Brave New Normal with host Jason James: Law professor Bruce Pardy continues to explore the world he has envisioned through the creation of a new constitution for an independent Alberta. In this conversation, Prof. Pardy walks us back to Canada’s origin story of deference to authority and how that beginning has shaped Canadians’ sense of self by comparison to the American origin story: liberty through rebellion. As the discussion travels across time to the society we have today—the inherent uncertainty of the country’s legal system and its uneven application of the law, the concentration of power in a small group, the government’s approach to managing the population, its problems and past grievances—two questions emerge for Albertans: The What and The Who. The latter is the one that counts; not the perpetual Canadian conundrum of “who are we?” but Who has the power to decide and control everything else. Prof. Pardy’s proposed constitutional framework for Alberta dispenses with the back and forth of rule by elites, rule by the mob, and combinations of both, to place the individual at the center of power. Yet another conundrum emerges: the outcome if everyone is granted “the ability to rule themselves in an absolute way” is inevitably “violence,” he concedes. How do you empower the state to keep the peace but not so much that it is enabled to interfere and tell the people what to do? It’s tricky, the professor admits, but it’s possible through one law that governs each and every one in the new world of independence. A brave, new normal indeed.
Bruce Pardy is the executive director of Rights Probe and a professor of law at Queen’s University.
Contact us to book Bruce Pardy for an interview or appearance, or to subscribe to our newsletter:
rightsprobe@protonmail.com