In January of 2022 a lawsuit was filed by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) on behalf of the Honourable Brian Peckford, the last surviving signatory of our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and others, with a goal of striking down the vaccine mandates for travel.

In October of 2022 the federal courts struck this case based on mootness, stating that the use of judicial resources for a five-day hearing, when the travel mandate had now been lifted, outweighed the public interest in having the case heard on the merits. This completely ignored the threat of mandates being reinstated at the government’s discretion, and disregarded the significant public interest in knowing that our Charter is being upheld by our courts.

Even the chief medical officer expressed that travel mandates were unlikely to be effective, noting that the WHO also advised against them. Obviously, the Trudeau government was not following science but a political agenda, seeking to make an example of all who opposed. They ignored Charter rights and failed to provide proof that mandates had a positive effect on transmission (because the evidence did not exist).

The JCCF have filed an appeal to the dismissal of their case and are currently waiting for a date to have their appeal heard.

The appeal highlights the judge’s error in failing to use the three-part legal test they are to apply when considering exercising discretion toward hearing a case:

1. The existence of a truly adversarial context.
2. The presence of particular circumstances which justify the expenditure of limited judicial resources to resolve moot cases.
3. Respect shown by the courts to limit themselves to their proper adjudicative role as opposed to making free-standing, legislative type pronouncements.

On behalf of all Canadians, we applaud their tenacity and hope the courts will finally acknowledge the Charter and further acknowledge that the processes in place to supersede these rights have never been demonstrated in the eyes of the law.

We have seen some support for our Charter in recent cases, hopefully this is a sign of the return of our free Canada.

To read the article written by JCCF, click here 

To keep up to date on all matters regarding this case and other cases, visit the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms website; https://www.jccf.ca/