Bruce Pardy

Professor of Law, Queen’s University

Bruce Pardy is professor of law at Queen’s University, senior fellow with the Fraser Institute, and executive director of Rights Probe (rightsprobe.org). A critic of legal progressivism and the discretionary managerial state, he has written on a range of subjects at the front lines of the culture war inside the law, including environmental governance, climate change, energy policy, human rights and freedoms, professional and university governance, property and tort theory, free markets, and the rule of law. He has taught at law schools in Canada, the United States and New Zealand, practiced civil litigation at Borden Ladner Gervais LLP in Toronto, served as adjudicator and mediator on the Ontario Environmental Review Tribunal, and has published and commented widely in traditional and online media. He is one of the co-creators of the Free North Declaration, a public petition and movement to protect civil liberties in Canada from COVID-19 irrationality and overreach.

Recent Research by Bruce Pardy

— Jan 12, 2023
Printer-friendly version
ESG is Corporate Socialism

ESG is Corporate Socialism is the latest installment in the Institute’s series on the Environmental, Social and Governance movement. It details how ESG undermines the duty of business executives to act in the best interests of the corporation, and in so doing, actually undermines capitalism itself.

— Jun 28, 2018
Printer-friendly version
Protecting Government from Free Trade: The “Free the Beer” Case at the Supreme Court of Canada

Protecting Government from Free Trade: The “Free the Beer” Case at the Supreme Court of Canada argues that the Court effectively nullified section 121 of the Constitution, which states that goods from any province shall be “admitted free into each of the other provinces.” As a result, provincial governments may raise barriers to any products—including beer and wine—from any other province as long as they can identify a regulatory objective in the public interest.

— May 31, 2018
Printer-friendly version
Federal Reforms and the Empty Shell of Environmental Assessment

Federal Reforms and the Empty Shell of Environmental Assessment finds that environmental assessments for resource development projects, such as oil and gas pipelines, have always been arbitrary and political, and the federal government’s proposed reforms—contained in Bill C-69—do nothing to change that. If anything, the changes may increase uncertainty in the project approval process.