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Monday, July 14, 2025

Quebec government introduces legislation to protect academic freedom

By
Elie Cantin-Nantel
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The Quebec government tabled legislation on Wednesday to protect academic freedom in post-secondary institutions, allowing professors to use potentially offensive language without fear of reprisal.

Bill 32 would require universities to put in place policies that address academic freedom, defined as “the right of every person to engage freely and without doctrinal, ideological or moral constraint in an activity through which the person contributes, in their field of activity, to carrying out the mission of such an educational institution.”

Academic freedom policies mandated in this bill include allowing professors to use any word in an educational context, including slurs and language that some may find questionable. 

The bill would also prohibit universities from requiring professors to issue trigger warnings before addressing sensitive content.

As for infringement of rights guaranteed under the bill, universities will be required to create a council “whose main functions are to oversee the implementation of the policy, examine any complaints about violations of the right to university academic freedom.”

The bill comes in the wake of a Dec. 2021 report by Quebec’s Independent Scientific and Technical Commission on the Recognition of Academic Freedom in the University Environment. The report made five recommendations to the provincial government, including introducing legislation that would define academic freedom and create committees that would deal with disputes related to the issue.  

In a press conference, Quebec’s Minister of Higher Education Danielle McCann stated that “(c)lassrooms are not safe spaces; they are spaces for debate.”

She added that “censorship has no place in our classrooms. It never will, and we need to protect faculty from censorship.”

While cancel culture and woke ideology have been plaguing universities across the Western world, notable Canadian incidents caught the attention of the Quebec government. 

These include a fall 2020 incident at the University of Ottawa, where professor Verushka Lieutenant-Duval was suspended for using the “N-word” while discussing how certain social groups have reclaimed slurs. 

In an email to uOttawa’s student newspaper The Fulcrum, Lieutenant-Duval said she used the word while explaining “queer theory.”

“I clarified that the term ‘Queer’ is an example of ‘subversive resignification,’ that is to say a word which was, first an insult, which has been reappropriated, emptied of its initial meaning and resignified as a powerful marker of identity,” said Lieutenant-Duval.

“I gave two other examples of this subversive resignification: the word ‘cripple’ resignified by Crip theory and the ‘n-word’, resignified by the black community.”

Lieutenant-Duval also claims to have been doxxed by a disgruntled student, who published her phone number and personal email address online.

Quebec politicians were some of the only leaders who stood up for Lieutenant-Duval. Those who took her side include Quebec premier Francois Legault, Bloc Quebecois leader Yves Francois Blachet and Quebec Liberal leader Dominique Anglade, who is herself black.

In a Feb. 2021 Facebook post, Legault took aim at academic censorship and woke leftism, promising to fight back.

“Freedom of expression is one of the pillars of our democracy,” he wrote. “If we compromise on that, we risk having undue censorship spilling out into our political debates and our media.”

Legault noted other incidents, including one where a university faculty member testified to having been harassed for using the words “man” and “woman.” 

A questionnaire sent to Quebec post-secondary faculty in September saw an overwhelming majority (82%) respond that they believed faculty should be allowed to use any word “deemed useful for academic purposes.” The questionnaire also saw 60% of respondents saying they self-censored by avoiding certain words, and 35% saying they self-censored by not teaching certain topics. 

Despite the support of Legault, academics and other officials the proposed bill has received opposition from some, including the Concordia Black Student Union, who called it “a slap in the face.”

“We don’t feel comfortable. Especially when you’re in a predominantly white school or in a predominantly white class, I don’t feel okay with my non-Black professors saying the N-word,” union president Amaria Phillips told CTV News.

However, it should be noted that under this bill, words including the “N-word” would only be permitted when used in an educational context.

Former Parti Québécois cabinet minister Alexandre Cloutier, who presided over the Commission who recommended the legislation, told TVA that there are sanctions in place for those who use the “N-word” to insult.

The bill also makes Quebec a leader in promoting academic freedom amid growing censorship, cancel culture, and woke left-wing policies on North American university and college campuses.

