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Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling on Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government to defend private property rights in the face of what he claims is a threat posed by a landmark B.C. Supreme Court decision establishing Aboriginal title on private property.
Speaking in Richmond, B.C., Thursday, Poilievre said Carney should instruct Crown lawyers to argue private property rights supersede all other titles to land.
“You need property rights protection to have a thriving, property-owning democracy,” he said.
Poilievre said it’s “regrettable” that fee simple ownership, a legal term for property ownership, isn’t enshrined in the Constitution.
Poilievre was responding to a judge’s decision from last August that established Aboriginal title for the Quw’utsun First Nation over up to 325 hectares (800 acres) of riverside property in Richmond owned by the federal Crown, the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, the City of Richmond and private landowners.
While Young’s ruling said “the property rights of the private landowners are not undermined,” the judge said the Crown would have to work with the Quw’utsun to “negotiate and reconcile” the coexistence of Aboriginal title and private property rights.
The federal Crown, the province and the City of Richmond are all appealing the decision, part of which Young suspended for 18 months in order to give the parties time to deal with fallout from her ruling.
Poilievre criticized the decision, highlighting a phrase that said Aboriginal title is a “prior and senior right to land.”
“Ultimately that claim replaces the property rights ownership of the landowners there,” Poilievre said.
Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre speaks at a news conference on a farm in Richmond on Thursday. (Nick Allan/CBC)
Poilievre is not the first politician to criticize the decision.
B.C. Premier David Eby has called anxiety by private property owners “totally reasonable,” and Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie said the decision may “compromise the status and validity” of their ownership.
In October 2025, Quw’utsun Nation responded to Brodie’s claim, calling it “at best, misleading, and at worst, deliberately inflammatory.”
The nation said the case does not challenge the effectiveness or validity of any title held by individual private landowners and “does not erase private property.”
Poilievre said the federal government originally argued fee simple property rights took precedence over other claims, but in 2018, Ottawa discouraged Crown counsel from relying on that defence.
He said the Liberals should return to arguing that private property takes precedence and said he is concerned the Quw’utsun decision will affect other claims by First Nations in other areas of the province.
Poilievre also said the Liberals signed a “secret deal” with the Musqueam Indian Band.
He was referring to a set of agreements, which include a rights recognition agreement and fisheries and marine stewardship agreements, outlining a framework for how Musqueam rights may be recognized and implemented in the future.
“We don’t know if the agreement affects private property,” Poilievre said.
The federal government has said the agreements do not have any effect on privately owned land.
But Poilievre said the federal government shouldn’t make any agreements with First Nations without explicitly protecting fee simple ownership in a legally binding way.
He challenged Carney to plan for the future of private property and convene a parliamentary committee to begin an “emergency study” on how to protect property rights across Canada.