Connect with us
[the_ad id="89560"]

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.” 

Alberta

Red Deer Doctor critical of Alberta’s COVID response to submit report to Danielle Smith this May

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Leading the task force is Dr. Gary Davidson, who was skeptical of mandates at the time.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith will soon be receiving a little-known report she commissioned which tasked an Alberta doctor who was critical of the previous administration’s handling of COVID to look into how accurate the province’s COVID data collection was, as well as the previous administration’s decision-making process and effectiveness. 

As noted in a recent Globe and Mail report, records it obtained show that just less than one month after becoming Premier of Alberta in November of 2022, Smith tasked then-health minister Jason Copping to create the COVID data task force. 

Documents show that the Alberta government under Smith gave the new task force, led by Dr. Gary Davidson – who used to work as an emergency doctor in Red Deer, Alberta – a sweeping mandate to look at whether the “right data” was obtained during COVID as well as to assess the “integrity, validity, reliability and quality of the data/information used to inform pandemic decisions” by members of Alberta Health Services (AHS).  

As reported by LifeSiteNews in 2021, Davidson said during the height of COVID that the hospital capacity crisis in his province was “created,” was not a new phenomenon, and had nothing to do with COVID.

“We have a crisis, and we have a crisis because we have no staff, because our staff quit, because they’re burned out, they’re not burnt out from COVID,” Davidson said at the time. 

Davidson also claimed that the previous United Conservative Party government under former Premier Jason Kenney had been manipulating COVID statistics.  

In comments sent to the media, Smith said that in her view it was a good idea to have a “contrarian perspective” with Davidson looking at “everything that happened with some fresh eyes.” 

“I needed somebody who was going to look at everything that happened with some fresh eyes and maybe with a little bit of a contrarian perspective because we’ve only ever been given one perspective,” she told reporters Tuesday. 

“I left it to [Davidson] to assemble the panel with the guidance that I would like to have a broad range of perspectives.” 

After assuming her role as premier, Smith promptly fired the province’s top doctor, Deena Hinshaw, and the entire AHS board of directors, all of whom oversaw the implementation of COVID mandates. 

Under Kenney, thousands of nurses, doctors, and other healthcare and government workers lost their jobs for choosing to not get the jabs, leading Smith to say – only minutes after being sworn in – that over the past year the “unvaccinated” were the “most discriminated against” group of people in her lifetime. 

As for AHS, it still is promoting the COVID shots, for babies as young as six months old, as recently reported by LifeSiteNews.  

Task force made up of doctors both for and against COVID mandates  

In addition to COVID skeptic Dr. Gary Davidson, the rather secretive COVID task force includes other health professionals who were critical of COVID mandates and health restrictions, including vaccine mandates.  

The task force was given about $2 million to conduct its review, according to The Globe and Mail, and is completely separate from another task force headed by former Canadian MP Preston Manning, who led the Reform Party for years before it merged with another party to form the modern-day Conservative Party of Canada. 

Manning’s task force, known as the Public Health Emergencies Governance Review Panel (PHEGRP), released its findings last year. It recommend that many pro-freedom policies be implemented, such as strengthening personal medical freedoms via legislation so that one does not lose their job for refusing a vaccine, as well as concluding that Albertans’ rights were indeed infringed upon. 

The Smith government task force is run through the Health Quality Council of Alberta (HQCA) which is a provincial agency involved in healthcare research.  

Last March, Davidson was given a project description and terms of reference and was told to have a final report delivered to Alberta’s Health Minister by December of 2023. 

As of now, the task force’s final report won’t be available until May, as per Andrea Smith, press secretary to Health Minister Adriana LaGrange, who noted that the goal of the task force is to look at Alberta’s COVID response compared to other provinces.  

According to the Globe and Mail report, another person working on the task force is anesthetist Blaine Achen, who was part of a group of doctors that legally challenged AHS’s now-rescinded mandatory COVID jab policy for workers. 

Some doctors on the task force, whom the Globe and Mail noted held “more conventional views regarding the pandemic,” left it only after a few meetings. 

In a seeming attempt to prevent another draconian crackdown on civil liberties, the UCP government under Smith has already taken concrete action.

The Smith government late last year passed a new law, Bill 6, or the Public Health Amendment Act, that holds politicians accountable in times of a health crisis by putting sole decision-making on them for health matters instead of unelected medical officers. 

Continue Reading

COVID-19

Inquiry shows Canadian gov’t agencies have spent $10 million on social media ads for COVID jabs

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

One campaign cost $1.5 million alone to encourage children to receive the COVID-19 shots.

A recent Inquiry of Ministry request revealed that Canada’s Public Health Agency (PHAC) along with Health Canada have combined to spend approximately $9.9 million on social media advertising to promote the experimental COVID injections since 2020.

The Inquiry of Ministry information showing the large advertising spending on the COVID shots became known as the result of a request from Conservative Party of Canada MP Ted Falk, who demanded answers about what was being spent by officials to promote the shots.

The information published on April 8 shows that PHAC and Health Canada spent approximately $4.6 million on production costs of ads, with $5.3 million on actual advertising of the COVID shots on social media platforms Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Pinterest from 2020 to 2024.

One mass COVID vaccination advertising campaign titled the “Ripple Effect” cost about $1.8 million alone. PHAC claimed the campaign served to “remind Canadians about the collective vaccination effort required to see a reduction in restrictions and public health measures.”

Other campaigns ranged in spending from $75,000 to $564,000 to promote the shots to young adults.

PHAC also spent $1.5 million on a campaign to promote the COVID shots to parents with kids to try and encourage them to get their kids injected.

It should be noted that PHAC, as per a 2021-22 Departmental Results Report, had tried “diligently to counter false statements and misinformation” to prop up the COVID shots. In 2023, PHAC was looking to hire social media influencers to promote the jab to Canadians who were opposed to taking the shots.

Health Canada previously was found to have spent some $132,000 on social media influencers to promote the COVID shots.

As reported by LifeSiteNews recently, the Trudeau government is still under contract to purchase multiple shipments of COVID shots while at the same time throwing away $1.5 billion worth of expired shots.

Canadians’ decision to refuse the shots also comes as a Statistic Canada report revealed that deaths from COVID-19 and “unspecified causes” rose after the release of the so-called “safe and effective” jabs.

LifeSiteNews has published an extensive amount of research on the dangers of receiving the experimental COVID mRNA jabs, which include heart damage and blood clots.

Continue Reading

Trending

X