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COVID-19

Randy Hillier wins appeal in Charter challenge to Covid lockdowns

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Former Ontario Member of Provincial Parliament Randy Hillier in the Ontario Legislature (Photo credit: The Canadian Press/Chris Young)

Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms

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 Hillier has faced similar charges in many other jurisdictions across Ontario, but these have been stayed or withdrawn at the request of the respective prosecutors.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.”

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COVID-19

COVID virus, vaccines are driving explosion in cancer, billionaire scientist tells Tucker Carlson

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From LifeSiteNews

By Emily Mangiaracina

The spike protein from the COVID virus and shots cause persistent inflammation, which in turn suppresses the immune system, according to the accomplished Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong.

A billionaire scientist and cancer drug inventor told Tucker Carlson that the COVID virus and mRNA “vaccine” are driving an explosion in cancer among the young and old alike.

Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a transplant surgeon and owner of the Los Angeles Times, recently broke down in an interview how the COVID spike protein, persisting in people’s bodies both from the virus and the mRNA shots, is contributing to unprecedented cancer diagnoses.

Soon-Shiong likened the disturbing rise in atypical, aggressive cancer cases to a “non-infectious pandemic,” now claiming the lives of young people afflicted with cancers highly unusual for their age. He cited the fatal post-COVID case of a 13-year-old boy he had seen with pancreatic cancer usually found in people at least 45 to 50 years old.

He told Carlson how these cases were concerning him so much that he called a doctor friend whose experience mirrored his own. Soon-Shiong recounted how his friend told him, “Patrick, I’m now seeing an eight-year-old, a 10-year-old and 11-year-old with colon cancer … We’re seeing now 30-year-old, 40-year-old ladies, young ladies with ovarian cancer.”

Soon-Shiong explained that the challenge presented by cancer can be distilled into the question of how we can increase or activate the cancer killer cells and decrease or deactivate the cells that suppress the killer cells, which he called suppressor cells.

According to the doctor, what knocks these cells “out of equilibrium” is essentially inflammation.

A mechanism by which inflammation can help contribute to cancer is by flipping infection-killing neutrophils into suppressor cells, when the inflammation is “persistent,” according to Soon-Shiong.

Worse, after 50 years of scientific research and practice, he believes that “everything we’re doing” to address cancer “is tipping the scales towards the suppressor cells.”

To give context to the potential impact of COVID and its “vaccine,” he pointed out that there are cancer-causing viruses, called oncogenic, which persist in the body, thereby creating ongoing inflammation. COVID itself, as well as the mRNA shots created in response to the virus, both produce inflammatory spike proteins, he noted, which attach to blood vessels with ACE-2 receptors, found all throughout the body.

“So is it by coincidence that post COVID infection, post COVID vaccine, we’re seeing all these events where we know the spike protein goes? I don’t think so. I think it’s not a coincidence,” Soon-Shiong said. “So the question is, can we prove, is what I call long COVID virus persisting?”

“And the group at University of California, San Francisco, has now definitively proven that and published that in papers like Nature,” the doctor noted.

He said there is also published research showing that the persistence of the virus, which is likely the reason for “long COVID” symptoms, suppresses natural cancer-killer cells, making them “go to sleep.”

“And that’s why I sort of abandoned everything just to focus on how do we clear the virus, because the answer is to clear the virus from the body, the answer is to stop the inflammation,” Soon-Shiong said.

He has found that the virus persists in the body at least three to four years, and told Carlson he believes it cannot be cleared from a body that is immunosuppressed.

This accords with a Harvard study pointed to by the prolific internist and cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough, which shows that those suffering from long COVID likely have spike protein from the virus circulating in their bloodstream.

However, according to medical freedom champion Dr. Mark Trozzi and other doctors, there are simple ways people can clear their body of the COVID virus (or shot’s) spike protein, to which Soon-Shiong himself attributes the illness caused by the virus.

Trozzi has shared three methods by which one can help clear out the spike protein and minimize its effects: Accelerating the process of autophagy through intermittent fasting; ingesting Nattokinase, which “digests” the spike protein; and taking substances that block the uptake of the spike protein, such as ivermectin and quercetin.

Soon-Shiong believes the only way to clear the body of the virus itself is to have a “T cell, natural killer (NK) cells,” (a type of T cell), which are white blood cells which kill cancer cells. He attributed the fact that he himself did not suffer from a COVID infection to the manipulation of his own immune system, through what he calls a “bioshield.”

What the bioshield does is “educate your body to have these T cells, called memory T cells, that go and hide in the bone marrow and come out when they need it and kill that cell,” Soon-Shiong said. He told Carlson it was approved for public use in the U.S. in 2024 for bladder cancer.

