Ideas - Astra Taylor's CBC Massey Lectures | #2: Barons or Commoners?

Episode Date: July 15, 2024

In Astra Taylor's second Massey Lecture, she argues our social order runs on insecurity. But we’re also guaranteed the right to “security of the person.” The wealthy barons of the past and present have defined what security means for themselves — but the rest of us, ordinary commoners, have fought for something else instead.

Hey there, I'm Kathleen Goltar and I have a confession to make. I am a true crime fanatic. I devour books and films and most of all true crime podcasts. But sometimes I just want to know more. I want to go deeper. And that's where my podcast Crime Story comes in. Every week I go behind the scenes with the creators of the best in true crime. I chat with the host of Scamanda, Teacher's Pet, Bone Valley, the list goes on. For the insider scoop, find Crime Story in your podcast app. This is a CBC Podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayed. This is the second of the 2023 CBC Massey Lectures, The Age of Insecurity, by writer, filmmaker and political organizer Astra Taylor.

Everyone feels insecure these days. series, Astra explores how the many different crises we're facing, mental health, housing, food insecurity, are tied to the fact that our social order runs on insecurity. From policing to the beauty industry, the systems that promise us security instead seem to undermine it. But while our society runs on insecurity, Astra Taylor argues there are ways to change that. Astra Taylor was born in Winnipeg and raised in Athens, Georgia. Her most recent book is Remake the World, Essays, Reflections, Rebellions. Others include the American Book Award winner, The People's Platform, Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age,

and Democracy May Not Exist, But We'll Miss It When It's Gone. Every year we record the Massey lectures on a cross-Canada tour, and this year we went to Winnipeg, Halifax, Whitehorse, Vancouver, and Toronto. Today on Ideas, from Neptune Theatre in Halifax, the second of the 2023 Massey Lectures titled Barons or Commoners? Here's Astra Taylor. Wow. Wow. I'm so honored to be here and humbled to be given the 2023 Massey Lecture. And I'm just so grateful to each and every one of you for showing up tonight and being here and being willing to listen and hopefully have a conversation as well. The book, through various lenses, looks at the way capitalism is, in essence, a kind of insecurity-generating machine. And again, there are these two types of insecurity that I look at. Existential insecurity,

which is the insecurity that comes from being mortal, from being fragile creatures who can be wounded psychologically, physically. And that's a kind of insecurity that will always be with us, and that I think can be the basis of what I call an ethic of insecurity, a recognition of our mutual vulnerability and the basis of solidarity. Solidarity is the motor force that can help us change our society, a society that runs on manufactured insecurity, not just on encouraging us to consume and consume more, but that doesn't give us a stable floor. We can't rest, right? It denies us the material

security that we need. Okay, so this is chapter two, lecture two, Barons or Commoners. On a June day in the year 1215, an angry King John had no choice but to bow to a rebellion organized by his barons. A notoriously incompetent, treacherous, and violent ruler, John's name today is often followed by the epithet, The Worst King. This seems an accurate assessment. John's exploitation of his feudal rights and taxation powers, which he employed to fund doomed military ventures,

pushed England's aristocrats to the brink. They wanted King John off their backs, their property returned, and a restoration of their privileges. Gathered in mutiny in Runnymede Field, a large meadow about 20 miles west of central London, the barons demanded a drastic change in government. But this was no democratic rebellion. Incensed at their ill treatment, the barons withdrew their fealty in a kind of upper-class strike, proposing new limits on the monarch's power. These were detailed in a royal declaration of rights and freedoms,

a text known to us as the Magna Carta, the great charter. Since a king without loyal subjects cannot rule, his majesty reluctantly agreed to the terms. The Magna Carta contains 63 clauses, the majority of which are confounding or irrelevant to the modern reader. So I'm going to give one example. No town or person shall be forced to build bridges over rivers except those with an ancient obligation to do so. But clauses 39 and 40 became legendary and remain lucid and resonant. They contain the famous phrases,

to no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice, and no free man shall be arrested or imprisoned except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. These clauses are said to have helped establish the legal concept of due process. Most important of all, as every history textbook states, the Magna Carta was extraordinary for arguing that the king was not above the law and that governments need to be restrained. The barons, in the conventional telling of this history, are heroes for fighting a tyrannical king,

and they did indeed accomplish something revolutionary. Claiming that citizens need protection from their own sovereign introduces a central idea of democratic governance. The power of the state must be checked for the population to be secure. Predictably, monarchs despised this idea. King John had the charter nullified, the first chance he got. He was aided by another unsavory 13th century character, Pope Innocent III.

Together, they engineered a papal bull that declared the Magna Carta, quote, null and void of all validity forever, and pronounced the idea that people needed security from an overweening sovereign to be, quote, illegal, unjust, harmful to royal rights, and shameful to the English people. centuries, the Magna Carta faded in and out of fashion, forgotten or suppressed by the powerful, only to be rediscovered by those looking to break free of monarchical power. In the 1620s, the famed legal theorist Sir Edward Coke, then Speaker of the British House of Commons, helped usher in the English Revolution of the 1640s with his framing of what was called the Petition of Right, which extended the principles of the Magna Carta for a new age. From there, its ideas drifted across the ocean where the Magna Carta became a tool of colonial independence. The authors of the

U.S. Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the American Constitution, found inspiration in the charter's principles as they sought to build a government that could guard citizens against state tyranny, a kind of anti-government government. The Magna Carta directly influenced the American amendments guaranteeing the right to a jury trial and due process, as well as the right, quote, of people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures. It is this medieval document, alternately repressed and rediscovered, that we today claim as the foundation of our modern democratic societies.

The Canadian Supreme Court put it this way in 1998. The evolution of our democratic tradition can be traced back to Magna Carta. It is also an early enumeration of what we now call human rights. Most notably, for our purposes, many experts regard it as the basis of the right to security, a guarantee encoded in a range of international and domestic treaties, covenants, and constitutions, including, as we'll see, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Section 7 promises each and every one of us a right to security of the person. Today, we rarely think of ourselves as possessing a right to security, compared to, say, the right to free expression,

or freedom of religion, or equal protection before the law. But we do. And the fact that we do, as well as what this evocative and ambiguous right might mean for our present and future, is profoundly shaped by the seemingly remote history that I have just sketched, and by what we emphasize, and by what we emphasize,

and by what we leave out. This version of the story of the Magna Carta, in which barons revolt against an abusive ruler, is not the only one that we can tell. There's another tale, told less often and far less known, also worth recounting. The barons, it turns out, were not the only group incensed at King John. Commoners were angry too, and the rights the Magna Carta is now famous for, the right to be protected from the king's tyranny, were paired with rights to subsistence and security that benefited the peasantry. The Great Charter's revolutionary promise was concretized in the fact it granted the commoners rights to material livelihood, and by doing so, it introduced a second central and essential idea of democratic governance.

The state must provide for its citizens in order for the population to be secure. Yet this second idea has mostly been erased from the history of the Magna Carta and from the understanding of a right to security that prevails in legal circles today. The commoners had plenty of reasons to be aggrieved. In 13th century England, almost one-third of the country was designated as forest, a legal term that described land enclosed for royal use and governed by forest law, a system that hoarded natural resources for the crown. As time went on, more and more territory was privatized by royal decree,

making it harder for regular people to survive, a prelude to the systematic enclosure of the commons 400 years later as market capitalism ascended. Like rulers before him, King John and his enforcers capriciously infringed on the peasants' customary rights to subsistence, rights to fish in the streams and let their animals forage and graze, to gather nuts, berries, honey, kindling, and herbs for medicine. Fences and hedges kept them out of land they did not own outright, but had long shared and used and even lived upon. The king's minions charged the needy fees to enter the woods and find or kill trespassers without recourse or remorse. It is no surprise that tales of the folk hero Robin Hood,

living freely with his band of rebels in Sherwood Forest and thwarting foresters and the local sheriff, first appeared during these years. In 1217, seeking to consolidate political support, the new King Henry III reissued the Magna Carta alongside a new companion document, the so-called Charter of the Forest. The Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest were considered twin documents, often read aloud in public spaces in the same breath.

Among other things, the Forest Charter restored a significant portion of royal forest to the commons. It was, in a sense, an early example of reparations, for it returned property that had been stolen, while also providing the peasantry an affirmative right to something, the security that the access to the commons provided. And this idea of affirmative rights is crucial, because it hints at the path to collective security today. By detailing the right to the woods, the Charter of the Forest offered commoners assurance that they could sustain themselves, without fear of being drawn and quartered. And I'm talking literally. McGill University law professor Pearl Eliadis described it to me as the, quote, bread-and-butter charter,

because in addition to securing villagers' limbs, it also secured their livelihoods. And yet in 2015, when the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta was marked by a raft of celebratory coverage all over the English-speaking world, there was virtually no message of the Charter of the Forest, and certainly no continued assertion of collective commoning rights. For the Magna Carta to take its modern form as the protector of individual and not communal liberties, it had to be severed from its companion, the Charter of the Forest. By the early 21st century, the cleavage was complete. And so why this rupture? The answer, simply stated, is that the charter of the forest provided material security for all. It limited private property rights, halted privatization, and returned land for common use. the business interests that currently reign, for it implies rights not only to be protected from something, a tyrannical state, but the right to something, a good life supported by the state.

Political theorists describe this as the difference between negative rights and positive rights, or rights that shield you from threats versus rights that grant you what you need. Both kinds of rights are essential to a free society. That is to say, we need both the Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest together. But their respective urgency is class-based. If you are a baron, you want to be able to hunt in the woods without being charged a hefty fee and to be free to exploit the peasants who dwell in your fiefdom. You just need the king off your back. You are content, in other words, with negative rights. If you are a commoner, though,

what you need above all is the right to access land you can farm, fuel to heat your home, and confidence you won't be displaced. The positive right, in essence, to the means of survival and a dignified life. When we shift our perspective and view this history through the lens of the commoners instead of the barons, we can see that the positive right to forage in the forest was inseparable from the negative right to not be mutilated while doing so. Then, as now, a secure existence requires both provision and protection, subsistence and safety in equal measure.