Kenney urges unity as leadership review ballots mailed to UCP members

By
Harrison Faulkner
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As the day arrived for his leadership review to begin, Alberta premier Jason Kenney told his party members that he was the key to keeping the conservative movement in Alberta united.

While speaking at a special general meeting on Saturday, Kenney warned United Conservative Party (UCP) voters that if he was ousted as leader, the UCP would fall apart.

“I truly fear that if we choose the path of division, it will drive a wedge right down the middle of our party for which we may never again recover and there’s only one person who wins from that, and her name is Rachel Notley,” said Kenney.

“Unity requires constant effort — it can never be taken for granted — but division is easy.”

Kenney also acknowledged criticism of his handling of the pandemic and his implementation of strict public health guidelines, which included a number of lockdowns and the use of a vaccine passport system.

“I ask for your forgiveness if there were decisions that we made which you think were wrong or which offended you,” he said.

Recently elected UCP MLA for Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche and a long-time critic of Kenney, Brian Jean, said the premier’s approach to the party has divided the conservative movement. 

“The premier gave a speech that said the choice is between more-of-the-same or Rachel Notley’s NDP — you know someone is losing when they resort to fear,” said Jean.

Mail-in ballots will be sent to approximately 60,000 registered UCP members in the coming days. Ballots will need to be received by May 11th, but results will not be published until a later time. Auditing firm Deloitte will be overseeing the leadership vote.

Kenney will need to get a 50% plus one majority in order to survive the vote. If he doesn’t, a leadership contest will ensue. That new leader will then have approximately one year to prepare for the next election.

While Jean has campaigned openly on removing Kenney, Danielle Smith too has expressed interest in the UCP leadership if Kenney fails the review.

The party received immense criticism after the UCP’s board decided to move the in-person meeting in Red Deer to a mail-in ballot after 15,000 people had already registered to attend – a number more than seven times what the scheduled venue could hold.

Organizer calls Alberta Boot Project a partial win, takes aim at Jason Kenney

By
Harley Sims
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A campaign launched by Alberta healthcare workers last year to show the human toll of the province’s vaccine mandates set up its final display in Red Deer on Saturday, with organizers vowing political action for years.

The Alberta Boot Project began in December after thousands of healthcare workers were forced onto unpaid leave by the province’s vaccine mandate. The project’s organizers collected close to one thousand pairs of boots and shoes – from affected nurses, doctors, paramedics, firefighters and other frontline professionals – and displayed them with signs detailing how long their owners had served.

The project set up displays at the Edmonton legislature and at the Peace Bridge in Calgary, with plans at the time to cross the province.  

With Alberta Health Services (AHS) allowing rapid testing in December and then finally dropping the vaccine mandates in March – at least, for workers already hired – the Alberta Boot Project’s organizers decided last month that it would put on one last display before donating the remaining boots to charity.

The hundreds of pairs of shoes and boots lined the roadside at 127 Poplar Ridge Road in Red Deer on Saturday, with the display followed by a tailgate party nearby.

“We are SO incredibly thankful for each and every one of you, and for the community of likeminded people who have stood together through the ups and downs of the past few chaotic years,” organizers stated on a Facebook post.

Organizer Sierra Rotchford told True North on Friday that around half of those who had donated the approximately 800 pairs of boots had gone back to work but that there was a large number who were either never going back, or who – as employees of contractors to AHS – had been terminated.

Rotchford, an Edmonton paramedic, said she would be returning to work next week. She described her own experiences with the vaccine mandate, where despite ongoing complications from a recent surgery – including major sepsis – she was unable to get a medical exemption.

She said she otherwise had no issues with the vaccine, but believed in people’s right to choose it for themselves.

“I thought okay, no big deal,” she said. “I have a legitimate health condition. I ended up talking to my doctor, who said that they were not allowed to write the medical exemption because being at risk of myocarditis is not an exemption criterion, only having an active case of myocarditis is. So, I ended up not bothering with going through the medical exemption process with AHS because it’s just more work when the doctor is not allowed to approve it.”

