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tempted to act on values that diverge. Law may deter such conduct or
authorize courts or police to stop such conduct when it occurs.
To a significant extent, law depends on there being sufficient willingness
on the part of most people to comply absent the need for specific court or
police intervention. Otherwise resources would be too overwhelmed for
enforcement to occur. Those to whom law is applied need generally to
believe in the substantive values it expresses, or at least to believe in the
value of a system in which the law in force at any given time must be complied
with unless or until it is amended. One might, in turn, surmise that
the more people are seen as getting away with non-compliance, the more
people will try it—perhaps a sign that the substantive values reflected in the
law are outmoded, or at least a belief that is the case, but perhaps instead
reflecting the opportunism of those who make no claim to have a better substantive
alternative to the law already in place.
This is not the first time we have expressed those concerns, of course, nor
are they especially profound. They are, however, increasingly acute—examples
of unabashed and literally unmasked fellow citizens proudly telling
reporters and each other of actions that are in breach of law, and conveying
a sense of entitlement to act in breach (rather than the self-reflection and
regret that might accompany an act of traditional civil disobedience), seem
to proliferate. Within the United States, the sense of entitlement seen
among those who roamed on camera through Capitol offices and attacked
police officers on January 6, 2021 was a terrible example of a veering away
from the social cohesion that needs to exist to some extent for the rule of
law to be maintained.
Just as we said in our March 2019 Entre Nous, though there in the context
of discussions regarding Meng’s potential extradition, “as lawyers we ought
to be wading into every single conversation about these issues and reminding
people that Canada is a rule-of-law country. Our laws are known and
accessible. They apply equally to all.”20 If we do not like those laws, we
should try to change them, not suggest we are being dealt with unfairly if
expected to abide by them until they are changed.
ENDNOTES
1. (2019) 77 Advocate 169.
2. The term “tit for tat” that we criticized—though not
without detractors: see e.g. John Edmond, “Grumble”
(2019) 77 Advocate 619—continues to be used
in relation to the Meng case: see e.g. Chris Buckley
& Katie Benner, “To Get Back Arrested Executive,
China Uses a Hardball Tactic: Seizing Foreigners”,
The New York Times (25 September 2021), online:
<www.nytimes.com/2021/09/25/world/asia/
meng-wanzhou-china.html> (noting that “the speed
at which Beijing returned two Canadians held seemingly
tit-for-tat in exchange may signal comfort with
the tactic”).
3. Prime Minister Trudeau claimed on December 6,
2018: “I can assure everyone we are a country of an
independent judiciary and the appropriate authorities
took the decisions in this case without any political
involvement or interference”. A useful chronology
containing this and other items related to the Meng
case is found in Richie Assaly, “A Timeline of the
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/meng-wanzhou-china.html