 Well, good evening, and welcome to the Schulich School of Law. It's my very great pleasure to welcome you here tonight for the Sir Graham Day lecture series in Ethics, Morality, and the Law. My name is Jennifer Llewellyn. I'm the Yogis and Kedi Chair in Human Rights Law at the Schulich School of Law. I am not Dean Cameron of the Law School who wishes she was here to welcome you. She is thinking about this and regretting not being here from her sick bed this evening. So she sends her great welcome and regards. And she's fortunate because we're recording this this evening for the Ideas Program. So she, along with a very large audience, are going to be able to also hear the lecture this evening. I want to start by acknowledging with gratitude that we're assembled here today for this event on the traditional and unceded MiGMA Territory. And I want to tell you a little bit about the lecture series that we're here today to participate in. Sir Graham Day, who is with us this evening, sitting at the back, is a graduate of this law school. The class of, am I allowed to say, Sir Graham? The class of 1956. He was very young. We've just come from a book launch of a book about him, The Last Canadian Night, The Unintended Business Adventures of Sir Graham Day. And as unintended as they were, there were many of them, just a sampling of them. He was chairperson and CEO of British Shipbuilders from 1983 to 1986, chairman and CEO of the Rover Group from 1986 to 1991. Between 1989 and 1993, Sir Graham was chairman of Cadbury Schweppes. He also served as chairperson for Sobies. He was knighted, hence The Last Canadian Night, in 1989, by Queen Elizabeth II for his service to British industry and was inducted into the Canadian Business Hall of Fame in 2006. He was appointed as a member of the Order of Nova Scotia in 2011 and the Order of Canada in 2014. And in addition to his extraordinary adventures in business, Sir Graham has been a longtime friend and supporter of this law school and of Dalhousie University. He was chancellor of the university from 1994 to 2001 and received an honorary degree in 1987. And you should absolutely read a bit more about him in his book because the proceeds of the book go to support a scholarship at this university. So we're very fortunate that one of the ways in which he befriends the law school and, by extension, the community that we're a part of is through this annual event, which welcomes distinguished authorities to the law school who deepen our understanding and observation of important societal challenges and helps us think more deeply about the shifting legal, moral, and ethical terrain we face in navigating these challenges. And this year's lecturer is human rights lawyer, Gareth Pierce, who we're so very fortunate to have with us. And to introduce her, it's my pleasure to introduce Mary Link, who's a producer with our co-hosts for this evening, the CBC Program Ideas. This has been a really important partnership with the law school and with this lecture series. And so I welcome you, Mary, to introduce Gareth and this evening's program. Thank you. I'm going to be very brief. So my name is Mary Link, and I'm a producer with Ideas. But I get to live in Nova Scotia, so I'm very fortunate and very lucky. And I'm also really lucky that I convinced Gareth to come fly all the way from London to give the lecture here. And incredibly busy woman and in demand, but usually far too busy in the courts and fighting the good fight to come. So we're really lucky to have her here tonight. And then, of course, it's going to be on Ideas, I think November 7th. So if you do have a cell phone, if you could just turn on the on-science, I'd appreciate that. But what we'll do is that we'll probably do the lecture, and I'll do an interview with Gareth and I'll interweave it between. And it'll be for an hour, if not two, we don't know yet. Poor Gareth. But this has been a really great partnership with the Schulich School of Law and Sir Graham Day. Our first lecture was with Peter Singer, the philosopher, about assisted dying. And that was just prior to Canada passing legislation on medical assisted dying. So it was very much in the zeitgeist. And then we had legal scholar Richard Susskin from Britain talking about technology, taking over our jobs from the industrial jobs, also to lawyers' jobs, and the tsunami effect. And that was, again, very zeitgeist. And I find right now, and I guess maybe I felt this need, because they give me a chance to sort of pick the person. And I was sort of looking around the world, which is a great thing about Ideas, of who I want to speak for this year. And I just felt this crushing need to have someone talk about democracy. Someone who's working hard at fixing the wrongs of the miscarriages of justice and for the innocents. And Gareth Pierce was sort of my number one choice. And I was really fortunate that she said yes to us to come over. So Gareth has spent much of the past 40 years fighting to overturn miscarriages of justice to free the wrongly convicted in particular. She began, well, from the Yorkshire Moors, right? That's sort of where you came from. Once upon a time, a few years ago. And then at one point, in the 60s, she was a journalist in the States and covered Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. And from there, went and had a law degree. And so it became well known internationally when she represented the Guilford Four. And that was famously depicted in a movie in the name of the father, and Emma Thompson portrayed Gareth, but she doesn't like to go on about that too much. But it's very Hollywood. But still, at the same time, it was a really important film. And that was where a group of young, mostly Irish men and women were arrested and