This Year's Series

Just over twenty years ago, Canada introduced the Youth Criminal Justice Act, sparking a quiet revolution in response to soaring youth incarceration rates. Since then, the number of young people arrested, charged, sentenced, and incarcerated has plummeted. This remarkable story of decarceration offers powerful lessons for how we think about justice today. In this talk, Professor Lisa Kelly of Queen’s University Faculty of Law situates the successes and failures of contemporary reform within the longer history of juvenile delinquency and young offender laws in Canada. And most importantly, asks what might the youth experience teach us about building a more humane and compassionate legal system for all.?

Democracy has never been a mainstream option anywhere in the world. John Ralston Saul, Canadian writer,political philosopher, and Companion of the Order Of Canada will assert that democracy requires enormous effort at every level. Every time technology or economics produce social changes, a democracy is endangered. Today it is collapsing to our south and the autocracy beyond the North Pole is becoming increasingly unpredictable. Canada has always been a special case. How do we handle this?