Land Ownership in Canada - Crown Lands

Crown Lands

The majority of all lands in Canada are held by governments in the name of the monarch and are called Crown Lands. About 89% of Canada's land area (8,886,356 km²) is Crown Land, which may either be federal (41%) or provincial (48%); the remaining 11% is privately owned. Most federal Crown land is in the Canadian territories (Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon), and is administered on behalf of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada; only 4% of land in the provinces is federally controlled, largely in the form of National Parks, Indian reserves, or Canadian Forces bases. In contrast, provinces hold much of their territory as provincial Crown Land, which may be held as Provincial Parks or wilderness.

The largest class of landowners are the provincial governments, who hold all unclaimed land in their jurisdiction in the name of the Crown (Crown Lands). Over 90% of the sprawling boreal forest of Canada is provincial Crown land. Provincial lands account for 60% of the area of the province of Alberta, 94% of the land in British Columbia, 95% of Newfoundland and Labrador, and 48% of New Brunswick.

The largest single landowner in Canada by far, and by extension one of the world's largest, is the federal government. The bulk of the federal government's lands are in the vast northern territories where Crown Lands are vested in the federal, rather than territorial, government. In addition the federal government owns national parks, First Nations reserves and national defence installations.

Until the Natural Resources Acts of 1930 the prairie provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, and to a limited extent British Columbia, did not control Crown Lands or subsoil rights within their boundaries, which instead rested with the federal government. This deprived them of the benefits of royalties from mining, oil and gas, or forestry (stumpage) within their boundaries. This was a major source of Western alienation at the time.