Calling all ‘sleepy heads’!
(Loved the comment from ‘FortheLoveofFreedom’ in my previous update.)
On Wednesday afternoon, as I drove across north Oshawa on Taunton Road (the same area that inspired my last Substack, as it happens), one of my real estate agent friends called. We’ve been following land use by-law changes (and other developments on this front) over the past couple of years, and in the course of our conversation, the subject of Land Registry came up — more importantly, the closure of the office in Durham Region. This happened, ostensibly, because of Covid. That wasn’t the real reason, of course, it was just another part of the provinces’ ‘digital transition’ plan (in keeping with Deep Shift #2 in The Fourth Industrial Revolution — ‘Our Digital Presence’); the lock down was an opportune moment to make this transition, while no one was watching. I was just north of Rossland Road in Whitby by this point, so I detoured south to visit the Municipal Offices myself.
From The Regional Municipality of Durham Headquarters (above right), I was cheerfully directed across the road to the local Service Ontario offices (above left), where I was informed that: “Yes, the Land Registry is closed, and won’t be opening again. It’s all online now — for your convenience.” A staffer behind the counter overheard the conversation, and handed me the document you see below (copied many times over, for other concerned land owners).
Let me back up a little here, to share the following: The Great Taking. If you’re familiar with this work already, you’ll see where I’m going with this; if you’re not, then I suggest you’ll want to set aside some time to watch (or read).
I needn’t explain too much here, but the basic premise is that assets in the form of equities and securities (stocks and bonds) have been ‘dematerialized’ over the past few decades. We no longer have physical evidence of ownership (except in rare cases), and do not take possession of actual certificates; it’s all digital and online now (of course, for our convenience). In fact, you no longer even have ownership, as people once understood this ‘outmoded’ concept, ‘absolute’ ownership that is. Instead, those who ‘own’ stocks and bonds (and don’t actually have in their possession the paper certificate) have only ‘beneficial’ ownership; the right to buy, sell, vote and ‘benefit’ financially from capital gains or dividends.
That may sound okay (to those who trade actively and don’t want the encumbrance of physical paper certificates), but the trade off, as you will see, is that virtually all securities (and equities) are now legally owned by one entity — through a chain of ‘Central Clearing Counter-Parties’ (CCPs), the Depository Trust Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and The Canadian Depository for Securities Ltd (CDS) in Canada — the enigmatic trust company Cede & Co.
Please refer to David Webb’s work, The Great Taking, for a full explanation of this mechanism. Suffice it to say (here), the ultimate consequences of individuals unwittingly ‘ceding’ absolute ownership of their assets (in exchange for ‘convenience’ and ‘beneficial ownership’) is reflected in the title of Webb’s work: someone (invisibly) has just ‘taken’ control of your assets.
Land is not explicitly covered in The Great Taking (though Credit Default Swaps, Collateralized Debt Obligations and the Great Financial Crisis, are mentioned) but parallels can be drawn. It is not common knowledge, though most real estate agents (and more informed landowners) will understand the limitations of land ownership in Canada.
Here too, most of us only have a kind of ‘beneficial ownership’ — to use, buy, sell and profit from (through capital gains or rental). Ultimately (or supposedly) ‘The Crown’ owns the land in this country (with important exceptions that we can discuss later). Just as Cede & Co. has ultimate ownership of most stocks and bonds (wouldn’t you love to know exactly who the ‘Co.’ is?), an ‘elite’ of one kind or another has ultimate ownership, and in the case of land, technically, we are just tenants — How feudal is that?
To add further insult to injury, here in Ontario, Municipal staff and elected officials have cut themselves in on the Globalist’s scheme (like the courtier class of a bygone age who curried favour with the Monarch, or the Scottish Lairds who contrived to have their own people ‘cleared’ from the land in the early 1800s).
The Highland Clearances. Ch1. ‘Year of the Sheep.’ pg.14
‘[T]he docile obedience of their people would make the hard necessities of the future easier to impose. They began, willingly or unwillingly, the great betrayal of their children. Highland society had been a pyramid.’
