Globalization's Perilous Imbalance: Constraints for Canada's Governments, Opportunities for Canadian Citizens‪.‬

It has been fifteen years since the birth of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which marked the apogee of United States-driven, neoconservative economic globalization; nine years since Osama bin Laden's attacks on New York and Washington, which laid a terrorism-obsessed, border-raising paradigm on top of the previous market-liberalizing, border-lowering paradigm; and two years since the collapse of the American financial system, which heralded China's entry onto the world's stage as its next political and economic giant. It may therefore appear disconnected from present reality to focus the Viscount Bennett Lecture on such a cliched subject as globalization's constitutional challenges. But for a Faculty of Law that considers Canada's position in the world through the lens of legal theory, globalization still presents a legion of conceptual and normative puzzles that cry out for a comprehensive, interdisciplinary analysis that is capable of guiding the policies of Canada's governments and channelling the energies of Canadian citizens toward the effective but urgent action needed to correct the perilous imbalances that threaten the sustainability of human society on our planet. I will defend this broad claim first by explaining my approach to the phenomena known as globalization; second, laying out the framework that defines the still dominant, exclusively domestic conceptualization of constitutionalism in the legal academy; and third, elaborating on the evidence that the world's constitution has produced dangerous asymmetries that are being operationalized by states and market players. Finally, I will make a properly Canadian--that is, muted--call for both governments and citizens to work toward a new paradigm so that our governments and citizens can contribute constructively and deliberately to saving our still-resourceful planet.