Juno News - Will Canada’s courts uphold our Charter rights？ (Ft. Bruce Pardy)

00:00:00.000 hey everybody welcome back to the show today we deal with a very important topic is the supreme

00:00:24.960 court of canada interpreting the letter of the constitution and protecting our charter rights

00:00:30.020 and freedoms or have they gotten into the business of social engineering to pursue so-called

00:00:35.900 progressive agendas that limit our individual liberties as it turns out i'm recording this on

00:00:42.540 a very historic day in the u.s when the supreme court finally overturned roe versus wade liberals

00:00:48.960 are having a collective meltdown but the point is when a liberal dominated supreme court decreed

00:00:54.880 the right to abortion in the original roe versus wade decision they overstepped and took over the

00:01:01.060 job of state legislatures since abortion is not a constitutional right in the u.s so many may

00:01:07.980 disagree with this decision but i happen to think it's the right one my guest today is none other

00:01:14.900 than bruce party who is executive director of rights probe and professor of law at queen's university

00:01:20.960 he's a tireless champion of individual liberty and writes widely on the subject it's truly my

00:01:27.960 pleasure and privilege to welcome bruce to the show to chat about the state of the legal system in canada

00:01:33.900 and whether our individual liberties are actually being protected hey bruce uh welcome to my show welcome

00:01:41.020 to the podcast it's really an honor and privilege to have you here and i'm really looking forward to

00:01:46.160 our conversation um about um canada's legal system hello rupa thank you very much for having me yeah

00:01:53.600 so bruce you know let me just um start by um telling you what i experienced during the freedom

00:02:00.360 convoy protests i was struck by something that uh by by an image of many people carrying a copy of the

00:02:06.920 charter um the ones i spoke to strongly believe that their charter rights uh weren't being enforced

00:02:13.020 and from some of your writings it sounds like you also don't believe that those rights are being

00:02:18.420 enforced partly because the courts are too deferential to the legislature to the government

00:02:24.080 and perhaps uh they also share the progressive agenda of the government um what would you tell the

00:02:30.500 average canadian who doesn't necessarily get the niceties of constitutional law why their charter

00:02:36.580 rights were apparently not being upheld um say on issues like bodily autonomy right it's a very good

00:02:43.760 question and you know one of one of the silver linings if there are any uh about this period is that

00:02:49.980 more people are coming to a personal understanding of how the legal system works and how the charter works

00:02:58.420 and how it doesn't work and what it means and maybe what it should mean and so on and before this was

00:03:04.220 all background noise to a lot of people but now it really matters now it really matters in in in in

00:03:09.500 the very practical uh sense of their everyday lives and so the first thing i would say to them is

00:03:16.300 look there's a there's a difference between uh saying that your civil liberties have been infringed

00:03:22.660 which is undoubtedly true and saying your charter rights have been infringed which is a legal question

00:03:29.220 so the civil liberties thing is very straightforward you know if you're told you can't go here and can't go

00:03:33.860 there and if you do you have to wear a mask or have to have a vaccine you're being told what to do

00:03:38.200 and so in a very real sense your liberties are being infringed but that leaves up on the question

00:03:43.440 about whether they're being infringed in a legally remediable remedial sense uh in a way let me put that

00:03:51.880 better in a way that the courts will remedy if you if you complain about it and that's not quite so clear

00:03:57.680 uh yes over time uh the courts and the especially the supreme court has tended to embrace a progressive

00:04:07.540 way of interpreting the charter but but but also one of the main problems is the charter wasn't really

00:04:15.040 built to withstand an all-encompassing uh managerial state and so one of the distinctions i i try to

00:04:25.600 explain to people um is the difference between negative and positive rights

00:04:31.840 and many of the most important freedoms in the in the charter are negative freedoms in the sense that

00:04:38.080 i don't mean negative in the sense that they're bad and negative in the sense of what the government

00:04:43.680 needs to do to comply with them and the negative right simply means you just governments just leave

00:04:49.920 people alone just don't do anything and if you leave people alone to their own devices then you've

00:04:56.080 complied with the negative rights whereas a positive right on the other hand is a right to receive

00:05:01.760 something from government or otherwise so um welfare or access to housing or access to airplanes or access

