Connect with us
[bsa_pro_ad_space id=12]

COVID-19

Court to hear Charter challenge to $5,000 ArriveCAN ticket

Published

5 minute read

From the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms announces that a Notice of Constitutional Question has been filed in the ticket case of Elim Sly-Hooten. Mr. Sly-Hooten’s lawyers, provided by the Justice Centre, have requested a judicial pre-trial to schedule new times, and to agree on witnesses and procedures needed to make Charter arguments. The matter is scheduled to be heard on March 1, 2024, at 3:00 p.m. ET in Courtroom M4, 950 Burnhamthorpe Road West, Mississauga, Ontario. Mr. Sly-Hooten, who lives in British Columbia, returned to Canada from the Netherlands on July 30, 2022. He landed at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. Once on the ground, he did not use the ArriveCAN app to disclose his Covid vaccination status. It is Mr. Sly-Hooten’s personal belief that this medical information should remain private. While overseas, Mr. Sly-Hooten tested positive for Covid. At Pearson International Airport, he provided Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) agents a certificate of recovery given to him by the Government of the Netherlands, proving he had natural immunity to Covid. Because he did not use the ArriveCAN app to disclose his vaccination status, however, Peel Regional Police and Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) personnel detained him. In custody, under pressure and without counsel, Mr. Sly-Hooten broke down and revealed his vaccination status. He received a $5,000 ticket for violating the Quarantine Act and was ordered to quarantine in his home for 14 days. At issue in the upcoming trial is whether the federal government can demand personal health information from someone just because they are at the border. Also, the relevance of vaccination status is questionable since it has been shown that vaccination does not affect infections or transmission; the vaccinated and unvaccinated transmit Covid at the same rate. Another issue is whether authorities can arbitrarily order people into detention.  In his defense, Mr. Sly-Hooten cites his Charter section 7 right to liberty, his section 8 right to be protected from unreasonable search and seizure, his section 9 right to be free from arbitrary arrest and detention, and his section 10(b) right to counsel after arrest and detention.  Mr. Sly-Hooten’s Notice of Constitutional Question follows the withdrawal of all charges in a similar ticket case.  Scott Bennett received an ArriveCAN ticket for not using the app at the Pearson International Airport around the time Mr. Sly-Hooten received his, on July 12, 2022. Mr. Bennett joined with ten others who had been fined or ordered into quarantine for not using the ArriveCAN app to launch a legal challenge  on August 24, 2022, commenced by lawyers provided by the Justice Centre. They wanted their tickets and detention declared unconstitutional.  On September 30, 2022, a few weeks after the Justice Centre’s lawyers sued the federal government over the mandatory use of this app, the government discontinued the ArriveCAN app. The court then decided that the constitutional challenge, known as Yates v. Attorney General of Canada, was “moot” (no longer relevant). The court would not hear the case based on its view that, since the app had been discontinued, there was nothing for the court to decide. The court disregarded the fact that the government could bring back the policy at any time. The Federal Court upheld that decision on July 19, 2023, though the Court acknowledged that each person ticketed could raise Charter challenges when fighting their fines. In fact, the federal government itself suggested at the first court hearing that the proper place for a constitutional challenge was when individuals contested their tickets. Based on this, Mr. Bennett, with lawyers provided by the Justice Centre, filed a Notice of Constitutional Question in his case. But when his day in court came, on January 16, 2024, the federal government’s witness failed to appear, and the charges against Mr. Bennett were withdrawn.It is possible that Mr. Sly-Hooten’s trial could meet with a similar fate. Chris Fleury, lawyer for Mr. Sly-Hooten, stated, “The requirement for unvaccinated Canadians to lock themselves in their houses for 14 days following international travel was the height of the federal government’s unscientific and irrational response to Covid. By the summer of 2022, it was widely understood that the vaccines did not stop the spread of Covid, even among vaccinated individuals. Mr. Sly-Hooton’s detention in his own house was entirely arbitrary where it provided no public health or other benefit.” 

Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.

Follow Author

COVID-19

Trump DOJ seeks to quash Pfizer whistleblower’s lawsuit over COVID shots

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

The Justice Department attorney did not mention the Trump FDA’s recent admission linking the COVID shots to at least 10 child deaths so far.

The Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) is attempting to dismiss a whistleblower case against Pfizer over its COVID-19 shots, even as the Trump Food & Drug Administration (FDA) is beginning to admit their culpability in children’ s deaths.

As previously covered by LifeSiteNews, in 2021 the BMJ published a report on insider information from a former regional director of the medical research company Ventavia, which Pfizer hired in 2020 to conduct research for the company’s mRNA-based COVID-19 shot.

The regional director, Brook Jackson, sent BMJ “dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings, and emails,” which “revealed a host of poor clinical trial research practices occurring at Ventavia that could impact data integrity and patient safety […] We also discovered that, despite receiving a direct complaint about these problems over a year ago, the FDA did not inspect Ventavia’s trial sites.”

