Juno News - What are our rights？

00:00:00.000 so do we have any rights what even are rights and how do we protect them well fundamentally

00:00:13.020 rights are divided into two groups positive and negative rights positive rights mean that you

00:00:19.380 will be given or you are entitled to a good or service so that would be in some countries for

00:00:25.260 example housing many people believe housing is a right and a human right and so you should be

00:00:30.300 given or provided with housing on the other hand we have negative rights a negative right simply

00:00:36.180 requires that someone leave you alone this is probably best known with free speech so you have

00:00:41.460 the ability to say something and you are basically guaranteed that no one will stop you or bother you

00:00:47.760 while you are saying that thing now I don't want to delve into any specific rights I more want to

00:00:53.820 talk about the concept because I think this concept is at the heart of a discussion that has been going

00:00:59.580 on since everyone is basically stuck at home there's a lot of confusion over what we're supposed

00:01:04.800 to do and what our rights are and so I think having a look at rights and where they come from and how we

00:01:10.180 uphold them can really help people illuminate some of the parts of that discussion so that it can

00:01:15.160 actually be fruitful and not devolve into a yelling match as often happens on the internet now I want

00:01:20.980 to start at the very very beginning I want to start with the social contract or social contract theory

00:01:27.160 now this is basically the view that your rights and the way that we understand society simply comes

00:01:34.360 from a social contract we together as a collective have a collective unwritten unspoken agreement with

00:01:41.660 each other and this allows us to have the freedoms and security that we would otherwise not have now one

00:01:48.980 of the earliest people to talk about rights in such a manner is Thomas Hobbes whose famous work the

00:01:54.760 Leviathan goes into a lot of these things and so Thomas Hobbes is probably most famous for this quotation

00:02:00.980 down here it's right at the bottom so he divides the world into two there's the world with the social

00:02:08.540 contract and then there's the world of the state of nature so in the state of nature it's basically this

00:02:14.180 here during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe so this is the social

00:02:18.580 contract or he's referencing particularly the government but under the auspices of a social

00:02:23.020 contract under the auspices of a common power to keep them all in awe they are in conditions called

00:02:31.160 war and such a war as if every man against every man so basically every man for himself you're doing

00:02:36.180 whatever you want to this war of every man against every man there is also consequence that nothing can

00:02:41.160 be unjust that notions of right and wrong justice and injustice have no place where there is no common

00:02:46.580 power there is no law where no law no injustice force and fraud are in war the cardinal virtues

00:02:52.900 and here's the the main part no arts no letters no society and which is worst of all continual fear

00:02:59.480 and danger of a violent death and the life of man solitary poor nasty brutish and short you've probably

00:03:05.340 heard that nasty brutish brutish and short bit before but he's basically trying to describe two

00:03:11.220 things one is again the social contract social contract theory with a government or some power

00:03:16.300 to keep all these um desires all these wars between man and against man and that's you know if i need if

00:03:23.760 it's if it's not obvious between people against people and so he's basically saying that you're living

00:03:29.500 in a state of nature right this is outside of government this is probably what we would think of

00:03:35.260 as survival of the fittest to put it in a different context so this is where there's no rules there's

00:03:41.760 nothing is right nothing is wrong it's sort of a kill or be killed take you know whatever works for

00:03:45.520 you whatever you would like you have to fight for it it's a constant war so this is on one hand this

00:03:51.600 is what hobbes is saying is the opposite then we have the social contract so if we go back here and

00:03:57.460 scroll a bit down um in addition to subjectivism he infers in this theory that human nature that

00:04:04.360 humans are exclusively self-interested okay so now he's saying that we are self-interested and we

00:04:10.560 have the capacity for rational thought so because of these two things we're able to rationally think

00:04:17.180 about items and because we are able to be self-interested and and understand that self-interest in a

00:04:23.700 rational way i thought i had another quote um so because of that we are able to enter into a social

00:04:28.900 contract where for example you would like to have something that someone else has but you recognize

00:04:34.280 that other people have those same desires about you so you're not going to go and beat up your

00:04:39.000 neighbor and take his sheep or his car or whatever it is you know depending on time period you want to

00:04:43.500 put this context in so you're not going to do that to your neighbor because you don't want your neighbor

00:04:48.700 to do that to you you want to have that common security that hobbes is talking about that social

00:04:53.480 contract those unwritten rules where you are behaving in such a manner that facilitates other

00:04:58.560 people to behave in the same manner and therefore you have in essence more security and more freedom

00:05:03.720 under the framework or under the constraints even of this new social contract so one of the things i

