WHO health treaty a convenient cover for more government overreach: Bruce Pardy

From the MacDonald Laurier Institute

By Bruce Pardy

The updated regulations will transform the WHO from an advisory body to the directing mind and will of global health.

Last September, the CBC ran a hit piece on Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis after she warned that a new international pandemic treaty could undermine Canadian sovereignty over public health.

Catherine Cullen, the CBC journalist, quoted three academics to debunk Lewis’ claims. It’s nonsense, said Stephen Hoffman of York University. “So far from the truth that it’s actually hard to know where to begin,” said Kelley Lee of Simon Fraser University. It’s fearmongering, said Timothy Caulfield of the University of Alberta, as no treaty can suspend the Canadian Constitution. That last part is correct, but Lewis is right to be concerned. Under the guise of international cooperation, governments are devising a cover to enact even tougher public health restrictions next time a crisis is declared.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is drafting a new pandemic agreement and amendments to the International Health Regulations, which since 2005 have set out countries’ obligations for managing the international spread of disease. Member countries of the World Health Assembly are expected to approve both in May. The agreement would establish governing principles for an international pandemic management regime, and the updated regulations will transform the WHO from an advisory body to the directing mind and will of global health.

Technocrats learned a lot from COVID. Not how to avoid policy mistakes, but how to exercise control. Public authorities discovered that they could tell people what to do. They locked people down, closed their businesses, made them wear masks and herded them to vaccination clinics. In Canada and elsewhere, people endured the most extreme restrictions on civil liberties in peacetime history. If the new proposals are anything to go by, next time may be worse.

Under the new health regulations, the WHO will have the authority to declare public health emergencies. Countries will “undertake to follow WHO’s recommendations.” WHO measures “shall be initiated and completed without delay by all State Parties … (who) shall also take measures to ensure Non-State Actors operating in their respective territories comply with such measures.”

In other words, governments will promise to do as the WHO directs. They will make private citizens and domestic businesses comply too. Lockdowns, quarantine, vaccines, surveillance, travel restrictions and more will be on the table. Under the draft agreement, countries would commit to censoring “false, misleading, misinformation or disinformation.” During COVID, despite governments’ best efforts, dissidents managed to seed doubts about the mainstream pandemic narrative. In the future, things may be different.

WHO officials and proponents of the proposals won’t admit to any of this out loud, of course, and you won’t hear much about these plans in the mainstream press. But the draft proposals, at least the ones released, say so in black and white.

Many national governments will be on board with the plan. That may seem counterintuitive since it appears to diminish their control, but more valuable to them is the cover that WHO directives will provide for their own heavy hands. Officials will be able to justify restrictions by citing international obligations. Binding WHO recommendations leave them no choice, they will say. “The WHO has called for lockdowns, so we must order you to stay in your home. Sorry, but it’s not our call.”

That sounds like a loss of sovereignty, but it is not. Sovereign states have exclusive jurisdiction in their own territory. WHO directives would not be directly enforceable in Canadian courts. But national governments can agree to follow the authority of international organizations. They can craft domestic laws accordingly. That too is an exercise of sovereignty. They can undertake to tie their own hands.

Provinces might decide to go along also. Provinces have jurisdiction over many orders that the WHO might recommend. Lockdowns, vaccine mandates, quarantine orders and other public health restrictions are primarily provincial matters. The feds control air travel, international borders, the military, drug approvals and the federal workforce. The federal government’s power to make treaties cannot oust provincial legislative jurisdiction, but WHO cover for restrictive measures would appeal to provinces as well.

The WHO cannot suspend the Constitution. International norms, however, can influence how courts read constitutional provisions, and the meaning of the Constitution is fluid, as our Supreme Court is fond of insisting. If norms change, so might the court’s interpretation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The WHO’s proposals can’t define Canadian constitutional rights, but they aren’t irrelevant either.

Proponents would deny that the WHO is seizing control or undermining democracy. Technically they are correct. National governments must approve the new international pandemic plan. Without their agreement, the WHO has no power to impose its dictates. And not all countries may be keen on all the details. The WHO proposals call for massive financial and technical transfers to developing countries. But climate change pacts do too, and these were embraced by rich countries, unable to resist the virtue signaling and validation of their own climate boondoggles.

States that sign on to the WHO proposals retain the sovereignty to change their minds, but leaving international regimes can be hellishly difficult. When the United Kingdom belonged to the European Union, it agreed to be subject to EU rules on all manner of things. It remained a sovereign country and could decide to get out from under the EU’s thumb. Brexit threatened to tear the country apart. Having the legal authority to withdraw does not mean that a country is politically able to do so. Or that its elites are willing, even if that’s what its people want.

The WHO proposals prescribe authority without accountability, but they do not eliminate sovereignty. Instead, national governments are in on the game. When your own government aims to manage you, national sovereignty is no protection anyway.