accused of an IRA bombing of a pub, a tragic and lethal bombing. And they were completely innocent and evidence was withheld. And 15 years later, Gareth is one of the lawyers representing some of the members of the Guilford Four, including Jerry Collin, and who died a few years ago. And then from post 9-11, Gareth has been representing another sort of suspect community. And that would be members of the Muslim community and represented a lot of people who were detained, innocent people, and sent in a long sort of torturous route, some from Pakistan to Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay. And Gareth has represented some members there, including Mozem Beg, sort of famously. And so really important work. But Gareth also, I've read her book and a lot of her writings. And she talks not just about these individual cases, but also the importance of the minority, that the minority's rights are still maintained when the majority are beating their chests sometimes emotionally. And that state secrets in the name of national security are something to be very wary of in terms of the erosion of our democracy. And that torture, even if it's done by another country where evidence is supposedly gained, is not moral or legal. So that's sort of some of the ideas that I would be reading about that Gareth has talked about. And she talks about if we're not careful about those things, I don't want to say too much what you're going to say. This slippery slope of human rights erosions is leading to what she calls a new dark age of injustice, which is a pretty profound and disturbing title. But yet when you look around the world right now, you know that we have to be vigilant. And with that, I introduce Gareth Pierce. Good evening. For a significant part of all our lives since World War II, the idea of rights has been available to us, even in the country in which I live and work, which has no comprehensive Bill of Rights and no written constitution. A society that in fact boasts of such and where power is exercised informally in accordance with unwritten conventions. Serious reflection on the rule of law and respect for human rights occurs erratically and marginally. We are in my country effectively constitutionally illiterate. My own immense good fortune was to have jump ship falling out of a society in which there was no such basic education and falling into living and working in a decade of revolution. In the USA in the 1960s, the social movements founded on realization of rights. And ever after that, it's enabled me to see more clearly my own country to which I returned through different eyes. And often with horror at the ignorance and complacency, when at the same time there was racism rampant, one of our government ministers, Enoch Powell at the time, talked of the rivers of blood that would be flowing through England as a result of immigrants coming to our country. And the explicit attempts to articulate and campaign for human rights in the north of Ireland were met with bullets of the British army. And in turn, internment, arbitrary detention without trial and torture. All of that's now a matter of record and acknowledgement. But at the time in the early 1970s, in the law school in the United Kingdom and then becoming a lawyer, I was in shock, the slow burning realization of the yawning gap. There was what's called public law, administrative law, ability to challenge executive decisions, a tiny window of opportunity for what I had thought the law would be, a tool to fight against oppression. And there was a long possibility of a long slow appeal process to the European Court of Human Rights. Then occasionally a concept drawn from the 17th century, John Lillben dragged from star chamber saying, I will not be my own executioner, I will not give evidence. It will be used as evidence against me. Such reversal as occurred didn't occur through the use of law or a revolutionary social movement in any precise form but unexpectedly in fight back, fight back against racism and against the worst of oppressive police practices. And so when during the 1970s and early 80s, many young people in many urban concentrations fought back against the police and against racist violence. They were themselves arrested and charged as the perpetrators of crime, charged with riot or with conspiracy to cause explosions to young men who had petrol bombs, milk bottles stuffed with rags to throw against fascists who were coming to their northern town. They were charged as the criminals. But the reversal of comprehension came when jurors acquitted them all, acquitted them all in turn. When they articulated the confidence that in the first of the trials had come from the Black Power movement in the UK to be able to say with confidence, yes, we did. We did fight back. We did articulate what was wrong loudly, fiercely, naming names. We did fight with violence when we had to when the police came with their jackboots into the Black community in St Paul's in Bristol. We fought back and they were acquitted. We had to. Classical self-defence available anywhere, everywhere in the world to use proportionate violence if it's necessary and if there is no other way. And the shock of those unexpected acquittals by juries when defendants insisted that the jurors had to be representative of the communities from which they came. They had to be ethnically diverse. They had to be and insisted on it. In turn, the shock checked racist attacks. Checked the worst of the police violence and oppression for a while. Checked it. Caused society to think. The second unexpected way of reversing a country that was regardless of rights in fundamental ways. The second reversal came from the appreciation, the acknowledgement grudgingly, not willingly that dozens