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Sarah E. Hamill* McGill Law Journal ~ Revue de droit de McGill PRIVATE RIGHTS TO PUBLIC PROPERTY: THE EVOLUTION OF COMMON PROPERTY IN CANADA Sarah E. Hamill* This article uses the recent Occupy litiga- En s’appuyant sur le récent litige « Oc- tion of Batty v. City of Toronto to argue that cupy » dans l’affaire Batty c City of Toronto Canadian courts no longer have a robust under- (Batty), cet article montre que le judiciaire ca- standing of common property and its attendant nadien n’a plus de compréhension solide des rights. The lack of judicial understanding of biens communs, ni des droits qui y sont asso- common property is hardly surprising given ciés. Ce manque de compréhension judiciaire en property theory’s focus on private property, par- matière de biens communs est à peine surpre- ticularly individual private property. This arti- nant compte tenu la focalisation de la théorie cle argues that rather than use the traditional sur la propriété privée, et particulièrement la analogy of governments holding common prop- propriété privée individuelle. Cet article sou- erty in trust for the public, Batty relies on an tient qu’au lieu d’utiliser l’analogie tradition- analogy of common property which treats the nelle, selon laquelle le gouvernement détient les government as an owner. The emergence of the biens communs en fiducie pour le public, Batty latter understanding of common property can se fonde sur une analogie qui considère le gou- be traced to Supreme Court jurisprudence from vernement comme propriétaire. L’émergence de the early 1990s. Although the government-as- cette dernière compréhension des biens com- owner analogy of common property was intro- muns peut être retracée à la jurisprudence de la duced in a concurring judgment, more recent Cour Suprême du début des années 1990. Bien Supreme Court decisions have since reiterated que l’analogie gouvernement comme proprié- the analogy. Such an understanding of common taire ait été introduite par un jugement concur- property is a clear attempt to force all property rent, des décisions plus récentes de la Cour Su- into a private property model and emphasize prême l’ont réitérée. Une telle compréhension the rights of owners above all other rights in de la propriété est une tentative évidente de property. This article argues that the govern- forcer tout le droit des biens dans un modèle de ment-as-owner analogy is problematic given its propriété privée, et d’accentuer les droits des emphasis on the government’s use of property propriétaires par-dessus tous les autres droits rather than the public’s benefit from common reliés à la propriété. Cet article soutient que property and calls for a return to the trust anal- l’analogie gouvernement comme propriétaire est ogy of common property. problématique puisqu’elle met l’accent sur l’usage que fait le gouvernement des biens communs, et non les bienfaits publics qui en ressortent. L’article appelle ainsi à un retour à l’analogie fiduciaire des biens communs. * PhD Candidate, Faculty of Law, University of Alberta. I am indebted to the three anon- ymous reviewers for their advice and suggestions on this article. © Sarah E. Hamill 2012 Citation: (2012) 58:2 McGill LJ 365 ~ Référence : 2012 58 : 2 RD McGill 365 366 (2012) 58:2 MCGILL LAW JOURNAL ~ REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL Introduction 367 I. Kinds of Property and the Bundle of Rights 370 II. Batty: Parks, Protesters, and Private Property 380 III. The Rise of the Government-as-Owner 388 IV. Bringing Back the Public 396 Conclusion 403 THE EVOLUTION OF COMMON PROPERTY IN CANADA 367 Introduction “How do we live together in a community? How do we share common space?” These questions opened Justice Brown’s judgment in Batty v. City of Toronto and were prompted by the Occupy movement’s “occupation” of a park in downtown Toronto.1 Despite these opening lines, the decision in Batty does not deliver the promised discussion of common space. Instead, Batty repeatedly defers to private property rights or the rights of the city of Toronto in its role as manager of municipal parks. That is not to say that Batty reached the wrong decision but to say that Batty reached the right decision for the wrong reasons, and rather than taking common property rights seriously—particularly the public’s right not to be exclud- ed from such property2— the case upholds individual private property as the only acceptable way to think about property. It is the purpose of this article to explore the state of common property in Canada. I argue that in cases dealing with issues of what would tradi- tionally be understood as common property, such as streets and parks, Canadian courts have shown themselves to have a weak understanding of such property. By weak understanding, I mean that the courts have pre- ferred to force