L to R: Professor Ubaka Ogbogu, Professor Steven Penney, and Professor Eric Adams
The week of March 14 was an especially busy one for University of Alberta Faculty of Law professors Ubaka Ogbogu, Steven Penney, and Eric Adams. On March 16, Professor Ubaka Ogbogu, cross-appointed to the faculties of Law and Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences, was one of three panelists discussing perspectives on Canada's new physician-assisted death law, at an event hosted by the Centre for Constitutional Studies at the Law Centre.
Physician-assisted death will be legal in Canada as of June 6, 2016, and the panel came together to discuss a multitude of questions, including: what role should physicians play, who should have access, and to what extent should the government control the process? Professor Ogbogu was joined on the panel by the Reverend Brian Kiely, spokesperson for Dying With Dignity Canada, and Dr. Will Johnston, chair of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of British Columbia. All three panelists provided an interesting perspective on this controversial issue at the event, which was free and open to the public. Professor Ogbogu's position was that the Government of Alberta should develop policy guidelines before the June deadline or face having to accept whatever guidelines the federal government puts in place. He also argued that the policy should account for freedom of religion, but also enable patients to access the physician-assisted death option without undue hardship.
From physician-assisted death we move on to digital privacy rights. On March 17, Professor Steven Penney headlined the first of the Centre for Constitutional Studies' Downtown Charter Series. His talk on "Section 8 of the Charter: unreasonable search and seizure in the digital era", was the first in a series of free lunch-time events for the business community and members of the public at the University's Enterprise Square location. Professor Penney gave a primer on section 8 of the Charter and argued that it should be interpreted to forbid searches of digital devices, such as cell phones, at the border. The Downtown Charter Series is an initiative that supports the Centre's public legal education mandate of bringing the Constitution to the people. For more information on future events in the series, visit the Centre's website.
Ending the week on Friday, March 18 was Professor Eric Adams, also a Research Fellow at the Centre for Constitutional Studies, who went head-to-head with University of Calgary political science professor Tom Flanagan on the right to strike and S. 2 (d) of the Charter. This lunch-time session was presented by the Canadian Constitution Foundation. In his talk, Professor Adams spoke in favour of the January 30, 2015 Supreme Court of Canada ruling that struck down as unconstitutional a Saskatchewan law that prevented public-sector employees from striking. Professor Flanagan offered a competing perspective through a political science lens, arguing that the right to strike, as an element of the right of association, should also extend to the right not to associate for the purposes of collective bargaining. He framed the issue as one of personal liberty.
The events hosted by the Centre for Constitutional Studies and the Canadian Constitution Foundation reinforce that the University of Alberta Faculty of Law is a place where members of the public can gather for the healthy and respectful debate of ideas, so important at a time when such complex legal and ethical questions are being decided by policymakers, the judiciary, and our elected representatives.