of individuals have been buried alive in British prisons completely innocent not just for a short time 15, 16, 18 years many of them Irish that triggered an acute realization is like a seismic shock in society. But what it had taken was not precisely the workings of rights entrenched in law. It was investigation yes but it was political activism. It was pressure, acutely important pressure internationally until the politicians who at the time had the power eventually to reopen cases of wrongful convictions capitulated. Not previously articulated in the language of rights but acknowledged that best to accept it in a way. But don't analyze it as representing anything other than something that happened in the past. This was the reaction on the whole. And adding a few more protections but what the state gave with one hand it would take away with another. So the phenomenon of coerced confessions was appropriate after that thought appropriate to have lawyers representing and advising in police stations yes. But in exchange to balance to balance and rights should not be balanced but to balance take away the right to silence and warn the suspect that if you say nothing now ultimately a jury can be told that they can draw an inference of your guilt because you've said nothing now at the moment of arrest a different kind of coercion. And juries those magnificent juries that had stood up to be countered and acquitted in fact in the trial of the Bristol young man who had rioted and who had said we had to because of what the police did to us one lawyer whose family had come from the Caribbean to the jury if you go down to the cellars underneath these courts you will see the shackles where your ancestors and mine were transported to the West Indies this is your moment to stand up and be counted soon after the right to a jury challenge was first diminished and then taken away completely and from then on and now the first 12 people who sit down in the jury regardless of whether they represent your peers or the jury will decide your fate the shifts in these decades in the late 80s and early 90s coincided with an incoming new government which was committed in opposition to bringing in a Human Rights Act which meant on the cusp of the new century the 21st century for the first time in our country lawyers and judges had to train in the concept language of human rights that had never been part before of any legal training however reluctantly on the part of the government the institutions of the state this was revolutionary in a way, or deemed to be and for the first time we began to think of rights, had to think of rights and at the same time in the north of Ireland was the Good Friday Agreement an acknowledgement that if there was to be a future new society it was a society that had to be sure and confident that it would never again a huge part of that society be a different kind of citizen than the other half but two years in to the coming in of the Human Rights Act into the new century came the devastating chain reactions to the devastating events of 9-11 and from that moment whatever we had learned or relearned we now found out again how fragile the protections for human rights in reality were I have to tell you what our Prime Minister did and achieved Tony Blair four days after 9-11 is a record of having discussed the need for changes to human rights law and civil liberties Blair said from this point on it seemed to me the balance of civil liberties between protecting the rights of the suspect and protecting the rights of the citizens had changed asserting that our values versus theirs justified full-scale war he overlooked the possibility that what governments themselves might do might equally be unlawful but in the face of which there could be no legal sanction but based on his claim as to who the suspects might be beyond a handful of men already identified as the perpetrators plus a summer bin Laden who were the citizens he was talking about who were deserving of rights and who were the persons all over the world who were to be eliminated he talked about a virus that needs elimination eradication and this is how he formulated the future he said he'd seen different countries in this way until September 11 but after that the splashes of colour on different parts of the canvas did not appear to the eye as a single picture after it the clarity was plain vivid and defining Kashmir, Chechnya, Algeria, Yemen Palestine, Lebanon what were these splashes of colour? the infinitely varied movements of political Islam which he saw as a virus to be eliminated he said there were countries in the Arab and Muslim world that will offer their people a choice between a ruling elite with the right idea and a popular movement with the wrong one this was the view in which he took our country into an understanding of what the right should be he said it requires a whole new geopolitical framework and a myriad of interventions deep into the affairs of other nations above all a willingness to see the battle as existential and to see it through it was that combination of stupidity and recklessness that defined the years that were to come and the concepts of human rights all the lessons from Northern Ireland the years of conflict and the pain and suffering and the resolution in the end through the Good Friday Agreement were thrown away including forgetting the most basic maxim that every state action produces a reaction and there was a reliance came to be a reliance on the concept of exceptionalism an exclusion to make a political point for a handful of accused men or Muslim once again internment in definite detention was introduced in definite detention without trial not told the evidence in secret courts it was a three-year pitched