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COVID-19

Liberals determined to reject rule of law after Emergencies Act ruling: Aaron Wudrick

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6 minute read

From the MacDonald Laurier Institute

By Aaron Wudrick

The government comforts itself in the fiction that the rules don’t apply to it

On Tuesday, The Federal Court of Canada released a decision that all Canadians should celebrate as an important victory for the rule of law in Canada.

In an application brought by two public interest law associations — the Canadian Constitution Foundation and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association — the court considered two questions. Whether the Trudeau government acted outside the law in invoking the Emergencies Act in February 2022 to put an end to the Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa, and whether orders issued under the authority of the act violated the Charter. On both counts, the court answered unambiguously: yes, they did.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the court decision authored by Justice Richard Mosley is how straightforward much of the reasoning is. There is no tortured logic, no obscure line of argument, no abstract reasoning; the principles at stake are easily digestible by lawyers and non-lawyers alike. Justice Mosley does exactly what most Canadians probably expect courts to do: consider evidence; read what the law says; and draw conclusions that, for lack of a better phrase, reflect common sense.

Take for example the government’s insistence that the Freedom Convoy constituted a “threat to the security of Canada” — a phrase which is explicitly defined in the Emergencies Act as having the same meaning as it does in Section 2 of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Act. Unfortunately for the government, CSIS’s official determination was that the convoy did not constitute a threat to the security of Canada. This being a very inconvenient obstacle for a government that wanted to invoke the act, Cabinet simply came up with a new strategy: ignore the statutory requirement that the Section 2 CSIS Act definition be met, come up with an alternative definition that better fits their argument, and make the opposite finding! QED.

Understandably, Justice Mosley had none of this. The law says what the law says. Perhaps, as has been argued elsewhere, using the CSIS Act definition of “threat to the security of Canada” is a poor fit for the Emergencies Act. If so, Parliament is well within its rights to amend it. But it’s not what the law said in February 2022, and Cabinet cannot simply wave away the words because it happens to be inconvenient for their best-laid plans.

On issue after issue — the scope of the security threat; the claim that enforcement tools under existing laws being exhausted; the reasonableness of sweeping violations of Charter rights of free expression and against unreasonable search and seizure — Justice Mosley, after looking at all the evidence, disagreed with the government’s assertions. The government’s claims simply did not survive contact with a fulsome evidentiary record.

Nor was the ruling only damning to the government’s flimsy arguments. It was also an implicit rebuke to Justice Paul Rouleau, the head of the Public Order Emergency Commission, who made the unnecessary and ill-advised choice in his final report to muse about the legality of the act’s invocation, in spite of the fact that — by his own admission — it was not part of his mandate to do so, and he had not undertaken a formal analysis.

Perhaps most interesting of all was Justice Mosley’s candid admission towards the end of his decision that he had initially “been leaning to the view that the decision to invoke the (Emergencies Act) was reasonable” and acknowledged that it was only after taking the time to “carefully deliberate about the evidence and submissions” and the applicants’ “informed legal argument” did he conclude — unambiguously — that the government had acted outside the law.

And what of the political fallout? There is a world in which a government might, when confronted with a court ruling that they illegally invoked and abused the most draconian law on the books, simply accept the ruling with humility, apologize unreservedly for having overstepped, and resign on principle.

Clearly, we don’t live in that world: unrepentant as ever, and within an hour of the decision’s release, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland announced that the government would be appealing it. This is completely in character for a government that has time and again sneered at the rule of law — e.g. their ethics violations both big and small, the SNC-Lavalin scandal — preferring to comfort itself with fiction that rules are for other people.

Canadians know better. Governments are obliged to follow the law, just like everyone else — and we owe Justice Mosley a debt of gratitude for the timely reminder of that fact.

Aaron Wudrick is a lawyer and the domestic policy director at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

2025 Federal Election

Conservatives promise to ban firing of Canadian federal workers based on COVID jab status

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

The Conservative platform also vows that the party will oppose mandatory digital ID systems and a central bank digital currency if elected.

Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party’s 2025 election platform includes a promise to “ban” the firing of any federal worker based “solely” on whether or not they chose to get the COVID shots.

