move to COVID weekly reporting is really weakly reporting Tank: Saskatchewan summer looms - just don't pretend pandemic is over.Phil Tank is the digital opinion editor at the Saskatoon On This Topic Letting individuals alone interpret the charter would mean living in chaos, not a country. Why obey speed limits if you can find material online that suggests traffic deaths are fake?Ĭases challenging the vaccine mandate may prove more complicated, and some of those are coming in Saskatchewan.īut Keough’s case shows that one person cannot unilaterally decide when his rights are being violated.
You could argue against any laws if you embrace an alternate reality. Keough lost and was found guilty of violating the public health order.Īs cases go, Keough’s seemed weak, even silly. He tried to show grocery store employees “counter information” about the pandemic during his mask-free visits, a written decision says. Wynyard Provincial Court Judge Michelle Marquette rejected the defence assertion that his freedom of expression was violated because wearing a mask shows that COVID-19 is “real and dangerous,” which Keough does not believe. Keough and his lawyer tried to claim the mask mandate violated his right to freedom of expression and his right to life, liberty and security of person. In this case, Richard Keough in late 2020 and early 2021 entered the Foam Lake Co-op food store on four occasions without a mask, despite a provincial order requiring face coverings in indoor public spaces.
Yet one of the first decisions in Saskatchewan weighing one person’s rights and freedoms against pandemic measures was delivered last month. Those who defied public health measures likely fantasized about a future when they could walk into a courtroom, cite their charter rights and magically have the charges against them dismissed. Undoubtedly to the dismay of some, those decisions are made by judges and courts, not folks waving the Canadian flag, honking their horns, brandishing signs or peddling conspiracies. In the case of public health measures, the standard will be determined about whether restrictions were justified by the need to prevent the pandemic’s spread. Hence, the nonstop references to the charter, rights and freedoms.īut the key to the viability of any law is that first clause from the charter on whether they can be reasonably justified. The critics who opposed public health measures may have been correct in their assertion that public health measures violated their enshrined rights and freedoms. This was particularly true when governments, including Saskatchewan’s, introduced a vaccine passport system to limit the ability of those who refused to take a safe and effective vaccine to potentially infect others with a deadly disease.
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, so did government-imposed restrictions intended to limit its spread and prevent illness and death.Īs the pandemic wore on, people became fatigued with public health measures, which they saw as infringing on their guaranteed rights and freedoms. It proved tricky, since courts have ruled that panhandling is a charter-protected form of expression. We elect politicians at various levels to introduce laws that attempt to balance some people’s rights and freedoms against the rights and freedoms of others.įor example, a few years back, Saskatoon city council tried, rather clumsily, to try to balance the rights of panhandlers against those of people who felt unsafe downtown.
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The first clause in the charter, the “guarantee of rights and freedoms” explains pretty clearly that these are “subject only to such reasonable limits as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”įor example, while freedom of expression is guaranteed, you cannot legally express yourself through interpretive dance, should that be your preferred means of expression, on a busy freeway. You don’t have to read far to understand that while the charter does indeed lay out Canadians’ rights and freedoms, it also points out what should be obvious: There are always limits, and no rights or freedoms are absolute. What seems clear is that too many people eager to claim their rights and freedoms have never read the document.
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