‘No air of reality’: Judge quashes private prosecution of Ford
Independent ‘researcher’ gets blockaded
In between shifts as a call-centre operator, Davoud Tohidy spent “hours” every day researching COVID-19 on the internet.
He came away convinced the pandemic was fake, a conspiracy between Communist China, the Gates Foundation, the World Health Organization and various “criminal” government leaders in Canada and elsewhere, says a recent court ruling.
Then to press home his point, the Ottawa man applied to launch a private prosecution against Ontario Premier Doug Ford for assault and criminal negligence over his support of vaccines and vaccine mandates.
A judge recently rejected the request to file private charges against Ford, dismissing Tohidy’s supporting evidence as lacking “any air of reality.”
But disinformation experts say the case is a striking example of how falsehoods about the pandemic have influenced many Canadians, and bred distrust of science and public-health organizations in the process.
“It’s a powerful anecdote about the sway of both social media and misinformation,” said Timothy Caulfield, a University of Alberta law professor. “I’ve been studying misinformation for years and even I was surprised at the degree to which it’s had an impact in this (COVID) space.”
False reports of the kind Tohidy cited are pervasive — always “one click away,” agreed Ahmed Al-rawi, a Simon Fraser University communications professor. But the case also points to how authorities need to engage such individuals respectfully, to acknowledge that frustration at pandemic restrictions is felt even by the more scientifically oriented, he said.
“We need to take them seriously, not only consider them as ‘the other’ and cancel them,” said the director of Simon Fraser’s Disinformation Project. “Government agencies have to find the right way talk to them .... (Currently) they are talking at them, not with them or to engage them.”
Ford’s office did not respond to a request for comment by deadline.
Tohidy himself refused to answer questions about the case. However, a website for the legal action — illustrated with photographs of the Nazi war-crimes trials in Nuremburg — said he is trying to appeal the decision.
“This is a criminal lawsuit and I have beyond-reasonable-doubt evidence, no matter if Justice (Charles) Hackland has dismissed my lawsuit,” he said in a brief email exchange. “I am not prepared to talk to you as your views are not in line with my views.”
Tohidy applied to a justice of the peace (JP) in December for permission to charge Ford with criminal negligence causing bodily harm and assault, citing the premier’s promotion of the COVID-19 vaccines and introduction of mandates requiring vaccination to enter certain indoor facilities. He also asked for a declaration that the vaccines and mandates are criminal and must be “urgently” ended.
The JP ruled against him, saying there were no reasonable grounds for the prosecution, and Tohidy turned to the Superior Court.
Hackland said the litigant filed a “very large quantity of material” downloaded from the internet, and noted that he spends “hours each day” researching the issues online.
The gist of his evidence is that the pandemic is a vast, malicious conspiracy, COVID shots are poison, not vaccines, PCR tests are actually illegal genetic tests and health-care workers are fraudulently diagnosing people with the virus to support the conspiracy, said the judge. Tohidy also believes people involved in the plot are interfering with billing for his Rogers Internet account, the ruling added.
There are no reasonable grounds to let a private prosecution go forward, said Hackland.
“None of this has any air of reality to a rational person and, more to the point, has nothing at all to do with Premier Ford.”
Caulfield said the kind of COVID-19 disinformation that influenced Tohidy is having a tangible impact. While there are legitimate ethical issues around vaccine mandates and fatigue generally over public-health measures, research indicates that the more people embrace false information about the pandemic, the more likely they are to not believe in vaccines or oppose vaccine mandates. A recently released survey by the Ekos polling company, for instance, found a close correlation between Canadians who accepted statements like “COVID-19 was manufactured in a lab” and were against vaccine mandates.
Even so, it’s generally only people with a particular worldview who are drawn to such material, Al-rawi said.
“We cannot say that this kind of information ... would brainwash masses of the public,” said the Simon Fraser professor. “They can influence some segments of the public based on their willingness to believe in these ideas.”
Tohidy also has a website dedicated to “chemtrails,” a conspiracy theory that the contrails left by airliners are not made up mostly of water, but of chemicals designed to harm people on the ground.