00:05:10.800 to something that the government rules or other people are are denying you and so if we go along

00:05:19.920 with the idea that the charter is built basically the freedoms anyway are built upon the idea of a

00:05:26.000 negative freedom the argument from the government has been all the way along in this well we're not

00:05:32.480 making you do anything we're not the the vaccines are not mandatory in the sense that we'll throw you

00:05:39.920 in jail or issue a fine uh you're free to wander about the country you can walk you can drive you just

00:05:47.440 came on a plane but by the way there's no charter right to get on a plane that's a positive right to

00:05:52.960 access an airline and you know that there's some credence to that argument because that's the way

00:06:02.800 the charter is built but here's the problem we've come to the stage now where this managerial state

00:06:09.360 controls everything everything your economic relationships your social relationships your

00:06:16.560 movements your ability to have a license for driving for practicing a profession and so

00:06:22.960 what's happening is the government is doing indirectly with all these little rules

00:06:29.200 what it might not be allowed to do directly by saying you must get back and and so it's not really

00:06:36.640 serving the purpose that people think it's supposed to serve yeah so yeah no i i i wanted to actually

00:06:42.960 you know uh follow up on that i i feel that my own observation is that governments um have been rather

00:06:49.040 sneaky uh when it's come to vaccine mandates uh those that have imposed these vaccine mandates on the

00:06:54.480 on their people um you know instead of just saying hey we're mandating vaccination for example austria

00:07:01.280 tried to do that this past winter and then backtracked um you know they've said you need a vaccine for

00:07:06.320 the following activities xyz uh travel dining out etc but not a technical mandatory vaccination which is

00:07:14.240 punishable by uh fine or jail um but then even then the restrictions imposed by the vaccine mandates

00:07:20.960 could reasonably be argued uh as in that they're impeding a person's uh normal life uh so it's

00:07:28.880 basically mandatory vaccination and all but name um so do you think that the courts have been too

00:07:36.480 deferential in accepting the government's rationale for the mandates as reasonable limits as set out in section one

00:07:44.480 like the the court story on vaccine mandates is still yet to be fully told because a lot of

00:07:49.600 these cases are still pending and so we'll find out i mean and none of these none of these

00:07:53.600 covid cases have gone to the supreme court yet so there's a lot of the story still to to find out

00:07:59.120 um but on other matters i think you're absolutely right and the one reason i i i would expect

00:08:06.400 that we don't actually have literally mandatory vaccines is that that would be a much easier charter case

00:08:12.800 to make because we have in section seven the right to security of the person and that includes the

00:08:18.960 right to bodily autonomy in the sense that we have the right to give informed consent to any kind of

00:08:23.360 medical procedure but so right there you've got a a a a real reason why a mandatory vaccine would

00:08:32.800 probably hopefully be found to violate that that that right however if it's not a full-on requirement if it

00:08:42.160 is as you say you know little bits and pieces so as to avoid infringing that right this is essentially

00:08:48.880 what's what's what's happening and um the argument goes and i think again there's some credence to the

00:08:55.040 to the legal approach here uh that that if you are asked by your employer say for example whether it's the

00:09:05.920 employer alone and of course employers employers private employers are not subject to the charter

00:09:11.520 because they're not governor but a lot of employers are are imposing these mandates under cover of a

00:09:18.080 government rule a government directive a government recommendation uh so people are saying well i'm

00:09:23.440 being coerced by my employer to get a vaccine and in a sense they are because i mean the threat is

00:09:30.800 do this or you'll lose your job but the problem is that that's not quite the same thing as the

00:09:36.800 charter means in terms of the the right to bodily autonomy the right to security the person because

00:09:42.160 if you think of this in terms of other kinds of job requirements and i know they're not the same

00:09:47.200 thing i just i know people are going to say but but the one thing's not like the other thing and

00:09:51.520 they're right but the example that i use is getting a haircut so let's say your employer brings in a new policy

00:09:56.640 it says all our employees must have short hair and you don't want to have short hair and you have

00:10:03.200 to go to the barber to get a haircut and you think i'm being coerced and in a way you are but

00:10:09.680 it's not unlawful coercion because it's part of the policies that the employer is entitled to make

00:10:15.440 so in the same way i mean let's try this if you go to to let's say you want to buy a bike and you find

