As you take that satisfying summertime pull of the frothy, feel crisp cool wine on your lips or perk up to the sound of ice cubes rattling, you might pause to consider just how much your adult beverage has endured to find its way into your possession. Provincial liquor control monopolies, in particular, limit the acquisition and jack up the prices of “imported” beverages – even those produced in the next province. Hopes ran high that the most recent round of legal jousting and political fine-tuning would throw things wide open. Constitutional law expert and connoisseur of fermentation and distillation Rainer Knopff explains why, sadly, killing the IILA didn’t free the beer.
During a backpacking tour of Europe in 1971-72, Rainer Knopff very nearly missed the train carrying his personal and political destinies. Things might have turned out very differently for the future political scientist and member of the “Calgary School” of conservative academics if the train had not returned to the station, thereby reuniting him with the woman he would marry and his (then unread) copy of Plato’s Republic.
While federal Liberals seem increasingly pro-market, hunters in Alberta killed off a proposal to introduce market forces to hunting. Rainer Knopff explains…
Law, especially rights-entrenching constitutional law, has become a new sacred text, allegedly defining the legitimate community and putting apostates beyond its pale. In Canada, the pulpit hyperbole that cast Wilfrid Laurier as a heretic in late 19th Century Quebec has been replaced by the “Charter Hyperbole” now used to demonize Stephen Harper.