Federal Travel Mandates
What are we ranting about?
The Federal Government’s illegal and discriminatory travel mandate.
Why are we ranting?
On October 30, 2021, the Federal Government announced that anyone travelling by air, train or ship must be fully vaccinated. This has made 6 million unvaccinated Canadians prisoners in their own country, neither able to travel domestically to visit relatives without a huge time cost, nor to travel internationally to enjoy the freedoms of another country. On its face, this mandate violates Section 6 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Under this Section, every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada. Any restriction on travel by the government must be defensible under the Oakes test, a four part test in which the defendant must prove:
-
The objective of the law must be sufficiently important to justify the limitation;
-
The law must be rationally connected to the objective;
-
The law must impair the right no more than is necessary to meet the objective; and
-
The detrimental effects of the law are proportionate to the beneficial objective of the law.
The Government of Canada cannot meet its burden of proof to support any prong of this test:
-
COVID-19 has been shown to have similar (or lower) infection and case fatality rates to influenza; the Government cannot justify denying a Charter right to prevent the transmission of a disease that has a 99.97% survival rate (without treatment), and is only fatal to those who are elderly or infirm.
-
Prior to each province revising their COVID-19 reporting formats to further hide the data, it was clear that the number of “vaccinated” COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations were increasing exponentially (and were much larger than the unvaccinated population). Along with studies performed by many distinguished virologists and epidemiologists, this data proves that the COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent the transmission of COVID-19 and therefore prohibiting the unvaccinated from travelling is completely illogical. Airline studies have also shown that air travel is completely safe, and the Government of Canada has not published any data supporting its allegation that the unvaccinated are any more likely to spread COVID-19 than the vaccinated.
-
There is no reason that other means of preventing the sick from traveling, like rapid testing or temperature screening, cannot be employed to prevent travelers from spreading disease.
-
Again, given the fact that there are no data showing that the unvaccinated are any more likely to spread COVID-19 (and, because they are less likely to be asymptomatic carriers, may indeed be less likely), this prong has not been proven.
On February 4, 2022, Dr. Theresa Tam stated that all existing public health policies, including vaccine passports, needed to be re-examined, with an understanding that Canada must start living with this virus in a “sustainable way”. She also admitted that the COVID-19 vaccines are ineffective against the current Omicron variant and, indeed, as the virus mutates, one would expect the vaccine to become less and less effective. Furthermore, the WHO, which has ostensibly been guiding Canada’s response to the current pandemic, has never recommended restricting travel, nor requiring proof of vaccination for such travel. The WHO reiterated this statement as recently as January 19, 2022.
Several lawsuits have been launched against the federal government for these extreme and illegal violations of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (including Peckford et al. v. Minister of Transport and Canada, Bernier v. The Minister of Transport and the Attorney General of Canada); however, 6 million Canadians continue to be persecuted for exercising their rights to bodily autonomy and freedom of expression, and in some cases, these violations also constitute a human rights violation due to religion, genetic characteristic or disability.
Who can we rant to?
Contact your Member of Parliament to complaint about this continued violation of rights, which threatens every Canadians’ ability to rely on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to protect themselves from governmental overreach. Also reach out to the Ministers of Transport (Omar Alghabra, omar.alghabra@parl.gc.ca) and Health (Jean Yves-Duclos, jean-yves.duclos@parl.gc.ca), and Premiers of each province to let them know these violations are not acceptable, as well as party leaders and members of the shadow cabinet (https://www.conservative.ca/team/shadow-cabinet/, and specifically Melissa Lantsman, melissa.lantsman@parl.gc.ca, and Michael Barrett, michael.barrett@parl.gc.ca, as the shadow ministers of Transport and Health).
Example Rants: