words, in the US where rights seem to still matter, the government can’t take your stuff without some form of legal proceedings flowing from law that is in all other respects constitutionally valid and lawfully enforced.
One of the purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment was to prohibit a long-standing practice in continental Europe wherein people would be dispossessed — literally their stuff would be taken from them by the rulers as punishment for some offence. Some smart people along the line realized that dispossession wasn’t properly part of punishment for anything. With the Fourteenth Amendment no longer could a misguided branch of the US Government take things from people without a matter being before the courts. Constitutions are designed to stop bad governments from doing harm to the people.
What about our rights in BC? Do we have a right to private property?
Sadly, the governments in our country have ignored Magna Carta, which technically should still be good law in many respects. And we have nothing like the US Fourteenth Amendment. A few decades ago our courts were proactive in protecting people when the government came to take our stuff. We’re sorry to tell you that our courts don’t do a very good job of this anymore.
In BC without due process of law the Government has taken vehicles away from probably more than 50,000 people. Without any proceedings in court, each person who has been issued an Immediate Roadside Prohibition has had their vehicle taken from them by the Government. And lots of people had their vehicle taken from them when another person was driving and they weren’t even a party to the incident.
Was there a warrant? No. Were proceedings started in court? No.
The BC Government imposed the IRP law which directs the police to take private property without due process of law.
Right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure
This right is actually in our Constitution, the Charter of Rights, but the BC Government largely did away with it by passing the IRP law. In the last three years we’ve seen a massive increase in the number of cases where the police in BC detain people against their will without just grounds and force them to blow into an Approved Screening Device without any lawful authority.
The issue here is that there is no remedy. Although we see in the police report that the person’s Charter rights have been violated, the BC Government, with Stasi-like malevolence, wrote the IRP law so that the Charter of Rights doesn’t apply. The police can violate your Charter Rights all they want in IRP investigations because the OSMV tribunal is officially instructed to ignore the Charter of Rights in each case where a person blows into a breathalyzer.
How creepy is that? It’s dirty. And it’s shameful that anyone would support such a law.
When we think of the sacrifice people made in fighting to protect our rights and our country, it is disheartening to see that at this point in time our governments are now the biggest threat to our rights and freedoms.