00:05:10.280 think most people tend to think about is this here and this is the american declaration of independence

00:05:15.680 and so the most well-known section in the declaration of independence is this we hold these truths to be

00:05:21.440 self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain

00:05:26.300 unalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness that to secure

00:05:31.360 these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the

00:05:36.660 government so there's a lot to unpack here and let's examine it line by line so we have first we hold

00:05:42.420 these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator

00:05:47.620 with certain unalienable rights so right off the bat here you see that the declaration of independence

00:05:52.660 is basically saying that you have these rights regardless of anyone regardless of any government

00:05:57.600 social contract any state or anything you have these rights by virtue of you being born and you

00:06:03.100 being a human person you have these rights um among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness

00:06:10.960 and that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men so here we can see the

00:06:17.400 influence of the social contract so it's you have these rights however to secure these rights to uphold

00:06:24.340 and protect these rights that you as a god-given person have you have these rights automatically but

00:06:30.020 we're going to we're going to create governments and institutions to simply secure these rights they're

00:06:34.800 not giving you the rights government is not giving you the rights but they're securing them for you

00:06:39.220 um deriving in their just powers from the consent of the governed so here again this is the powers of

00:06:47.140 government are being given to government by people as long as they handle them justly and with the

00:06:53.620 consent of the populace so this is the american version and this is what i think a lot of people

00:06:58.840 tend to understand or perceive simply because we're swimming in american culture often and there's so many

00:07:04.060 movies about the declaration of independence you hear so much about the constitution constitutionality

00:07:08.340 upholding rights and amendments etc etc etc and so i think a lot of people tend to have this frame of

00:07:13.120 reference but what does canada say what does our constitution actually say so if you pull up the

00:07:18.800 constitution act 1982 right so this is when we repatriated our constitution we officially got our own

00:07:26.380 constitution the highest um uh courts and the highest documents came back and became officially canadian no

00:07:33.720 longer uh british and again i don't want to get into those ties in the back and forth but but this is

00:07:38.760 the constitution act of 1982 and it is referred to commonly as you would know the charter of rights

00:07:45.000 and freedoms so this is what is establishing your rights so right here in the in the opening the

00:07:50.040 canadian charter of rights and freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to

00:07:55.940 such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrated demonstrably justified in a free and democratic

00:08:02.040 society so right off the bat this is a very different introduction now i know this is not the

00:08:07.080 declaration of independence uh in in many ways it is because we are reconst we are um repatriating our

00:08:13.700 constitution back from the uk and obviously the same way no much the same way um that the u.s repatriated

00:08:19.640 uh them their constitution back and had their own constitution although again they had a um

00:08:25.080 uh uh civil war and in a uh rebellion but again it's sort of the same idea but now look at the

00:08:32.540 difference here um the reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free

00:08:39.620 and democratic society so right now we're putting out that this document guarantees rights but there

00:08:44.540 are limits so right off the bat there are limits there is nothing right here in the opening preamble

00:08:50.180 that talks about inalienable rights or where these rights are coming from so let's go down further

00:08:55.180 look at the document here it's listing the different kind of rights freedom of conscience freedom of

00:08:59.360 religion etc uh you you guys are i'm sure familiar with these um there's a human rights commission

00:09:04.180 which i'll talk about in a second but we have down here now here legal rights this is where it's

00:09:12.340 trying to enshrine where are your rights coming from and so right here we have a bit of a distinction

00:09:17.660 between legal rights or what some would refer to as natural rights which are more in line with the

00:09:23.380 u.s the american understanding of the sort of god-given rights of the the rights you have by

00:09:27.520 nature here we're diving right into legal rights and to go off on a bit of a tangent for a second

00:09:33.420 about why that's not necessarily an issue is because ultimately as with the american constitution

00:09:40.080 and the american declaration of independence you have here that to secure these rights governments

00:09:44.760 are instituted among men and let's pause because this is a super super interesting and super

00:09:51.260 important point we need to all remember that these rights in essence regardless of where they're coming

00:09:58.060 from both sides recognize that you require a state or social contract and so here we're looking at the

00:10:06.200 legal legalistic aspect of it and we'll dive a bit deeper into that but this is the legalistic

00:10:11.080 legalistic aspect of how we're going to enforce and protect those rights so again everyone has the

00:10:16.600 right to life liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in

00:10:20.500 accordance with the principles of fundamental justice okay another bone thrown to you another

00:10:24.740 sort of wrench in in understanding what this is what are the principles of fundamental justice what