On page 23 of the “Canada First – For A Change” plan, which was released on Tuesday, the promise to protect un-jabbed federal workers is mentioned under “Protect Personal Autonomy, Privacy, and Data Security.”

It promises that a Conservative government will “Ban the dismissal of federal workers based solely on COVID vaccine status.”

The Conservative Party also promises to “Oppose any move toward mandatory digital ID systems” as well as “Prohibit the Bank of Canada from developing or implementing a central bank digital currency.”

In October 2021, the Liberal government of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced unprecedented COVID-19 jab mandates for all federal workers and those in the transportation sector. The government also announced that the unjabbed would no longer be able to travel by air, boat, or train, both domestically and internationally.

This policy resulted in thousands losing their jobs or being placed on leave for non-compliance. It also trapped “unvaccinated” Canadians in the country.

COVID jab mandates, which also came from provincial governments with the support of the federal government, split Canadian society. The shots have been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects, such as death, including in children.

Many recent rulings have gone in favor of those who chose not to get the shots and were fired as a result, such as an arbitrator ruling that one of the nation’s leading hospitals in Ontario must compensate 82 healthcare workers terminated after refusing to get the jabs.

Beyond health concerns, many Canadians, especially Catholics, opposed the injections on moral grounds because of their link to fetal cell lines derived from the tissue of aborted babies.

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COVID-19

RFK Jr. Launches Long-Awaited Offensive Against COVID-19 mRNA Shots

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Nicolas Hulscher, MPH's avatar Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

As millions of Americans anxiously await action from the new HHS leadership against the COVID-19 mRNA injectionsinjected into over 9 million children this year—Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has finally gone publicly on the offensive:

Let’s go over each key point made by RFK Jr.:

The recommendation for children was always dubious. It was dubious because kids had almost no risk for COVID-19. Certain kids that had very profound morbidities may have a slight risk. Most kids don’t.

In the largest review to date on myocarditis following SARS-CoV-2 infection vs. COVID-19 vaccination, Mead et al found that vaccine-induced myocarditis is not only significantly more common but also more severe—particularly in children and young males. Our findings make clear that the risks of the shots overwhelmingly outweigh any theoretical benefit:

The OpenSAFELY study included more than 1 million adolescents and children and found that myocarditis was documented ONLY in COVID-19 vaccinated groups and NOT after COVID-19 infection. There were NO COVID-19-related deaths in any group. A&E attendance and unplanned hospitalization were higher after first vaccination compared to unvaccinated groups:

So why are we giving this to tens of millions of kids when the vaccine itself does have profound risk? We’ve seen huge associations of myocarditis and pericarditis with strokes, with other injuries, with neurological injuries.

The two largest COVID-19 vaccine safety studies ever conducted, involving 99 million (Faksova et al) and 85 million people (Raheleh et al), confirm RFK Jr.’s concerns, documenting significantly increased risks of serious adverse events following vaccination, including:

  1. Myocarditis (+510% after second dose)
  2. Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis (+278% after first dose)
  3. Cerebral Venous Sinus Thrombosis (+223% after first dose)
  4. Guillain-Barré Syndrome (+149% after first dose)
  5. Heart Attack (+286% after second dose)
  6. Stroke (+240% after first dose)
  7. Coronary Artery Disease (+244% after second dose)
  8. Cardiac Arrhythmia (+199% after first dose)

And this was clear even in the clinical data that came out of Pfizer. There were actually more deaths. There were about 23% more deaths in the vaccine group than the placebo group. We need to ask questions and we need to consult with parents.

Actually, according to the Pfizer’s clinical trial data, there were 43% more deaths in the vaccine group compared to the placebo group when post-unblinding deaths are included:

We need to give people informed consent, and we shouldn’t be making recommendations that are not good for the population.

Public acknowledgment of the grave harms of COVID-19 vaccines signals that real action is right around the corner. However, we must hope that action is taken for ALL age groups, as no one is spared from their life-reducing effects:

Alessandria et al (n=290,727, age > 10 years): People vaccinated with 2 doses lost 37% of life expectancy compared to the unvaccinated population during follow-up.

Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation

www.mcculloughfnd.org

Please consider following both the McCullough Foundation and my personal account on X (formerly Twitter) for further content.

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