The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the document that was supposed to protect Canadian liberty. The Bench refers to the roster of Supreme Court judges that have instead transformed the Charter into an ideological blueprint. The Barcode stands for the transhumanist, digital fate that awaits Canadians on the other side of the slow-motion legal revolution currently underway: a technocratic administrative state regulates life, including private behaviour and speech, in the name of common good. The individual is increasingly becoming subordinate to the collective. The law is becoming arbitrary and unequal. Is the end of Western liberal civilization, as we have known it, conceivable?

Bruce Pardy, Professor of Law at Queen’s University and Executive Director of Rights Probe, will delineate how broad discretion in the hands of a managerial aristocracy has replaced law as the foundation of our modern Canadian system of government. Pardy will address some of the following questions: have we rejected the legal principles upon which our society was built? Or is the present deterioration of law’s rule actually a consequence of those principles? How could we recover civic life based on the rule of law in Canada?

The lecture will be held at the UBC Sage Catering Lecture Hall (6331 Crescent Road Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2). Paid parking is available at the UBC Rose Garden Parkade.