According to the report, Ventavia “falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events reported in Pfizer’s pivotal phase III trial.” Overwhelmed by numerous problems with the trial data, Jackson filed an official complaint with the FDA.

Jackson was fired the same day, and Ventavia later claimed that Jackson did not work on the Pfizer COVID-19 shot trial; but Jackson produced documents proving she had been invited to the Pfizer trial team and given access codes to software relating to the trial. Jackson filed a lawsuit against Pfizer for violating the federal False Claims Act and other regulations in January 2021, which was sealed until February 2022. That case has been ongoing ever since.

Last August, U.S. District Judge Michael Truncale dismissed most of Jackson’s claims with prejudice, meaning they could not be refiled. Jackson challenged the decision, but the Trump DOJ has argued in court to uphold it, Just the News reports, with DOJ attorney Nicole Smith arguing that the case concerns preserving the government’s unfettered power to dismiss whistleblower cases.

The rationale echoes a recurring trend in DOJ strategy that Politico described in May as “preserving executive power and preventing courts from second-guessing agency decisions,” even in cases that involve “backing policies favored by Democrats.”

Jackson’s attorney Warner Mendenhall responded that the administration “really sort of made our case for us” in effectively admitting that DOJ is taking the Fair Claims Act’s “good cause” standard for state intervention to mean “mere desire to dismiss,” which infringes on his client’s “First Amendment right to access the courts, to vindicate what she learned.”

Mendenhall added that in a refiled case, Jackson “may be able to bring a very different case along the same lines, but with the additional information” to prove fraud, whereas rejection would send the message that “if fraud involves government complicity, don’t bother reporting it.”

“The truth is we do not know if we saved lives on balance,” admitted FDA Chief Medical Officer Vinay Prasad in a recent leaked email. “It is horrifying to consider that the U.S. vaccine regulation, including our actions, may have harmed more children than we saved. This requires humility and introspection.”

The COVID shots have been highly controversial ever since the first Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed initiative prepared and released them in a fraction of the time any previous vaccine had ever been developed and tested. As LifeSiteNews has extensively covered, a large body of evidence has steadily accumulated over the past five years indicating that the COVID jabs failed to prevent transmission and, more importantly, carried severe risks of their own.

Ever since, many have intently watched and hotly debated what President Donald Trump would do about the situation upon his return to office. Though he never backed mandates like former President Joe Biden did, for years Trump refused to disavow the shots to the chagrin of his base, seeing Operation Warp Speed as one of his crowning achievements. At the same time, during his latest run he embraced the “Make America Healthy Again” movement and its suspicion of the medical establishment more broadly.

So far, Trump’s second administration has rolled back several recommendations for the shots but not yet pulled them from the market, despite hiring several vocal critics of the COVID establishment and putting the Department of Health & Human Services under the leadership of America’s most prominent anti-vaccine advocate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Most recently, the administration has settled on leaving the current jabs optional but not supporting work to develop successors.

In a July interview, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary asked for patience from those unsatisfied by the administration’s handling of the shots, insisting more time was needed for comprehensive trials to get more definitive data.

Continue Reading

COVID-19

Canadian Health Department funds study to determine effects of COVID lockdowns on children

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

The commissioned study will assess the impact on kids’ mental well-being of COVID lockdowns and ‘remote’ school classes that banned outdoor play and in-person learning.

Canada’s Department of Health has commissioned research to study the impact of outdoor play on kids’ mental well-being in light of COVID lockdowns and “remote” school classes that, for a time, banned outdoor play and in-person learning throughout most of the nation. 

In a notice to consultants titled “Systematic Literature Reviews And Meta Analyses Supporting Two Projects On Children’s Health And Covid-19,” the Department of Health admitted that “Exposure to green space has been consistently associated with protective effects on children’s physical and mental health.”

A final report, which is due in 2026, will provide “Health Canada with a comprehensive assessment of current evidence, identify key knowledge gaps and inform surveillance and policy planning for future pandemics and other public health emergencies.”

Bruce Squires, president of McMaster Children’s Hospital of Hamilton, Ontario, noted in 2022 that “Canada’s children and youth have borne the brunt” of COVID lockdowns.

From about March 2020 to mid-2022, most of Canada was under various COVID-19 mandates and lockdowns, including mask mandates, at the local, provincial, and federal levels. Schools were shut down, parks were closed, and most kids’ sports were cancelled. 

Mandatory facemask polices were common in Canada and all over the world for years during the COVID crisis despite over 170 studies showing they were not effective in stopping the spread of COVID and were, in fact, harmful, especially to children.

In October 2021, then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced unprecedented COVID-19 jab mandates for all federal workers and those in the transportation sector, saying the un-jabbed would no longer be able to travel by air, boat, or train, both domestically and internationally.

As reported by LifeSiteNews, a new report released by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) raised alarm bells over the “harms caused” by COVID-19 lockdowns and injections imposed by various levels of government as well as a rise in unexplained deaths and bloated COVID-19 death statistics.

Indeed, a recent study showed that COVID masking policies left children less able to differentiate people’s emotions behind facial expressions.

Continue Reading

Trending

X