This article mixes up entirely different scenarios. If as the article says the care home stopped accepting residents and was winding down it is very appropriate that the government intervened. Private for-profit corporations are risky providers of care services. 1. the residents are vulnerable; 2. the government is paying for the care services (including the upkeep and the mortgage on the building and may have been doing so for years). 3. too many for-profit care providers are only too willing to close down to realize a profit on their land investment leaving the government to pick up the pieces. Nonprofit community based organizations should be providing care services - they do not cut and run with the profit leaving vulnerable people at risk and misusing government tax dollars for private profit.
"Private for-profit corporations are risky providers of care services". Take a long hard look at BC's record as a public provider of care services, especially for drug addicts. Billions in care services with no decrease in drug related deaths but plenty of corruption and mismanagement.
You are correct that BC has had trouble reducing deaths from overdoses but I could find no evidence that this failure is linked to corruption and mismanagement by public or nonprofit providers, rather to a general failure of existing support and intervention services to address the drug crisis. e.g. we have yet to figure out what works. On the other hand Cedar tree Investment Canada, owned by Dajia Insurance group which in 2017 bought the largest private chain of senior care homes has provided such substandard care that in 2020 roughly 30% of the homes were run by health authority appointees. Many families are suing.
There is more to this story that needs to be explained, why did they stop taking patients? why was it going to close? were there health and safety issues? what were the terms of the expropriation settlement? were these somehow not market driven?
Expropriation is knife that should be used as a last resort but sometimes is necessary when the free market does not operate as it should
" ... if governments can kick farmers off their lands today, what’s to stop the government from nationalizing their factory tomorrow?"
Egregious use of a fallacy (in this case, the slippery slope fallacy) makes this piece not up to The Line's usual standards of argument.
Further, the author appears not to be familiar with expropriation, or its place in property rights law. Hey, I'm no lawyer, and I don't know a heckuva lot about it either, but I sure didn't learn anything new here, and it seems what little I know is more than what the author knows.
As other commenters have noted, there's more to this story.
No different than the current federal governments firearms confiscation program, as an example. In theory, anything a Canadian possesses can be taken by government, federal or provincial. ‘Ownership’ in Canada is an illusion.
This slippery slope argument is silly. Expropriation has a long and successful history. None of the major infrastructure projects that we enjoy today would exist without expropriation. No railways, electric grids, highways or airports. A lot of housing tracts and major industries would not have been built without government land assembly.
The fact is that large private equity firms - often funded by public pension funds - are rolling up entire industries, cutting capacity, and raising prices. Long term care, veterinary clinics, hotels, rental apartments, and dentistry are a few examples. There's a public interest in ensuring that private monopolists don't have a stranglehold over critical economic bottlenecks. The libertarians are living in a fantasy world.
There are nervous homeowners in Greater Vancouver who now fear that the land upon which their houses are built, and which they thought that they owned, will be taken over by First Nations as the courts have deemed the properties to be on unceded territory of those indigenous people. What a mess.
This current result was patently obvious when property rights were removed from the previous Canadian Bill of Rights when the successor Charter of Rights and Freedoms was implemented by Trudeau the Greater. Of course the greedy provincial governments had no issue with it.
This goes with the cloudiness of land titles brought about by “Indian” (a term used in Federal law ie the Indian act) land claims in BC. All you get basically get with Canadian land ownership IMO is a piece of paper that says the crown gives you the permission to occupy the land and to pass this permission to others via sale or testament. The Crown can take this permission back whenever it chooses.
Property rights as guaranteed in the US by their constitution do not prevent expropriation for overriding public purposes (“Eminent domain” ). However this process forces negotiation to arrive at a fair market value. So the gaslighting and selective application of land use limiting regulations so beloved of Canadian Government land grabbing functionaries(eg “wetland” designations) to reduce values could be challenged in court if property rights were enshrined in law.
My advice to any foreigner contemplating investing in Canada is to take a long hard look at what protections you have before committing. Business competition is enough of a poker game without having to cope with someone who can change the rules at any time.
The owner of the Lemay Forest planned to build a 5000 bed facility, by that plan was rejected by both the City of Winnipeg, and later by the Manitoba Municipal Board. This article makes it seem like the Manitoba Govt slammed the door on an assisted living facility in order to expropriate the land, when in actual fact the plan was rejected multiple times and had been shelved.
I don't love expropriation, but it's not necessary to play fast and loose with facts to make the point.
Yes, we should push back against Govts threatening expropriation of land: sadly it is making my head spin how many things current Govts are doing that we should be pushing back against. I long for the day when Govts ( and their representatives) existed to serve us instead of their own ideologies.
What rubbish. The common good (ie: the care of elders, etc.) should always come first. Absolute greed corrupts absolutely, an organization like the Canadian Constitution Society is well aware of but encourages. But, threatening the closure of a much needed public asset like a nursing home is perverse. Shame on Mr. Dehaas. Public good over private greed every time!
Property rights are a cornerstone of functional economies. To such an extent that the teach about it in university and call out countries like China with poor property rights and how it’s impacted their economies. It’s stunning that property rights aren’t that well protected in Canada as the impression I was under was certainly different than this article indicates. Manitoba and Ontario will reap the costs of not protecting property rights I guess. But why do courts allow it? You’d think they’d prevent it from being overboard?
If the older care facility was taken over by the government with the insider knowledge that the newer facility would not go forward, that presents a serious conflict of interest.
