In September, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced that the right to make one’s own choices about receiving vaccinations should be added to the Alberta Bill of Rights, stating: “No Albertan should ever be subjected or pressured into accepting a medical treatment without their full consent.”
Some argue that new laws to protect the right to bodily autonomy are redundant because the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms already protects citizens from government abuse.
In theory, the Charter protects bodily autonomy, including the right to make medical choices, under the right to “life, liberty and security of the person.” In theory, the Charter protects the right to decide for oneself, without any coercion or pressure, whether to get injected with a vaccine. In theory, governments must justify “demonstrably” with cogent and persuasive evidence that any health order that violates a Charter right or freedom is reasonable, rational, truly necessary, and bringing about more good than harm. In theory, judges should base their rulings only on the evidence placed before them in court by the parties in a dispute, to the exclusion of media reports. In theory, when judges state that party “A” has presented better and more persuasive evidence than party “B,” judges will explain why and how they came to that conclusion. In theory, when a judge upholds lockdowns or vaccine passports as justified violations of Charter rights and freedoms, the judge will explain why she or he believes that the government’s evidence is better and more persuasive. In theory, Canadians don’t need laws to be changed because the Charter already protects citizens from being forced, pressured, or manipulated into getting injected with a vaccine.
Using the words “in theory” seven times in the paragraph above is necessary, unfortunately. In reality, when Canadians have challenged governments in court over violating Charter rights and freedoms, some judges have upheld lockdowns and mandatory vaccination policies without providing clear reasons—or any reasons—as to why the judge preferred the government’s evidence over the evidence presented by the citizens. In some cases, judges have made assertions in their rulings that are not supported by any evidence at all; these assertions appear to be based only on what the media have stated repeatedly.
If the judge had bothered to look at death statistics from any Canadian province, or any country in the world, he would have understood that children were as likely to die of COVID as they were to die of lightning strikes.
The judge in O.M.S. v. E.J.S. 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. The judge actually asserted in his ruling that no reasonable person would dispute the accuracy of a claim made by a government health authority!
Perhaps he has never heard of all the people damaged by thalidomide, a drug deemed safe and effective by health authorities in the 1950s. Doctors advised pregnant women to take thalidomide, resulting in miscarriages as well as babies dying at birth or shortly after. The babies who were not killed by thalidomide suffered life-long deformities and permanent damage to their limbs, brains, and other organs. All of this happened under the watchful eye of health authorities in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Germany, and other countries. But when the Saskatchewan Health Authority declared a vaccine that was still in clinical trials to be “safe and effective” for children, this judge happily embraced the government’s claim as gospel truth.
In theory, the Charter protects Canadians from being forced, pressured or manipulated into getting injected with a vaccine. In light of recent court rulings that are more media-based than evidence-based, the sad reality is that legislation must be changed expressly to protect citizens from government abuse.