battle until in the end what was at the time our Supreme Court the House of Lords stated what we have to fear is not terrorism but laws like these and during that course of battle in the occasional point in a secret court in which representing an accused person who didn't know the evidence against him you could ask a question of a security service agent behind a curtain witness A or B it's the opportunity to ask the odd question so the question would you use evidence that came from torture produced the answer yes the only question is what weight to give it so the next legal battle through the courts another three years with the government lawyers arguing it was appropriate and right and emanated from precepts incredibly important in our legal history that we should use evidence from torture if we don't remember history it's as if we were born yesterday there was to be a reversal of sorts and that reversal came as a result of two things there were 15 British residents British citizens kidnapped by the US and rendered to Guantanamo Bay and in the battle to get them back legal battle and eventually to sue for compensation for damage for complicity by the British in rendition and torture there was a grudging amount of disclosure and embedded in the cabinet minutes every minister of the time the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, the Foreign Secretary a record of what they each said the longer they stay in Guantanamo the better I mean no rush to get them back to a man and a woman at the same time as saying publicly we deplore Guantanamo we never miss an opportunity to raise the issue with the United States nothing to do with us first of all was the discovery that it had been condoned at government level but then later that worse was to come and at the same time Iraq invaded on falsified intelligence and now tens of millions of Iraq is dead and tens more millions of Iraq is displaced whilst within our borders we have created a new suspect community a country of the hunters and the hunted and so for Muslims in our country began to ask then was it like this for the Irish but as national discomfort and embarrassment gave way to a reversal for the Guantanamo men who had finally come back as the revelations became greater there was a settlement and an apology of sorts and the Arab Spring in Libya the uprisings against the Gaddafi regime produced a liberation of the government offices and documents in Tripoli and there was even harder evidence of the interaction between the British state and Libyan torturers the most dramatic of which was a telegram from the head of MI6 intelligence service that works abroad outside the UK head of MI6 the Libyan intelligence planning for the rendition the leader of an Islamic group who was seized with his wife on a plane diverted as he was travelling to seek asylum in Britain diverted to Libya to be tortured and fed questions it's all on the record all the documents we have to be fed questions on behalf of the British so the head of MI5 said I know we didn't pay for the transport but we helped and we would be very grateful for the product the product of torture product of torture interrogation this might have been a reversal that led to a brave new world but now since the Syrian conflict has continued and the most flagrant excesses of all actors state and non-state have been over shadowed and overwhelmed in our consciousness by the deliberate and cultivated brutality of ISIS and some time ago because of that Britain slid back again into the worst of its betrayals of human rights for Muslims now in Britain it's as if your community and only your community has fallen into an abyss just as post 9-11 every internationally guaranteed protection showed it could be jettisoned and to reclaim took years and accidents of revelation and state criminality now there is a new acceleration and all on the grounds of claimed national security we have internal exile men and women can be removed from their homes and made to live somewhere else in the country where they know no one on secret evidence again control on who you meet and how much money you can have in your pocket stripping of passports and stripping of British nationality again on secret evidence question of taking away your citizenship once upon a time extordinarily rare only for traitors at worst now is a galloping new exercise and if you have your nationality stripped it leads immediately to your being classified as a foreign national and deportation to a country where you may be deemed to have potential citizenship and if that means citizenship derived through your father your mother, your grandfather, your grandmother it's a potential that affects a significant part of our Muslim community in this country but even more a central concern is a program called Prevent a theory about Muslim beliefs and behavior based on no verifiable data and a history from neo-conservative origins neo-orientalist idea of Islam that political Islam is not the real Islam and any aspect of political dimension is a deviation and is terrorism a conveyor belt theory and the definition of extremism used daily is totally political talks of British values having or not having British values doesn't even talk anymore about criminality and it affects your ability to have a bank it affects schools, it affects charities it affects mosques it affects students it affects children it creates the antithesis of a school environment schools should be safe places to share ideas interacts with family courts with warship with children taken into care there's absolutely no doubt as a whole the Muslim as a community is affected parents are frightened of what their children might say even in a kindergarten there's not a jot of protection even infants