Professor Christopher Essert argues it's possible to reimagine property as an egalitarian institution: CBC Radio's Ideas

University of Toronto Professor Rinaldo Walcott is the director of U of T's Women and Gender Studies Institute and an associate professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). His research is in the area of Black Diaspora Cultural Studies, gender and sexuality.

Walcott examines the relationship between policing and property in his book, On Property. He argues the history of being bought and sold shapes Black people's relationship to the idea of property. 

Faculty of Law Associate Professor Christopher Essert and Val Napoleon, Law Foundation Chair of Indigenous Justice and Governance at the University of Victoria and a member of Saulteau First Nation and an adopted member of the Gitanyow (Gitksan) House of Luuxhon, Ganada (Frog) Clan, respond to Walcott's thesis in an episode of CBC Radio's Ideas.

Essert says he believes what we have today is "a distorted, defective version of what a system of property could be." But he believes it's possible for property to become an egalitarian institution.

Read more and listen to CBC Radio's Ideas: On Property