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Peckford, Bernier take travel restrictions to Supreme Court of Canada

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News release from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms

The Justice Centre announces that the Honourable Brian Peckford, the Honourable Maxime Bernier, and other applicants seek to appeal their vaccine mandate challenge to the Supreme Court of Canada. These Applicants argue that vaccine mandates are an issue of national importance and that Canadians deserve to receive court rulings regarding any emergency orders that violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In November 2021, the Government of Canada required all travelers of federally regulated transportation services (e.g., air, rail, and marine) to provide proof of Covid vaccination. These restrictions on the Charter freedom of mobility prevented approximately 5.2 million unvaccinated Canadians from traveling by air and rail.

In response to these restrictions, the Honourable Brian Peckford (last living signatory of the Charter and former Premier of Newfoundland), the Honourable Maxime Bernier (leader of the People’s Party of Canada), and other Canadians took the federal government to court in February 2022, arguing that the Charter freedoms of religion and conscience, assembly, democratic rights, mobility, security, privacy, and equality of Canadians were infringed by these restrictions. In addition, affidavits filed in this court action (e.g., the affidavit of Robert Belobaba at paragraph 19) attest that, in a country as large as Canada, prohibitions on domestic and international air travel have significant, negative impacts on Canadians.

In an affidavit (at paragraph 29), Jennifer Little, Director General of Covid Recovery at Transport Canada, provided her Covid Recovery Team’s October 2, 2021 presentation, entitled Implementing a Vaccine Mandate for the Transportation Sector. The presentation outlined options and considerations for the purposes of seeking the Minister of Transport’s approval of the travel vaccination mandate. Her presentation outlined (at pages 12 and 13) that the Canadian travel restrictions in question were “unique in the world in terms of strict vaccine mandate for domestic travel” and were coupled with “one of the strongest vaccination mandates for travelers in the world.” She admitted during cross examination (at paragraphs 162-163, PDF page 61) that she had never seen a recommendation from Health Canada or the Public Health Agency of Canada to the Ministry of Transport to implement a mandatory vaccination policy for travel.

At the same time, Dr. Lisa Waddell, a senior epidemiologist and the knowledge synthesis team lead at the Public Health Agency of Canada, admitted during a cross examination (at paragraphs 300-305, PDF pages 91-93) that there was no recommendation from the Public Health Agency of Canada to impose vaccination requirements on travelers.

In June 2022, the Government of Canada announced that it would suspend the travel vaccine restrictions, but that it would not hesitate to reinstate the mandates if the government considered it necessary.

As a result, the federal government (the Crown) moved to have Premier Peckford’s constitutional challenge struck for mootness (irrelevance). The Crown argued that the travel restrictions were no longer a live issue because they had been lifted and should not, therefore, take up further court resources. The Crown brought this motion after each side had produced expert evidence, called on experts to testify under oath, cross-examined the other side’s experts and witnesses daily for six weeks, conducted significant legal research, and prepared substantive written arguments. Lawyers for both sides spent hundreds of hours placing all the evidence and legal arguments before the Federal Court for its consideration. The only remaining step in the trial process was the presentation of oral argument, scheduled for October 31, 2022. The Federal Court was fully and properly equipped to render a thoughtful decision as to whether the travel restrictions had been a justified violation of Charterfreedoms.

Even though the federal government can impose these same travel restrictions on Canadians again, without notice, the Federal Court granted the Crown’s motion on November 9, 2023, and dismissed this Charter challenge as moot. The Federal Court of Appeal affirmed this lower court ruling on November 9, 2023. Effectively, the courts determined that a constitutional challenge to the use of unprecedented emergency powers was neither sufficiently interesting to the Canadian public nor an appropriate use of court resources.

Premier Peckford, Maxime Bernier, and other Canadians now seek to have the Supreme Court of Canada hear their case. This involves a two-step process, whereby the applicants first ask whether the Court is willing to hear the appeal. If so, the appeal will then be scheduled for a hearing several months later. The applicants in this case argue that the issues raised in their case are of national importance and that Canadians deserve access to court rulings about policies that violate the Charter freedoms of millions of Canadians.

(See the January 8, 2024 Leave Application of Premier Peckford here. See the January 8, 2024 Leave Application of Maxime Bernier here.)

Further, Premier Peckford and the other applicants warn that all challenges to emergency orders risk being deemed irrelevant due to the simple fact that emergency orders are normally implemented only for short periods of time. In most cases, emergency orders will be rescinded by the time a constitutional challenge makes its way through the court process and all the relevant evidence, along with legal arguments, has been put before the judge. For this reason, the Applicants argue that the courts should provide guidance on how emergency orders should be handled in the context of the mootness doctrine.