are interviewed without their parents knowing children pulled out of class it's your duty if you're a university a school, a teacher, a doctor a social worker if you deem there is any whisker of what you think is radicalisation according to a checkbox it's your duty to report it to the police an intervention of lawyers is seen as evidence of a resistant attitude question how can this be if there is a concept of human rights how can this be the answer is that we need to appreciate the weaknesses of the extraordinary world treatise the end of World War II the huge challenges today to the preservation of human rights don't come out of the blue they come out of a result of systemic weaknesses in those extraordinary magnificent treatise the UN Charter all the declarations of human rights extraordinary documents but with fatal weaknesses the United Nations is United Nations as opposed to United peoples and it accepted the concept of national sovereignty the countries to police themselves not the idea that came out of World War II that we would all police each other countries to police themselves and no sanctions and no enforcement mechanisms and into this we fit from the western world other residual assumptions of colonialist thinking the fundamental questions to be decided by society is that right the question of who is a human and what are rights it's essential to understand that the history of human rights has always accommodated concept of exclusion wrongly and without justification what Tony Blair called exceptionalism who could benefit and who could not just as in US history at the time of the declaration of independence all men are created equal from their creator inalienable rights at the same time as the signers were slave owners inbuilt in nation states today still to regard themselves as having the freedom to determine who is entitled and one observes in a movement yet again of the way governments form concepts for themselves and effectively monopolize the decision making as to who is a human and who deserves rights in our country amongst the floors is a never ending appetite for secrecy and a sense of entitlement that pervades English culture and there's a circularity with secrecy if the nation is your protector deems itself to be your protector then it deserves deference on your behalf it has to have secrets and you are not to know if the claim is national security if human rights came to be about power, exercise of power and now each unshuckling from restraint from the state normalizes the inequality and the disruptions human rights for every human being it liberates confidence by the governments to articulate first covertly and then openly what would have been considered heresy or blasphemy not so long ago so we in the UK have moved now towards a government speaking out against preservation of human rights feels it can speak against the preservation of human rights leaving the European court of human rights and that's on the political agenda and creating deliberately excluded parts of society referring to a hostile environment for immigrants and for foreigners even some retired senior judges who never liked the way in which the European court of human rights would lay down decisions that should have been adopted in English law criticised to our adherence to that European jurisdiction as a pressure of concepts false concepts, it's emotional pressure talking about national sovereignty national integrity, patriotism and one can observe what the idea of terrorism does to the concept of human rights question of exclusion for all Muslims are deemed to be part of the human community but as some kill the state can take exceptional steps against all precisely repeating precisely the history of the conflict in Northern Ireland each breathtaking departure demands a response from society at large national and international two, in recent weeks in the UK exposed one, the hostile environment for foreigners immigrants threw up the horrific fact that a generation known as the Windrush generation who came from the Caribbean British Commonwealth entitled to be British came after the world war to build, create the national health service to build, create the railways to build, create work to give our country an infrastructure, a life it's been found that not just dozens but hundreds have been excluded from that entitlement a grandparent who's gone home to Jamaica unable to come back never see their family again because somehow it's been said you didn't have the right papers you didn't actually ever literally quite become a British citizen despite the fact you worked in a hospital in south London for 40 years you're an illegal immigrant you can't come back people dying, people homeless living in poverty because they're excluded from benefits that is shaming, shaming to our government and there is a slight reaction a shame but not a reversal of the withdrawal of a concept of rights not the reversal of that saying we had no business excluding human beings creating a hostile environment and now, last example a secret letter from our home secretary to the U.S. Attorney General was leaked and a legal challenge has shown the vice again of exceptionalism Tony Blair would call unprecedented crimes deserving exceptional measures and we have agreed that we will give evidence obtained by British police to American prosecutors so that the two men who were held elsewhere in the world can be prosecuted on British evidence and be sentenced to death it's a total reversal of our international commitments our policy, our practice our pride in saying we Britain above all for the abolition of the death penalty worldwide we will lobby any government we will do anything to save people from death and here, this is what we've done