00:10:23.520 a used bike for sale you go to the person selling the bike and you say i'll give you 100 bucks for

00:10:28.000 the bike and they say no 150. and they say if you don't pay me 150 you can't have the bike now would

00:10:34.880 we say those people that the seller of the bike is coercing me into into buying the bike no we

00:10:40.880 wouldn't say that because you can say no i don't want it and walk away okay same idea i seem abstract

00:10:47.040 idea with your job you know you're it's a deal right you work and they pay you and one day the

00:10:52.720 employer comes along and says well i don't want to pay you unless you have a hair short haircut

00:10:56.880 so it's coercion in a sense but not in that unlawful sense where you might be fined or imprisoned if

00:11:01.760 you don't do it and so same argument is being applied with the vaccines is it you are being

00:11:08.400 coerced on threaded loss of your job but it's not unlawful coercion because you can always walk away

00:11:14.160 and find a job somewhere else ignoring the fact that these vaccine mandates are very broad

00:11:20.720 and being pushed by governments in many sectors so that the appearance of your freedom to go and

00:11:27.040 find another job without one is a loser yeah and um you know i just wanted to um shift gears a little

00:11:33.520 bit and i wanted to bring in some uh international comparison um and specifically i was struck by a

00:11:39.840 recent um uh news development um from india uh india's legal system is based on the same uh british legal

00:11:48.480 system on which our legal system is based as you know um and laws are made by parliament and and

00:11:55.040 recently in indian and you know and the courts by and large tend to defer to the legislature

00:12:00.400 having said that the uh recently the indian supreme court ruled that bodily autonomy must be protect

00:12:06.400 protected as laid out in the constitution and that vaccine mandates which the federal government never

00:12:12.080 never imposed were unconstitutional again it's worth pointing out that this is in a country where the

00:12:17.920 courts have generally been uh quite uh deferential to the government meanwhile back in canada it's

00:12:24.000 noteworthy that during the course of the pandemic legal challenges to lockdowns mandates and other

00:12:29.520 restrictions have mostly failed in the courts um and whose decisions have uh mostly been in line with

00:12:36.160 uh got the government's view on on on the pandemic um and similarly you know our arbitrators uh on

00:12:42.960 matters such as challenge challenging workplace uh mandates have invariably um uh you know tended

00:12:49.120 to favor the government's view this is a puzzle i mean i've been trying to uh understand this how

00:12:54.960 do you explain that canadian courts have been so deferential to the government when it comes to

00:13:00.320 covet 19 rules and restrictions in in particular i i mean they seem to be even more deferential than

00:13:07.120 any other westminster country like india uh my comparison is not the us where their courts are

00:13:12.720 much less deferential well they do tend to be deferential in this country but not but not across

00:13:18.560 the board i mean it depends upon the cause and there are some situations in which you can think of

00:13:24.160 through the years where they have not been deferential so for example it was the courts and not the

00:13:29.520 legislature that brought in a gay marriage to canada it was the courts that said no no this is required

00:13:36.480 by the constitution you will do this and that's not deferential at all so it it does tend to be the

00:13:42.720 pattern it's it's it's there's exceptions to the pattern of course but the pattern has been

00:13:48.640 that they're deferential to governments in one direction but not in another direction our courts tend

00:13:54.960 to be very progressive in fact in uh the first press conference that the chief justice of supreme

00:14:00.640 court held when he was first appointed as the chief justice a reporter asked him whether or not he

00:14:05.440 agreed that the supreme court of canada was the most progressive in the world and he said he agreed

00:14:11.040 with that and was very proud of it and that that is that is a a court acknowledging the political

00:14:17.840 perspective that they're coming from and you can see that reflected in a lot of the judgments

00:14:21.840 and so the the the deference that's being being applied as i said the supreme court has not yet

00:14:28.240 heard a code case but the other courts that have heard lockdown cases and so on have tended to be

00:14:34.320 deferential and in some cases a couple of cases that the uh in family law for example a couple of judges

00:14:40.400 have even taken judicial notice judicial notice of the effectiveness and the safety of the vaccine even

00:14:48.320 though that was one of the factual matters in contention now judicial notice is is not a kind of

