A Quebec judge has ruled in favour of a mother who wants to have her son to receive COVID-19 vaccination without the father’s consent, and has also banned the father from taking the child to participate in COVID-19 protests.
In a ruling dated April 12, Superior Court Justice Nathalie Pelletier sided with the 10-year-old’s mother, who said the father told the child to lie about his age to avoid wearing a mask in public places.
The mother also said the child’s father took him to the February trucker convoy protests in Ottawa, claiming he wanted to instill democratic values in the boy. She was against it and argued that such protests were “dangerous” for children.
For his part, the father said protests against pandemic restrictions aren’t risky for children and he had the right to hold a different view about COVID-19 vaccination.
Pelletier said she found the evidence the father submitted in court in defence of his view about the vaccines not corroborated by health experts. She ruled that getting the shots would be in the boy’s best interest, and also that the father should not take him to participate in COVID-19 protests.
“I could say that my journey was incredibly peaceful, and I had no issues on it whatsoever. Sarah was absolutely fine,” he said.
But the father said he may not have access to his daughter anytime soon. “They didn’t even let me say goodbye to her when they arrested me, nothing,” he said.
Jackson said he hoped to find a “good lawyer who has ethics and believes in God” to represent him.
Vaillancourt called the father a “conspiracy theorist” based on his Facebook posts, and said “the Court has strong reasons to doubt that he respects health measures as he claims to do in his written statement.”
Pazaratz characterized the attempt to base a ruling on COVID-19 policies enacted by all levels of government as trying to make a judgement based on a “moving target.”
“How can you take judicial notice of a moving target? During the past two years of the pandemic, governments around the world—and within Canada—have constantly changed their health directives about what we should or shouldn’t be doing. What works and what doesn’t,” he wrote.
“But how can judges take judicial notice of ‘facts’ where there’s no consensus or consistency?”