Asked how we can strengthen our immune system for disease in general, Soon-Shiong said we should seek to “activate” the natural killer cell. This immune cell can be replenished with sleep and exposure to sunlight and can be preserved by avoiding food that has an immunosuppressive effect. This means sticking to natural foods and avoiding processed foods with toxins, such as red dye, according to the doctor.

During his interview with Carlson, Soon-Shiong also discussed how his proposed interventions for COVID were shut down by the FDA, the efforts to find “dirt” on him to prevent him from becoming the head of the NIH, his thoughts on Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the healthcare establishment’s conflicts of interest, and why he decided to buy the Los Angeles Times.

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Freedom Convoy

A Miscarriage of Justice

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From Police On Guard For Thee

Tamara Lich and Chris Barber have finally reached the end of what became the longest mischief trial in Canadian history, with a total of 45 days in court spanning 31 months.
Both Tamara and Chris had received several charges resulting from their participation and leadership with the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa early in
2022. Their charges included counseling to commit mischief, intimidation, obstructing police, and disobeying a court order (this last charge was applied to Chris only).
Both were released on bail with conditions. One bail condition stated that Tamara was not to be in the company of specific individuals without her lawyer present. At an award ceremony honouring Tamara, she was photographed with one of these individuals – Tom Marazzo – while members of her legal team remained nearby. Justice of the Peace Paul Harris determined this to be a breach of her bail conditions and issued a warrant for her arrest.
Tamara Lich, a grandmother with no prior criminal record, was arrested in Alberta and held for 6 days before being returned to Ontario where she was again held while awaiting trial; she spent a total of 48 days incarcerated while violent criminals were being released with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
Justice Goodman later released Tamara on a $37k bond stating that Harris had made “erroneous” conclusions and “misapprehended” the evidence against Lich when deciding she broke her bail conditions.
During the trial the Crown insisted that, as organizers of the Freedom Convoy, Tamara and Chris used unlawful means to pursue their goals. The Crown claimed that their actions caused significant interference with the lawful use and enjoyment of property, that they intentionally intimidated residents and obstructed police efforts (even though organizers were in direct contact and in regular meetings with police).
Their defence team countered, stating both were engaged in a lawful and constitutionally protected peaceful protest (as determined in the first injunction with respect to the horn honking). Defence argued that it is unreasonable to believe that Tamara and Chris could have controlled the actions of all who arrived in Ottawa (not just those who followed them there directly).
The defence further asserted that the message from both defendants had been consistent in its promotion of the peaceful nature of the protest; their goal had been expressed clearly throughout the duration of the Convoy.
Justice Heather Perkins-McVey, of the Ontario Court of Justice, presided over their case. In her view, the key issues included whether either Tamara or Chris (a) blocked or obstructed a highway; (b) interfered with the lawful use, operation or enjoyment of property; (c) obstructed police; or (d) counseled anyone to commit mischief, intimidation, or obstruction of justice. One final key issue for Chris alone – whether he counselled anyone to honk their horns in contravention of an interlocutory injunction.
In considering these key issues, Justice Perkins-McVey determined that the Freedom Convoy did in fact cause significant disruptions and interfere with the lawful use of property. (It should be noted here that most businesses were already shut down due to the mandates and those that remained open were inundated with fear mongering over the coming Freedom Convoy, with ‘suggestions’ that they too should close their doors).
The court further determined that both Tamara and Chris were aware of the impact their actions were having on residents and businesses in the area. She pointed to evidence showing that Chris was aware that police wanted the trucks gone, and that he had responded by stating they were staying until the mandates came down. She noted that both Tamara and Chris continued to encourage more people to join them, and finally, that Chris (through a TikTok video) had encouraged participants to “grab that horn switch and don’t let go” if police approached their trucks.
With these facts in mind, Justice Perkins-McVey found both Tamara and Chris not guilty of intimidation, counselling to commit intimidation, obstructing police, and counselling to commit the offence of obstructing justice. The charges for counselling to commit mischief were stayed on the recommendations of the Crown.
On the count of mischief, both Tamara and Chris were found guilty. Justice Perkins-McVey believed their actions contributed to the obstruction of the lawful use and enjoyment of property in the areas affected by the Convoy.
On the final charge against Chris, for disobeying a court order, she found his TikTok video to be sufficient evidence showing Chris deliberately encouraged others to disobey the court order prohibiting the use of air horns.
In summary, Tamara Lich was acquitted of four out of six charges with a fifth stayed, leaving only a single conviction of mischief. Chris Barber was acquitted of four out of seven charges with a fifth charge stayed, leaving Chris with a guilty verdict for the charges of mischief and of disobeying a Court Order.
