Western Standard - August 13, 2026


Canada's Constitution： 1982 Shift & US Comparison

The vote Canadians never got on Trudeau’s Constitution Can Ottawa strike a tariff deal in time？

Episode Stats


Length

1 minute

Words per minute

127.58

Word count

165

Sentence count

8


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00 So before 1982, before we had a codified constitution, we were, I'm going to say, more different than from America.
00:00:10 We were about compromise and the sovereignty of the people in that the people had the ability to elect people to say what the law was,
00:00:23 regardless of what judges had said in the past,
00:00:26 we could elect new representatives and they could make new laws.
00:00:30 So we had a direct influence and impact on the law of the land.
00:00:35 And then after 1982, everything goes back to the codified Constitution,
00:00:40 which is defined and understood primarily through the judiciary.
00:00:46 So that
00:00:48 So before 82, Canada chose sovereignty of the individual and compromise.
00:00:55 The United States chose sovereignty of the state and adversarial direction. And then at 82,
00:01:05 what we did was we threw out our entire history, and we joined the United States. And the reason
00:01:10 I voted against it, because in short form, is I didn't want Canada to become like America.