The question before us then, and the challenge I want to pose, is whether we will continue to accept this division. Will we remember or misremember security in a limited and defensive way as the kind of security of private property in due process won by the barons in the form of negative rights? Or can we also, at the same time, recognize it as something more substantive, as the material security embodied in the peasantry's rights to the commons? The question before us really is quite simple. Do we see ourselves as barons or as commoners? Do we see ourselves as barons or as commoners? In today's world, it can be hard to tell. Largely because we are encouraged to see ourselves as barons-to-be.

Given the underfunded and shrinking state of many public services, the most obvious path to security for ordinary people is through the marketplace. Security, crudely put, is a function of wealth. The resources to rent or purchase property, to buy food and necessities, to pay for education, to invest for retirement, and all the rest. The last thing the powerful want to see is a revival of the idea found in the Charter of the Forest, a robust right to the material security of the commons for everyone. Such a guarantee would make it harder to manufacture the insecurity that capitalism relies on. But if we could rely instead on the security of the commons, we wouldn't need to aspire to be barons anymore.

A revival of the commoners' perspective is long overdue. Updated for our present age, the ancient idea of the right to the commons embraces security not as any one single thing, but rather as a bundle of entitlements that together help ensure individual and collective well-being. The Forest Charter guaranteed rights to herbage, which was grass for grazing sheep and cattle, pannage, which was sustenance for pigs, terbury, which was peat fuel from a bog, and estovers, which was kindling. This lecture is just a convoluted excuse to say the word terbury

to a room full of people. Terbury. The modern equivalent of these ancient rites might include things such as the right to a decent home, to medical and mental health care, to education, to support in disability in old age, to meaningful and well-paid work, to a healthy and habitable environment, and so forth.

We can each make our own list. This linking of positive and negative liberties is neither an archaic or nostalgic idea, nor is it some starry-eyed distant possibility. It is, in fact, woven into the fabric of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The final draft of the Declaration, crafted in the wake of the catastrophe of the Second World War and formally adopted in 1948, uses the word security three times. Article 3. Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person.

Article 22. Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization of the economic, social, and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality. Excuse the gendered language. Little dated. Article 25. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care, and necessary social services,

and to the right of security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age, or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. These rights, of course, have not been realized. Despite possessing such entitlements on paper, we continue to live amid pervasive and persistent insecurity. Governments near and far commit heinous acts of violence against their citizens. Billions of people can barely provide for themselves, if at all. An estimated 1.8 billion

people worldwide are homeless or living in grossly inadequate housing, lacking basic services including electricity, water, and sanitation. Wars rage, people starve, police kill, and the climate burns. And as our societies grow more deeply unequal, and our environment collapses, even the comparatively affluent never feel wholly secure. The stark display between promises and reality explains why, particularly if you travel in left-wing circles, you may be familiar with the quip that the powerful decided the poor could have rights when they realized that rights were useless. Or, as a friend of mine always says, we don't need rights, we need things.

I take her point, but my perpetual retort is that we need both. As an organizer, I'd always rather have legal rights, particularly to the thing I'm fighting for, than have no rights at all. Even when they appear to be empty promises, these entitlements enable us to mount legal challenges, highlight government failures, and bring more people more easily into

the fight to match words with deeds. The existence and exercise of rights means that more of us grow up believing that universal goods like freedom and material security belong to us by birth and will for generations to come. The bailiff looking the other way as you gather herbs in the king's woods is merely a privilege. Knowing that you can continue to do so and that your children and grandchildren will as well is a right. When we talk about insecurity and security, we are often talking about the future.

We anticipate what might occur beyond the here and now. This is why food insecurity, housing insecurity, health insecurity, and economic insecurity are useful terms. They may sound euphemistic. Food insecurity might seem less urgent and visceral than hunger, and housing insecurity less pressing a crisis than homelessness. But adding the modifier insecurity emphasizes the importance of time and the fact that human beings require much more than just having our immediate needs met. You may have a meal on the table or a fridge full of groceries, but that does not mean you are confident the same will hold tomorrow or next month or six months hence. Security means having some assurance of future stability and

the ability to plan ahead. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its predecessors, the Magna Carta and the Forest Charter, all contain this richer and more substantive idea of security. Should we work together and bring it back to life, our present-day selves would be better protected. Our future selves would be better protected too. These connections and this history are personified in the life of one man from the Maritimes, John Humphrey, who spent most of his long career as a professor of law at McGill University before retiring at the age of 90 in 1995. He was also the lead author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, though much of his work happened behind the scenes and his role in its creation is not

well known. Humphrey would have been the first to recognize his debt to the Magna Carta, and while I have not found any definitive proof that he also drew on its companion, the Forest Charter, he was undoubtedly someone who believed in and fought doggedly for a positive conception of security fully in line with the medieval rights to the commons. It was largely thanks to Humphrey's vision and persistence that the final draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ended up protecting both negative and positive liberties. Humphrey was born in New Brunswick in 1905. His father died when he was an infant. At age six, he had his left arm amputated after a severe burn, and cancer took the life of his mother when he was 11. But it was the suffering of others that made him a socialist.

The Great Depression radicalized him. Humphrey joined the League for Social Reconstruction, a national alliance of socialist intellectuals, to campaign for the creation of a welfare state as a remedy to capitalist insecurity. As its 1932 manifesto declared, despite our abundant natural resources, the mass of the people have not been freed from poverty and insecurity. the mass of the people have not been freed from poverty and insecurity. The League evolved into the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, or CCF, the left-wing party that jump-started Canada's eventual adoption of universal Medicare. For democratic socialists like Humphrey,

ensuring a baseline of material security and equality is what enables the full exercise of human freedom. In many ways, Humphrey's goal while drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was to expand the Canadian welfare state to the whole world. At the time, his position was anything but controversial. Despite their numerous disagreements and differences, most UN member states assumed that generous social entitlements were the way of the future.

But this global consensus around public welfare was short-lived. Almost as soon as the ink on the Declaration was dry, emerging Cold War fractures began to spread. American proponents of capitalism associated freedom with free markets and painted any constraint on the private sector as a form of creeping communism. Some avowedly communist countries, meanwhile, invoked economic development and social cohesion as excuses to constrain civil and political liberties. In Canada, conservative political forces and business interests

regarded the Declaration with open hostility. John Humphrey was in despair. Writing in his diary, he lamented, the universal declaration of human rights has now been adopted, but the miracle for which some of us had hoped did not happen. But despite this backlash, these ideas survived and influenced the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In addition to concerns about Quebec's independence and growing demands for Indigenous sovereignty, a desire to conform to international human rights law also spurred

the Charter's adoption in 1982. And so, in a circular way, John Humphrey's appreciation for the Canadian welfare state helped shape international human rights law, which then, in turn, helped shape the Canadian Constitution. In words that directly and deliberately echo the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms proclaims, everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice. Compared to the Charter's more renowned provisions, the right to peacefully assemble or to free expression,

the right to security of the person is less known and more ill-defined. But I hope to convince you this right is no less significant. US Public Radio, across North America on Sirius XM, in Australia on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas. You can also hear us on the CBC Listen app and wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayyad. My name is Graham Isidore. I have a progressive eye disease called keratoconus. Unmaying I'm losing my vision has been hard, but explaining it to other people has been harder.

Lately, I've been trying to talk about it. Short-sighted is an attempt to explain what vision loss feels like by exploring how it sounds. By sharing my story, we get into all the things you don't see about hidden disabilities. Short Sighted, from CBC's Personally, available now. While we were on the Massey tour, we recorded interviews about the kinds of insecurity we see today, specifically housing and food insecurity. We'll be playing excerpts from those interviews throughout the lectures. From Halifax, here's a glimpse into the Dalhousie University Food Bank.

Our economy's gone crazy. The days of students coming to food banks and just wanting things that are like snack or things to get them tied them through for a couple of days are gone. They're coming and they're standing here with their friends and with their roommates and they're literally planning what their entire week of food is going to be to like to eat. I have seen people break down crying because getting food here has allowed them an opportunity to go buy books. We had a mother that was making a choice between buying a textbook she needed for an exam and buying school supplies for her child.

And she came to the food bank because her other piece of money was for food. She came to the food bank, got enough food that she ran to the bookstore and got her book. Back here is our fridge-freezer. I will just show you quickly. It's like that. And so, like, we're getting pretty low. This was full to the door today. And this is all gone.

I'm actually surprised how much food we're going through. Which makes me a little concerned for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Our food prices are high. Our taxes are high. Our tuition is high. You know, our rent is crazy. I, like myself, was like, you know what, until I just got my rent renewal, I'm like, I'm going to start looking at tents and see if I can find a real comfortable one, because I can't afford to live here. And I'm from here. That was recorded at the Dalhousie University Food Bank. And now back to the 2023 CBC Massey Lectures, The Age of Insecurity.

Astra Taylor argues that we need the right to things, not just protection from threats. Our Constitution tells us what we're protected against, but it doesn't tell us a lot about what we're entitled to. In this lecture, Astra Taylor looks to history to explore how the interests of wealthy barons have defined what security means and what kind of security we commoners need to fight for. Here's Astra Taylor with Barons or Commoners.