Rotchford said she then exhausted herself working double the number of shifts to bank as much money as possible before the vaccination deadline. She said she ended up being put on unpaid leave after her doctor’s note for medical leave was dismissed.

“They thought I was just escaping the mandate,” she told True North. “And so, they delayed the whole process.”

Rotchford said that the experience has awakened her and thousands of healthcare workers who were politically passive beforehand. She said that 15,000 of them would be voting Jason Kenney out as leader of the UCP this weekend and that they would be looking forward to overhauls of the AHS board and making the health unions answerable for not standing up for their members.

Recognizing that the Alberta Boot Project represents one of the very few success stories in the fights against vaccine mandates in Canada, Rotchford urged healthcare workers in other provinces to band together.

“My one piece of advice is to find each other, to connect with like-minded educated people who are willing to show the truth in the most basic form, which is that we as healthcare professionals go into that profession knowing to do no harm, to have compassion and to have no judgment when we’re treating our patients,” she said. “And so, when you steward your profession, and then this happens to you, you steward the truth the same way.”

She warned, however, that there was no going back after a political awakening.

“It’s going to cost you time, and it’s going to change you for the rest of your life,” she said. “I want to go back sometimes and be like, ‘I’m just going to go back to worrying about which detergent is on sale,’ but instead now, it’s like, okay, no.”

“The long-term plan is, get involved.”

Legacy media call Trudeau’s big-spending budget “prudent and responsible”

By
Cosmin Dzsurdzsa
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Despite the legacy media’s campaign to portray the 2022 Liberal budget as modest, comparisons show that it eclipses even Trudeau’s past spending.

The Liberals have projected that they will spend $452.3 billion this year, vastly exceeding pre-pandemic spending in 2019 by $89.4 billion. 

In 2018, the Liberals also projected total spending worth $338 billion – $114 billion less than what they’ve budgeted to spend in 2022. 

Despite these facts, economic pundits and journalists with legacy outlets including the National Post, the Toronto Star and the CBC would have Canadians believe that the Liberals had put forward a fiscally conservative spending plan on Thursday. 

According to the CBC, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland tabled a “lower-spending budget” that cut deficits. 

“To that end, Freeland tabled a relatively thin 280-page budget — 500 fewer pages than last year’s document — that is much more focused on a few key areas than Liberal budgets of the recent past. The budget allocates only $31.2 billion in net new spending over the next five years — a fraction of the sums in recent budgets,” claimed the CBC. 

Thursday’s budget projects that the deficit will reach $52.8 billion, down from the $154 billion estimated last year. However, this doesn’t take into account that in 2019, the actual deficit was $39.4 billion.  The year prior, it was $14 billion. 

In reality, the Liberals announced $56 billion in new spending – not the $31 billion figure Freeland and others have floated. That number takes into account new taxes collected from financial institutions. 

The Toronto Star’s Tonda MacCharles called it the “most conservative budget” tabled by the Trudeau Liberals to date. 

“The 2022 federal budget is perhaps the most conservative one the Trudeau Liberals have ever produced, and yet it will survive with the support of New Democrats despite drawing outrage from Conservatives in Parliament,” MacCharles said. 

Meanwhile, National Post’s John Ivison referred to the budget as “prudent and responsible,” even going so far as to suggest Conservatives will like it.

“What was widely expected to be an NDP budget turns out to be one that will appeal to many Conservatives,” he wrote on Thursday.

Looking back at former prime minister Stephen Harper’s last year in power, the Conservatives at the time had a billion dollar surplus in 2015 despite spending $298 billion that same year. 

Ottawa mayor wants to force residents and kids to keep wearing masks

By
Cosmin Dzsurdzsa
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Ottawa mayor Jim Watson is the latest voice to demand the Ontario government force residents and kids to mask up again, saying that schools and stores are two places where he’s becoming “more and more worried.” 

Watson called on Ontario premier Doug Ford to “really rethink” the government’s decision to drop the mask mandate – this despite the fact that public health officials in several major provinces no longer recommend mandatory masking. 

“We’ve got to kill this virus once and for all, and we can’t do it if we take away some of the tools that doctors tell us are the most effective tools keeping us safe,” Watson said.

