Stanley Park is full of living things, from meandering tourists to nipping coyotes, nesting herons to soaring conifers. But could the 400-hectare park — the “crown jewel” of the city — itself be a person?
Likewise, it’s not uncommon to have caretakers oversee the well-being of legal persons who can’t make decisions for themselves. Children or people incapacitated by a coma or injury all fall into this category and offer a practical precedent for designating land as a legal person. The thinking goes something like this: by legally re-configuring land ownership as a person, it gains certain inalienable rights that effectively protect it from development or resource extraction. Any government, company or individual trying to infringe on the land would leave themselves open to legal action.
Could turning land into a person advance reconciliation? Turning a piece of land or water into a person has been done before. A joint guardians program — involving one government representative and one Indigenous member from each community — is in place to oversee the river’s health. It’s also not clear how Canadian courts will interpret a 2020 law passed by the ʔEsdilagh First Nations and Tsilhqot’in Council of Chiefs, which declared B.C.’s Fraser River a legal person threatened by pollution and low fish stocks.
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