This article mixes up entirely different scenarios. If as the article says the care home stopped accepting residents and was winding down it is very appropriate that the government intervened. Private for-profit corporations are risky providers of care services. 1. the residents are vulnerable; 2. the government is paying for the care services (including the upkeep and the mortgage on the building and may have been doing so for years). 3. too many for-profit care providers are only too willing to close down to realize a profit on their land investment leaving the government to pick up the pieces. Nonprofit community based organizations should be providing care services - they do not cut and run with the profit leaving vulnerable people at risk and misusing government tax dollars for private profit.
"Private for-profit corporations are risky providers of care services". Take a long hard look at BC's record as a public provider of care services, especially for drug addicts. Billions in care services with no decrease in drug related deaths but plenty of corruption and mismanagement.
You are correct that BC has had trouble reducing deaths from overdoses but I could find no evidence that this failure is linked to corruption and mismanagement by public or nonprofit providers, rather to a general failure of existing support and intervention services to address the drug crisis. e.g. we have yet to figure out what works. On the other hand Cedar tree Investment Canada, owned by Dajia Insurance group which in 2017 bought the largest private chain of senior care homes has provided such substandard care that in 2020 roughly 30% of the homes were run by health authority appointees. Many families are suing.
There is more to this story that needs to be explained, why did they stop taking patients? why was it going to close? were there health and safety issues? what were the terms of the expropriation settlement? were these somehow not market driven?
Expropriation is knife that should be used as a last resort but sometimes is necessary when the free market does not operate as it should
If there is no criminal activity involved then the free market is operating as it should.
Sometimes, maybe always hard to find governments that are concerned with the what the free market may say or do. :)
" ... if governments can kick farmers off their lands today, what’s to stop the government from nationalizing their factory tomorrow?"
Egregious use of a fallacy (in this case, the slippery slope fallacy) makes this piece not up to The Line's usual standards of argument.
Further, the author appears not to be familiar with expropriation, or its place in property rights law. Hey, I'm no lawyer, and I don't know a heckuva lot about it either, but I sure didn't learn anything new here, and it seems what little I know is more than what the author knows.
As other commenters have noted, there's more to this story.
Thanks for saying what I wanted to.
No different than the current federal governments firearms confiscation program, as an example. In theory, anything a Canadian possesses can be taken by government, federal or provincial. ‘Ownership’ in Canada is an illusion.
First they came for the private equity firms
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a private equity firm.
This slippery slope argument is silly. Expropriation has a long and successful history. None of the major infrastructure projects that we enjoy today would exist without expropriation. No railways, electric grids, highways or airports. A lot of housing tracts and major industries would not have been built without government land assembly.
The fact is that large private equity firms - often funded by public pension funds - are rolling up entire industries, cutting capacity, and raising prices. Long term care, veterinary clinics, hotels, rental apartments, and dentistry are a few examples. There's a public interest in ensuring that private monopolists don't have a stranglehold over critical economic bottlenecks. The libertarians are living in a fantasy world.
There are nervous homeowners in Greater Vancouver who now fear that the land upon which their houses are built, and which they thought that they owned, will be taken over by First Nations as the courts have deemed the properties to be on unceded territory of those indigenous people. What a mess.
This current result was patently obvious when property rights were removed from the previous Canadian Bill of Rights when the successor Charter of Rights and Freedoms was implemented by Trudeau the Greater. Of course the greedy provincial governments had no issue with it.
This goes with the cloudiness of land titles brought about by “Indian” (a term used in Federal law ie the Indian act) land claims in BC. All you get basically get with Canadian land ownership IMO is a piece of paper that says the crown gives you the permission to occupy the land and to pass this permission to others via sale or testament. The Crown can take this permission back whenever it chooses.
Property rights as guaranteed in the US by their constitution do not prevent expropriation for overriding public purposes (“Eminent domain” ). However this process forces negotiation to arrive at a fair market value. So the gaslighting and selective application of land use limiting regulations so beloved of Canadian Government land grabbing functionaries(eg “wetland” designations) to reduce values could be challenged in court if property rights were enshrined in law.
My advice to any foreigner contemplating investing in Canada is to take a long hard look at what protections you have before committing. Business competition is enough of a poker game without having to cope with someone who can change the rules at any time.
The owner of the Lemay Forest planned to build a 5000 bed facility, by that plan was rejected by both the City of Winnipeg, and later by the Manitoba Municipal Board. This article makes it seem like the Manitoba Govt slammed the door on an assisted living facility in order to expropriate the land, when in actual fact the plan was rejected multiple times and had been shelved.
I don't love expropriation, but it's not necessary to play fast and loose with facts to make the point.
Yes, we should push back against Govts threatening expropriation of land: sadly it is making my head spin how many things current Govts are doing that we should be pushing back against. I long for the day when Govts ( and their representatives) existed to serve us instead of their own ideologies.
What rubbish. The common good (ie: the care of elders, etc.) should always come first. Absolute greed corrupts absolutely, an organization like the Canadian Constitution Society is well aware of but encourages. But, threatening the closure of a much needed public asset like a nursing home is perverse. Shame on Mr. Dehaas. Public good over private greed every time!
Canadians do not enjoy the right to private property, a right which is part of the foundation of a free society.
Property rights are a cornerstone of functional economies. To such an extent that the teach about it in university and call out countries like China with poor property rights and how it’s impacted their economies. It’s stunning that property rights aren’t that well protected in Canada as the impression I was under was certainly different than this article indicates. Manitoba and Ontario will reap the costs of not protecting property rights I guess. But why do courts allow it? You’d think they’d prevent it from being overboard?
Property rights may be a cornerstone, but that doesn't mean they're absolute.
Google is your friend (look up history of expropriation - also it's called "eminent domain" in the US).
As the author said,there is no Constitutional protection for property in this country.
If the older care facility was taken over by the government with the insider knowledge that the newer facility would not go forward, that presents a serious conflict of interest.