In policing circles, mischief is not considered a serious offence. It is virtually unheard of to receive jail time, except in the most egregious of cases, yet the Crown is seeking up to 10 years for both Tamara and Chris – an utterly ridiculous and excessive request.
Sentencing for both is expected later this month, with a tentative date of April 16th.
While this incredibly long and involved mischief case was taking up valuable court resources, at an estimated cost to taxpayers of $5 to $10 Million dollars, Crown prosecutors in Ontario had tossed out many cases involving sexual assault and other violent crimes, citing the continued issue of insufficient court resources.
“There seems to be a glaring double standard in prosecutions in Canada.”
This quote is from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) where President John Carpay confirms what many of us have long suspected.
Mr. Carpay explains, referencing the fact that 86 sexual assault cases have been tossed out in Ontario since 2016 due to court delays and insufficient court resources stating, “Crown prosecutors in Ontario claim that they do not have enough resources to prosecute people accused of sexual assault and other serious crimes….Yet the Crown has devoted massive amounts of its limited time and energy to prosecuting peaceful protesters who exercised their fundamental Charter freedoms.”
Mr. Carpay highlights the obvious double standard, stating that had Chris and Tamara been leading a protest against racism, transphobia or climate change, they would not have been subjected to a 45-day trial spanning 31 months.
He also made a point we can all agree with; “it appears that the charges against Chris Barber and Tamara Lich were laid for political reasons.”
The Freedom Convoy began as a simple protest against Covid-19 vaccine mandates for cross-border truck drivers. Soon, thousands of Canadians found their voices alongside the truckers, tired of being treated as second-class citizens for a decision that they felt was personal and not one for the government to dictate. Denied the right to visit ailing loved ones, to work, travel, play or attend sports or just eat out; everyone affected was justifiably fed up and eager to join the truckers in voicing their frustration with these overreaching mandates.
Thousands of Canadians descended on the parliament buildings in Ottawa in hopes that the Prime Minister would listen to their concerns and negotiate. Instead, Trudeau turned his back and hid in his cottage, refusing to even speak to Convoy organizers.
That was a significant turning point for the Freedom Convoy. Until then people had hope, believing that the largest protest in Canadian history could sway our political leaders. Once Trudeau walked away, that hope turned to sheer determination, to hold the line until he relented and listened to the people. Instead, he insulted every one of us and spewed lies about both the cause and the atmosphere of the Convoy, trying desperately to turn Canadians against us.
Trudeau then decided to illegally invoke the Emergencies Act on February 14, 2022, to allow the use of violence to suppress convey participants.
A media release from The Democracy Fund (TDF) states, “The ruling ignites fierce debate over the boundaries of peaceful protest and the growing criminalization of political dissent in Canada. The verdict, delivered after 45 days of trial proceedings concluding on September 13, 2024, marks a significant moment in the legal treatment of protest-related cases, potentially deterring Canadians from exercising their rights to free expression and assembly out of fear of severe legal repercussions.”
Mark Joseph, Director of Litigation for TDF described the trial as a critical test of Canadians’ right to peaceful assembly. “This ruling is a bittersweet moment – while Tamara Lich’s acquittal on several charges affirms the centrality of free expression, the mischief conviction could be interpreted as punishing some participants for the actions of others,” “We remain committed to challenging any erosion of Canadians’ rights to protest.”
A post from Kiernan Green of The Hub, quoting directly from Statistics Canada, shows the incredible increase in violent crime in Canada to be over 130% from 2013, yet our government has chosen to go soft on these violent crimes while targeting peaceful citizens who dared speak out against the decisions of our political leaders.
In a social media post from Right Blend (@rightblend ) he states, “The authorities have spent an unbelievable amount of resources prosecuting Chris and Tamara to the end of the Earth because they had the audacity to stand up against the most oppressive restrictions on Canadian rights and liberties in generations. How many violent criminals were let off the hook because the court was spending precious resources on this and other Freedom Convoy cases?”
“Thank God for the Freedom Convoy. No matter what happens today, they already won.”
We couldn’t agree more.
The Freedom Convoy represented the combined voices of tens of thousands of Canadians who were beaten down by those trusted to protect us all. While it has become tragically clear that our government wishes to pick favourites, reducing the rest of us to destitution, both in freedoms and in spirit, we will always have the strength that the convoy instilled in us all. The knowledge that we are many and we are strong; that there are still Canadians who value what we used to stand for as a society – family values, freedoms and opportunity. We showed the world that our peaceful nature has a deeply imbedded determination.
We applaud both Tamara and Chris for their strength and determination. We respect their commitment to everything the Freedom Convoy stood for and for remaining true under the incredible pressures piled on them in the past few years and are proud to call them friends.
Regardless of the outcome, we offer our respect and gratitude to them both.
The Freedom Convoy will be remembered and celebrated for generations. To all who participated and supported this incredible event – Thank you.
To read the court decision, click the link; https://www.jccf.ca/…/2025-04-03-R.-v-Lich-and-Barber…
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