CHURCHES TO GET HELP
Group will aid in legal fight
A legal advocacy group has stepped up to help several local religious leaders fight charges of allegedly contravening the Reopening Ontario Act during the current pandemic lockdown.
Harvest Bible Church Windsor's Rev. Aaron Rock is facing charges in relation to a city gathering on Dec. 19. And four unidentified men face charges following services at Old Colony Mennonite Church and Word of Life Mennonite community locations in Leamington and Wheatley in late December.
Chatham-kent police said 100 unmasked people gathered on two consecutive days, while Essex County OPP wouldn't release details related to the other charges.
Lisa Bildy, a staff lawyer for the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, an organization dedicated to defending the constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of Canadians, said governments “haven't really paid very much attention to the charter of rights” when imposing various measures.
“By defending people who have been charged for exercising those freedoms, we'll have an opportunity to put the government to a test that they are required to meet when infringing Canadian's rights,” Bildy said.
“That hasn't happened in a court of law in Ontario yet. By defending these charges, we can ensure that that happens.”
Bildy said the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns have resulted in a “deluge of cases and inquiries” from across the country over the last 10 months.
The centre is defending Woodstock Pastor Rene Mcintyre of the Trumpet of Truth Church, who was served with a summons after a service on Dec. 27, as well as six church elders and pastors of Trinity Bible Church near Waterloo who were simultaneously served at their homes on Dec. 30 with summonses to appear in provincial offences court in January.
The centre is also representing Alymer Church of God's pastor Henry Hildebrandt and his son Herbert Hildebrandt in defending charges that were laid against them for attending peaceful protests against lockdown measures in November.
“We're taking a bunch of these on to make sure that these folks that are charged are getting the constitutional question properly put before the court,” she said.
In a news statement, the Justice Centre said the Reopening Ontario Act, like all laws in this country, must comply with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees citizens that the government will not infringe their freedoms of peaceful assembly and religion, among other fundamental freedoms.
The onus is on government, not citizens, to show that the violation of Charter freedoms is “demonstrably justified.”
Where there is a pressing and substantial concern, such as a declared public health emergency, the statement went on to say that reasonable restrictions may be imposed, but governments are required to violate charter rights and freedoms as little as possible, only to the extent necessary to protect public health. Bildy said churches have been restricted to 10 people indoors but some have a capacity for upwards of 1,500 — similar to big box stores where “you can have a couple hundred people in at a time.
“I don't know that there's evidence to say that (churches) haven't been holding (services) safely,” she said. “For the last number of months, most churches have been operating at the 30 per cent capacity and I don't believe there's any significant, I don't believe that there's any evidence, that there have been outbreaks tied to the churches to any great degree.
“Most of these churches have been incorporating safety measures in the same way that other businesses or stores or whatever have been.”
Bildy said churches seem to be “always singled out to be shut down ( because) they are not essential.
“It's been 10 months. How long do we expect people to not gather in their worship communities, which is fundamental to most of these people, without any sort of accommodation or understanding that this is a real hardship to people.
“And it is something that they have a constitutional right to do,” she said. “So the government has to show that its actions are balancing the harms and balancing those consequences with what they are trying to achieve.”
Bildy said the Crown is expected to make disclosure in the first of the local cases to go before court on Jan. 27 but it will probably be several months before the cases are tried.
I don't believe that there's any evidence, that there have been outbreaks tied to the churches to any great degree.