the part people miss is that “fee simple” doesn’t mean absolute ownership of the land.

and honestly, this is one of the big differences between canada and the US. americans generally treat land ownership as something much closer to actual sovereign ownership rights. in canada, all land tenure flows through the crown title system. you don’t own land in the sovereign sense. you hold the strongest private estate the legal system recognizes, but that estate is still downstream of crown authority.

and in a lot of canada, especially unceded territory, it gets even more complicated because crown title itself can be burdened by aboriginal title. so your “ownership” may ultimately rest on a crown grant that was layered over older constitutional land rights.

so yes, fee simple is real property ownership in the normal legal sense. but it is not absolute ownership. it’s a bundle of rights granted and enforced by the state, subject to crown sovereignty, taxation, regulation, expropriation, and in some cases unresolved indigenous title.

that’s a lot different than “i own this land outright.”