By Amanda Lorbetski [1]
BELLEVILLE – How can the government just take away someone’s private property?
Many people are questioning how the federal government could expropriate the Quinte West [2] farm that has been in the Meyers family for two centuries [3].
David DeMille [4], a lawyer with Templeman Menninga LLP [5] in Belleville, explains that expropriation is the act of acquiring land through force by a government for public use.
http://www.qnetnews.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/david-demille-templeton-menninga-lawyer-expropriation-explainer-clip-2.mp3 [6]It’s not ideal for either the government or the property-owner, he says, adding that negotiation for compensation is what drags the process on – although Frank Meyers’s battle of more than seven years with the government is an unusually long one.
It’s also not a battle Meyers is likely to win, he added:
http://www.qnetnews.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/david-demille-templeton-menninga-lawyer-expropriation-explainer-clip-3.mp3 [7]But most property-owners don’t need to worry about the possibility of expropriation, DeMille said. A government can only expropriate if it can prove that privately owned land is needed for public purposes.
In Meyers’s case, the Department of National Defence [8] says it needs the land for a training facility for the military’s Joint Task Force 2 unit.