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Law professor Bruce Pardy was an outspoken critic of the government's suspension of civil liberties during the COVID-19 pandemic. At Rebel News LIVE! Toronto 2024, Pardy took the stage to address the rule of law and how nations, particularly Canada, grant their citizens rights and dole out justice.

“The rule of law is an idea that limits the powers of those who govern,” Pardy told the audience. “It requires, for example, that laws be set out, fixed, and announced beforehand so they are obvious to everybody. Everybody can know what they are and govern themselves accordingly.”

But this isn't something we have today, the professor said.

“Another piece of the rule of law is the separation of powers idea, these three branches that are supposed to act as cheques and balances on each other,” he continued. “But today, they're all on the same page.”

In our current world, “we have rule by law,” he added, noting a small-but-important distinction.

“The law is now a tool in the hands of the officials and the bureaucrats to essentially make up as they go along so they can herd all the little people into where they want them to go,” Pardy stated. “That is not the rule of law.”

Freedom is a universal idea, Pardy said, and one that is most important in the moment when an individual is doing something we profoundly disagree with.

“When you have that moment, when you think, 'yes, but not that,' that is the moment of truth. As long as that person is not imposing upon somebody else, in the sense of interfering with or coercing them, then the test of freedom is whether or not we can leave them alone.”

In closing, the professor posed a question: if a competent, consenting adult (or group of adults), is doing something that affects nobody else, in their home with the curtains drawn, is there anything under those circumstances they should not be legally allowed to do?

“I would submit to you that the answer is 'no.'”