and in our courts two weeks ago government lawyers were arguing this was right we had to do it it required deference to the executive because they know about our national security and explicitly what was said was that there was a telegram disclosed in the court proceedings from the UK ambassador in Washington it said senior members of the Trump administration will be incandescent with rage if we were to refuse to give our evidence and require an assurance there will be no death penalty incandescent with rage and Trump will bear a grudge that was the reason that's the reason that we've done it Trump will bear a grudge and we have to have deference to foreign relations even though Trump at the beginning of his administration declared a war on the concept of human rights that's how vulnerable human rights in our country are I'm quite sure they're not vulnerable in the same way in yours but I apologize because this is all I have to bring to the table but we're now as an activist in the US civil rights movement in the 60s Howard Zinn who said you can't be neutral on a moving train histories like the moving train you can't ride the train and then say you've no idea how you arrived at your destination you're either onboard or not you can't be neutral in short we can take sides and we're proud of it he said don't believe it's possible to be neutral the world's already moving in certain directions to be neutral to be passive in a situation like that to collaborate with what's going on so my message this evening which I'm sure you don't need and I apologize bringing my woes to you is we should not be collaborators that's it we're going to actually ask for questions if anybody has any questions for Gareth if they want to come up there's a mic here and a mic there and she's more than willing to ask to answer any questions would anybody have any questions for Gareth hi thank you for your presentation and for sharing I've lived in this country for about 30 years and the things that you're describing of what was happening in England or what is happening in England is happening here so it's I'm adding to your gloom I guess we're experiencing these things and strangely enough it seems like not enough people are concerned so I'm wondering if you have any suggestions of about raising the consciousness of the population because the abuses that have been accepted especially racialized violence in this city for example black people are three times as likely to be stopped by the police and it's a violation of Canadian human rights law and yet the chief of police says it's necessary and they need to do it and they believe that it's good policing they don't have any facts to back that but it's just a belief and the relative silence from the population on that is outstanding so I'm just wondering if you have any I would really welcome other people here saying what is done what is done what is the fight back what are the avenues there's a constitution doesn't work why doesn't it work are lawyers here law professors come on you can't be silent it's being complicit I mean I think some of the comments that you've made ring true here as well and especially in terms of the ways in which I think we've taken for granted the rule of law and the sort of level of comfort and the stories we tell ourselves about being Canadian and I think that complacency keeps us from seeing and hearing the stories as more than individual instance stories but for their systemic and structural nature that this is becoming part of and has been for a long time part of the structures that we're not bringing law to bear on we're not bringing human rights to bear on and I think this may be adding to gloom and woe as well and maybe feeds into a question back for you I mean I think part of what's beginning to happen in the rights revolution is that rights are being seen as rights of individuals in a way that focuses on individual harms individual rights, individual disputes so it's harder to see the forest for our focus on the trees while we talk about the harm to individual victims we in some ways obscure that that's not a unique experience right and so my question back to you in terms of the advocacy you do for those who are wrongfully convicted for those who are evidence to us of what of where we have failures of human rights is how do we at the same time not let that become stories of individuals sort of human human tragedy and redemption and fighting for those individual cases and see that bigger picture see exactly the question he's asking shine the light of human rights through those cases on that larger structural systemic all of the issues you've talked to us about tonight is there a tension there in the ways in which our mechanisms focus on individuals and then our human rights are beginning to do so too that doesn't let us see that kind of structural story that is a story of systemic racism in this province that is absolutely a story of those systems does that mean in Canada the society regards in the formulation I've I've suggested does it mean Canada as a nation or Canada cities within Canada treat some people as human with rights and some people not is that and what what litigation if this is right what work what work is done what compiling of what collection of cases what class actions what naming and shaming of those who are responsible what part of that goes on in any fight back so I think there's we have a very strong fight back in terms of civil society and cultures and black lives matter movements as one example in terms of race I think some of the question that we start to ask and I'd invite others then to think about where that fight back is in our is in both at the community level but in terms of the legal structure some of that