“If courts are going to affirm and uphold emergency orders that violate our Charter rights and freedoms whenever the emergency order is no longer in force, how can the Charter protect Canadians from government abuses?” asks John Carpay, President of the Justice Centre.

Emergency orders are not debated in, or approved by, federal Parliament or provincial legislatures. Rather, they are discussed confidentially in Cabinet such that ordinary Canadians are prevented from understanding the reasons for, or the legality of, emergency orders, such as mandatory vaccination policies that discriminated against Canadians who chose not to get injected. Therefore, it is only through court rulings that Canadians can learn whether a mandate or emergency order is constitutional.

“The Supreme Court of Canada has an opportunity to create an important precedent for how Canadian courts deal with all so-called ‘moot’ cases involving questions about the constitutionality of emergency orders,” stated lawyer Allison Pejovic, who represents Premier Peckford and Maxime Bernier.

“The public interest in this case is staggering. Canadians need to know whether it is lawful for the federal government to prevent them from travelling across Canada, or from leaving and re-entering their own country, based upon whether they have taken a novel medication,” continued Ms. Pejovic.

“The Court’s dismissal of constitutional challenges to Covid orders for ‘mootness’ has deprived thousands of Canadians from knowing whether their governments’ emergency orders were lawful or not. It is time for the Supreme Court of Canada to expand the legal test for mootness to account for governments’ use of emergency orders, which are devoid of transparency and accountability. Canadians have a right to know whether unprecedented mandatory vaccination policies, which turned millions of Canadians into second-class citizens, were valid under our Constitution,” concluded Ms. Pejovic.

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COVID-19

Japan’s most senior cancer doctor: COVID shots are ‘essentially murder’

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Dr. Masanori Fukushima

From LifeSiteNews

By Emily Mangiaracina

The most senior medical oncologist in Japan recently slammed the COVID-19 mRNA shots as “the work of evil” that has caused “essentially murder.”

In an interview published April 19, Dr. Masanori Fukushima, who spearheaded the first cancer outpatient clinic at Kyoto University and launched the first course in pharmacoepidemiology there, listed a slew of problems with the COVID mRNA jabs, evidencing what he called an evil “abuse of science.”

He pointed out that “turbo cancers,” a kind “previously unseen by doctors” that progress extremely quickly and are typically in stage four by the time they are diagnosed, have started to appear after the jab rollouts. These “turbo cancers” are emerging along with excess mortality due to cancer in general, which Dr. Fukushima says cannot be explained only by lost opportunities for screenings or treatment during the COVID outbreak.

As a tragic example of the fatal danger of the COVID shots, the oncologist shared the story of a 28-year-old man who was found dead by his wife when she tried to wake him in the morning, five days after he received his second Pfizer shot.

“The doctor who did the autopsy said that when he tried to remove the heart, it was soft and had disintegrated,” Dr. Fukushima said. “And even just one case like this shows how dangerous this vaccine can be.”

He pointed out that these severe harms, including death, have been afflicting people — post-jab — who have a history of good health.

“It’s serious. It’s essentially murder. In the end, I want to state clearly that this is my view,” the doctor said.

He lamented that the media, including newspapers, generally have not reported on these harms, and that in fact those who question the safety of the COVID shots — just as with the flu shots — have been characterized as anti-science “heretics.” He described the attitude of those who shut down the voices COVID “vaccine” critics, however, as far from scientific, and “more akin to faith, hysteria or even cult behavior.”

He highlighted the fact that countries that most aggressively pushed the COVID shot, such as Israel, saw the highest rates of death and infection, as shown by studies comparing Middle Eastern countries, including Jordan, Syria and Egypt.

“Israel led in early and widespread vaccination but also had the highest death and infection rates. The less aggressively vaccinated areas saw less harm,” said Dr. Fukushima, noting that “Israel was quick to halt the vaccine.”

There were problems, moreover, with the very technology used to administer the mRNA — the lipid nanoparticles — that the doctor said result in “off-target effects” on various organs, including the ovaries, brain, liver, and bone marrow.

Worse, the spike proteins produced by the mRNA have been detected in the human body more than a year after the administration of the COVID shot, noted the oncologist, indicating “a severe problem.”

The doctor took aim at the World Health Organization (WHO) for “hastily” pushing the COVID shots without proper investigation, and moreover for trying to enforce a one-size-fits-all approach in countries with widely varying “medical circumstances, habits, and systems,” calling it “somewhat absurd.”

He argued that it is “crucial” that the WHO take responsibility for the harms of the COVID shots, which he called “an abuse, a misuse of science and an evil practice of science, to be frank.”

Dr. Fukushima pointed out that the WHO is “aware” of harms from the so-called vaccines because they are compensating for these damages in certain countries, and yet they are not properly addressing the COVID shot-induced death and injury through an investigation and report.

