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Free Land!
by Jeffrey S. Murray, Library and Archives Canada
The process of dividing the Prairies into precisely measured
units for individual ownership was not as easy as one might think. Prior to the
passage of the Dominion Lands Act in 1872, there was much heated debate
in the House of Commons over the size of the homesteads to be awarded. Most Parliamentarians
agreed that, given the openness of the prairies, the American-style grid system
of dividing land in measurable units made sense. Where they could not agree, however,
was on the size of the blocks to be used. The American system called for townships
measuring six square miles (16 km²) and divided into 36 one-square-mile blocks
of 640 acres (259 hectares). The blocks in turn were subdivided into quarter-section
homesteads amounting to 160 acres (65 hectares) each.
Lieutenant-Colonel John Stoughton Dennis, a leading surveyor in the province
of Ontario, and William McDougall, the minister of Public Works, led a movement
that wanted to see Canada expand the blocks to 800 acres (324 hectares), with
quarter-section homesteads measuring 200 acres (81 hectares) each. They felt the
larger-sized homesteads would make Canada a more attractive destination for immigrants.
In the end, Parliament decided to follow the American system, with one difference:
allowances for roads would be incorporated into the survey pattern rather than
subtracted from the homesteads bordering the road. In this way, all homesteads
would be of equal size.
Despite the best intentions of the Dominion Lands Act,
land speculation ran rampant in some sectors of western Canada, especially when
the Métis Scrip Commissions were meeting. Rather than settle the Métis
on reserves as it had done with First Nations, the federal government devised
a system of land grants called scrip. Notes in the form of money scrip (valued
at $160 or $240) or land scrip, valued at 160 acres or 240 acres (65 hectares
or 97 hectares) were offered to the Métis in exchange for their Aboriginal
rights. Along with the treaties that awarded First Nations territories to Canada,
the scrip system enabled the federal government to alot western lands to new settlers,
unencumbered by prior rights of use.
The scrip process was marked by fraud, however, with many Métis families
losing their scrip (and their land rights) to unscrupulous agents who easily forged
their signatures on documents. As well, scrip speculators, many of whom were connected
to prominent western banks, followed the commissions around and bought up scrip
at a fraction of its value (about 35 cents on the dollar), only to sell it later
to land speculators and homesteaders at a marked-up price. Historians have recently
found evidence to suggest that the federal government knew the scrip system was
flawed but chose to ignore it. It may be that the government was using scrip as
a form of indirect federal subsidy to assist western development at the expense
of Métis land. The result was tragic for the Métis. It left them
homeless in their own land.
The Dominion Lands Act also created an imperial
relationship between the West and Ottawa. It gave federal ministers of the Crown
exclusive control over the disposal of western land and natural resources. Initially
the minister for the Secretary of State had been given the responsibility to administer
the Act, but in 1873 the responsibility was passed to the minister of the newly
formed Department of the Interior, who, at the time, was Prime Minister Sir John
A. Macdonald. Later, federal rights over natural resources were also extended
to the Railway Belt and the Peace River Block in British Columbia and to lands
north of the 60th parallel (particularly in Yukon Territory). When Canada's four
original provinces had come together in 1867, and when the provinces of British
Columbia and Prince Edward Island followed in the early 1870s, they retained control
over the natural resources within their borders. Such was not the case for the
Prairie provinces, however, and their inferior constitutional position did not
end with the creation of Alberta and Saskatchewan in 1905, or with the expansion
of Manitoba in 1881 and 1912. It continued until 1930, when federal authority
was successfully challenged by the three Prairie provinces in front of Britain's
Privy Council. But the Natural Resources Transfer Agreements that resulted from
that challenge did not end the debate over natural resource management. The debate
continued to plague federal-provincial relations throughout most of the 20th century,
with the Prairie provinces playing key roles in the fight for "provincial
rights."
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