Godfrey-Milliken Bill
The Godfrey-Milliken Bill , officially: Bill C-339: The American Liberty and Democratic Solidarity ( Loyalty ) Act , is a bill introduced into the Canadian Parliament by a so-called backbencher ( English : Private Member's Bill , French : Projet de loi émanant d'un député ) by MPs Peter Milliken and John Godfrey . It was supposed to serve as a parody and at the same time as an attack on the US-American Helms-Burton Act ( Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity ( LIBERTAD ) Act ).
The Helms-Burton Act installed harsh penalties for any company or individual that profited from US property expropriated by the Cuban Revolution . This law also included foreign states and companies. Since practically everything in Cuba was "expropriated property" in some way, this also affected Canadian companies.
The 1996 bill calls on the survivors of the loyalists to reclaim land and property expropriated by the then American government. It would also have guaranteed the right to expel or refuse entry to company boards of directors or their power-exercising stockholders, as well as their wives and children, if they manage expropriated property of former loyalists. About three million Canadians are believed to be descendants of the UK loyalists , including Milliken and Godfrey, among others. Property expropriated during the American Revolution is likely to be worth billions of dollars .
The bill received a lot of attention across Canada, but was not completely ignored in the United States either.
The Godfrey-Milliken Bill never became law, but a more serious draft called An Act to amend the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act passed Congress of Canada. While it did not refer to past property claims of the loyalists, it attempted to neutralize the Helms-Burton Act within Canada.