 “I think the province has to really rethink their mask mandates; I think we need to have masks remaining on in essential services, places you have to go to – grocery stores, pharmacies, schools and also on transit.” 

Ontario lifted its mask mandates on Mar. 21 for most settings. Masks remain mandatory in several high-risk public environments including public transit, hospitals and long-term care homes until April 27.

In an attempt to override provincial directives, Watson has asked the city to look into whether they have the authority to continue mask mandates on public transit. 

“The last thing we need is more lockdowns, so I’d rather take some preventive measures now,” said Watson. 

Ontario’s Liberal and NDP parties have also called for a return of masking earlier this week.

Watson was a principal opponent of the Freedom Convoy which protested against COVID-19 mandates throughout downtown Ottawa in February. 

During a council meeting on Feb. 7, Watson claimed without any corroborating evidence that an attempted arson in the city the night before “clearly demonstrates the malicious intent” of the truckers protesting on Parliament Hill.

“Yesterday we learned of a horrific story that clearly demonstrates the malicious intent of the protesters occupying our city,” said Watson. 

“On Sunday morning, two young men entered the lobby of the building on Lisgar St. where they proceeded to light fire starter bricks near the elevators before taping up the door handles so residents would struggle to get out during a fire.”

The Ottawa Police Service has since stated that neither of the suspects arrested for the incident has any connections to the convoy protests. 

Arrogant Australian says Canadian Citizenship Process is “Problematic”

By
Candice Malcolm
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A woke Australian pens an opinion article in CBC complaining about how he became a Canadian citizen while peddling false information about Canada’s citizenship and immigration process. 

It’s Fake News Friday on the Candice Malcolm Show, and Candice is joined by True North producer Harrison Faulkner to break down all the latest fake news being peddled by the legacy media, including a wild story of a journalism association nominating a far-left rant for a news award – this, after the rant in question was thoroughly debunked by an RCMP report. 

You can’t make this stuff up. 

Plus, more Liberal journalists turn on Canada, our flag, our national symbols and our foundational principle of freedom. They say the quiet part out loud, which is that they prefer pushing woke globalist causes over defending western liberal democracy. 

SUBSCRIBE TO THE CANDICE MALCOLM SHOW

Charest tells Poilievre his support for truckers disqualifies him from being PM

By
Cosmin Dzsurdzsa
-

Conservative leadership hopeful and former Quebec Liberal premier Jean Charest attacked rival candidate MP Pierre Poilievre on Friday, saying Poilievre can’t be prime minister if he supported the Freedom Convoy.

Charest accused Poilievre of backing “people breaking the laws” and alleged that his support for freedom demonstrators disqualifies him from being prime minister. 

“I have a competitor by the name of Mr. Poilievre who supported, as you know, the blockade. And if you want to be a leader in this country and a legislator, you can’t make laws and break laws,” Charest told CTV News. 

“Laws are not a buffet table, if you’re a legislator, from which you choose what you want. Because what you’re really saying to people is, I’m above the law. You can’t be a leader of a party and the chief legislator of the country, as prime minister, and support people breaking the laws. That disqualifies you.”

Poilievre has frequently spoken in support of the protest movement.   He has not, however, expressed any support for blockades. 

“Just talked with hundreds of cheerful, peaceful, salt-of-the-earth, give-you-the-shirt-off-their-back Canadians at the trucker protest. They choose freedom over fear,” tweeted Poilievre on Jan. 31. 

On Friday afternoon, Poilievre released a political ad going after Charest accusing him of repeating “Liberal lies about truckers.”

“Jean Charest is a Liberal. As Liberal premier he raised the sales tax by 2%. He brought in a carbon tax and supported the billion dollar long-gun registry. He even said the Liberal Party was “our party” and while the Chinese government detained kidnapped Canadians, Charest was a paid consultant for Huawei on the Meng Wanzhou case and helping it participate in Canada’s 5G networks,” the ad claimed.

Charest went on to claim that he was the “underdog” in the 2022 Conservative leadership race and accused other candidates of engaging in “American-style politics.” 

