| A primary distinction between public and private ownership is the claim that private owners hold the right to act in a purely self-seeking fashion and that public owners, far from holding this right, are burdened by obligations to act for the public good. This thesis challenges the notion that this distinction can be uniformly applied to all types of public property through an analysis of the provincial and federal government's (the "State") ownership interest in public land. In this thesis, I argue that the State has---until very recently---owned property in precisely the same manner as a private owner. The critical element underlying State ownership, the public interest, is political and does not derogate from the State's ownership interest. However, judicial interpretation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms altered the content of the State's ownership interest by placing justiciable limitations on the State's use of public land. |