00:14:55.440 thing that courts are supposed to use about facts in dispute they're supposed to be a shortcut to deal 0.52

00:15:02.240 with facts that nobody in the right mind would contest like the sky is blue what is uh judicial notice bruce if

00:15:09.840 judicial notice is like is a is a conclusion okay the court can come to a factual conclusion a court can

00:15:16.080 come to without the need for evidence so in a courtroom i mean technically speaking here's the

00:15:22.240 basic rule the basic rule is the court knows nothing nothing everything you hear in a courtroom any

00:15:29.840 factual conclusion must come from evidence that you hear from witnesses or from documents in the courtroom

00:15:36.400 now there are some facts that are so notorious like the sky is blue that you really wouldn't want

00:15:41.200 to take the court's time to get a witness to explain that the sky is blue i saw it was blue this morning

00:15:45.760 and so on so that's a shortcut to to cut through then that rule so as to get at the real matters

00:15:53.840 that are in contention and and and for an efficient use of court resources but it's not meant to be used

00:15:59.760 for the matters that are in dispute for which you should need evidence and in these in these couple of

00:16:06.160 instances we have courts so deferential to the government narrative that they take judicial

00:16:12.800 notice of the safety and efficacy of the vaccine which in these family law disputes between you know

00:16:18.720 separated parents about whether or not the child's going to get vaccinated it is one of the main things

00:16:23.840 that's in contention so it's just uh it's it's quite a remarkable um trend or or pattern that you have

00:16:32.320 courts embracing what essentially is a particular narrative on things as opposed to starting from

00:16:39.840 a blank slate and saying i know nothing about this and we'll we'll see what we'll see what your

00:16:45.600 witnesses say we'll see what your experts say and we will we evaluate the evidence on that basis

00:16:51.040 but but back to your question about about the comparison between india and and canada i i don't

00:16:56.400 know the particularities of the text that the indian courts were working from but here here is one

00:17:03.680 characteristic of our law and it may be the case in india as well if they're based upon the same

00:17:08.720 system but one of the characteristics of our system shared throughout the commonwealth is that of

00:17:15.520 legislative supremacy and the charter and the constitution is an exception to that principle in

00:17:22.000 other words if you're looking for the starting place where the system begins it's really legislative

00:17:26.800 supremacy and not the charter so the idea of legislative supremacy is that a body like a

00:17:33.680 legislature that has democratic legitimacy can make laws about anything there was and it does not have

00:17:40.800 to justify those laws based upon evidence or data or rationality or benefit or any of those things

00:17:47.680 um the one exception is whether or not it that law violates a charter right but that's a burden that

00:17:56.080 the person alleging the violation has to prove so people are seeing these policies seeing these statutes

00:18:02.720 that are causing harm they're causing economic harm they're causing physical harm they're violating civil

00:18:10.080 liberties and they think well this can't this can't be lawful this can't be right this must be a

00:18:14.800 violation and the government hasn't shown hasn't shown the data that it's based on hasn't it hasn't

00:18:21.360 justified the benefits hasn't done the cost benefit analysis let's see it hasn't shown it to us therefore

00:18:26.320 it must be invalid no that's not that's not the criteria for available if you have a properly elected

00:18:34.400 legislature and it passes a statute then the statute is valid unless you can show the violation of a

00:18:40.720 charter right there are only a couple of exceptions where all of this information becomes relevant

00:18:45.520 all the facts that people are focused on and rightfully so if you can buy if you can show a

00:18:51.360 violation of a charter right then and only then you get into a section one argument because section

00:18:57.440 one requires the government to justify as a reasonable limit the violation of the right and

00:19:03.360 then the facts become important but unless you can get over that threshold first then the government

00:19:09.600 doesn't have to answer to to to these kinds of of requests to justify what it is that they've done

00:19:16.160 right um so bruce you've also noticed and um you've written uh that the supreme court of canada has

00:19:23.520 uh increasingly taken on an activist progressive stance rather than sticking to interpreting the law

00:19:29.920 and the constitution as as written why do you suppose this has happened and where do you think we're

00:19:35.440 heading with this do you think that um um that conceivably the supreme court could become much

00:19:42.080 more politicized as it is in the us yes well let's start with this every judge has their own philosophy

