Canadians Were ‘Persuaded to Fear COVID-19 Too Much’: Constitutional Rights Group

A near-empty Rene-Levesque Boulevard seen under Quebec's COVID-19 lockdown, in Montreal on Jan. 13, 2021. Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press

Two years have passed since governments first imposed lockdown measures across Canada in mid-March 2020, among other COVID-19 restrictions. The measures continued on an off over the two years, which is a deviation from the initial order of “two weeks to flatten the curve” and calls for an apology from officials, a constitutional rights group says.

On March 15, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedom released a new report, titled “Two weeks to flatten the curve, two years to flatten our freedoms,” in which it said public health policies that were imposed and reimposed repeatedly have brought widespread economic, physical, and psychological damage upon Canadians.

“For sheer national impact, the single most devastating bait-and-switch was selling lockdowns to Canadians on the basis of two weeks to flatten the curve, then continuing with them for nearly two years to reach the goal of total eradication of the virus,” the Justice Centre said.

“Two weeks turned into two years as federal, provincial, and municipal governments violated the Charter freedoms of Canadians to move, travel, associate, assemble, worship, express themselves, and exercise control over their own bodies.”

The group concluded that Canadians “have been persuaded to fear COVID too much,” and have thus “endured a two-year national trauma of human rights violations.”

That fear started out with the government’s embrace of what the Justice Centre said turned out to be “an irresponsibly alarmist prediction” from a study led by Imperial College London epidemiologist Dr. Neil Ferguson. Based on its modelling, more than 326,000 Canadians would die of COVID-19 in a few months unless the government implemented a combined suppression that includes the “social distancing of the entire population,” or what came to be known as lockdowns.

The report said that prediction was soon proven to be grossly exaggerated, as Canada had registered only 103,918 COVID-19 cases and 8,566 COVID deaths as of June 30, 2020.

“Yet, inexplicably, when the theorised problem of ‘runaway’ COVID had been revealed to be flawed, the proposed flawed solution was retained and rebranded,” the group said.

“The justification for massive economy-killing government intervention, and the shredding of the fabric of civil society, would no longer be ‘flattening the curve.’ It was the total elimination of COVID.”

The report said the government’s constantly changing narratives and public health objectives led Canadians to become doubtful and cynical. It also noted that the federal and provincial governments failed to justify their many infringements of Canadians’ Charter freedoms through their confused and arbitrary approach.

“We were all stripped of our Charter rights to travel, assemble, worship, and exercise control over our own bodies, in order to combat a virus whose most severe effects were felt by a single demographic: elderly and infirm Canadians. Governments have yet to provide persuasive evidence that lockdowns spared the lives of those belonging to this vulnerable minority,” the group said.

“We were encouraged to report our friends and neighbours, if we suspected they might be in breach of public health regulations. Friends and families quarrelled bitterly over masks and vaccinations.”

“We were taught to fear and even hate each other.”

The Justice Centre called for change as the country marks the second year since these measures were imposed, listing their recommendations in the report:

1) Promoting true scientific discourse without censorship. Rationality must replace fear.

2) A return to the parliamentary process and a rejection of “emergency” authoritarian powers. Violations of Charter rights and freedoms by the arbitrary will of government officials and un-elected health official must never again be allowed to happen.

3) Lockdown strategies are unjust and don’t work. All governments should repudiate them. Never again.

4) Personal agency over one’s own body is a core Canadian value. Vaccine mandates must be repudiated.

5) Health policy in Canada be adjusted to “living with the virus.”

6) Infrastructures of compulsion, in particular that needed to support so-called vaccine passports, be dismantled.

7) The federal government apologize for demonizing dissent and promoting disunity among Canadians.