Though you may not realize it, the concept of security of the person has played a pivotal role in a startling array of society-shaping Supreme Court cases, striking down abortion restrictions, restoring funding for safe injection sites, removing laws that made sex workers unsafe, facilitating the privatization of medical care, decriminalizing medical assistance in dying, and, as we'll see, protecting homeless encampments, the kind that many people in Halifax live in right now. In the background of these cases,

a debate about what exactly security of the person means has been raging for approximately four decades. This debate has profound implications for our rights to income support, health care, housing, a habitable environment, and more. The fundamental question here is simple enough. Does the right to security of the person promised by the Canadian Charter oblige the state to provide for citizens materially? Or does it only protect citizens from an abusive state? In other words, can we expand it to guarantee

a positive right to material security? Because right now, Canadian citizens, despite the country's general commitment to welfare state principles, have affirmative rights to remarkably little, at least as things stand. We haven't made up our minds about whether we are barons or commoners. Over the decades, the Supreme Court of Canada has fleshed out the meaning of the phrase security of the person, determining that it includes both physical and psychological security, bodily integrity and personal autonomy, and that it can be triggered not only by the infliction of actual harms, but also by the risk or threat of harm. But no decision to date has decisively embraced a positive conception

of the right to security of the person, that is, one that entails substantive social and economic rights. For the duration of the Canadian Charter's life, the right to security of the person has remained in a kind of legal limbo. Its positive attributes have never been fully affirmed, nor explicitly denied. Instead, in the words of a recent court decision, they have been left, quote, unsettled. That this is an unsettled matter may strike you as odd. Don't we know what words and laws mean?

The truth is far from it, and thankfully so. In Canadian jurisprudence, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is often referred to as a living tree. In Canadian jurisprudence, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is often referred to as a living tree. In the United States, a ghoulish obsession with originalism has turned the country's constitution into a bulwark of reaction. But in Canada, the living tree doctrine says that the charter must flexibly adapt and evolve alongside society. That means it can grow and branch in directions its original authors could never have foreseen.

These tensions, ambiguities, and possibilities were captured in a case that began in 1987. During a time of rising youth unemployment, a young woman named Louise Gosselin launched a challenge under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Despite the dearth of jobs in Quebec, people under 30 were not eligible for full welfare benefits. A disparity, Gosselin argued, violated her right to security of the person. Her lack of stable income was causing her extreme physical and psychological distress. Fifteen years later, in 2002, the Supreme Court finally issued a decision denying her claim. In the majority's view, Gosselin had failed to prove she had been deprived of her Section 7 rights to life, liberty,

or security of the person, and so there were no grounds for an increase in income support. But the majority acknowledged the matter was not, quote, frozen. One day, the court said, punching the question, Section 7 may be interpreted to include positive obligations. We are still waiting for that day. Justice Louise Arbour issued a passionate dissent, countering that the charter not only implies a duty to guarantee positive rights, but also, in fact, compels immediate action by the state. She explained, quote, a minimum level of welfare is so closely connected to issues relating to one's basic health or security of the person, and potentially even to one's survival, that it appears inevitable that

a positive right to life, liberty, and security of the person must provide for it. Arbour was adamant that the charter could not be interpreted from one side, from only the baron's perspective. Negative and positive rights, she argued, are not in opposition, but in fact two sides of the same invaluable coin. She insisted, and this is a quote, positive rights are not an exception to the usual application of the charter, but an inherent part of its structure. The right to vote, to trial within a reasonable time frame, to minority language education, these rights and others all impose positive obligations on the state. That means the state must invest money and resources to implement them. They are not merely negative. When we sever positive rights from economic rights,

we stunt the Charter's necessary growth. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been cut off from its roots, captured to serve the interests of society's barons and enclosed like a royal forest, rather than used to help guarantee material security for everybody. The stakes of this disconnection are clear at Crab Park, on Vancouver's downtown east side, which is currently home to around 50 people. They manage their affairs during

weekly meetings held in a shared warming tent, jobs are distributed to keep things clean, and people look out for each other. It's safe enough that they can leave their tents and belongings to access services nearby. When the community learned in the summer of 2021 that the city was going to clear their encampment, they took the city to court and they won. In early 2022, the BC Supreme Court struck down the impending eviction on Section 7 grounds. We're all overwhelmed, resident Clint Randon

told the CBC upon getting the news. It's a wonderful thing. Another park dweller, Andrew Hirschpold, attended the proceedings and said that the judge engaged humanely, asking who bears responsibility for the people facing displacement. The city didn't have a good answer, and it was determined they could stay. The decision provided further recognition that Section 7's right to security of the person

includes a limited right to shelter, a right that lawyers such as Alexander Kirby, who worked on the Crab Park lawsuit, have spent years slowly establishing and expanding, building off an initial victory in 2009 that ruled people could shelter on public land overnight but had to pack up their personal belongings in the morning. Case by case, inch by inch, the parameters have expanded. Kirby told me that the situation in Vancouver shows how important negative rights can be for the vulnerable. Just being able to camp in one place provides life improving stability. But the very same successes also show why negative rights on their own are

insufficient. And this is Kirby. The Charter tells us that we live in a society that considers life, liberty, and security of the person to be the most important thing. Without positive rights, including a positive right to housing, we're not actually getting at the root of the issue. Without a doubt, housing is an essential component of security. But the legal situation is confusing and murky.

