Clergy reserve

[3] The provincial legislatures could vary or repeal these provisions, but royal assent could not be given before such passed bills having been laid before both houses of the British Parliament for at least thirty days.

[2] Except in the Talbot Settlement (where they were located off the main roads), they were generally arranged in a checkerboard pattern within each township,[16] and were a serious obstacle to economic development as they were effectively wasteland,[17] either being abandoned by lessees after the timber had been fully harvested,[8] or unattractive because of the availability of cheap freehold land.

[8] This was recognized by the Legislative Assembly in 1817 when it passed resolutions that condemned the lands as "insurmountable obstacles" and called on the Parliament in Westminster to authorize their sale.

[19] They were leased for terms of twenty-one years, with rents on a sliding scale:[19] Even with higher rates being charged from 1819, total annual revenues were still only £1200 in 1824, and only one-third could be collected without pursuing legal action.

[27][28] In the interim, it became one of the issues in the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837 (and subsequently identified as such in the 1838 report written by Lord Durham),[17] where William Lyon Mackenzie exclaimed to the crowd outside Montgomery's Tavern: Stick true to the cause of Liberty, and you shall, every man of you, have three hundred Acres of Land and a piece out of the Clergy Reserves!

[36] In 1828, a British parliamentary committee reported that leases were being granted on certain terms: The reserve lands generated little income in Lower Canada, with the average annual profit from such activity amounting to only £3 between 1791 and 1837.

[37] Pressure arose to reform the entire structure of the reserves, but the government of Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine chose not to proceed on such a course, because of the resistance of the established churches and the roadblocks presented by the 1791 Act.

As he stated in a letter to Lord Newcastle: Can religious liberty be preserved in no other way than by putting all religions on a level, as equally entitled for support from public encouragement and protection?

Even Robert Baldwin, who was the leader of the struggle for Responsible Government did not advocate for complete abolition and chose to resign his seat rather than tackle the question.

In 1867, the Municipalities Funds for Upper and Lower Canada were declared to be part of the joint property of the new provinces of Ontario and Quebec,[45] subject to division and adjustment at a later date by arbitrators appointed under s. 142 of the British North America Act, 1867.