00:19:49.840 and so when we talk about courts in general we're talking about trends as opposed to saying every

00:19:54.560 single judge thinks this way which is not true at all uh you know in supreme court canada for example

00:19:58.960 they often have dissents on various things and that's a healthy sign i think that the judges are

00:20:03.760 are are are are are treating their tasks as individuals and not as a group which is good

00:20:10.560 um the fact of the matter is that our courts have been as political as this courts in the us

00:20:18.640 i think forever except that it's more noticeable in the us because you have essentially two competing

00:20:27.040 sides and when you have two competing sides you can see that you can see the battle going up and you

00:20:31.600 can see the inclinations in the political sense and sometimes in the partisan sense but it's it's

00:20:37.200 when we say political we also mean a much more broader sort of philosophical or ideological take on

00:20:43.440 things um it's not that our courts are immune from that it's just that we don't have these two sides

00:20:51.360 we we have a prevailing progressive country with progressive courts and like i say this is not the

00:20:59.760 case across the board it's not the case with every quarter every judge uh but but it's not it's not

00:21:06.640 a distinctly two sides fighting phenomenon as you will see in the us and so we've been able to to uh

00:21:13.920 sort of promote this myth that our courts are not political sure they are sure they are they're just

00:21:20.080 not they're just not in the same kind of dynamic as as in the states and perhaps not as partisan here not

00:21:26.800 as partisan here because frankly most of the mainstream political parties are pretty much on

00:21:32.160 the same page too as opposed to more conflict on that ground in the us yeah and that that brings me

00:21:39.040 up to this uh to to a related question uh the current chief justice of the supreme court was recently in

00:21:44.720 the news for speaking out against the freedom convoy and uh you've argued very persuasively uh that the

00:21:52.160 sitting chief justice that you know by doing so this uh by him doing so this tarnishes the the perception

00:21:59.120 of impartiality uh if any challenges uh say to the emergencies act uh eventually reaches the supreme

00:22:06.080 court um why do you think chief justice wagner thought it was okay to opine on a matter in such a

00:22:13.440 strong way uh um you know as to be siding completely with the government um aren't are there any sanctions

00:22:20.320 uh for uh in the system for for this kind of behavior i cannot answer why he did that you'd have to ask

00:22:29.440 him uh yeah but the the the the remedies for this kind of thing range from refusing oneself from a case

00:22:40.160 now to be to be sure that case none of so there there are at least four challenges right now to the

00:22:46.240 invocation of the emergency act and none of those cases have been heard yet much less found their way

00:22:50.960 to the supreme court of canada and so who knows perhaps if and when one of those does reach the

00:22:57.680 court maybe the chief justice will see fit to recruit recuse himself from the hearing of that case

00:23:03.360 i mean who knows um but he is the chief justice of the whole system and so i would have thought that

00:23:11.680 his expression of a view on a particular dispute like this would have ramifications that extend

00:23:19.040 beyond his actual sitting on the case and might influence other judges within the system whose

00:23:24.960 courts essentially uh report report to the supreme court of canada in the in the hierarchical sense

00:23:31.200 um so i'm not sure that simple recusal would would fix the effect that that uh the expression of

00:23:38.080 opinion has had in this case uh that has already been done right in a sense that's right that's

00:23:46.800 correct that's correct and and the degree of influence that the expression of that opinion has

00:23:52.000 had is impossible to calculate it would be very very difficult to figure out what the effect was whether

00:23:58.480 or not it was zero or minimal or substantial i mean who who knows we can only speculate i mean is

00:24:05.440 there is there is there a you know something we could do to prevent this kind of uh thing from

00:24:09.920 happening in the future should should there be a code of conduct for supreme court justices and other

00:24:15.040 officials you know that they should remain uh silent on matters that could that could come before them

00:24:20.480 or you know which could take them into the area arena political contestation well in fact there is one

00:24:26.960 already this the canadian judicial council has uh a document called ethical principles for judges and it does

00:24:33.440 suggest as as do as do decisions of the supreme court itself say that judges must must be and must appear

00:24:42.160 to be impartial on all disputes that that come before them um it's a very well established and not not

00:24:50.400 not contentious legal principle uh the the whole idea of impartiality is that you refrain from forming