Bureaucrats and technocrats have now managed to steal a significant part of our ‘beneficial interest’ as well. I do not use this word lightly, but you can decided for yourself how to characterize the self-enriching ‘sleight of hand’ that has occurred.
If you can’t wait to ‘test out’ the [new OnLand.ca] website, you will see that the land registry is no longer a public service; it is now a private, for-profit business. The Registry, apparently, was too costly to manage on our behalf; yet privatized, it is wildly profitable.
Some will say this goes to show how ‘efficient’ a public utility or service can be when privatized. This is the neoliberal economic model at work, they may argue, so let’s privatize everything. But no, what this shows is how profitable a public utility or service can be for private interests, if they’re able to loot the value that exists in the public’s assets held there in trust. For anyone who still wishes to make a case for privatizing, centralizing and digitizing land records — while ‘dematerializing’ (read: ‘disappearing’) our deeds, and further diminishing our claims of ownership — you must realize that, unless you are an Ontario Municipal employee, you’re not going to see a penny of the proceeds from these ‘efficiencies,’ and your taxes will continue to go up.
If you clicked on the link above, you may have noticed, at the bottom of the page, that ‘OnLand® is a product [registered trade name] of Teranet Property & Registration Services,’ a private company, or more precisely, a public-private partnership. Click on the TERANET logo, and you will see, on the ‘About us’ page:
‘Teranet is wholly-owned by OMERS, one of Canada’s largest defined benefit pension plans. Serving more than 550,000 members, OMERS has C$124 billion in net assets as of Dec 31, 2022. OMERS investment in Teranet is overseen by OMERS Infrastructure, the plan’s global infrastructure investment arm.’
OMERS is the ‘Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System.’
‘Teranet and OMERS Infrastructure alike are trusted partners to governments and many stakeholders across Canada and around the world.’
On the Municipal level, as we have discovered in recent months, ‘stakeholder’ does not mean the people who elected representatives to office, it means the corporate partners that work with governments (who are themselves corporations, incorporated under the Municipal Act). This is a whole other story, to be revisited another day.
So, Regions and Municipalities, by means of their ‘trusted partners,’ have usurped an aspect of ‘beneficial ownership’ to enrich themselves; as explained in some detail on their websites. Do ‘Visit OMERS Infrastructure to learn more,’ as you are invited: 36 billion dollars [of assets] under management, perhaps even using your property as collateral (since I only discovered this two days ago, and I’m not a forensic auditor, I only suggest this as a possibility). The manner in which your assets could be used in this financial/technocratic arena, is explained in more depth in The Great Taking, and perhaps someone more qualified might want to dive into their books?
Speaking of books, here’s a little essential reading. The first and last, I’m reading right now. I mentioned The Highland Clearances previously, and I’ve just started Techno-Feudalism. The Unconscious Civilization and The Sleepwalkers (middle) are (or should be) considered classics.
My home town/Region recently released its budget, which saw an increase in property taxes of 5.77% (while Whitby and Clarington each announced a 1.5 % rise ‘in their municipal portion of the 2024 property tax,’ Oshawa announced a 3.89% increase). Again, I’m not the person to undertake an audit of any kind (or even really comment on the contents of this budget), but I would suggest that any profits generated from our properties, ‘collectively,’ might first be use to eliminate further increases in our property taxes. Your thoughts on this would be most welcome.
It does almost seems (given the financial difficulties so many people face today) that there’s a concerted effort underway to slowly ‘clear’ people off their land. At 5.77% per year, whatever taxes are paid now would double in thirteen years (by my calculation).
More alarming than the ‘slow bleed’ of property tax increases, are the commentaries, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Environmental, Social Governance (ESG) buzzwords all over the TERANET site (keeping in mind the concept of ‘Disguised Expropriation’): ‘Climate change is a critical issue affecting financial stability due to extreme weather.’ You may find the following of interest:
‘De facto expropriation without compensation through heritage or environmental designation of land’ — www.canliiconnects.org
‘An Introduction to Expropriation Law’ — www. fasken.com
In conjunction with the ‘densification’ of towns and the so-called ‘rewilding’ of the countryside (and all manner of land use by-laws in between), it will be argued that this is all for the ‘public good.’ We might almost believe this, except that, in the process, golden opportunities are being generated for ‘Municipal partners’ (the corporate stakeholders), and the ‘spoils’ (should we call them) are then distributed only to a select few (the technocrats and ‘courtier insiders’ ) through their exclusive ‘Retirement System.’ Perhaps we need a little ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ in this as well!
On the whole, I have only ever had a positive experience when interacting with staff and Council members. My emails and calls are very often ignored, and it sometimes feels next to impossible to get answers to questions, but in person, our representatives and staff have been pleasant (at least). And, like the pleasant young lady at the Region on Wednesday, who helpfully directed me to the Land Registry office that had been closed for at least two already, most are probably oblivious (among other things) to the source of their pensions and benefits. So in no way do my observations here reflect on our friends and neighbours at the Region, and in our Towns; though it is time for an open discussion on all of this.
A ‘Good Friday’ Public Service Message from the/a Region:
Or, a Municipal cry for help . . . and more propaganda from the Provincial technocrats? If our elected representatives (on the Municipal level) are to do anything constructive, they need the the population as a whole to be informed and engaged.
My interest here, of course, is to protect the rights of landowners, and to lower their taxes. In turn, these reduced costs, would (or should) reduce the cost for renters too. This is very much the topic de jour, and for good reason. But ‘re-materializing’ those deeds and land titles, and re-establishing the existing Land Registry offices, should be a top priority.
In part, the centralization of this service is what has made it essential to digitize our records of ownership. Yet strangely, at the same time as we are being warned of future cyber attacks, governments everywhere are still pushing their so-called ‘digital transition.’ The only way greater dependence on digital technology makes sense (in light of what we’re being told) is if someone wanted the records of ownership centralized and digitized, so that they might be more easily disappeared. Call me a ‘conspiracy theorist.’
We already know the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is creating (or wants to create) a Unified Ledger. Into which digitized (and tokenized) representations of all assets and ‘natural resources’ will be moved. In this way, the BIS (and its agents) become the gate keepers, and gain absolute control. Access to your assets, now locked into their Metaverse, will be on their terms. You will need a digital identity, and perhaps even a digital avatar, to participate in this new digital economy; but this isn’t the place for a discussion of Digital ID, programmable CBDC, Open Banking, and all this entails. The implications, however, are obvious.
In the near term (on a more practical note) some of the recouped profits from the ‘exploitation’ of our property rights, could quite easily be used to once again decentralize the land records, and reinstate physical records of the properties in various Regions. It is difficult to believe that a million dollar physical asset can be constructed, while it is too expensive and impractical to maintain a physical record of this in the community. Those who make decisions based on only convenience, can sleepwalk into serfdom and servitude (if they wish), but we must insist on taking back the rights that have been craftily appropriated, before our physical properties are expropriated.
The only way to do this is by getting involved. Those who are most comfortable, are perhaps most at risk (unless you are already an extra-national, without assets to lose here). The more assets you have, the more you have to lose — and the more engaged, therefore, you should be.
I look forward to some productive conversations in the coming weeks, but I've written enough for now, in this introduction.
Thank you for your continuing interest, and support, here and on Patreon.
David
Hi there, Painter14. You mean 'no' guarantee of property rights I guess?
That is true, I understood this, but there are some interesting things happening, and a small glimmer of hope (for some).
More later
Thank you David for continuing to shine a light on all these shifty things going on in our province/country and globally. It appears I need to catch up on some of the reading materials you suggest. What a bait and switch scenario going on. |Very concerning.