> In Canadian law all lands are subject to the Crown, and this has been true since Britain acquired much of Eastern Canada from France by the Treaty of Paris (1763).
> In common law systems, land tenure is the legal regime in which land is owned by an individual, who is said to "hold" the land. It determines who can use land, for how long and under what conditions. [...] The sovereign monarch, known as The Crown, holds land in its own right. All private owners are either its tenants or sub-tenants.
In other words, while a municipal or provincial government might have to go through the courts to expropriate your land, the Canadian Government (and esp. the Queen acting through the Governor General) can directly take your land without passing any sort of Act, because it's fundamentally their land—they're not taking it, they're just revoking your use of it, which they granted you [or someone, at some point, by parcelling out land and writing a deed for it] in the first place.
The deed you hold to real estate in Canada (and other common-law countries) is fundamentally a granting of use of that land from the Crown to you, and a promise by the Crown to be on your side in any property dispute between you and any other subject of the Crown. But it's not a repudiation of the Crown's fundamental ownership of the land. A Canadian property deed is essentially a feudalist freehold lease, with the Crown as feudal lord and the property owner as tiller, and federal property taxes as the freehold payments.
(You might not have to pay federal property taxes if you live on land deeded from the Crown to a province—and then perhaps further deeded to a municipality—because of negotiated settlements between the Crown and the Provinces. In a sense, the Provinces are paying that tax for you, and then charging you separate taxes in turn. Make no mistake, though; you would be paying federal property taxes—and estate taxes, when those existed—if your land were deeded directly out of federal land, i.e. if you have a deed to unincorporated land in the Territories.)
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And, inasmuch as Canadian indigenous bands hold title to land, they're still modelled within Canadian law as subjects of the Crown who've been granted the land by statute; not as, say, small land-locked foreign enclaves that the Crown has to negotiate external treaties with. Within the framework of common law, land is deeded from the Crown to the indigenous people, never from the indigenous people to the Crown.
One more Wikipedia excerpt:
> However, the British and Canadian authorities recognized that indigenous peoples already on the lands had a prior claim, aboriginal title, which was not extinguished by the arrival of the Europeans. This is in direct contrast to the situation in Australia where the continent was declared terra nullius, or vacant land, and was seized from Aboriginal peoples without compensation. In consequence, all of Canada, save a section of southern Quebec exempted by the Royal Proclamation of 1763, is subject to Aboriginal title. Native groups historically negotiated treaties in which they traded tenure to the land for annuities and certain legal exemptions and privileges. Most of Western Canada was secured in this way by the government via the Numbered Treaties of 1871 to 1921, though not all groups signed treaties. In particular, in most of British Columbia Aboriginal title has never been transferred to the Crown. Many native groups, both those that have never signed treaties or those that are dissatisfied with the execution of treaties have made formal Aboriginal land claims against the government.
Note that what the First Nations peoples of Canada were trading away in the Numbered Treaties was land tenure, not land holding. Under common law, the prior claim of title by First Nations peoples did not translate to a top-level, independent claim of ownership ("holding") over the land, but only to an automatic grant — and then only in some cases! — of tenure from the Crown to the First Nations peoples (which were then traded for other benefits.)
The very fact that the First Nations peoples with a claim to most of the land Vancouver sits on, don't have legal power to enforce that claim, is the best demonstration of the fact that there is no right to land ownership in Canada separate from the Crown granting land to you, revocably, on a case-by-case basis.
Snippets from Wikipedia:
> In Canadian law all lands are subject to the Crown, and this has been true since Britain acquired much of Eastern Canada from France by the Treaty of Paris (1763).
> In common law systems, land tenure is the legal regime in which land is owned by an individual, who is said to "hold" the land. It determines who can use land, for how long and under what conditions. [...] The sovereign monarch, known as The Crown, holds land in its own right. All private owners are either its tenants or sub-tenants.
In other words, while a municipal or provincial government might have to go through the courts to expropriate your land, the Canadian Government (and esp. the Queen acting through the Governor General) can directly take your land without passing any sort of Act, because it's fundamentally their land—they're not taking it, they're just revoking your use of it, which they granted you [or someone, at some point, by parcelling out land and writing a deed for it] in the first place.
The deed you hold to real estate in Canada (and other common-law countries) is fundamentally a granting of use of that land from the Crown to you, and a promise by the Crown to be on your side in any property dispute between you and any other subject of the Crown. But it's not a repudiation of the Crown's fundamental ownership of the land. A Canadian property deed is essentially a feudalist freehold lease, with the Crown as feudal lord and the property owner as tiller, and federal property taxes as the freehold payments.
(You might not have to pay federal property taxes if you live on land deeded from the Crown to a province—and then perhaps further deeded to a municipality—because of negotiated settlements between the Crown and the Provinces. In a sense, the Provinces are paying that tax for you, and then charging you separate taxes in turn. Make no mistake, though; you would be paying federal property taxes—and estate taxes, when those existed—if your land were deeded directly out of federal land, i.e. if you have a deed to unincorporated land in the Territories.)
---
And, inasmuch as Canadian indigenous bands hold title to land, they're still modelled within Canadian law as subjects of the Crown who've been granted the land by statute; not as, say, small land-locked foreign enclaves that the Crown has to negotiate external treaties with. Within the framework of common law, land is deeded from the Crown to the indigenous people, never from the indigenous people to the Crown.
One more Wikipedia excerpt:
> However, the British and Canadian authorities recognized that indigenous peoples already on the lands had a prior claim, aboriginal title, which was not extinguished by the arrival of the Europeans. This is in direct contrast to the situation in Australia where the continent was declared terra nullius, or vacant land, and was seized from Aboriginal peoples without compensation. In consequence, all of Canada, save a section of southern Quebec exempted by the Royal Proclamation of 1763, is subject to Aboriginal title. Native groups historically negotiated treaties in which they traded tenure to the land for annuities and certain legal exemptions and privileges. Most of Western Canada was secured in this way by the government via the Numbered Treaties of 1871 to 1921, though not all groups signed treaties. In particular, in most of British Columbia Aboriginal title has never been transferred to the Crown. Many native groups, both those that have never signed treaties or those that are dissatisfied with the execution of treaties have made formal Aboriginal land claims against the government.
Note that what the First Nations peoples of Canada were trading away in the Numbered Treaties was land tenure, not land holding. Under common law, the prior claim of title by First Nations peoples did not translate to a top-level, independent claim of ownership ("holding") over the land, but only to an automatic grant — and then only in some cases! — of tenure from the Crown to the First Nations peoples (which were then traded for other benefits.)
The very fact that the First Nations peoples with a claim to most of the land Vancouver sits on, don't have legal power to enforce that claim, is the best demonstration of the fact that there is no right to land ownership in Canada separate from the Crown granting land to you, revocably, on a case-by-case basis.