Original Challengers to Travel Vaccine Mandate File New Lawsuit for Damages After Court Defeats

An Air Canada flight departing for Toronto taxis to a runway as a WestJet flight bound for Palm Springs takes off, at Vancouver International Airport in Richmond, B.C., in a file photo. The Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck

The two businessmen who first challenged the federal government in court over its travel vaccine mandate have filed a new lawsuit seeking damages after receiving two unfavourable rulings.

Shaun Rickard and Karl Harrison filed their new statement of claim in federal court on Nov. 29 against the minister of transport and the attorney general.

This new lawsuit follows a defeat in the Federal Court of Appeals on Nov. 9. The court upheld the ruling of a lower court saying their initial case is moot.

Four different parties, including Mr. Rickard and Mr. Harrison, sought to overturn a ruling made by Justice Jocelyne Gagné in October last year.

Justice Gagné said that because the Liberal government had suspended the vaccine mandates in June 2022, there is no controversy to adjudicate and the challengers have already received the remedy sought.

In a post on the X platform, Mr. Rickard said they have decided to take a new path and sue the government for damages, which they had not done the first time around.

“Right from the get go it was never our intention to seek financial compensation, we didn’t want to appear to be looking to make any monetary gains from our lawsuit,” he said.

“It was always solely about ensuring that the Canadian government could never implement or invoke such tyrannical and unconstitutional mandates on Canadian citizens ever again.”

Mr. Rickard says the new lawsuit is being filed to ensure that the extensive evidence collected during the proceedings for the first case doesn’t go to waste. Around 13,000 pages of records were collected, from expert reports to testimonies from the architects of the travel mandate policy.

These records indicate that the Transport Canada official in charge of crafting the travel mandate policy had not considered whether it was ethical to implement it. There was also no recommendation of public health authorities to impose a mandate, said the official during cross-examination.

The government nevertheless wanted to be a world leader with the stringency of its mandate, which had for purpose of being a “catalyst” to drive vaccine uptake.

$1 Million in Damages

Mr. Harrison and Mr. Rickard in their new action are claiming constitutional damages in the amount of $1,000,000 for the violation of their charter rights.

The statement says the damages were incurred “as a result of government decision-making and actions that were rooted in negligence, bad faith and that were willfully blind as to the lack of scientific evidence and/or disconfirming scientific evidence regarding the efficacy, safety and role of Covid-19 vaccination in the transportation sector.”

The plaintiffs claim that due to the vaccine mandates put in place by the Liberal government in October 2021, they were identified as belonging to a “new, segregated class” of unvaccinated people who could not travel by plane or train.

As a result, the claim states the plaintiffs could not visit their parents in the U.K. who are in poor health, or conduct business activities.

The claim alleges that the vaccine mandates were political, given they were part of the Liberal Party’s political platform, and that they lacked data about the effectiveness of a mandate in the transportation sector.

Evidence obtained during the first lawsuit showed the government had little to no data indicating vaccination increased protection against in-flight transmission of the virus.

The lawsuit also alleges that the defendants were “aware that the Covid-19 vaccines presented possible health/safety risks to Canadians but continued to publicly promote these vaccines as ‘safe’ and ‘effective’ notwithstanding scientific evidence to the contrary which was ignored and not communicated to Canadians.”

The Liberal government suspended its vaccine mandates on June 20, 2022.

Then-transport minister Omar Alghabra said at the time that the “mandatory vaccination requirement successfully mitigated the full impact of COVID-19 for travellers and workers in the transportation sector and provided broader protection to our communities.”

Then-health minister Jean-Yves Duclos said for his part that the science is “perfectly clear on one thing: vaccination remains the single most effective way to protect ourselves, our families, our communities, and our economy against COVID-19.”

Government data and real-world experience show the vaccine mandate had little impact in stopping the spread, with the Omicron variant wave in late 2021 to early 2022 not discriminating between those who received injections and those who didn’t.

“Vaccine effectiveness against infection, symptomatic disease, and transmission with two doses was initially ~<50 to 60%, but waned over time to near zero after six months,” wrote the Public Health Agency of Canada in a Feb. 28, 2022, document entered as evidence in the first lawsuit.

The first lawsuit included PPC Leader Maxime Bernier and former Newfoundland premier Brian Peckford.

The federal government will file its statement of defence at a later date.

Challengers to the travel vaccine mandate and their lawyers in Ottawa on Oct. 11, 2023. PPC Leader Maxime Bernier is in the centre. To his right is Karl Harrison and to his left Nabil Ben Naoum and Shaun Rickard. Handout/Shaun Rickard