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How does the royal family own more than 90% of Canada? This is insane!

by outside1234 3y ago

ethbr0 3y ago
Is 90% of Canada more or less valuable than the other 10% of Canada?
autokad 3y ago
I definitely didn't know that.
Kalium 3y ago
I think this is an artifact of attribution. Something like 90% of Canada's land is owned by the Crown of Canada, which as far as I can tell is public land owned in a technical sense by the British royal family. In practice it seems to be mostly owned and controlled by provinces. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_land#Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_land#Canada
- ssnistfajen 3y ago
  The crown is merely a legal concept that due to precedence (since common law countries place so much emphasis on precedence), had to be attached to a natural person who despite holding the title cannot really use its powers as they wish thanks to more precedence that evolved over the history of the UK.
SonicScrub 3y ago
They only do on a technicality. Canada is huge and only a tiny fraction of it is inhabited. Most of Canada is government owned, which is referred to as "Crown Land" (owned by "The Crown", which is the legal entity controlled by the monarch). Note that this land is "owned" by the monarch in the same way the head of state is the monarch. Ceremonially and historically true, but in practice not at all. There are legal restrictions preventing the monarch from using the land in a way that someone who "owns" the land typically would. For instance, they can't sell it, transfer it, and revenue from renting the land (usually for natural resource extraction) goes to the entity administering that land. Which is either the provincial or federal government, who are also responsible for who deciding who gets to use the land in the first place. So again, technicality true, but if a monarch attempted to actually use the land, they'd be thwarted by the Canadian legal system from actually doing so. In much the same way the Canadian legal system has acted to prevent our "head of state" from acting as one in practice.
- asdff 3y ago
  Could Canada be used as like a hunting ground or something like from days of yore?
  - hammock 3y ago
    The Crown land, yes of course. https://www.harvestyourown.ca/start-harvesting/finding-a-place-to-hunt/ https://www.harvestyourown.ca/start-harvesting/finding-a-pla...
  - morkalork 3y ago
    Not just hunting. You can camp / live on it for free as long as you follow some restrictions like moving every X many days. Edit: "The Crown" really is just the state in Canada. When you commit a crime, it's The Crown that prosecutes you. Obviously that's not literally referring to living royalty..
    - bombcar 3y ago
      And this is true of most US Government "BLM" land.
  - vkou 3y ago
    You can camp on crown land. You need a hunting permit to hunt, but that's due to local laws. Local laws, based on public need may also restrict access, or particular uses of parts of crown land. Local legislatures exercise full control over it. It belongs to the king only in name.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hammock 3y ago
  In that sense the situation is not that different from feudal Britain… the king technically owns all the land. He gives title/control of it to the nobility and they in turn, to others. If the king were to ever make alternate use of the land in such a way that would upset enough people, a war or other means of resolution would break out. #politics
tamimio 3y ago
Last time I said that to someone they didn’t believe it, but it’s true, yet people are spending 70years mortgage to buy few square feet of property to spend the rest 10y of their lives in.
- ricksunny 3y ago
  Disturbing and I feel we can do better. The primacy of the 30-year mortgage as the anchor of professional life & status needs to recede into history.
  - ta1243 3y ago
    100% land value tax, distributed evenly to each citizen as a citizen dividend. Therefore everyone can have an equal amount of land (by value -- land in the middle of a major city is clearly more valuable than land in the middle of nowhere), and the only thing they then need to do is build appropriate shelter.
  - VancouverMan 3y ago
    Beyond the cost, what's even more nonsensical about land "ownership" in Canada is the significant lack of freedom and control that comes with it. This should be clear to anyone who has been involved with, or even just witnessed, expropriation proceedings, for example. The bureaucracy involved with building or extending common structures on property that one "owns" can be extremely costly, time-consuming, and painful. Even trimming or removing a tree on said property can involve significant restrictions and bureaucracy in some places.
version_five 3y ago
It's silly, just like the "Inuit own nunavut" may be true on a technicality but it's pointless. The King is our head of state and through the legal concept of the Crown may technically be the "owner" but in fact they're controlled by the elected government. Likewise the nunavut land (which is effectively uninhabitable arctic) would be governed by whatever self government they have, but you might as well say the citizens of the US own all federal land. I thought adding these made the list look silly, they should have stuck with ownership as it's commonly understood. In which case I suppose it would have been just Australian ranchers.
dragonwriter 3y ago
They are probably counting all land owned by the Crowns of various nations of which Charles is King as personal property, which I guess is true in one rather abstract sense but substantively not, as it is the national government that exercises all the powers associated with ownership, not the King in his own person. There is the Crown Estate, in the UK that is essentially (at least, beneficially; not sure how much of it can be alienated even in theory) the personal property of the King, and the Duchy of Lancaster (and, for the Prince of Wales, Cornwall) where the income goes to the Sovereign, but I don’t think there is much, if anything, similar in Canada or other countries of which Charles reigns.
ssnistfajen 3y ago
Crown land in Canada is roughly the same equivalent to federal/public land in the United States. The "crown" is more of a legal concept than a person. Charles just happens to be the one who currently holds based on legal precedence. This does not mean the monarch of Canada (a legally separate entity from the monarch of the UK) can privately dispose the land at their wish, since in a constitutional monarchy they almost always act on advice from (prime) ministers who act as the real heads of governments holding executive power. Most of the land nominally owned by the British royal family around the world are like this, they don't really count towards their net worth since they don't have full control over these lands. The royal family's real income come from other sources than these nominally held lands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finances_of_the_British_royal_family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finances_of_the_British_royal_...

