The Freedom Convoy: The Case of the Canadian Truckers with Bruce Pardy

The Liberty Exchange
S03E01 -

Jonathan Fortier talks with Bruce Pardy, Professor of Law at Queen’s University and Executive Director of Rights Probe.

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Guests
Bruce Pardy

Bruce Pardy is professor of law at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada and executive director of Rights Probe, a law and liberty thinktank. He is an academic, lawyer, columnist, and outspoken critic of the illiberal managerial state. Bruce writes for the National Post, Epoch Times, and the Brownstone Institute, among others, and on his own Substack. He serves as senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, the Macdonald-​Laurier Institute, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, and the Aristotle Foundation. He has taught at law schools in Canada, the United States and New Zealand, practiced civil litigation in Toronto, and served as adjudicator and mediator on the Ontario Environmental Tribunal.

Jonathan Fortier

Jonathan Fortier is the director of Lib​er​tar​i​an​ism​.org. Over the past 25 years he has worked to promote the principles of a free society with many organizations, including Liberty Fund, the Institute for Humane Studies, and the Fraser Institute. He earned his MPhil and his doctorate at the University of Oxford.

In this episode, Jonathan Fortier and Bruce Pardy discuss some of the ways that the government response to COVID (both in Canada and abroad) revealed the fragility of individual freedom in the face of political power and explore the various reasons that political, legal and civic institutions failed to protect individual liberty in a time of apparent crisis. The conversation explores aspects of the Canadian trucker protest as, in a sense, representative of the wider international and democratic opposition to authoritarian governments. Jonathan and Bruce conclude with some reflections on the centuries-​long tendency to “move power around” from one place of authority to another, without questioning the legitimacy of exercising power over others. The conversation concludes with some thoughts about the administrative state, and the manner in which it stands in opposition to accountable government and a robust individual freedom.

Substack: https://​sub​stack​.com/​@​b​r​u​c​e​pardy
State Singularity: https://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​p​u​b​I​Z​_​PeDKw
Rights Probe: https://​www​.right​sprobe​.org/​about
Queen’s Law University: https://​law​.queen​su​.ca/​d​i​r​e​c​t​o​r​y​/​b​r​u​c​e​-​pardy