fight back is starting interestingly enough I think through the use of tort litigation and class action claims so the movement on reconciliation and residential schools actually emerged out of being able to utilize those tools not of criminal justice or of the formal human rights tools but of civil claims and class action civil claims to recognize those systemic human rights issues the same was true in this province for a response to systemic racism in the form of abuse experienced over generations in the home for colored women that resulted in finally at least a beginning acknowledgement from this province of our history and our current state of systemic racism in the province so those are moments of pushback and pushback through legal mechanisms but I think they've all emerged out of a pushback at a much more ground level first so I would thank you so on what you spoke about these waves and counterwaves of human rights since World War II and it seems to me that given your presentation that this is largely at the hands of politicians, of powerful people who decide who gets rights and who don't in society what I'm wondering is in your view what you think the role of lawyers are in tempering those waves and those counterwaves and maybe even providing some stability and coherence in this rights culture that we've come to accept as something that's just around all of us I think it's extremely difficult one of the phenomena I was suggesting is when the moment comes that it's more embarrassing not to recognize, it's more uncomfortable not to acknowledge that's the moment but until that we can politics is politics, politicians are politicians we live in a country that's largely politically apathetic but the worst of the the worst of the temptations and opportunities comes from observing by a politician or someone with authority to speak and be listened to that what they say is tapping a particular nerve and that particular nerve is on the edge of something prohibited or should be prohibited like racism but yet it edges closer and closer to it now we have just had our having will have the most horrific pandering to the worst of our psyche nationally in terms of immigration and insanely has led to a vote to leave Europe tempering modifying elements in our national progression towards future and maturity that shamelessly tapped into xenophobic hatred of the other the other being anyone who wasn't flying a union jack basically and I think probably like Trump the moment you get that feel that yes you're mining gold with that rhetoric it becomes extraordinarily difficult to block it unless you have such a rigid set of moral values in place and legal values that you can say you can't do that you can't do that freedom of speech yes but you can't vilify and create as we've done a whole suspect community in which it's just about acceptable now to say just about anything about Muslims in our country and so I think actually the answer comes back to to participation you know what Howard Zinn said we're on a moving train and it's no good finding we're there if we could have done something to stop it no you know a few people sitting in a room on a Friday night isn't a revolution I acknowledge that but I guess we all have a duty and some people are I'll give them more ability than others some people have more significant voices than others but a mass movement is a mass movement and it ain't like nothing else it works it's simplistic questions what keeps you up at night these days what worries you the most we're all sort of fretting about the rise of populism and we're fretting about this rhetoric what we talk about what's happening in Canada now we're seeing it amongst some politicians and a lot of anti-immigrant talk anti-sex education talk in Ontario what worries you the most does it worry you that the legal system will start to falter or what concerns you what are some of the key concerns in terms of keeping our democracy strong I think if you are a lawyer try to be a lawyer and what you do is impossible what you want to do is impossible that just kills you but yet actually the impossible isn't impossible and you just never know you never know where you push or you pull or who you talk to or just something should work but if you can't do it it isn't it's killing you but what about the person you're representing it can be life or death for them so you ought to be awake at night honestly thank you very much for coming on a Friday night and hearing Gareth and as I say I'm going to sit down and talk to her and have until you'll hear a more curated event so Gareth it's my pleasure to get to say thank you to you once more and to add my thanks to yours what you shared with us tonight and the clarion call that we should be hearing I think is something that maybe we're all too familiar with but try to hope we'll go away with the next election down south or one more and a better result here which is how fragile the rule of law is how much it requires if we're going to secure human rights our vigilance not our complacency not our collaboration as it moves on and so I know that you don't enjoy people paying attention to your role and your work in this because there's much more at stake for many other people and that deserves the attention but paying attention to your story and hearing you and having you with us reminds us all of the kind of inspiration and modeling we should draw from the fact that you stay up at night about these issues and that you're calling us to think about at least doing even a portion of what you do to be advancing human rights and so we're very grateful for the work you do to be with us tonight thank you oh great and we hear you have a little bit of the weekend to see a bit so thank you all for coming