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Disciplined Police Officer Asks Court To Reverse Violation Of His Privacy And Freedom Of Expression

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News release from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms announces that Constable Michael Brisco has asked the Ontario Divisional Court in Toronto to review a charge of discreditable conduct for donating $50 to the peaceful Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa in 2022.

Constable Brisco was on unpaid leave due to the Windsor Police Service’s (WPS) vaccine mandate when, on February 8, 2022, he exercised his freedoms of expression and association by donating $50 to the 2022 Freedom Convoy protest via GiveSendGo. He did so privately and without mentioning his capacity as police officer.

Before the donation had reached Freedom Convoy recipients, a court order froze the GiveSendGo account. Shortly after the freeze, GiveSendGo’s website was hacked. Donor information was leaked to the public. On February 16, the Ontario Provincial Police obtained the leaked information and, despite knowing that the information had been illegally hacked, relayed that information to various police services around the province. Nothing in the leaked information identified Constable Brisco as a police officer. However, his name surfaced when the stolen database was cross-referenced with a police members database. He was called in for an interview with a WPS investigator and was required to answer the investigator’s questions about the donation pursuant to the Police Services Act.

The WPS charged Constable Brisco with discreditable conduct and eventually summoned him to a Discipline Hearing. The case against him was motivated by the assumption that he had contributed to an illegal protest. In support of the claim that the protest had been illegal, however, the WPS presented nothing more than the contents of newspaper reports, citing the opinions of the Prime Minister, the Premier of Ontario, and the (then) Ottawa Police Chief.

The prosecution made submissions about the Ambassador Bridge protest, trying to tie it to the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa. Trucks had parked on the bridge between Windsor and Detroit in a separate protest against Covid restrictions. The implication was that Constable Brisco’s donation supported the bridge blockade in Windsor. But there was no financial or even organizational connection between the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa and the Ambassador Bridge protest. Furthermore, Constable Brisco stated his donation was intended for the protest in Ottawa, not for the protest in Windsor. Nevertheless, on March 24, 2023, after a six-day hearing before a Hearing Officer, Brisco was found guilty of discreditable conduct. On May 18, 2023, he was fined the equivalent of two-weeks’ pay.

That decision was appealed on June 14, 2023, but it was upheld by the Ontario Civilian Police Commission in February 2024. In response to this decision, lawyers provided by the Justice Centre have assisted Constable Brisco in applying for a judicial review – a process by which courts make sure that the decisions of administrative bodies (e.g., the Windsor Police Service) are fair, reasonable, and lawful.

With assistance from the Justice Centre, Constable Brisco continues to stand up for his Charter-protected freedom of expression. He made a private political donation and did not identify himself as a police officer. Like other Canadians, police officers enjoy Charter freedoms and can express themselves within reason. Canadians should not be punished for expressing their political views, especially when evidence against them is obtained by unlawful means.

Darren Leung, one of the lawyers for Constable Brisco, stated, “It was unfortunate that private donor information was unlawfully accessed. It is outrageous that the Ontario Provincial Police obtained this information to assist in persecuting police officers who were exercising their right to free expression. The evidence used to convict Constable Brisco amounted to nothing more than opinions from people who did not like the message. We are hopeful that the Divisional Court will see that the entire conviction was unreasonable.”

Constable Brisco, a highly trained and respected police officer of 15 years, is now back on active duty.

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COVID-19

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

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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.

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

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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.

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