Charges laid against an Ontario couple who protested the province’s COVID-19 lockdown measures have been dropped at the request of a Crown prosecutor, according to the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF).
On May 8, 2021, Richard and Valerie Bostock participated in a protest against Ontario’s lockdown measures at the Courthouse Square in Goderich, a town located northwest of Toronto. At the time, the province had announced a third emergency declaration, while a
“stay-at-home” order was in place to prevent citizens from leaving their residence except for limited purposes such as going to the grocery store. Protesting was not among the permissible reasons to leave one’s residence.
According to the JCCF, the Huron County Provincial Police warned the protestors to disperse, but the couple asserted their constitutional freedom of peaceful assembly and refused to leave. They subsequently each received an $880 ticket. The Bostocks were each charged with one count of “failure to comply” with the Reopening Ontario Act, according to their legal counsel Christopher Fleury.
The couple immediately completed the back of the ticket and requested a trial date. But they did not hear anything about their case until more than a year and a half later in January 2023, when they received a notice of trial, with a trial date slated for March 7, 2023.
The couple’s lawyer and the prosecutor reached an agreement for the Bostocks to make a “modest charitable donation” after which, their charges would be withdrawn. The court adjourned the case to June 6 to allow the couple time to make the donation. On June 6, all charges against the Bostocks were withdrawn.
“Had the case proceeded, my clients would have made an issue of the 22-month delay in bringing the case to trial,” Fleury, who is working in partnership with the JCCF, said in
a news release on June 9.
“Delays of this length in the Provincial Offences Court, which normally hears minor traffic tickets, are unacceptable,” he said.
While the limit for delays that would be considered unreasonable is
18 months for cases heard in provincial courts in Canada, Fleury said the court finds that the closure related to COVID-19 was under “exceptional circumstance” and thus doesn’t apply towards that 18-month limit. He added that the courts have found that the “very significant delays” still complied with the Charter.
Under this context, the Bostocks decided to accept the terms for their cases being withdrawn.
“That is really the best possible outcome in a criminal case or a quasi-criminal case,” Fleury told The Epoch Times. “So there really was no better possible outcome regarding the delay.”
Fleury also represented Ontario’s former MPP Randy Hillier, who was charged with breaching public health orders for protesting the provincial lockdown measure in May 2021 in Barrie, Ontario. Charges against Hillier were also dropped earlier this year. JCCF said it has filed a constitutional challenge in the Ontario Superior Court in Toronto, arguing that the province’s stay-at-home order in place in 2021 went against the Canadian Charter. The case will be argued in court on July 27 and July 28. 