“I’m the underdog in this race. And you know what? I’ve been the underdog all my life. So I don’t mind being there, it’s a place I recognize,” said Charest. 

“Either we are going to go down the route of American-style politics, of wedge politics, and attacks, that we are actually seeing in this leadership race. Or we’re going to be a Canadian Conservative party, which is what I believe in.”

Fellow MP Chris Warkentin came to the defence of his colleague Poilievre, calling Charest “an apologist for Trudeau.” 

“He won’t fight restrictions on Canadians’ freedom, as long as Trudeau makes it illegal?!? We need a leader who will fight for liberty…not an apologist for Trudeau,” tweeted Warkentin.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared the Freedom Convoy protests illegal in February before invoking the Emergencies Act both to end the demonstrations and freeze the financial accounts of their supporters.  

Leona Alleslev officially announces bid for 2022 Conservative leadership

By
Cosmin Dzsurdzsa
-

Former MP Leona Alleslev has officially launched her bid to become the next leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Originally elected as a Liberal in 2015, Alleslev crossed the floor to join the Conservatives in 2018, where she was made deputy Opposition leader by Andrew Scheer. After being re-elected as a Conservative in 2019, she was narrowly defeated in her Greater Toronto Area riding of Aurora–Oak Ridges–Richmond Hill in 2021.

Alleslev held a news conference at Parliament Hill on Wednesday to make her announcement.

“Simply because I chose to wait until now to announce doesn’t mean that I haven’t been doing all of the work that the other candidates have been doing. I am not behind,” said Alleslev. 

Candidates hoping to be on the leadership ballot have until Apr. 29 to get all of the required signatures and pay the $300,000 entry fee. 

Alleslev touted her decision to cross the floor in 2019 from the Liberals to the Conservatives as a reason people should support her. Alleslev said that it was a decision she made because of her conservative principles. 

“In order for (Conservatives) to be successful in an election, to win a majority government, we need a lot of other people to make the same choice that I did,” said Alleslev. 

Alleslev will be running against Pierre Poilievre, Jean Charest, Leslyn Lewis and others to become the next leader of the party. 

The CPC has stated that it expects to have a new leader elected by September of this year. 

Prior to her official announcement Alleslev had set up a CPC leadership website. 

“Canada is being led by the weakest, least competent prime minister of our lifetimes. At the same moment our country faces critical issues at home and global turmoil around the world. Canada is not playing the role it should on the world stage. And yet, we have lost three straight federal elections to Justin Trudeau,” the website claims. 

“We need a strong Conservative Party to defeat this Liberal government and get our country moving in the right direction again. Leona Alleslev is the leader who can get this critical mission done.” 

It goes on to tout Alleslev’s experience as an officer in Canada’s Air Force and her past work in the private sector. 

DZSURDZSA: How the Liberals and NDP pushed the arson hoax about the Freedom Convoy

By
Cosmin Dzsurdzsa
-
Darrin Calcutt

On Thursday, the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) issued a statement on a second man arrested for a Feb. 6 arson attempt on a downtown apartment building, revealing that 41-year-old Bartosz Wernick had nothing to do with the Freedom Convoy protests happening at the time. 

Only two weeks ago, authorities said the same of Wernick’s alleged accomplice, 21-year-old Connor Russell McDonald. “There is no information indicating MCDONALD was involved in any way with the Convoy protest which was going on when this arson took place,” wrote the OPS on Mar. 21. 

Despite the now undeniable absolution of the Freedom Convoy of an alleged attempt to burn down a building full of entrapped residents, the governing Ottawa establishment seems to have been replaced with crickets. 

Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson was chief among those who blamed the convoy for the incident in the first place, declaring during a Feb. 7 city council meeting that the arson “clearly demonstrates the malicious intent” of the truckers. 

“Yesterday we learned of a horrific story that clearly demonstrates the malicious intent of the protesters occupying our city,” said Watson. “On Sunday morning, two young men entered the lobby of the building on Lisgar St. where they proceeded to light fire starter bricks near the elevators before taping up the door handles so residents would struggle to get out during a fire.”