00:24:58.400 and being seen to form a view about the case you haven't heard yet uh and if if remarks outside of

00:25:08.320 the courtroom are such that it's clear that that's not the case then one of the parties going to

00:25:13.680 reasonably perceive that that they're already at a disadvantage before the cases happen uh so i it's

00:25:21.520 it's it's this is pretty straightforward stuff you would have thought and yet we now have the the uh

00:25:29.760 the practice of the chief justice and this chief justice is not the first one um the chief justice now

00:25:36.960 holds press conferences uh every year uh with journalists to talk about this and that and i suppose that

00:25:43.840 you know could be done in a way that avoided this kind of a problem but it also risks this very thing the more you

00:25:50.800 express opinions about matters that might come before you the the more likely it is that the perceived

00:25:55.920 impartiality of the court would be put at risk um so you know i wanted to go back to progressivism

00:26:03.120 something that we touched upon uh earlier in our conversation um and it sounds as if progressivism

00:26:10.080 in the service of collectivism has taken hold in in our legal system uh essentially working as a um

00:26:16.960 handmaiden of the of the of the technocratic state and you've you've argued uh this in several of your

00:26:23.520 recent writings um the question really is you know as believers in individual liberty and uh and

00:26:30.560 originalists uh you know as in interpreting the constitution as it was written how do we reclaim

00:26:36.160 our freedoms in such a context yes you know this is this is the question rupa it's the question that

00:26:43.520 we're all asking ourselves what do you do when the institutions in your society seem to have adopted a

00:26:49.280 completely different philosophy than the one that you believe your society is built on yeah and if i had

00:26:54.480 an easy answer to that i i'd be i'd be shouting it from the rooftops and i i really don't but uh but but but

00:27:01.600 first i mean the first reality is that it's it's really got to come from the people and part of the

00:27:10.640 problem during these past two years is i mean in addition to the problem that the technocrats have taken

00:27:17.360 over in addition to the problem the courts don't seem to care in addition to the problem that the you know public health

00:27:22.720 officials have been given more power than they deserve and so on the the real problem is that a

00:27:28.000 whole bunch of people a very large portion of the population seem to be fine with it and and wanted

00:27:34.640 more of it and complain when it's in when that when the restrictions are taken off i mean that this is

00:27:40.640 the central problem and so there's a lot of educating to do a lot of talking to do a lot of of trying to

00:27:48.240 get people out of the trance that they seem to be in and i i i'm not sure that that very much will

00:27:55.200 happen before that happens because many other institutions are are are are built upon and think

00:28:04.000 that they're following public opinion public sentiment as opposed to pushing against it and

00:28:09.360 until they do have to push against it i'm not sure that they will feel compelled to to change the path that

00:28:16.560 they're wrong um yeah and and you know i also i wanted to you know ask you something about the

00:28:23.520 supreme court and the composition of the supreme court um you know even if the trudeau government

00:28:28.080 falls in the next election the composition will be the same uh do you think we are heading or maybe

00:28:35.360 should we be heading toward a u.s style situation where party leaders uh take a stand on what sort of

00:28:41.920 justices uh they would appoint to the supreme court or would this be too great a deviation from our

00:28:48.160 current westminster inspired model yeah that's a fair question i i'm not opposed to to to open hearings

00:28:56.720 and fights about who gets appointed to the supreme court i think it's healthy for a society to to to

00:29:02.640 to air these things and to make clear what the choices are and the consequences of those choices and

00:29:08.240 the fact that when you do appoint a person whoever that person happens to be that person is going to

00:29:14.640 carry with them some predilections and we need to know what the predilections are and and you know

00:29:19.520 people have said well you know with respect to the comments from the chief justice and so on

00:29:23.680 you know wouldn't you prefer that he has said these things so you know where he's coming from

00:29:28.800 as opposed to hiding it and you know they got a point maybe maybe it's just as well in that sense

00:29:35.040 that we don't pretend that our courts are all you know absolutely tabula rasa neutral and do not have

00:29:43.440 any inclinations before they sit down on at the bench maybe that's just so not true that we should

00:29:49.600 acknowledge it's not true and then air these things in public and and fight about it a little bit i mean

00:29:54.880 one of the things about the u.s political situation is they do fight about things and you know our you

