Dear Editor:
Re: Queen’s Park Heritage Conservation. The recent war of words in Queen’s Park regarding heritage conservation has unwittingly uncovered a cancer on municipal politics that has been brewing below the surface for many years.
Approximately 30 years ago, I was appointed to the heritage advisory committee by Mayor Toporowski. Our chairperson was Yvonne Cocke, and I distinctly remember asking Yvonne about the very same issue that confronts us today, namely: How does one go about forcing an individual property owner to restore his home instead of demolishing it and building a new one to his own architectural tastes and preferences ? Her answer was clear and unequivocal: “It would never come to that. We would try to convince him not coerce him. We’re not fascists.” Unfortunately, Yvonne is no longer with us, and the committee has been turned into a commission whose silence on these fundamental issues is deafening.
Let us be clear about what is at stake here. The latest attack involves a heritage alteration permit, whereby any property owner in the Queen’s Park area wishing to demolish his house built prior to 1940 ( so he can build a new one) must obtain this permit prior to doing so. In order to acquire the permit, he must prove to a city-controlled and financed “design panel” that the house has no“heritage” value (whatever that means). If the panel decides it does have heritage value, then demolition will be denied and he is forced to live in it indefinitely or sell it at a much reduced price. If it does not have heritage value, then the panel will impose upon him their preferred “heritage” design guidelines for his new house, all of this at his expense, of course.
This has a very familiar ring to it. It’s the same “government of men” and “mob rule” that we uncovered in the recent OCP wars. However, in this case, it is not for the benefit of the city’s property tax. Rather, it is for the benefit of a handful of heritage diehards who think they are morally and legally entitled to ram their version of the architectural good life down the throats of their fellow citizens. This assault on private property rights is worse than the OCP version. It’s much more “in your face.” However, from a legal perspective, it’s exactly the same. It is trespassing, plain and simple, i.e. “to make inroads on the property or rights of another.”
The law of trespass, which predates even the Magna Carta, is one of the oldest and most powerful laws in the Common Law. To challenge it directly is a recipe for disaster on the part of any government “perpetrator.”
It is interesting to note here that in the recent heritage related case of Shaughnessy vs. City of Vancouver, the issue of trespass was never even brought up! Shaughnessy never argued principles, they just wanted more money on a technicality. In any event, the City of Vancouver has since freely admitted that violating citizens’ property rights was not the best course of action for two obvious reasons. Firstly, if a new action is started by other plaintiffs, the trespassing law will be called into play and the city will most certainly lose. Secondly and probably more importantly, the city cannot now avoid the compensation issue because they got their way by force without the property owner’s consent.
Since the properties in Shaughnessy are extremely expensive, the net compensation payable by the city will be in the millions. Who will pay for that ? You guessed it – the taxpayers at large. Is this what we want for this city ? I don’t think so.
The only practical and just way of resolving this issue is to go back to Yvonne Cocke’s tried and true principle of “by mutual consent to mutual benefit” with the following additional and more explicit procedure: Let the heritage diehards of Queen’s Park collect from their supporters an annual heritage conservation “fee” and then use these funds to pay the homeowner/builder the additional construction costs of building to their architectural details as shown on their marked-up drawings. In this way, they will be forced to put their heritage money where their heritage mouth is and it won’t cost the rest of the city a dime.
In the event that, after all this process, some homeowners still refuse to be dictated to, then that is their legal right. Just accept it, respect it and move on. Such is the nature of living in a free country, and since great leaders like Laurier are no longer anywhere to be found, it falls to us to“preserve at all cost our civil liberty, both political and commercial.” For our country to remain free, nothing could be more important.
In light of this, I would suggest that the appropriate signs for the front lawns of homes in Queen’s Park should read: NO TO HERITAGE TRESPASSING. Governments of all sizes and stripes need to hear and see this kind of message in action. More importantly, so do our children.
Ken Dextras, New Westminster
