This event will be rescheduled and reposted when more details become available.

This year’s Liberty Lecture will feature lawyer and author Peter Best, who will speak about his book There Is No Difference, a critique of Aboriginal law and policy in which he argues for the abolition of the Indian Reserve system and of special race-based laws and entitlements for Canada’s Indigenous Peoples.

The lecture will take place on Monday March 23 at 1 pm in Room 202.  Seating is limited and is first-come, first-served.

The Liberty Lecture series explores the law and politics of individual liberty, including freedom of speech and inquiry; the role of autonomy in liberal democracy and Western culture; and the forces that threaten liberty from without and within. The series was launched in 2018 with the support and sponsorship of Queen’s Law alum Greg Piasetzki and has featured lectures by Jordan Peterson, Conrad Black, Joe Martin and Amy Wax.

Peter Best has practiced law in Sudbury, Ontario for 43 years. Raised in nearby Espanola, favored with lifelong personal and professional relationships with Indigenous Canadians, he brings a personal, literary and historical perspective to a pressing social crisis. More information, commentary and reviews about Mr. Best and his book are available at http://thereisnodifference.ca/.  From the website: “For decades Canada’s Indigenous and non-Indigenous elites have been mindlessly doubling down on the apartheid-like, “separate but equal” dysfunctional status quo that has so harmed the vast majority of vulnerable, marginalized Indigenous Canadians: all to no benefit! Author-lawyer Peter Best offers as a compelling alternative the Nelson Mandela solution: complete legal equality with the rest of Canadians – the necessary precursor to social and economic equality – by amending the Canadian constitution, repealing the Indian Act, converting the reserves, and ending all the other special rights and entitlements that have so oppressed them. Mr. Best also issues a strong warning against the serious diminution of Crown sovereignty by our Supreme Court and our politicians, resulting in a serious threat to the rule of law, serious economic harm, and harm to our national welfare generally. A respectful and heartfelt argument and plea for our First Nations peoples to join our increasingly racially indifferent 21st century Canadian family on the basis of full equality of rights and responsibilities.”

Please join us for what should be a thought-provoking discussion.

Bruce Pardy
Professor, Faculty of Law