Throughout February, Liberal and NDP MPs (alongside the legacy media establishment) continued to insinuate that protesters had been involved in the incident, if not actually accuse them of responsibility.

The false claims not only litter the Hansard records of debate and committee proceedings in the House of Commons, but they were also repeated on social media and by pundits opining on the evils of the anti-restrictions protesters who had gathered in the capital. 

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh was the first to introduce the false accusation to the official record when he pointed to the incident as an “example” of the so-called commonplace violence at the protests. 

“We saw an example of this violence with an attempted arson of a downtown apartment building, where people started a fire and taped the doors closed when they exited. I ask members to take a moment to think what that means. They had the forethought to set a fire and then tape the doors so no one could escape,” said Singh on Feb. 7. 

The accusation was solidified when the Liberals called for a unanimous consent motion calling on the House to condemn “the arson attempts … by protesters on the streets of Ottawa.” 

When the motion failed to pass without the support of the Conservatives, Liberal MP and attack dog Mark Gerretsen used it to beat the official opposition over the brow and accuse them of not wanting the protest to end.

“They knew what they were saying no to. One lone Conservative over there, obviously set up by the whip’s desk, probably with their head down, said no and rejected the unanimous consent motion on behalf of the Leader of the Opposition,” claimed Gerretsen. “It is clear that she does not want the protest to end for the same reasons the rest of the country does.”

The examples are too many to include in one article, but the same claims were repeated by MPs Sameer Zuberi (Lib.), Matthew Green (NDP), Arif Virani (Lib.), Francisco Sorbara (Lib.), Alistair MacGregor (NDP), Anita Vandenbeld (Lib.), Laurel Collins (NDP), Ron McKinnon (Lib.), Jennifer O’Connell (Lib.), Ryan Turnbull (Lib.), Parm Bains (Lib.), Jenny Kwan (NDP), Andy Fillmore (Lib.), Peter Schlefke (Lib.) and Gord Johns (NDP). 

The question remains – how did our political and legacy media class get it so wrong? Well, for one, it’s not the first time that the cart went before the horse and leaders who should know better used an unverified claim to score political points before facts could be established. 

As far back as 2018, a fabricated hate crime by a young Muslim girl who claimed that an Asian man attacked her with scissors and cut up her hijab was broadcast to the entire country by none other than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. 

When the story was proven false, Trudeau went silent and refused to apologize despite calls from the Asian Canadian community. By then, though, the damage was done. 

More recently, the internationally publicized stories concerning the “discoveries” of so-called mass graves at former residential school sites throughout Canada incited a similar response from the Ottawa political and media establishment before the facts emerged. To date, those findings have been clarified and proven to be largely misleading if not outright false to begin with. 

These misleading reports led to nationwide grief spectacles and a revenge spree of arson and vandalism by radicals targeting Christian churches of all denominations.

The push to pin the attempted arson in Ottawa onto the Freedom Convoy betrays how much the government has and continues to rely on shoddy reporting and even social media to leap into action. 

This is evident from the fact that the arson was immediately pinned to the convoy by a local resident who clearly had a gripe with the protest movement and its goals – in fact, the resident still maintained that the convoy was responsible in light of the contradicting facts provided by the OPS. Without further investigation, politicians took this claim and ran with it.

Instead of level-headed sobriety and patience, the federal government repeatedly made grave missteps due to misinformation spun by not only themselves but also the establishment press. 

Looking through the parliamentary debate, it is clear that a hoax played a key role in justifying Trudeau’s first-ever use of the Emergencies Act, potentially setting a precedent for the regular use of government emergency powers to quash protests that are politically inconvenient.

Alberta’s chief medical officer grilled during civil suit

By
Harley Sims
-

Alberta provincial health officer Dr. Deena Hinshaw faced her fourth straight day of questioning in an Alberta courtroom on Thursday as an unprecedented civil suit against the province’s COVID restrictions continues.

