An Ontario law professor says Alberta should seek independence and a constitution that severely limits the power of government.Bruce Pardy, professor of law at Queen's University, made his comments at the Reclaiming Canada Conference in Calgary on Friday.Pardy began his address by quoting a 2022 Mark Carney article in the Globe and Mail that called the convoy protesters “seditionists” and “terrorists”.The senior fellow with the Fraser Institute and executive director of Rights Probe suggested that the government does not fear foreign influence, organized crime, undocumented aliens, violent criminals or church arsonists.“The Canadian government fears the Canadian citizens, and especially the ones who, above all else, want to be left alone. The greatest threat to the liberty, security, privacy, and prosperity of Canadian citizens is the Canadian government.”Pardy said Canada has turned into a “managed society” that is “planned and directed”, “progressive and socialist”, and "pathologically self-destructive.”Government has people “under its thumb,” Pardy said, so that citizens are “supervised, controlled, tracked and surveilled,” plus taxed everywhere. Unfortunately, governments were also “tightening the screws on their own people” in the U.K., Germany, Ireland, Australia, France and elsewhere.Governments do this because they can and their constitution cannot stop them, Pardy suggested..“Our constitution is not what you may think that it is. Our constitution does not restrict the state,” Pardy said, his definition including the courts, legislatures, and bureaucrats. “If those institutions cooperate, there is literally nothing that the state cannot do, constitutions notwithstanding.”Pardy said, “We will hear people say things like, ‘Our leaders should honour the constitution’... That is a waste of breath. If governments were honourable, we wouldn’t need a constitution.”These documents fail, the professor suggested, because of a flawed design.“A constitution that only works when people honour it is a house of straw. Constitutions if they are to do their job must be impossible to dishonour.”Pardy said an independent Alberta was “step one” to solve Canada's constitutional problem.“We are going to flip the default. We are going to have a state that is powerless. It has no power to do anything except…some specific exceptions that the state is there to do.” These functions included “keep the peace”, “resolve disputes”, and “protect the country from the outside.” Police, courts, military, borders would be the exceptions to an otherwise powerless state.“You're already guaranteed your autonomy, because the state is toothless,” Pardy explained.Step two would be to establish a free society. Here, the state could only use force for its core purposes. This would preclude most of its common functions. .“It can't collect taxes, it can't create institutions. It can't run a government funded single-payer public health care system. It can't prohibit discrimination in your private life. It can't create monopolies. It can't issue currency. It can't run a central bank. It can't restrict people to their homes. It can't restrict firearms unless you've used it in a crime,” Pardy explained.The professors said that the Supreme Court had interpreted the Constitution and Charter in ways that were “not quite what you might have been expecting.” Therefore, the third feature would be to draft a state and constitution that will “disempower the courts to change the meaning of your constitution.”A fourth feature would be limited terms in office for politicians, judges, and bureaucrats.“That's one of the problems we have today. We have a professional ruling class of career politicians, tenured judges, untouchable bureaucrats, petty functionaries at every level of government,” Pardy said.Pardy suggested six years of combined lifetime service in these aspects should be the limit.“You get an amateur public service, no careers, no fortunes,” he explained.Pardy ended with an exhortation to Albertans that was welcomed with applause.“To go where you have never gone, you must do what you have never done. Be brave. Be open-minded. Under most constitutions, the people ruling over us do not honour the limits because they don’t have to. But perhaps things will be different in a new and independent Alberta,” Pardy said.Tickets to attend We Unify’s conference or view the livestream are available here.