Bruce Pardy is executive director of Rights Probe, professor of law at Queen’s University and senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

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The Persecution of Canada’s “Other” Freedom Convoy Truckers

Published on September 12, 2025

Todayville

While thousands of serious criminal cases across Canada are dropped merely due to delays, many Convoy-related prosecutions on trivial charges continue more than three-and-a-half years later. The cases of Freedom Convoy truckers (left to right) Bern Bueckert, Clayton McAllister and Csaba Vizi (whose Volvo is shown at bottom) are still not fully resolved. (Sources of photos: (top left and right) screenshots from documentary Unacceptable?; (top middle) ThankYouTruckers.Substack; (bottom) Donna Laframboise)

By Donna Laframboise

On September 8, three and a half years after the 2022 Freedom Convoy departed Ottawa, and five long, stressful months after his trial actually ended, Robert Dinel walked out of court a free man.

Dinel, a Quebec heavy equipment operator who’d behaved entirely peacefully during the protest over Covid restrictions, had been charged with mischief and obstruction of police. Court proceedings were repeatedly delayed — four times alone just this year — until judge Matthew Webber of the Ontario Court of Justice finally stayed the charges on the grounds that Dinel’s Charter rights to a timely trial had been violated.

For Dinel, it was a relief. For Canadians concerned about freedom and justice, his legal ordeal was yet another example of a system gone off the rails.

Most Canadians are aware of the trials of convoy leaders Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, which ended in conviction; they are to be sentenced in October. Few may realize that many more protestors were charged, most for the relatively innocuous infraction of mischief, and have had their cases drag on and on through the courts for more than three years.

The record of Canada’s legal system clearly shows that mischief charges are routinely withdrawn before scarce and expensive court time is expended on relative trivialities. But when it comes to the truckers, the Crown attorneys at the Ottawa courthouse – employees of the Government of Ontario, not the federal government – appear to have lost all perspective. They are on a mission. The sheer intensity of the prosecution of Convoy members looks less like the fair administration of justice than revenge upon people who dared protest the arbitrary and oppressive measures of the Covid years.

The initial police crackdown itself was a mess. Those arrested were passed from police officer to police officer. Officials writing up the paperwork had no direct knowledge of what had actually transpired; extra charges appear to have been tacked on willy nilly. In Dinel’s case, the prosecution doesn’t even know the identity of the tactical officer who pointed a gun at his head and hauled him out of his vehicle on February 18, 2022.

In a police processing trailer four hours after his arrest, Dinel received a medical assessment from a paramedic. Seated and hand-cuffed throughout, the five-foot-three Dinel calmly and repeatedly told police he was in no fit state to be making decisions and that he wanted to speak to a lawyer. “I want to know what I’m signing,” he insisted. But the police officers, who outnumbered him ten-to-one, kept pushing him to sign an undertaking that he wouldn’t return to the protest area. The fact he never got his phone call – that he was denied his Charter right “to retain and instruct [legal] counsel without delay” – should have stopped this case in its tracks. The Crown chose to pursue it, anyway.

A week after Dinel’s mother died in July 2023, he suffered the first of four strokes. In December 2023, one occurred in the courtroom. “My whole face just seized up,” he recalls. “I had another stroke. My whole face drooped, then the judge freaked right out.” An ambulance was summoned and his trial was adjourned. “I hate court,” says Dinel. “It’s hard, you know. It’s stressful, it’s exhausting.” Rather than staying the charges on compassionate grounds, the prosecution continued, with Dinel accompanied by a service dog.

Nova Scotia trucker Guy Meister spent hours in the same paddy wagon as Dinel the day they were arrested. After travelling from his Nova Scotia home to Ottawa for court appearances more than a dozen times – at considerable expense – in May of this year Meister was found guilty of mischief, but not of obstructing police. In late July, he was sentenced to 20 hours of community service, six months’ probation, and ordered to pay a $100 victim surcharge.

The trial for Windsor, Ontario trucker Csaba Vizi began just this month, the same day Robert Dinel’s charges were stayed. Video broadcast around the world in February 2022 shows him being assaulted by multiple police officers after he’d exited his truck and knelt down in the snow with his hands behind his head. None of those officers were themselves charged following this violence. None were forced to raise tens of thousands in lawyers’ fees, as Vizi has. Even protesters who have endured the stress of a trial and been acquitted have still not always walked free and clear, because the Crown has often insisted on filing appeals. As a result, defence lawyers routinely advise Freedom Convoy protesters that their legal nightmare isn’t actually over until an additional 30 days have come and gone. In one instance, the Crown waited until the last afternoon of the last permissible day to file its appeal.

These are just a few examples of what’s been going on in Canada’s justice system, one already beset by long delays for cases involving far more serious crimes. Credible news reports suggest that the majority of criminal cases in Ontario aren’t even making it to trial, with sexual assault
charges dropped because of delays. Yet the Convoy prosecutions continue.

