King Arthur Movie Tristan

David Asper has a piece today in the National Post about honouring international law. Entitled Our Hypocrisy on the World Stage, Asper does a nice piece on UN treaties rights ignored by Canada. What set Asper off was a piece in yesterdays post regarding the un-elected Senate's recent report, Children: The Silenced Citizens.

What interested me was Asper's part on Private Property Rights:

The granddaddy of them all is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations in 1948. It was followed by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1966. Canada has ratified both of these documents...

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example, confers a right to own property. But property rights are not included in the Canadian Charter of Rights.

I have been on this issue before, back when Paul Martin was blathering on about people who "cherry-pick rights":

If you are talking rights, and things like 'fundamental human rights' we need to know what are human rights. Which leads us to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Note, this is from the UN's Commision on Human Rights and has been in effect for 57 years now. Here's a little something from the preamble:

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

'Member States have pledged themselves to achieve...human rights and fundamental freedoms'...

Article 17.

(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

... Rights are fundamental and cannot be cherry-picked or they are not. Property rights has been clearly spelled out in international law...

When people like myself, or maybe Gerry Nicholls' complain about the Conservatives not acting conservative, here's what we mean. From the founding principles of the Conservative Party of Canada:

The Conservative Party will be guided in its constitutional framework and its policy basis by the following principles:

... A belief that the best guarantors of the prosperity and well-being of the people of Canada are:

• The freedom of individual Canadians to pursue their enlightened and legitimate self-interest within a competitive economy;

• The freedom of individual Canadians to enjoy the fruits of their labour to the greatest possible extent; and

• The right to own property;

It's a UN right, it's a conservative principle and, as Asper points out, it's our obligation under international law. Further more, we are one of the few jurisdictions in the world that doesn't guarantee property rights.

Why does nobody ever want to tackle this important issue in this country? Where is Canada's John Locke?