COVID-19
Randy Hillier wins appeal in Charter challenge to Covid lockdowns
Former Ontario Member of Provincial Parliament Randy Hillier in the Ontario Legislature (Photo credit: The Canadian Press/Chris Young)
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms is pleased that the Ontario Court of Appeal has accepted former Ontario MPP Randy Hillier’s appeal and overturned a lower court ruling that had dismissed his Charter challenge to Ontario’s lockdown regulations. These regulations were in effect during the 2021 Covid lockdowns.
The decision was released by the Ontario Court of Appeal on Monday, April 7, 2025.
In the spring of 2021, Mr. Hillier attended peaceful protests in Kemptville and Cornwall, Ontario. He spoke about the importance of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the harms caused by the province’s lockdown regulations. The government’s health orders made it illegal for even two people to assemble together outdoors: a blatant and unjustified restriction of the Charter section 2(c) freedom of peaceful assembly. Other provinces allowed five or ten or more people to gather together outdoors.
Mr. Hillier has outstanding charges in Kemptville, Cornwall, Peterborough, Belleville, and Smith Falls. Prosecutors in those jurisdictions are waiting to see the results of this Charter challenge. Mr. Hillier has faced similar charges in many other jurisdictions across Ontario, but these have been stayed or withdrawn at the request of the respective prosecutors.
Mr. Hillier defended himself against the tickets that were issued to him for violating lockdown restrictions by arguing that these lockdown regulations were unjustified violations of Charter section 2(c), which protects freedom of peaceful assembly.
Four expert reports were filed to support Mr. Hillier’s case, including the report of Dr. Kevin Bardosh, which extensively reviewed the many ways in which lockdowns harmed Canadians. They showed alarming mental health deterioration during the pandemic among Canadians, including psychological distress, insomnia, depression, fatigue, suicidal ideation, self-harm, anxiety disorders and deteriorating life satisfaction, caused in no small part by prolonged lockdowns. Many peer-reviewed studies show that mental health continued to decline in 2021 compared to 2020. The expert report also provides abundant data about other lockdown harms, including drug overdoses, a rise in obesity, unemployment, and the destruction of small businesses, which were prevented from competing with big-box stores.
Justice Joseph Callaghan dismissed that challenge in a ruling issued November 22, 2023. Notably, Justice Callaghan did not reference any evidence of lockdown harms that Dr. Bardosh had provided to the court. Without reasons, the court declared that Dr. Bardosh is “not a public health expert” and then ignored the abundant evidence of lockdown harms.
Lawyers for Mr. Hillier filed a Notice of Appeal with the Ontario Court of Appeal on December 22, 2023.
Mr. Hillier’s Appeal argued that, among other things, Justice Callaghan erred in applying the Oakes test. As the Notice of Appeal states, Justice Callaghan “fail[ed] to recognize that a complete ban on Charter protected activity is subject to a more onerous test for demonstrable justification at the minimal impairment and proportionality branches of Oakes.”
The Oakes test was developed by the Supreme Court of Canada in the 1986 case R. v. Oakes, as a way to evaluate if an infringement of a Charter right can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. That test has three parts. The first requires that the means be rationally connected to the objective. The second is that it should cause minimal impairment to the right. The third is proportionality, in the sense that the objective of impairing the right must be sufficiently important.
Mr. Hillier’s Appeal focused on the second part of the Oakes test: whether the regulations were minimally impairing of Mr. Hillier’s 2(c) freedom where they effectively banned all peaceful protest.
Justice Centre President John Carpay stated, “It is refreshing to see a court do its job of protecting our Charter freedoms, by holding government to a high standard. There was no science behind Ontario’s total ban on all outdoor protests.”
COVID-19
Court compels RCMP and TD Bank to hand over records related to freezing of peaceful protestor’s bank accounts
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms announces that a judge of the Ontario Court of Justice has ordered the RCMP and TD Bank to produce records relating to the freezing of Mr. Evan Blackman’s bank accounts during the 2022 Freedom Convoy protest.
Mr. Blackman was arrested in downtown Ottawa on February 18, 2022, during the federal government’s unprecedented use of the Emergencies Act. He was charged with mischief and obstruction, but he was acquitted of these charges at trial in October 2023.
However, the Crown appealed Mr. Blackman’s acquittal in 2024, and a new trial is scheduled to begin on August 14, 2025.
Mr. Blackman is seeking the records concerning the freezing of his bank accounts to support an application under the Charter at his upcoming retrial.
His lawyers plan to argue that the freezing of his bank accounts was a serious violation of his rights, and are asking the court to stay the case accordingly.
“The freezing of Mr. Blackman’s bank accounts was an extreme overreach on the part of the police and the federal government,” says constitutional lawyer Chris Fleury.
“These records will hopefully reveal exactly how and why Mr. Blackman’s accounts were frozen,” he says.
Mr. Blackman agreed, saying, “I’m delighted that we will finally get records that may reveal why my bank accounts were frozen.”
This ruling marks a significant step in what is believed to be the first criminal case in Canada involving a proposed Charter application based on the freezing of personal bank accounts under the Emergencies Act.
Chris Carbert (right) and Anthony Olienick, two of the Coutts Four were jailed for over two years for mischief and unlawful possession of a firearm for a dangerous purpose.
From LifeSiteNews
The “Coutts Four” were painted as dangerous terrorists and their arrest was used as justification for the invocation of the Emergencies Act by the Trudeau government, which allowed it to use draconian measures to end both the Coutts blockade and the much larger Freedom Convoy
COVID protestor Chris Carbert has been granted bail pending his appeal after spending over two years in prison.
On June 30, Alberta Court of Appeal Justice Jo-Anne Strekaf ordered the release of Chris Carbert pending his appeal of charges of mischief and weapons offenses stemming from the Coutts border blockade, which protested COVID mandates in 2022.
“[Carbert] has demonstrated that there is no substantial likelihood that he will commit a criminal offence or interfere with the administration of justice if released from detention pending the hearing of his appeals,” Strekaf ruled.
“If the applicant and the Crown are able to agree upon a release plan and draft order to propose to the court, that is to be submitted by July 14,” she continued.
Carbert’s appeal is expected to be heard in September. So far, Carbert has spent over two years in prison, when he was charged with conspiracy to commit murder during the protest in Coutts, which ran parallel to but was not officially affiliated with the Freedom Convoy taking place in Ottawa.
Later, he was acquitted of the conspiracy to commit murder charge but still found guilty of the lesser charges of unlawful possession of a firearm for a dangerous purpose and mischief over $5,000.
In September 2024, Chris Carbert was sentenced to six and a half years for his role in the protest. However, he is not expected to serve his full sentence, as he was issued four years of credit for time already served. Carbert is also prohibited from owning firearms for life and required to provide a DNA sample.
Carbert was arrested alongside Anthony Olienick, Christopher Lysak and Jerry Morin, with the latter two pleading guilty to lesser charges to avoid trial. At the time, the “Coutts Four” were painted as dangerous terrorists and their arrest was used as justification for the invocation of the Emergencies Act by the Trudeau government, which allowed it to use draconian measures to end both the Coutts blockade and the much larger Freedom Convoy occurring thousands of kilometers away in Ottawa.
Under the Emergency Act (EA), the Liberal government froze the bank accounts of Canadians who donated to the Freedom Convoy. Trudeau revoked the EA on February 23 after the protesters had been cleared out. At the time, seven of Canada’s 10 provinces opposed Trudeau’s use of the EA.
Since then, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley ruled that Trudeau was “not justified” in invoking the Emergencies Act, a decision that the federal government is appealing.
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