Many people insist Covid is over, that we should all move on. But the legal persecution of the truckers who bravely protested government overreach in the bitter winter of early 2022 is far from over.

Donna Laframboise is an independent journalist and photographer. A former vice-president of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, she is the author of Thank You, Truckers! Canada’s Heroes & Those Who Helped Them.

The original, full-length version of this article was recently published in C2C Journal.

COVID-19

Canada’s COVID mandates linked to rise in ‘unexplained deaths’: new report

Published on September 11, 2025

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

The report drew on data from Statistics Canada and essentially concluded that thousands died not from the COVID-19 virus but because of public health rules.

A new report released by one of Canada’s leading constitutional freedom groups has 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.

The report, titled “Post-COVID Canada: The rise in unexpected deaths,” was released September 3 by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF). It found three key findings that arose from various Canadian governments’ handling of COVID.

“The report raises urgent concerns about the accuracy of Covid death reports, the harmful impacts of lockdowns and vaccine mandates, and the ongoing trend of unexplained deaths in Canada,” the JCCF noted.

The report drew on data from Statistics Canada and essentially concluded that thousands of Canadians died not from the COVID-19 virus itself but rather because of public health rules and vaccine mandates put in place.

The first main finding is that so called “unexpected” or “excess” deaths were significantly higher in 2022 after most lockdowns were in place but also at a time when most had had at least one injection of the mRNA COVID jabs.

The report found that there were “14,950 unexpected deaths in 2020, 13,510 unexpected deaths in 2021, and 31,370 unexpected deaths in 2022.”

“Canadians died at an alarming rate between 2020 and 2024. While public health officials and politicians claim that COVID was the cause, the data show that Covid death statistics were inflated and that thousands of Canadians died due to lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and their downstream effects,” the JCCF noted.

The report also found that deaths rose after the rollout of the COVID injections, noting that by the end of 2021, over 80 percent of Canadians were “fully vaccinated for Covid.”

“In 2022, however, Covid deaths increased to an all-time high of 19,906 – a 22 percent increase over 2020 Covid deaths,” the JCCF mentioned.

However, the JCCF observed that when looking at the statistics, in 2020 and 2021, Statistics Canada reported “690 fewer deaths from respiratory and pulmonary disease; 3,270 fewer deaths from respiratory infections and lung disease; 6,100 fewer deaths from vascular and other dementia diseases; and 1,000 fewer deaths from Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and other degenerative diseases of the nervous system.”

“The data is clear: deaths that would otherwise have been attributed to these illnesses were attributed to Covid,” the JCCF stated.

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

The mRNA shots have also been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects in children, and all have connections to cell lines derived from aborted babies.

Deaths linked to COVID lockdowns and ‘unknown’ causes spiked in 2022

In the report, the JCCF observed that when it comes to deaths “linked” to COVID lockdowns, drug overdose, delayed medical procedures, and alcohol-related deaths “increased significantly during lockdowns.”

The data, which Statistics Canada attributed to deaths from “unknown causes” for “Canadians under 45, who passed away in 2022, over 15 percent of these did not have a cause of death.”

JCCF research and education coordinator Benjamin Klassen, who is also the lead author of the report, said, “This report shows that Canadians were seriously misled about Covid and about the safety and effectiveness of government lockdowns and vaccine mandates.”

“Governments not only failed to protect lives but also contributed to thousands of preventable deaths with their freedom-violating policies,” he observed.

Klassen noted that despite government “assurances” that its policies would “save lives,” the reality is that the “data reveals the opposite.”

“Lockdowns, delayed healthcare, and rushed vaccine mandates all appear to have significantly contributed to high numbers of additional and unexpected deaths from causes other than Covid,” he observed.

“Higher death rates in Canada have continued to rise – especially evident among young Canadians.”

Report recommends investigation into COVID jabs and lockdowns

The JCCF report recommends that three steps be urgently taken at once to ensure that transparency and accountability to the public happens.

The first recommendation calls for both Statistics Canada and all levels of government to “provide timely and accurate death data.”

The second recommendation is a call for an investigation into the “harms caused by Covid lockdowns and vaccines.”

“Canadians deserve an independent and transparent inquiry into the short-term and long-term harms caused by government responses to Covid,” the report states.

The third recommendation calls for the protection of “freedom of expression for professionals.”

“Canadian professionals need legislation that prohibits colleges of physicians and surgeons and other professional regulatory bodies from censoring and punishing professionals who express dissenting views on public health issues,” the report says.

It should be noted that, after Premier Danielle Smith took over, the provincial government of Alberta commissioned Dr. Gary Davidson to investigate the previous administration’s handling of COVID-19.

Davidson’s report, which was made public earlier this year, recommended an immediate halt to the experimental jabs for healthy children and teenagers, citing the risks the shots pose.

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.

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 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.