A Pyrrhic Victory

A court challenge to Alberta’s pandemic restrictions was settled this week and the Judge found the restrictions to be invalid.  At first blush this would seem to be a huge victory for Albertans but really it was not.  According to the Judge the only thing that made the restrictions invalid was that the Government Did not announce the restrictions in accordance to the government’s own rules.

Justice Barbara Romaine ruled in favor of the applicants because the Chief Medical Officer of Health (CMOH) delegated her decisions to the cabinet, which she was not authorized to do under Canadian law. The CMOH herself testified at trial that she provided only advice and recommendations to politicians but did not make the decisions herself.

So the problem is that the Premier, Jason Kenney, made the decisions when under the law it should have been the Chief Medical officer Deena Hinshaw.  According to the judge, had the decisions been made by Hinshaw, everything would have been fine since the restrictions did not infringe too much on Albertans lives.

Justice Romaine did conclude that although they violated the rights in section 2 of the Canadian Charter, lockdowns would not have violated the Charter if they had been implemented legally.

“If I am incorrect with respect to whether [the orders were legal], these infringements were amply justified as reasonable limits in a free and democratic society pursuant to section 1 of the Charter,” Romaine wrote.

Think about that statement for a minute.  Restrictions that had no basis in science that did nothing other than increase misery were perfectly fine.  This means that if Albertans were mandated to wear butt plugs during COVID it would have been OK as long as that ridiculous order came from the chief medical officer rather than the premier.  This judge ruled that government can do anything it wants to you, whenever it wants, as long as it is an unelected bureaucrat that issues the order.

With this ruling the judge has verified something I have said many times on this blog.  Canadians do not have rights.  We have a charter of rights that actually enshrines in law that Canadians do not have rights.  The charter allows the government to make all rights subject to legislation which means they are not rights; just privileges the government can take away at any time.

The judge said so much in her ruling.  She openly acknowledged that lockdowns violated section 2 of the charter but that the government had every right to do so.  That is how Canada works, the government has rights but citizens do not.  In the name of public safety, government can override rights even if what they do is nonsensical, which is what lockdowns were.  There was absolutely no reason to believe that lockdowns would work and multiple papers have now documented that they did not work.  Effectively this ruling states that government does not need a valid reason for violating human rights.

In school Canadians learn that the judicial system is an independent arm of government designed to protect citizens.  That is not actually how the system works in Canada. In Canada the courts exist to protect the government.  Even with this ruling, which went against the government, Justice Romaine was protecting the government.  We now have a precedent that you are allowed to challenge the government on procedural matters but no on moral, ethical, or scientific matters. The truth has no place in a Canadian court room as long as the government follows the rules THAT THEY SET FOR THEMSELVES.

The Canadian government has a court ruling that paves the way to climate lockdowns.  There need not be a scientific justification.  As long as the lockdown order emanates from the right desk Canadians will have no recourse.  Canada is broken by design.