Emergency measures seen as overreach
OTTAWA • The many emergency laws and regulations introduced to target the COVID-19 pandemic have amounted to the “death of civil liberties by a thousand cuts,” a new report says.
The non-profit Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) on Friday released a lengthy document that reviews emergency measures introduced by federal, provincial and municipal levels of government in recent months, which authorized everything from unlimited spending powers to hefty fines for people who fail to practice social distancing. The organization asserts that those measures amount to a broad overreach of government powers that, left unchecked, threatens to become permanent.
“The pandemic has led to a thousand impositions on civil liberties that might feel minor alone, but which taken together represent an extraordinary change to civil liberties in Canada,” the report said.
Limits to civil liberties include government-led initiatives to curb “misinformation,” mandatory masks or temperature checks in private settings, restricted access to public settings, or even attempts to hinder “drive-in religious services,” the report said.
“Each of these constrain freedoms in what some might consider small ways. But taken together, they indicate a major shift in Canada towards a more designated, circumscribed, and government-ordered way of doing things.”
The study underscores the deep divisions that have surfaced in recent months, as the public grapples with the extent to which government should control public life in the name of safety.
Hefty fines issued by municipal police to people walking their dogs, for example, has been called an unnecessary overreach by some, while others argue that those fines might be seen as part of a broader need for compliance in order to curb the spread of the virus.
The CCLA report does not outright dismiss the need for emergency measures to combat COVID-19, but said the inconsistent and sometimes illogical nature of those policies likely reduced their effectiveness, while also restricting civil liberties.
Bill 10, introduced by Alberta Premier Jason Kenney in response to the pandemic, “allows a single minister to exercise the awesome law-making power of a parliamentary majority for up to 6 months after the end of the emergency,” for example, while Ontario and Quebec “wove a dragnet of social distancing rules” enforced through punitive fines.
But the effectiveness and necessity of those sweeping powers remains unclear, the report said, while blatant policy shortfalls caused a high rate of deaths in seniors’ homes and in some cases a failure to provide safe haven for vulnerable populations.
The study’s conclusion calls on governments to lift emergency restrictions as soon as possible.