CARPAY: Alberta Bill of Rights, several steps forward, one big step backward

Introduced in the Legislature on October 28, Bill 24 improves the Alberta Bill of Rights by recognizing that “the position of the family in a society of free people and free institutions” should be honoured and respected.Another positive addition is its assertion that human rights and fundamental freedoms are of foundational importance “including during times of emergency.” Bill 24 would amend the Alberta Bill of Rights to recognize expressly the individual’s right not to be coerced into receiving medical care, treatment or procedure (including a vaccine). Bill 24 strengthens property rights to include “the right not to be subject to a taking of property except to the extent authorized by law and where just compensation is provided.”Bill 24 adds “the right to acquire, keep and use firearms.” However, this new right is rather vague, and possibly meaningless, because its exercise must be “in accordance with the law.” If a new provincial law unfairly or unreasonably restricts the use of firearms, would this new addition to the Alberta Bill of Rights be helpful to a firearms owner?To stop judges from continuing to ignore the Alberta Bill of Rights (as some judges have done), a new provision declares that “any law of Alberta that is inconsistent with the provisions” of the Alberta Bill of Rights is “to the extent of the inconsistency, of no force or effect.”Sadly, the rights and freedoms recognized by the Alberta Bill of Rights are severely undermined by the addition of a new clause that mirrors Section 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Bill 24 expressly permits government to violate rights and freedoms by claiming that a law or government policy is a “reasonable limit” that can be “demonstrably justified” in a free and democratic Alberta. These same words were used by judges across Canada to uphold lockdowns and mandatory vaccination policies under Section 1 of the Charter. In cases across Canada, governments admitted in court that they were violating Charter rights and freedoms, and judges happily accepted these violations as “reasonable limits” without bothering to take a hard look at the harms that lockdowns were inflicting on people. Why would judges interpret the Alberta Bill of Rights differently than the Charter, when the exact same language about “reasonable limits” would be added by Bill 24?In Alberta Health Services v. Artur Pawlowski, the judge ordered an outspoken pastor to proclaim the government’s narrative about COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccines whenever the pastor addressed these topics in public. The judge ordered the pastor to state, among other things, that “Vaccinations have been shown statistically to save lives and to reduce the severity of COVID-19 symptoms.” When the judge issued this totalitarian order in October 2021, the mRNA vaccine was still in clinical trials, and no long-term safety data was available about the impact of this new technology on people.In O.M.S. v. E.J.S., Harper-appointed judge Michael Megaw ordered a 12-year-old girl to get injected with the COVID vaccine, against her will and against the will of her mother. In September 2021, he declared that COVID posed a “serious and significant” health risk to children, and that he needed no specific proof to support his conclusion. If he had bothered to look at death statistics from Canada or other countries, he would have understood that children were as likely to die of COVID as they were to die of lightning strikes. The judge went on to take “judicial notice” of the “fact” that the COVID vaccine was “safe and effective” for use in both adults and children, because Health Canada and the Saskatchewan Health Authority had said so. This judge asserted that no reasonable person would dispute the accuracy of a claim made by a government health authority! What about thalidomide, a drug deemed safe and effective by health authorities in the 1950s that killed and damaged so many babies across the globe?In Hillier v. Ontario, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice upheld the government’s total ban on all outdoor protests as a justified violation of the Charter freedom of citizens to assemble peacefully. The judge applied Charter section 1 and ruled in favour of the government while completely ignoring a lengthy and comprehensive expert report by medical anthropologist Dr. Kevin Bardosh, that outlined the magnitude of lockdown harms in Canada.These judgments in the Pawlowski, O.M.S. and Hillier cases are representative of how judges abused Section 1 of the Charter to place their stamp of approval on lockdowns and mandatory vaccination policies. In theory, Bill 24 amends the Alberta Bill of Rights so as to protect Albertans from being forced, pressured or manipulated into getting injected with a vaccine, along with other new protections. However, in light of recent court rulings that used Section 1 of the Charter to violate human rights, the new protections that Bill 24 seeks to create may be illusory. John Carpay, B.A., LL.B. is President of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (jccf.ca)

CARPAY: Alberta Bill of Rights, several steps forward, one big step backward

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