00:10:30.420 is what is that you know that's that's kind of confusing you might have a vague idea

00:10:33.700 so what is what does the charter say what does the government have to say about this

00:10:37.520 so if we scroll down here you can see that the fundamental um fundamental justice it's talking

00:10:43.540 about here the principles of fundamental justice are not limited to procedural matters

00:10:47.480 right so not just the uh you know how we enforce these rights and the act and laws the regulations

00:10:52.180 but including include substantive principles of fundamental justice again what are substantive

00:10:57.400 principles let's go down further substantive principles of fundamental justice include the

00:11:01.600 principles against arbitrariness overbreath and gross disproportionality a deprivation of a right

00:11:07.140 will be arbitrary and thus unjustifiably limit section seven if it bears no connection to the

00:11:12.100 law's purpose so you have a law that if you you know if you say something that you're not supposed

00:11:16.620 to say your house will be taken away that would be disproportional if you have a law that says

00:11:22.840 that you cannot go past a certain speed limit but people are using that law to enforce something

00:11:29.360 that's totally irrelevant it again bears no connection to the law's purpose because the purpose

00:11:32.980 is to have speed limits and to ensure safe operation of a motor vehicle on uh on roads and so this is

00:11:39.680 kind of what you're getting from the canadian constitution and this is where we're at on a more

00:11:44.920 legalistic and procedural basis so we're not really looking at the the pie in the sky idea um in our

00:11:51.080 constitution about where rights come from or what they what they are in a sort of abstract sense um it's

00:11:57.100 almost similar to um you know the forms plato's forms if you're familiar where there is the idea

00:12:03.560 of a table and there's many different tables out there but there is some universal concept of a table

00:12:09.560 that exists and everyone is able to sort of tap into that universal understanding of what a table is

00:12:14.620 that's why we know instinctively what is or is not or can or cannot be used as a table and so that's kind of

00:12:21.620 the pie in the sky edition and we are looking more in canada at the fundamental and the practical

00:12:26.240 now we have the human rights commission which talks about human human rights in canada and so

00:12:32.620 human rights but wait a second how do human rights differ from regular rights so this website provides a

00:12:39.480 an interesting an interesting analysis in simplest terms the difference between a human and a civil right

00:12:45.360 is why you have them human rights arise simply by being a human so this is the again the american

00:12:51.200 understanding these inalienable rights um you know you can add in given to you by your creator or

00:12:55.560 again simply just because you're human you you have these rights um civil rights on the other hand

00:13:00.380 arise by virtue of a legal grant of a right and so these are the ones that you have to have the

00:13:05.720 government giving you or uh enforcing for you or upholding for you these are the ones the civil rights

00:13:12.220 that is is given to you by government so this might be more akin to affirmative action type of rights

00:13:20.420 rights or other type of rights that the government then has to give and it is only because you are

00:13:25.760 a citizen or a member of that group or or country um then then you have those rights but back to the

00:13:32.260 human rights commission so again we have sort of where where are we getting these rights and it lists

00:13:37.040 two fundamental documents the canadian human rights act of 1977 and the un declaration of human

00:13:42.580 rights now i know i'm not the biggest fan of the un i think there's many problems many many

00:13:46.740 problems with the un i know a lot of readers and viewers are obviously not fans of the united nations

00:13:51.960 and especially right now there's a lot of talk about that but the un declaration of human rights

00:13:56.220 is an important document nonetheless to look at especially for our legal apparatus and and the way

00:14:01.560 that we're structuring governments and societies right now so there's the un declaration of human

00:14:06.240 rights and again it goes through different rights but you'll notice that it doesn't have

00:14:11.180 those uh inalible uh god-given rights that the american um declaration of independence does and

00:14:16.820 that's possibly simply because of the the time that it was written um 1776 versus 1948 for this

00:14:22.780 or for um 1982 for the the canadian charter but more than that let's think about it again in a more

00:14:30.900 practical manner talking about rights and why a social contract is important but also what we what

00:14:37.960 we need to do about it and what we need to think about it so you can imagine this um sort of state

00:14:43.200 of nature this arbitrary position where there's there's no right there's no government it's just

00:14:46.260 kind of you hanging out with your family maybe you have a farm maybe you're a hunter-gatherer you're

00:14:50.520 just kind of out there in the state of nature and someone wants to take one of your things so now it's

00:14:57.040 either you know you against them you'll have to fight them to protect your things and that's really

00:15:02.060 where we're at if you're weak then someone will take your stuff you go out you have your family

00:15:07.120 your maybe your immediate family or your larger family they can help you protect your rights