As the Crab Park case shows, the Charter has evolved, living tree-like, and can now protect a negative right to shelter, the right not to be evicted from a tent and exposed to the elements when you have nowhere else to go. But despite these welcome changes, there's still no guaranteed positive right to stable housing. Adding another layer of complexity to the mix, the passage of the 2019 National Housing Strategy Act has committed the federal government to, quote, a human rights-based approach to housing, a sign that John Humphrey's spirit lives on. Under the International Human Rights Law that the National Housing

Strategy Act directly references, housing is not a commodity. It is sanctuary and secure tenure. And being adequately housed means more than access to shelter on any given night. International law guarantees a positive right to adequate housing both now and in the future, not just to a flimsy tent in a muddy park. now and in the future, not just to a flimsy tent in a muddy park. And yet the National Housing Strategy Act only promises, quote, to progressively realize such a right over time, rather than immediately granting it.

In other words, you have a right, but not really. It's going to be fulfilled at a later date. And so in practice, we remain fully entrenched in a system that treats housing as a commodity, not as a human right, not as a commons, and which condemns millions of people to perpetual housing insecurity as a result. Without transforming how housing and residential land development are financed, owned, and operated, the positive human right to housing will likely remain unrealized. Words without deeds are right without a thing. Currently, only 4% of housing in Canada is provided by the government as a public good. 4%. A genuine human rights approach, in contrast,

would rebalance these numbers by substantially investing in a robust public option for housing. In other words, directly funding and building high-quality, environmentally sustainable, accessible, and non-market housing that is available to everyone who needs it. Under our current commodity-centered system, the cost of staying sheltered is surging so much that the housing emergency has now become a permanent condition. And this is a realm where Canadians out-American their southern neighbors. Canadians spend more of their income on housing than almost anyone else in the world. Like the peasants violently pushed off the commons, poor and working class people today are routinely displaced from their

homes and communities. But a market stuck in overdrive means housing insecurity is creeping higher and higher up the income ladder. Comparatively affluent people also have much to gain from supporting a commoner's approach to housing, including more generous public investment and strong tenant protections. From C to C to C, housing insecurity is highly racialized, with non-white people more likely to be housing insecure and disproportionately burdened by rent and mortgage debt. The roots of the inequities run deep and resound across the generations.

Here in Nova Scotia, for example, it begins with the theft of the land from the Mi'kmaq people. Geographer Ted Rutland and others have detailed how the province's African-Canadian communities were systematically denied opportunities to reap the full benefits of homeownership. As a result, they were prevented from building intergenerational wealth. Africville is the most notorious example. Denied basic municipal infrastructure like sewage, street lighting, and road and sidewalk paving, infrastructure like sewage, street lighting, and road and sidewalk paving, Africville residents were deemed ineligible for government-backed mortgage insurance that would have enabled them to take out loans for much-needed home improvements. Racist policies kept whole communities impoverished and insecure. And the same story continues to play out today.

In Nunavut, the number of Inuit households living in, quote, unsuitable, inadequate, or unaffordable housing is over three times the national average, and conditions described as abhorrent by the United Nations Special Rapporteur are commonplace. We're talking about sewage problems, water rot, leaking windows, mold, holes in walls, crumbling floors. These inequities are the result of explicit policy choices, not a lack of resources. The problem is not that there isn't enough money. They unspool from a system that refuses to treat housing as a human right, harming indigenous communities most intensely, while making housing insecure for Canadians more broadly.

The problem is widespread. Even the most egalitarian social democracies tend to treat housing as a market commodity, which is why housing is sometimes called the wobbly pillar of the welfare state. And yet some countries have succeeded in making housing more of a reliable welfare cornerstone by dramatically increasing the number of residences

provided on non-market terms by making housing a kind of commons. So consider Finland and Austria. In Finland, where housing is constitutionally guaranteed, 16% of homes are social housing, and over a quarter of new construction is supposed to fit into that category. One in seven Helsinki residents live in the city's 60,000 housing units. In addition, the government has embraced a housing-first approach to homelessness,

which means it provides stable housing before attempting to address other needs. This approach is not only more compassionate, it is also more cost-effective, saving the government the equivalent of $20,000 in emergency health care and law enforcement expenses per person. In Austria, 26% of the country's overall housing stock is non-market, with nearly half of Vienna's homes owned and run by the municipality. Viennese social housing shelters an estimated 60% of the population. Everybody lives there. Low-income earners, immigrants, the elderly, environmentalists, middle-class families, young professionals. Viennese social housing is the envy of the world,

and for good reason. The socialists who spearheaded Vienna's unique housing scheme in the 1920s believe that poor people deserve to live in beautiful, safe, and centrally located buildings. Here we see the right and the thing, the combination of promise and policy, the guarantee and its full realization. This is what the adoption of a positive right to material security looks like. Rights backed up by policies and public investment that prevent markets from undermining everybody's well-being. rights and things. And yet, across North America, social housing is generally considered inferior to private ownership and is too often stigmatized. People dream of getting a mortgage, not accommodation in social housing,