How does the royal family own more than 90% of Canada? This is insane!

ethbr0 3y ago

Is 90% of Canada more or less valuable than the other 10% of Canada?

autokad 3y ago

I definitely didn't know that.

Kalium 3y ago

I think this is an artifact of attribution. Something like 90% of Canada's land is owned by the Crown of Canada, which as far as I can tell is public land owned in a technical sense by the British royal family. In practice it seems to be mostly owned and controlled by provinces. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_land#Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_land#Canada

ssnistfajen 3y ago
The crown is merely a legal concept that due to precedence (since common law countries place so much emphasis on precedence), had to be attached to a natural person who despite holding the title cannot really use its powers as they wish thanks to more precedence that evolved over the history of the UK.

SonicScrub 3y ago

They only do on a technicality. Canada is huge and only a tiny fraction of it is inhabited. Most of Canada is government owned, which is referred to as "Crown Land" (owned by "The Crown", which is the legal entity controlled by the monarch). Note that this land is "owned" by the monarch in the same way the head of state is the monarch. Ceremonially and historically true, but in practice not at all. There are legal restrictions preventing the monarch from using the land in a way that someone who "owns" the land typically would. For instance, they can't sell it, transfer it, and revenue from renting the land (usually for natural resource extraction) goes to the entity administering that land. Which is either the provincial or federal government, who are also responsible for who deciding who gets to use the land in the first place. So again, technicality true, but if a monarch attempted to actually use the land, they'd be thwarted by the Canadian legal system from actually doing so. In much the same way the Canadian legal system has acted to prevent our "head of state" from acting as one in practice.

asdff 3y ago
Could Canada be used as like a hunting ground or something like from days of yore?
- hammock 3y ago
  The Crown land, yes of course. https://www.harvestyourown.ca/start-harvesting/finding-a-place-to-hunt/ https://www.harvestyourown.ca/start-harvesting/finding-a-pla...
- morkalork 3y ago
  Not just hunting. You can camp / live on it for free as long as you follow some restrictions like moving every X many days. Edit: "The Crown" really is just the state in Canada. When you commit a crime, it's The Crown that prosecutes you. Obviously that's not literally referring to living royalty..
  - bombcar 3y ago
    And this is true of most US Government "BLM" land.
- vkou 3y ago
  You can camp on crown land. You need a hunting permit to hunt, but that's due to local laws. Local laws, based on public need may also restrict access, or particular uses of parts of crown land. Local legislatures exercise full control over it. It belongs to the king only in name.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hammock 3y ago
In that sense the situation is not that different from feudal Britain… the king technically owns all the land. He gives title/control of it to the nobility and they in turn, to others. If the king were to ever make alternate use of the land in such a way that would upset enough people, a war or other means of resolution would break out. #politics

tamimio 3y ago

Last time I said that to someone they didn’t believe it, but it’s true, yet people are spending 70years mortgage to buy few square feet of property to spend the rest 10y of their lives in.

ricksunny 3y ago
Disturbing and I feel we can do better. The primacy of the 30-year mortgage as the anchor of professional life & status needs to recede into history.
- ta1243 3y ago
  100% land value tax, distributed evenly to each citizen as a citizen dividend. Therefore everyone can have an equal amount of land (by value -- land in the middle of a major city is clearly more valuable than land in the middle of nowhere), and the only thing they then need to do is build appropriate shelter.
- VancouverMan 3y ago
  Beyond the cost, what's even more nonsensical about land "ownership" in Canada is the significant lack of freedom and control that comes with it. This should be clear to anyone who has been involved with, or even just witnessed, expropriation proceedings, for example. The bureaucracy involved with building or extending common structures on property that one "owns" can be extremely costly, time-consuming, and painful. Even trimming or removing a tree on said property can involve significant restrictions and bureaucracy in some places.

version_five 3y ago

It's silly, just like the "Inuit own nunavut" may be true on a technicality but it's pointless. The King is our head of state and through the legal concept of the Crown may technically be the "owner" but in fact they're controlled by the elected government. Likewise the nunavut land (which is effectively uninhabitable arctic) would be governed by whatever self government they have, but you might as well say the citizens of the US own all federal land. I thought adding these made the list look silly, they should have stuck with ownership as it's commonly understood. In which case I suppose it would have been just Australian ranchers.

dragonwriter 3y ago

They are probably counting all land owned by the Crowns of various nations of which Charles is King as personal property, which I guess is true in one rather abstract sense but substantively not, as it is the national government that exercises all the powers associated with ownership, not the King in his own person. There is the Crown Estate, in the UK that is essentially (at least, beneficially; not sure how much of it can be alienated even in theory) the personal property of the King, and the Duchy of Lancaster (and, for the Prince of Wales, Cornwall) where the income goes to the Sovereign, but I don’t think there is much, if anything, similar in Canada or other countries of which Charles reigns.

ssnistfajen 3y ago

Crown land in Canada is roughly the same equivalent to federal/public land in the United States. The "crown" is more of a legal concept than a person. Charles just happens to be the one who currently holds based on legal precedence. This does not mean the monarch of Canada (a legally separate entity from the monarch of the UK) can privately dispose the land at their wish, since in a constitutional monarchy they almost always act on advice from (prime) ministers who act as the real heads of governments holding executive power. Most of the land nominally owned by the British royal family around the world are like this, they don't really count towards their net worth since they don't have full control over these lands. The royal family's real income come from other sources than these nominally held lands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finances_of_the_British_royal_family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finances_of_the_British_royal_...