Should Canadians be surprised that there are 450,000 legal claims pending against the federal government? The positive side of the avalanche of litigation confronting Ottawa is the knowledge that it represents citizens protecting their own rights and holding the government accountable for its actions. The most concerning of these consequences is the readiness with which officials feel emboldened to encroach on people’s lives in unreasonable and unwarranted ways. But this is not a problem that can be reduced to partisan politics. It is a universal and natural consequence of over-regulation — a sin of which no government in living memory is innocent.

Source: National Post August 26, 2016 19:07 UTC