00:15:11.860 there's an unwritten agreement in your family that this is how we operate we all have private

00:15:17.140 property we all have you know certain rights i'm not going to go into your hut you're not going to

00:15:20.380 go into my hut um you know if someone from outside wants to go into these huts i'll help defend you

00:15:24.760 you'll help defend me etc etc you extrapolate that out you can get from a family to a clan to a tribe

00:15:32.400 to a nation and then in the largest and most abstract sense to a government and so rights

00:15:39.740 are in essence something that is upheld by the government and so really what i want the purpose

00:15:47.060 of this video to be about is to get in people's minds the understanding and the thought that

00:15:52.800 regardless of where these rights are coming from i mean if you're a non-believer

00:15:56.020 then you you don't believe that you're endowed with any inalienable rights by a creator because

00:16:01.360 there is no creator so you you can't be given some arbitrary pie-in-the-sky rights by uh you

00:16:06.160 know a little man in the clouds because that man doesn't exist if you are a believer you might

00:16:10.420 believe that you know you have these god-given rights and that people do not have the right to

00:16:15.300 use that term here again um people don't have the right to violate your rights and to take away

00:16:20.680 your things or or um take your private property or or harm you in any sort of way because you you

00:16:26.200 have those rights but you're still stuck where the government is the guarantor of those rights

00:16:33.560 or for lack of a better term if you don't prefer government society again if you're going to the

00:16:37.700 smaller ones um family family family clan tribe nation those are more societal based there's no

00:16:43.140 official um government apparatus so why does this matter why why is it important to talk about rights

00:16:48.620 and why is it important to talk about now well obviously right now there is some suspension of

00:16:54.940 rights people i think um people are angry with some of the stay-at-home orders they're they're

00:17:00.680 getting tired of this it's been quite a long time a number of people have been home already for 50 days

00:17:04.340 straight without really going anywhere except perhaps the grocery store maybe to the park

00:17:08.080 um you know maybe to have a driveway beer if their if their neighbors are not snitching on them

00:17:11.640 um so people are very upset about their rights being violated and so it is important for us

00:17:18.920 as canadians to understand the concept of rights where our rights come from when they are being

00:17:26.280 violated when is it a justifiable violation of those rights and understanding how we can remedy

00:17:34.320 the situation to protect our rights in the future because there may be situations where your rights have

00:17:40.620 to be violated you commit a crime you don't have rights you lose certain rights because now the state

00:17:46.000 is apprehending you and you are going to be put on trial or you're going to face some sort of

00:17:49.780 punishment there's obviously times when you have to violate somebody's rights and that is something

00:17:54.980 that we as a society all agree but as a nation as a populace we have to understand these rights

00:18:01.400 we have to pay attention when our rights are slipping away what are the rights that we ex what are the

00:18:07.440 rights that we expect our government to uphold and how do we guarantee that the government go and do

00:18:12.680 that so i want to come back and examine this issue and maybe talk about a couple of specific rights

00:18:17.720 and how we can really move forward because i think right now during this covid crisis it's an excellent

00:18:26.180 time for everyone to reacquaint themselves with some of these concepts because when we when we come

00:18:30.200 out of this there's going to be a lot of questions did we overreact did we underreact we're right now in

00:18:35.300 the middle i'm making this video this is sort of in the middle still um we're you know maybe 50 days in

00:18:39.560 this is uh um um in in just the beginning of of may but there's a lot of questions and hindsight is

00:18:46.460 obviously going to be 2020 but we we're going to have to look back and say were these things

00:18:49.680 justifiable did we make the right decisions how can we make those decisions better so i want everyone

00:18:54.580 to sort of think about rights about human rights about natural rights and inalienable rights and where

00:18:59.740 these rights are coming from how we can protect ourselves how we can uphold these rights and let's have

00:19:04.640 that discussion let's um throw some ideas down in the comments let's you know subscribe so we can we

00:19:10.280 can get the latest update and see what a lot of the other two north contributors are talking about

00:19:14.320 because they're also talking about a lot of these things even if they're not outlining it in such

00:19:18.220 direct terms but let's have that conversation and let's come back in a little bit and see what

00:19:22.820 everybody thinks and what we can't pull out this conversation to make it better and hopefully come

00:19:27.380 out of this crisis as a much stronger freer and better country so thank you so much take care

00:19:33.000 wash your hands stay safe and i'm samish kenazi for true north have a great day a great evening

00:19:37.600 and be safe take care

Juno News - May 02, 2020

What are our rights？

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