There is some civil-liberties restlessness over sweeping forest-activity restrictions announced by the Nova Scotia government Tuesday in response to high province-wide fire risks, although actual fire has been minimal so far in 2025. It’s a fascinating snapshot of the post-COVID style of Canadian government. As our courts have accumulated more power to revise policies, their liberal principle of “minimal (rights) impairment” has gathered force, or ought to have. Even those who have some distaste for judge-ocracy can acknowledge that this is one of its relatively decent features — the idea that government limitations on individual conduct ought to be surgical and specific, rather than being defined expansively applied and with an axe, or perhaps a big old halberd.