Lawyers with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) have zeroed in on Hinshaw’s use of certain language – including “non-believers,” “conspiracy theory,” “naysayers,” “new normal” – and social justice commitments, as well as a highly publicized incident from October that saw Hinshaw apologize for initially blaming the death of a 14-year-old on COVID when he had actually died of brain cancer.

The long-delayed trial began this week, with JCCF lawyers representing a number of churches and individuals – including a gym owner – who had filed a constitutional challenge in Dec. 2020.

At that time, the plaintiffs had filed for an injunction against Alberta’s restrictions – including lockdowns involving their businesses, places of worship and family gatherings – pending this trial.

A different judge had struck down that petition, ruling the government’s health measures to be in the public’s best interest.

The timeframe of the challenge is important, as it means that health orders brought in after the summer of 2021 – including Alberta’s vaccine mandates and passports – are not within its purview. Neither is the “hindsight” of new research since, narrowing the relevance to what Hinshaw allegedly knew or believed at the time she imposed her health orders.

Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Barbara Romaine is presiding over the hearing.

The suit is one of many currently ongoing against the federal and provincial governments over violations of Charter and other rights under COVID, including travel restrictions, vaccine requirements and lockdowns.

The lawsuit states that the Alberta government had violated rights to peaceful assembly, to travel, to conduct a business to earn a living, to visit family and friends, to have visitors in one’s own private residence and to worship.

“Select individual rights and freedoms have been constitutionalized in this country for a reason,” the JCCF wrote. “Not merely because living in a free society is convenient, because of the recognition that the activities, experiences and endeavours those rights protect are what make life truly worth living.”

The JCCF’s lawyers have been cross-examining Hinshaw on her 206-page affidavit detailing pandemic statistics, timelines and decision-making frameworks.

Hinshaw testified that “it can take months” to distinguish people who died from COVID from people who died with it. When asked whether the number of people who died from COVID is actually lower than what was reported, Hinshaw answered, “it’s part of the ongoing checking process.”

Questions also arose around the slippery slope of socialized medicine – in addition to social justice considerations in Hinshaw’s decision-making – with lawyer Leighton Grey asking her why she hadn’t asked people to get their weight under control when evidence showed that obesity – along with many other conditions – was a major contributing factor to COVID hospitalizations.

“You never told Albertans they could reduce their risk of COVID-19 by reducing the amount that they ate,” said Grey. “You never said, ‘You know, it would really help you, it would really help your health, if you would get your weight under control.'”

Replying that obesity is not something that can be changed in a short time, Hinshaw then faced questions over restrictions involving children and young people, whom evidence showed were at next to no risk from the pandemic.

Hinshaw admitted that “COVID-19 infection is not a significant risk to people under the age of 19.”

On Tuesday, Grey invited Hinshaw to explain to the court why she had used the term “non-believers” to describe people who did not go along with her COVID recommendations.

Hinshaw defined non-believers as those who “adopted beliefs that would lead to behaviours that would put themselves and others at risk.” When asked about her use of “conspiracy theory” and “naysayers” to describe people who held different opinions from government doctors, she replied that a small number of individuals with a differing opinion does not change the consensus.

The fourth day of questioning brought up the inevitable issues of cabinet privilege and confidentiality, with the judge deciding to ask Hinshaw three questions “in camera” (or behind closed doors) about what the Alberta government had recommended or directed in terms of health orders.

The Rebel’s Sheila Gunn-Reid, who has been live-tweeting the case from court all week, summarized the questions, concluding that “we may or may not get to know what Hinshaw’s answers are until the judge rules.”

With Alberta one of the first provinces to remove almost all its pandemic restrictions – including even its vaccine mandate for already-hired healthcare workers – the appearance of a public health official in provincial court sets a precedent for accountability, especially with civil suits against other government doctors.

In comparison, British Columbia provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry is not currently expected to take the stand until Apr. 17, 2023.

Several constitutional challenges against pandemic restrictions have been launched in B.C., including one by public servants suspended or terminated over vaccine mandates that is scheduled to begin on May 16.

Two others by the JCCF in B.C. – both of which name Henry – include one on behalf of fired healthcare workers and another on behalf of churches and individuals affected by bans on in-person worship.

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