⁣James Cooper is an Ontario lawyer, see his website at: www.selfreplawyer.ca. He provides legal counsel to individuals on their legal rights. In this interview he talks about what is really going on behind the facade of a ‘global pandemic’ that is now heading into year three without any sign of letting up.
On the lack of transparency and public uncertainty…
[If] we're in a context now where the government purports to exercise emergency powers, then you have to be fully transparent with the public health data you're relying on to declare that emergency. Here is where you have a divide with members of the public. Certain members of the public say, “I trust Health Canada. I trust my public health authorities to do what they say they're doing and I don't have the time or inclination to look into it further.” Some members of the public, unfortunately they're painted with a broad brush they're called anti-vaxxers and I don't think that's accurate or fair, there are people who have hesitation for all sorts of reasons. Some people have pre-existing medical conditions and they're very unclear as to how they should proceed. They're worried because they see that their doctor has pressure [when] looking at their case.
On government over-reach…
In our Charter we have what's called Section 1, it's called the Notwithstanding Clause. The fact that you're violating a charter does not necessarily mean well, therefore it violates the Charter and therefore, you can't have that law. The circumstances are such notwithstanding that this is a justifiable charter breach…a series of factors to see if there's a rational connection between the rights being breached and the policy…whether this has minimally impaired the rights of the person…are there alternative ways where we can achieve the policy objective? In this circumstance, keeping some public safe minimally impairing rights. If you're not calling the public health data into question, if you're not even raising that, the judge will then weigh the policies. The challenges against masking would be a minimal impairment. Vaccine mandates in the workplace…we have wrongful dismissal law, unless there's discrimination, that's captured under the Human Rights Tribunal under the heading of religious discrimination or disability.
On your individual rights…
There are available accommodations you can do to keep patients safe. The Ontario Human Rights Commission actually has a statement saying it's a breach of human rights to compel somebody to take specific medical treatments that they're not comfortable with. It says right in the Human Rights Commission and people need to know that. So that does come into play… request a specific accommodation for PPE and masking saying that this option is reasonably available to keep patients safe. It may come out that there were these notices, their staff warned them…you're going into the winter with this potential disaster. Patient injury is foreseeable. If the hospital administration ignores that and there's a paper trail that they were forewarned of the shortage. Class action lawyers are going to say they were forewarned. The hospital administration had an opportunity to avert these foreseeable damages.
For more videos visit: https://strongandfreecanada.org/