00:30:01.280 know us polite canadians we don't like fighting but actually there's a healthy aspect to it as well

00:30:06.080 because you at least know you know where things stand and and what's at stake and and you know what

00:30:12.640 people represent and so on and i think a little bit more of that would be healthy yeah um and and

00:30:18.160 finally bruce could you tell us a bit about the free north declaration uh it's it's it's an initiative of

00:30:24.320 yours uh the intent behind the free north declaration and uh and how has it progressed since uh since you

00:30:31.760 launched it right yes so the free north declaration is is a is a statement of concern that that i and

00:30:39.600 three colleagues put together three other lawyers um and we this was last fall and we got to the point

00:30:47.840 of thinking you know what this is this is going very badly civil liberties are being are being crushed

00:30:54.000 um the the the the courts are not responding the legal profession is not responding uh we have to

00:31:02.480 say to the public that we don't agree with this we see something wrong we see that there's a crisis

00:31:09.360 and something needs to be done about it and nothing in the nothing in the declaration itself

00:31:14.080 is going itself to lead to any changes i mean it's just a declaration um we've had over 600 other

00:31:22.400 lawyers uh sign on to it uh over 90 000 citizens non-lawyers signed on to it which was very gratifying

00:31:30.720 and and and uh better than we had hoped um but it's it's really just a a shout in the darkness to say

00:31:39.200 things are not right people and we are losing things in this country that are really very

00:31:46.640 important we're crossing a threshold and we may not realize that once the threshold is crossed it's

00:31:52.800 very difficult to get it back and i i'm afraid that that that's exactly what has been happening over

00:32:00.560 these past two years standards and norms that we more or less took for granted in the before times

00:32:07.520 yeah are now out the window i mean before just to give you one one small example the idea before

00:32:15.680 that a business or an employer would have been able to ask you for your vaccination status or your

00:32:22.320 medical status in any other respect would have been seen to be outrageous and now it's outrageous to

00:32:27.120 object that that's the kind of change that we're experiencing and and we've got a big job to try and get

00:32:34.240 even to get back to where we were in in you know 2019. how hopeful are you about the future uh are

00:32:40.640 we going to be able to prevent uh the sort of infringement of our individual liberties and freedoms

00:32:46.960 going forward i am i am greatly concerned i i would like to hope so and i don't think i don't think

00:32:52.960 it's a a lost cause yet but i'm very um concerned because the this this managerial state that we've

00:33:02.240 spoken of tends to travel only in one direction which is it is bigger and more comprehensive and

00:33:08.720 more intrusive and as the technology gets better to to pay more attention to what we're doing to

00:33:15.280 surveil us and to make sure we're behaving properly those pressures will continue the the the state and it's

00:33:22.720 bureaucrats always want a little more control because they think that's their job to make 0.99

00:33:28.320 sure everything goes right and the opposite vision is one so the the division of the managerial state

00:33:35.760 in a sense is one of order order we don't want misbehavior we want compliance we want people to

00:33:42.880 behave in the interest of the common good we don't want you to say this we don't want you to do that

00:33:47.680 we want order the competing vision is one of a little bit of chaos you know free people do a lot

00:33:56.000 of different things and that's okay as long as they're not harmful to each other as long as there's

00:34:01.920 no violence peaceful chaos is a great society to live in but chaos is the kind of thing that managerial

00:34:09.760 states do not like and so i i hope their their efforts to stamp it out will be eventually pushed

00:34:18.800 back but it's going to be a very high amount in decline well on that note bruce uh i'm gonna we're

00:34:25.520 gonna have to end this but what a fascinating conversation um and i feel like we could have gone

00:34:30.480 on much longer um i really uh want to thank you for coming on to the show and uh i'm sure we'll have

00:34:37.280 lots to chat about uh if you come on again and i really hope you will uh at some point in the near

00:34:42.800 future so thank you for being here and it's been a great pleasure and privilege to have you uh to be

00:34:49.680 in conversation with you thank you so much it's been the pleasure of mind rupa i appreciate it very

00:34:54.720 much and i look forward to next time okay thank you bruce thank you so much

Juno News - June 28, 2022

Will Canada’s courts uphold our Charter rights？ (Ft. Bruce Pardy)

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