“Imagine finding your spouse dead in the morning. It’s no joke. A vaccine that causes such outcomes, even a single death, is unacceptable,” said Dr. Fukushima, adding that in Japan alone, the government has documented 2,134 deaths reported due to the COVID shot, which is likely a low estimate.

“There are tens of thousands of people who must see a doctor because of vaccine-related issues,” he continued, asserting that a big chunk of them — 30% — are “suffering from ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis) or chronic fatigue syndrome.”

This is just the beginning, according to Dr. Fukushima, because the rates of all sorts of diseases have been spiking since the COVID shot rollout, including “autoimmune disease, neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, and infections.”

“It’s as if we’ve opened Pandora’s box … We must take these damages seriously and address them earnestly. Any efforts to dismiss these damages as if they didn’t happen are frankly the work of evil. This is a quintessential example of the evil practice of science,” Dr. Fukushima said.

He called on scientific and medical institutions, led by the WHO, to directly confront these outcomes through research efforts in order to “shine the light of science” on the shots.

“We should never again use such vaccines,” he said. “This is a shame for humanity. It’s a disgrace that we did this.”

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Trudeau government only sought legal advice after Emergencies Act was invoked, records indicate

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Canada’s Freedom Convoy in Ottawa                                                                      Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

The two-page Memorandum For The Attorney General was dated February 15, 2022, and was written by the deputy director of prosecutions. The date of the memorandum is significant, as it comes after Trudeau had invoked the EA on February 14.

A Conservative MP’s request for information has revealed that the cabinet of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau waited until after it had invoked the Emergencies Act (EA), which was done to take down the peaceful Freedom Convoy, to get legal advice from Canada’s Attorney General on whether its use was lawful. 

As noted in a recent Blacklocks’s Reporter article, Access To Information records obtained by Conservative MP Arnold Viersen from the office of the Attorney General confirm what many MPs have been suspicious of for years, that Trudeau’s use of the EA was not really warranted.  

“I filed an Access To Information request for the memorandum on the Emergencies Act sent to the Attorney General from the Public Prosecution Service,” MP Viersen said in a statement to the media. 

“What did they advise the Attorney General? We will never know because Justin Trudeau censored it.” 

The documents, despite being censored, do reveal that the two-page Memorandum For The Attorney General was dated February 15, 2022, and was written by the deputy director of prosecutions. The date of the memorandum is significant, as it comes after Trudeau had invoked the EA on February 14.

Trudeau’s Attorney General Arif Virani, during testimony on February 28, said that there was a legal opinion offered regarding whether the use of the EA would be justified, but that its contents had to remain confidential.

This claim of secret legal advice has never been substantiated.

In early 2022, the Freedom Convoy saw thousands of Canadians from coast to coast come to Ottawa to demand an end to COVID mandates in all forms. Despite the peaceful nature of the protest, Trudeau’s government enacted the EA on February 14, 2022. Trudeau revoked the EA on February 23.   

Earlier this year, Canada’s Federal Court announced that the use of the EA by the Trudeau government was a direct violation of the nation’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and thus was “not justified.”   

The Trudeau government has since appealed the court’s decision.   

I do not ‘believe for a second’ the ‘threshold’ was met to invoke EA  

Conservative MP Glen Motz told a February 28 hearing of the Special Joint Committee on the Declaration of Emergency that he did not believe for a “second” that the “broader interpretation even existed,” in terms of the legality of the EA’s use. 

“I still believe more strongly today than I did in 2022 that the circumstances to invoke the Emergencies Act were not met,” he said, noting that “The threshold was not met.” 

“I agree with Justice Mosley in his decision that it was in fact illegal and unconstitutional,” he said.  

The EA controversially allowed the government to freeze the bank accounts of protesters, conscript tow truck drivers, and arrest people for participating in assemblies the government deemed illegal.   

Before Mosley’s ruling, an investigation into the use of the EA, as per Canadian law, was launched by Trudeau. The investigation, titled the Public Order Emergency Commission, was headed by Liberal-leaning Judge Paul Rouleau. Unsurprisingly, the commission exonerated Trudeau’s use of the EA.   

During the clear-out of protesters after the EA was put in place, one protester, an elderly lady, was trampled by a police horse, and one conservative female reporter was beaten by police and shot with a tear gas canister.   

Last month, LifeSiteNews reported that Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu uncovered that the federal government of Trudeau spent $2.2 million in taxpayer money in a failed attempt to try and stop court challenges filed against it for enacting the EA to stop the peaceful Freedom Convoy.  

Freedom Convoy leaders Tamara Lich and Chris Barber have been in a ongoing legal battle with federal officials.   

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