GEORGE BROWN SAID THE IDEA OF CONFEDERATION WAS TO ‘THROW DOWN ALL BARRIERS BETWEEN THE PROVINCES.’

R. vs. Comeau is our parting shot from Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, who infamously said her job as a judge was “to think about what’s best for Canadian society on this particular problem that’s before us.” As in: now you see the rule of law, now you don’t. Or rather, you consistently see the phantom not the substance.

The ruling is especially illtimed given that B.C. and Alberta are at loggerheads over a pipeline. If New Brunswick can ban beer from Quebec to prevent widespread drunkenness or whatever the feeble excuse is, surely B.C. can ban diluted bitumen from it itself just set.

Which is why I call the ruling post-truth jurisprudence. The idea of gazing haughtily clean through the plain text of our Constitution, its legal context and the ringing declarations of our founders about the purpose of Confederation would please the most ardent literary “deconstructionist” professor who insists there is no text, author, audience or truth. Or the most obnoxious politician untethered to facts.

Of course the post-truth world is ultimately uninhabitable. Even that deconstructionist professor expects her employment contract, and her parking pass, to be honoured to the letter. And a “post-truth” politician, whether named Donald or not, expects his fanciful reconstructions of reality to be mistaken for solid fact by the audience, which cannot happen if the audience believes there are no solid facts.

More generally, any theory that requires us to accept as true the non-existence of truth is a classic Cretansaying-all-Cretans-are-liars self-contradiction. And as the 20th century showed, when reality is banished in theory, what remains in practice is a raw contest of wills.

No less by our Supreme Court, whose “living tree” interpretation severs our constitution’s roots and topples its trunk while expecting branches and fruit to hang in mid-air. It insists we obey the rulings it conjures from nothing by saying “let there be law,” which in turn requires that we understand its rulings. Why? And how? But it is not hypocrisy. It is post-modernism reaching the bench.

As C. S. Lewis observed, if everything can be seen through, then nothing can be seen. If Superman can look through walls, why is he able to see the things or people behind the walls, rather than see through them as well? We were just told our Superjudges’ X-ray vision can penetrate Section 121 to reveal its opposite: that articles from any province shall not be admitted free into the others. Yet this ruling, too, will be vaporized by the same basilisk stare whenever the mighty judges somehow perceive new social needs.