Civil liberties watchdog warns restrictions have gone too far
prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s unnecessary invocation of the War Measures Act, the previous incarnation of today’s emergencies legislation,” it continues.
While Trudeau’s son, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, has resisted invoking the updated and renamed federal Emergencies Act, the “CCLA believes that similar overreach is happening now” — especially at the provincial level. “The Alberta government passed Bill 10, which allows a single minister to exercise the awesome law-making power of a parliamentary majority for up to six months after the end of the emergency,” the report says.
“In Ontario and Quebec, the provinces worst hit by COVID-19, governments wove a dragnet of social distancing rules that included a $750 minimum fine for sitting on an empty park bench,” it says.
“A public health pandemic became mischaracterized by governments as a public order crisis, thanks to public anxiety, anger and fear,” the study notes.
“‘C’mon people!’ was the paternalistic crie de coeur of Toronto’s Mayor (John Tory) on behalf of all those filling up the snitch lines with their invective for others presumed to be guilty of one form of ‘COVIDiot’ misbehaviour or another.”
In an introduction to the report, the CCLA’s executive director and general counsel Michael Bryant said “COVID-19 has brought out the best of times and the worst of times, in Canada, when it comes to our civil liberties.”
“It allowed Ontario to decarcerate its provincial prison population by nearly a quarter, after which no crime pandemic followed, demonstrating just how overpopulated our prisons have been,” writes Bryant, a former Ontario attorney general.
“Federalism also allowed health-care workers to innovate in one jurisdiction, then share with another. It allowed a Liberal Deputy Prime Minister (Chrystia Freeland) to publicly declare a Conservative Premier (Doug Ford) as her personal therapist, as they collaborated to fend off one of many diplomatic crises with the United States,” he continues.
“Nevertheless, mixed motives intruded upon some laws, which may have satisfied those seeking stricter isolation measures, but were nevertheless unnecessary and disproportionate in terms of their impact upon our civil liberties.”
Bryant points out that “the need to control the uncontrollable translated into a ticketing pandemic: over-policing, primarily by bylaw officers but also by the Sûreté du Québec and other police forces, contrary to the wisdom of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.”
“An Aurora mom with her baby was ticketed for standing still, alone, for too long, outdoors. The bylaw officer charged her in his vehicle, like a scene from ‘COPS,’ ” he writes, referring to the long-running U.S. reality show cancelled last week in the wake of outrage over the police killing of George Floyd, a Black man, in Minneapolis in May.
“The response to COVID-19 within Canada is more mangrove shrub than maple tree. Many branches, tangled, no trunk to elevate the whole.”
But the report says there was one consistent civil rights concern across the nation: the “catastrophic impact on elderly people in Canadian long-term-care homes,” where four-fifths of COVID-19 deaths have occurred.
“Some government responses to COVID-19 have certainly led to more death in care homes. Governments and decisionmakers across Canada should therefore understand the pandemic as having a discriminatory effect on elderly persons’ civil and human rights,” the report says.
“Moreover, Canadians may reasonably view government failures to respond to the pandemic as discriminatory failures to protect its elderly population. Given other countries’ experiences with COVID, Canadian governments should have anticipated how COVID would devastate care homes and Canada’s elderly people.”
ROBERT BENZIE
Some COVID-19 restrictions could remain in place even after Ontario’s state of emergency is expected to expire on July 15, warns Premier Ford.
Ford, who is seeking an extension to the emergency declaration that began March 17 and was supposed to end June 30, said Thursday that additional measures may be necessary.
“Hopefully this will be the last time,” the premier told reporters at his daily teleconference.
“Any (emergency) orders we take off we can’t put back on, but the ones that are in place can continue moving forward so that’s how that works.”
Under the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act, emergency orders, such as limiting large gatherings and preventing some businesses from opening, can continue after the termination of an emergency declaration. However, those orders cannot be amended in any way.
Ford said the government is reviewing dozens of emergency orders from the past three months to determine what should remain on the books after the state of emergency is over.
According to the Health Protection and Promotion Act, local medical officers of health maintain their considerable powers over openings and closures regardless of whether Ontario is in a state of emergency.