instances of common property into a private property model rather than delineating what rights exist for common property qua com- mon property. The resulting picture of common property emphasizes the state’s role as regulator of such property or, less often, the impact of com- mon property on private property rights. The unease that Canadian courts have with common property appears to stem from questions over ownership. I argue that this unease is hardly surprising due to two fac- tors. First, the conventional categorization of property tacitly assumes that individually owned private property is the base-line model or original form of property.3 Second, the conventional categorization’s tacit assump- tions about private property are compounded by the dominant theory of property as taught in law schools and promoted by academics. This theo- ry, generally known as the bundle of rights theory,4 has in recent years 1 Batty v Toronto (City of), 2011 ONSC 6862 at para 1, 108 OR (3d) 571, [Batty]. 2 I use the term common property to mean instances of public property which are open to the public. My definition of common property and choice of terminology are explained below (infra notes 20 to 50 and accompanying text). 3 Elinor Ostrom & Charlotte Hess, “Private and Common Property Rights” in Boudewijn Bouckaert, ed, Property Law and Economics, Encyclopedia of Law and Economics, 2nd ed (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2010) 53 at 53-54. This argument is further explored below. 4 For academic discussions of this theory see Tony Honoré, “Ownership” in Making Law Bind: Essays Legal and Philosophical (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987) 161; Thomas W Merrill & Henry E Smith, “What Happened to Property in Law and Economics” (2001) 111:2 Yale LJ 357; JE Penner, “The ‘Bundle of Rights’ Picture of Property” (1996) 43:3 368 (2012) 58:2 MCGILL LAW JOURNAL ~ REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL come to concern itself with questions of how best to define and recognize ownership of private property.5 Put simply the bundle of rights theory as- sumes that if a person holds all of the rights then she is the owner of the property.6 The question of ownership of common property is much more complex than ownership of private property because whatever rights there are to common property, they are shared among the population and between the public and the government. Rather than struggle with the complexity of common property, Canadian courts have sought to simplify the issue and force all forms of property into a private property model.7 There are two paradigmatic ways to understand common property. The first is the trust analogy whereby the common property is described as being held in trust by the government for the benefit of the public. The trust analogy has the same roots as the American public trust doctrine, but in Canada, the idea of a public trust is much weaker and less devel- oped than in the United States.8 Hence, to avoid confusion with the more powerful American public trust doctrine, I call the Canadian version “the trust analogy”.9 The trust analogy is one with a long history,10 but this ar- ticle argues that it has since been replaced with the government-as-owner UCLA L Rev 711. For a discussion of this theory in law textbooks see Bruce Ziff, Princi- ples of Property Law, 5th ed (Toronto: Carswell, 2010) at 2-3; Daniel H Cole & Peter Z Grossman, Principles of Law and Economics 2nd ed (New York: Wolters Kluwer, 2011) at 109-110. See also Michael A Heller, “The Dynamic Analytics of Property Law” (2001) 2:1 Theor Inq L 79 at 92, [Heller, “Dynamic Analytics”]. 5 Larissa Katz, “Exclusion and Exclusivity in Property Law” (2008) 58:3 UTLJ 275 [Katz, “Exclusion and Exclusivity]; Thomas W Merrill, “Property and the Right to Exclude” (1998) 77:4 Neb L Rev 730; Merrill & Smith, supra note 5 at 385-387. 6 This is further explored infra notes 54-75 and accompanying text. 7 See Parts II and III. 8 Constance D Hunt, “The Public Trust Doctrine in Canada” in John Swaigen, ed, Envi- ronmental Rights in Canada (Toronto: Butterworths, 1981) 151 at 151-56, 166; Barbara von Tigerstrom, “The Public Trust Doctrine in Canada” (1997) 7:3 J Envtl L & Prac 379 at 380-81; John C Maguire, “Fashioning an Equitable Vision for Public Resource Pro- tection and Development in Canada: The Public Trust Doctrine Revisited and Recon- ceptualized” (1997) 7:1 J Envtl L & Prac 1 at 2-7; Kate Penelope Smallwood, Coming out of Hibernation: The Canadian Public Trust Doctrine (LLM Thesis, University of British Columbia Faculty of Law, 1993) [unpublished] at 12-42, 78-93. 9 This term also has the benefit of emphasising that an actual trust is not created and therefore the law that applies to private trusts does not apply to property held under the trust analogy.
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