Anti-lockdown quintuple lose charter challenge ahead of trial

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This article was published 03/08/2022 (1378 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Five alleged pandemic scofflaws set to stand trial later this month will not be able to argue Manitoba public health orders violated their charter rights, a judge has ruled.

“This decision in no way affects your presumption of innocence,” provincial court Judge Victoria Cornick told the accused at a hearing Tuesday.

Cornick, the same judge set to preside over the trial, sided with the Crown, who in a motion last month to dismiss the challenge argued the charter right issue had already been settled in an October ruling by Queen’s Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal.

Cornick said she has not pre-decided the case, and the Crown will still be held to a standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

“I know my ruling disappoints you,” the judge told the five accused. “I can appreciate the frustration of seeing facts and events that are very real and very personal to you distilled into these generalized legal issues.”

Retiree and COVID-19 lockdown opponent Gerry Bohemier, Hugs over Masks organizer Sharon Vickner, anti-lockdown rally organizers Todd McDougall and Patrick Allard, and Church of God (Restoration) pastor Tobias Tissen were individually charged for alleged repeated violations of public health orders involving outdoor gatherings between November 2020 and May 2021.

The co-defendants filed notices of application arguing their arrests were in violation of their charter right to assembly.

Last fall, Joyal dismissed legal challenges launched by Gateway Bible Baptist Church and six other churches. They argued the province’s pandemic public health orders unfairly violated their rights and were improperly enacted into law.

The churches specifically challenged three provincial orders that in the fall of 2020, at the height of the second wave of the pandemic in Manitoba, restricted private and public gatherings and limited the number of people who could attend in-person worship services.

Joyal ruled although the orders did restrict the freedoms of religious expression and peaceful assembly, they didn’t infringe upon charter rights to liberty and equality. He said they were justified as a pandemic response based on credible science.

Alex Steigerwald, a lawyer representing four of the five co-defendants at trial, argued Joyal’s decision focused on indoor church services, with only a “cursory” mention of outdoor gatherings, which was the focus of their court challenge.

A reading of Joyal’s decision showed it is “clear (he) contemplated outdoor gatherings,” Cornick said.

Given that conclusion, the judge said she is legally bound to uphold the Gateway ruling, coming as it does from a higher court.

A trial for the five defendants begins Aug. 22.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca