Nobody has the right to force a pipeline onto your property.

By Dave Core & Associates

Nobody has the right to tell you how to run your farm or ranch.

And nobody has the right to tell you what to put into your body.

That's what property rights are all about.

Those were my thoughts as I watched the Truckers' Convoy head to Ottawa last week to protest the Vaccine Mandate for transport drivers coming into Canada.

I followed the protest over the weekend on social media and other reliable sites online — the mainstream media cannot be trusted as they seem obsessed with smearing the truckers (something they have often done to pipeline landowners).

As I watched the coverage, I realized the whole protest boils down to a question of property rights.

Who has the right to control your land, your truck, your farm, your business — or your body?

As someone with a background in trucking and farming and who has crisscrossed this country fighting for the property rights of pipeline landowners, I can identify with this protest.

Like you, many of these truckers are business people.  In business to feed their families by keeping our store shelves full and keeping your farms supplied.  And getting a whole lot of the agricultural commodities you produce to market.

Without every trucker fully employed we as farmers and ranchers will suffer supply chain interruptions and face bottlenecks on rail.

The mainstream media may be painting the truckers as "antivaxxers" and "extremists," but this has nothing to do with vaccines, and the only extremism here is the idea that the government should force medical treatments on people — the same way it is extremism to think the government should be able to force pipelines on your property.

While the Convoy that arrived in Ottawa may not have been as big as the promoters hyped, it is also many, many times bigger than what the mainstream media would like you to believe.

And the message of rights and liberties the convoy is carrying is ultimately one about property rights.  As such the message is one that supports the rights of pipeline landowners and all landowners and indeed all Canadians.

So whatever your feelings about the coronavirus or about the vaccines, pipeline landowners should be supportive of the truckers for fighting for your property rights and to keep your supply chains intact and running smoothly.

If there is one thing I have learned in over a quarter century fighting for property rights, it is that no single effort or protest or convoy is going to get the whole job done.  

If the truckers want to secure their right to bodily autonomy and to healthcare choice and to their property rights, they need to be committed for the long haul. To preserve our property rights, we all need to "keep on truckin'."

Yours for Property Rights, 

Dave Core

P.S.  If you don't have control over something, you don't own it.  If you don't have control over your own body, how can you control your land, your home, your farm, your business or anything at all?  That is why I see the Truckers Convoy, also known as the Freedom Convoy, as a Property Rights Convoy...and I hope in the days and weeks ahead, you will too.

Dave Core is managing partner at Dave Core and Associates, a consulting firm specializing in land management, property rights and agribusiness. He was president and CEO of CAEPLA from 2000 to 2018.

Photo credit to Cody Borek, Stettler AB