no matter how luxurious. Our very imaginations, it seems, have been enclosed. very imaginations, it seems, have been enclosed. It's a measure of just how steeped in economic thinking we are that the word security is now most familiar to us through the language of finance and the marketplace. Think, for example, of the term security deposit, which indicates a sum paid to a landlord upon the signing of a lease. Or think of those ironically named securities, the package of subprime home loans that brought down the global economy in 2008. Securitized American mortgages, subprime loans that were bundled together, sliced and diced and then rated AAA by insurers so that they could be sold to investors, produced a devastating financial shock and a global

recession. A market-based approach to housing, to be clear, is not a spontaneous development. It is the result of proactive government policy. Both the Canadian and American governments have invested significant public resources to encourage citizens to rely on private sector financing, which means they have facilitated securitization and fueled overheated housing bubbles. According to a recent report, housing has become by far the most valuable asset on Earth, an arrangement that generates astonishing wealth on the one hand

while also manufacturing pervasive insecurity on the other. For most North Americans today, homeownership is not only about having security of shelter, but also about trying to achieve material security in a much broader sense. Purchasing property is a way to compensate for the absence of a robust and trustworthy welfare state, particularly for the lack of adequate public pensions in old age.

Houses in our current paradigm are both places to live and investments. If we are lucky enough to have one, they are our de facto retirement accounts, emergency funds, and inheritable wealth. I can't help but wonder what things would be like and how I might live differently if my material security were guaranteed. Would I have recently bought a house, for example,

if my town were dotted with green and inviting social housing complexes for rent? Or if I wasn't afraid of joining the ranks of the elderly and destitute? Now that I own a house, I receive regular email updates from a real estate website, one seemingly designed to remind me that my home is actually a commodity. The alerts feature an arrow next to a number indicating whether prices are rising or falling in my zip code and how much they are expected to rise or fall in the year ahead, an index of my future security.

It is, however, an impoverished version of security, one with no guaranteed future and a steady dose of anxiety. Commodities have values, and values in our speculative economy can rise or fall. Conventional homeownership means consigning ourselves to live in something that always could, financially speaking, collapse. This is the source of the housing market's power, the grip that keeps property owners vigilant, insecure, and on edge, and in too many cases, oblivious or hostile to the needs of others, as the Not In My Backyard or NIMBY movement shows. Insecurity prods us to care which direction the arrow points on the app, and that prevents us from realizing that security may be better gained another way, not by going it alone, but by providing for one another. So far, in my case, the app's arrow rises,

briefly dips, rises again, but never dives. My relief at this fact makes me painfully aware of my conflicted allegiances and of insecurity's power. Of course, I do not want the value of my house to crash, but I'm also aware of the ancillary costs of my home's steady appreciation. The app does not tally the collateral damage of longtime residents displaced from my neighborhood. It doesn't count the number of families sharing cramped rooms or relying on food banks, the people living out of their cars or in doorways, or the teachers and nurses and retail workers commuting longer and longer distances to get to work.

It makes no mention of the people trapped with abusive partners because they can't afford to move out. It does not track the loss of community, local character, and creativity that escalating home values inevitably entails, because I, for one, am a firm believer in the correlation between artistry and cheap rent. The app isn't programmed to care about the political harm caused by spiraling wealth inequality and racial disparities, which an overheated housing market only aggravates. Nor does it appraise the ecological harm of a sprawling system of single-family fiefdoms.

It certainly doesn't factor into its assessment the fact that my friends and loved ones may soon have to move out of my town because the rent is too damn high for them to stay. But where will they go? Everywhere you look these days, the arrows shoot relentlessly skyward. A few years ago, I found myself wandering the English countryside, where I felt the commons beneath my feet. I was exploring some of the veins of meadowland that were spared from enclosure and remain open today for everyone's use and enjoyment. In 1865, the Commons Preservation Society was formed. Early members

included such luminaries as the philosopher John Stuart Mill and a personal hero of mine, William Morris, the radical author and textile designer. The group got to work protecting foot paths and rights of ways, and after various name changes, the organization still campaigns for their preservation today. At first, it felt strange to be traipsing through areas that where I live would definitely be designated as private property. I traversed fields and what felt like people's backyards, but as I passed people by, they greeted me, putting me at ease. I had a right to be there. putting me at ease. I had a right to be there. Later that day, ambling around a Derbyshire churchyard, I saw a grave with an unusual marker, and I bent down to read it. Here lies buried little John, the friend and lieutenant of Robin Hood. He died in a cottage, now destroyed,

to the east. It hadn't occurred to me until that moment that there might be real history behind the fable, even if, despite the grave I stumbled upon, it remains unclear whether the Sherwood Forest rebels were real individuals or amalgamations or pure myth. We just don't know. As a child, I understood that Robin Hood stole from the rich to give to the poor. But the account I heard

portrayed their struggles as an anti-tax revolt, not a fight for the commons, for the very path that I had just strolled. The barons' rebellion that gave birth to the Magna Carta has also been narrated in a way that reinforces an anti-government worldview. The story of the barons in its conventional telling implies that we're all rich people in waiting, as though we're all just sitting near the top of a feudal hierarchy and just need the state to leave us and our property in peace. The barons, though, were not ordinary folks. They were landlords whose vast holdings included castles and entire villages,

and their immense power and wealth came from living off the labor of others and taxing them into deprivation. These barons, unlike most of us, controlled private armies, courts, and officials, and it's no wonder that the common people flocked to Robin's free band of merry men, real or imagined as they may have been. This baronial anti-government worldview tells us that our homes are our castles. But many of us who technically own property hardly qualify as mini-monarchs. A mortgage means we're effectively renting from the bank, in my case for 30 years. I'll be 72 when I'm free and clear.

