Canadian author says COVID restrictions book examines societal shift

Pandemic Panic co-author Christine Van Geyn said her book is about making people think about government overreach on civil liberties during the COVID-19 pandemic. “The byline or the subtitle of the book is How Canadian Government Responses to COVID-19 Changed Civil Liberties Forever, and I don’t think that’s an overstatement,” said Van Geyn at a Tuesday event. When it comes to COVID-19 changing civil liberties, Van Geyn said it was done in two main ways. She said the first way was the invocation of the Emergencies Act. The Emergencies Act is the successor to the War Measures Act, which was abused by previous Canadian governments to intern Japanese Canadians and by former prime minister Pierre Trudeau during the October Crisis. After the abuse of the War Measures Act, the Canadian government decided in the 1980s to make it so it cannot be abused again. It put strict guardrails around it. These guardrails were it could be invoked when the high threshold for a public order emergency exists and cannot be dealt with under any other law in Canada. She said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “did not learn the lessons of his father and invoked this legislation abusively to respond to a non-violent domestic protest in Ottawa.” Since the Canadian government invoked the Emergencies Act, she said the glass on it has been broken forever. She questioned what restraint future governments can act with if that is the first time it has been used. Justin invoked the Emergencies Act to respond to the Freedom Convoy in 2022. READ MORE: UPDATED: Trudeau invokes the Emergencies Act in CanadaJustin said it had become clear there were major challenges for authorities to enforce the law.“Today, to continue building on these efforts, the federal government is ready to use more tools at its disposal to get the situation fully under control,” he said. Van Geyn went on to say the second way civil liberties changed forever was the impact to Canadian culture. She added there was damage done to the culture around civil liberties. She spoke about her friend in Ontario holding a first birthday party for her son during a lockdown. There was a gathering limit in place that restricted outdoor gatherings to 10 people. Since her friend wanted to hold the birthday party, she had five mothers and five babies sit outside in December. She made the mistake of inviting a baby music teacher, putting her over the limit. A neighbour snitched on her. The next day, she had a knock on the door from the police to ask her if she had an illegal gathering and to warn her about the dangers of it. Van Geyn concluded by saying these rules “can be used as a punishment by citizens who want to lash out against others.”“I think there’s this danger that for the rest of our lives, we are at risk of having created this culture where family members snitch on each other and neighbours rat each other out,” she said. “I think that is a huge risk for the next generation of people in Canada and that is why we did dedicate our book to all children who we think are the ones who are going to protect our civil liberties in the future.” Pandemic Panic co-author Joanna Baron said there were many incidents from the COVID-19 pandemic people forgot about. “We know about human memory that we know firsts and we know lasts, but not everything in between,” said Baron. “So you probably remember when you realized the pandemic was going to be a thing like March 11th when the NBA (National Basketball Association) shut down, but you probably don’t remember the details of the seven lockdowns and the different stages.” After Pandemic Panic went to print, Baron realized there were stories she forgot to put in it. For example, she did not include Toronto Police Service officers searching a database of positive COVID-19 tests to see if anyone in their neighbourhood was part of them.