Bruce Pardy on Alberta Self-Determination

From Elite vs. Mob to Individual Liberty: Designing a Constitution that Actually Protects Freedom

Queen’s University law professor and Rights Probe executive director Bruce Pardy joins Jason Lavigne to ask a hard question: if Alberta wants to be truly free, how should it rewrite the rules of government? Pardy argues Alberta can either jolt Canada into reform or chart a new course—and that the only sustainable path is a constitution that flips the default: the state can do nothing except what’s explicitly permitted.

In this episode:

- Why a clear referendum from Alberta could disrupt a broken status quo, and what comes next if Ottawa won’t change.
- Reversing the constitutional default: from “unlimited state, except rights” to “powerless state, except enumerated powers.”
- Borrowing the best architecture of the U.S. Constitution (absolute separation of powers) while avoiding the rise of a managerial state.
- Courts without supremacy: term-limited judges, an “amateur state,” and private adjudication with courts as procedural gatekeepers.
- Unitary Alberta vs. federal tangle, free markets over central planning, and why single-payer health care conflicts with genuine freedom.
- Taxes and liberty: the income-tax debate and funding a minimal state without re-creating bureaucratic overreach.

If you want a sober blueprint for liberty, one that protects families and businesses from both elites and the mob, this conversation lays out the stakes and the first principles.

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