Canada Company Lands and Bill 68

The Canada Company was formed in the early 1800s by a group of English businessmen. As a means of encouraging the raising of capital and providing settlers with land and employment, the government sold vast areas of crown lands and clergy reserves across southern Ontario to The Canada Company. As the company sold the lands over the next century, they often reserved the mineral rights to the company. The Canada Company eventually returned those remaining mineral rights back to the Crown in the early 1900s by way of a "quit-claim".

The Canada Company’s Lands Acts of 1922, 1923 and 1953, enabled the province to return the mineral rights to the present owners of surface rights. For many decades the province, most recently via the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines (MNDM), divested (quit-claimed) the mineral rights to those surface rights holders upon meeting the application requirements.

On December 18, 1997, Bill 68 was passed which is entitled for short, the Government Process Simplification Act (Ministry of Northern Development and Mines), 1997. It repealed the Canada Company Lands Acts. Section 180.1 of the Mining Act, R.S.O. 1990, states "Any interest of the Crown in the mining rights relating to the lands described in the indentures recited in The Canada Company Lands Act, 1922, is vested in the registered owners of the surface rights of those lands, subject to all registered encumbrances against the surface rights."

Therefore, all of the mineral rights held by the Crown on these lands as of December 18, 1997, have without further action, vested to the owners of the surface rights. The MNDM will not issue any form of certificate of this vested right. The owner may choose to apply under Section 75 of the Land Titles Act, or register a deposit under Section 105 of the Registry Act, stating the mineral rights vest with the owner by virtue of Bill 68.