the bank, in my case, for 30 years. I'll be 72 when I'm free and clear. In North America, this is undoubtedly a privilege, given that the alternative is to rent for my entire life and thus be consigned to either paying someone else's mortgage or contributing revenue to a corporate landlord's swelling cash reserve. But that shouldn't cause me to forget where my true interests lie, with the commoners and with the ideals of the Forrest Charter, with a future that offers material security for all as both a reality and a right instead of a lifetime of debt. What exactly material security means is something everyone should have the opportunity to decide democratically. As I was writing these talks,

I took to asking people what security means to them. Security, they told me, is safety, safety nets, having basic needs met, food, universal health care, mental health services, community, family, friends, money, $25 million, $50 million. Delusion, said a person who studies propaganda for a living. Illusion, said a former war correspondent who spent years reporting in U.S.-occupied Afghanistan and Iraq. Not living in a war zone, said a Syrian refugee currently living in Montreal. Knowing someone will be there to help me if my wheelchair breaks, said my disabled sister.

Housing. Having a home with no landlord. Not worrying about rent. Freedom from want. Freedom from fear. peace of mind, a state of being that enables creativity. In these responses, I hear echoes of both the Magna Carta and the Forest Charter, John Humphrey and Louise Arbour, the Commons Protection Society and Robin Hood. I hear the desire for a web of welfare supports capable of sustaining a good and dignified life, and a reimagining of the security offered by a thriving commons.

I also hear a useful dose of skepticism, a reminder that for vulnerable creatures like ourselves, it is unlikely that security will ever be absolute. This list is, of course, just the beginning, but it's a reminder that the quest for material security is less about owning specific goods than embracing an expansive understanding of well-being, as well as an awareness that no one can be secure on their own. The question again is whether we will adopt the perspective of barons or commoners, will we recognize the importance of both negative and positive rights to a good and dignified life,

or continue to leave one half of this essential democratic equation by the wayside? Are our personal interests really served by a model of security that envisions the government simply as a threat to our freedom or taxation as theft? By a welfare system that denies income support to those in need? Or by a housing system that is so bloated that only the rich can compete? Or would a more dependable and durable form of security come from a state that delivers collective care and provision? The provision of herbage, pannage, terbury, estovers. In our own time, that means social security,

housing, health care, education, and meaningful, fairly compensated work. We all have and deserve the right to security. It is written into declarations and constitutions, proclaimed as an entitlement that belongs to every human being. But rights require action. As 13th century peasants knew, like the barons who gathered on Renamead Field, the peasants also rebelled. They asserted and reasserted their right to sustenance and survival time and again.

Maintenance of the commons required constant care and regular doses of civil disobedience. When their rights were threatened, commoners fought back, protesting their abuse with great defiance, trespassing, taking what was theirs, jumping fences, and making rough music. The era's charming term for the clanging of pots, banging of drums, and shouting of chants that still rings out at demonstrations today. People who were considered lowly subjects demanded the ability to live with some measure of autonomy and dignity. As a result of their efforts, the rights enumerated in the Forest Charter endured in various forms for centuries, vastly outliving the Magna Carta before its memory was eventually buried.

The right to security, like all rights, is not only a technical term for lawyers and courts to interpret and decree. The idea that matters of law and policy should be left to experts is a myth today's barons want us to believe. Like the medieval commons, the law is something that belongs to everyone. It is political terrain we can struggle over and change. The right to security, whatever we decide security is, is ours. It is ours to debate, to reimagine, to proclaim, and to make real. Thank you.

You've been listening to Barons or Commoners, the second of the 2023 CBC Massey Lectures, The Age of Insecurity, by writer and political organizer, Astra Taylor, recorded at Neptune Theatre in Halifax. Your local bookseller will have the book version of the lectures,

The Age of Insecurity, Coming Together As Things Fall Apart, published by House of Anansi Press. Our partners in the Massey Lecture Series are Massey College at the University of Toronto and House of Anansi Press. The Massey Lecture Series is produced by Philip Coulter and Pauline Holdsworth.

In Halifax, special thanks to Mary Link and Mary Catherine McIntosh. Online production by Alfea Manassan, Ben Shannon, and Sinicaj Iolic. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Technical production, Danielle Duval. Our senior producer is Nikola Lukšić. The executive producer of the Massey Lectures and Ideas

is Greg Kelly and I'm Nala Ayyad.