The Court decision will be appealed - re 'quarentine hotels'.
Some points in the judge's pro-government essay suggest some very weak claims in the soft underbelly of the government's defence.
http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/therebel/pages/52719/attachments/original/1624048215/Covid_jails_ruling.pdf?1624048215
COVID-19 is a disease caused by a coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2. It was first detected in China in December 2019 and has since spread across the globe. It was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020. In the ensuing year, it was reported to have infected more than 118 million people, and to have been associated with 2.6 million deaths worldwide. In that same period, there were 899,757 infections and 22,370 deaths resulting from COVID-19 in Canada.
Whether or not the WHO declared a pandemic is actually not releant to the arbitrariness of the various Canadian measures that followed. The WHO's re-definition of pandemic is arbitrary and rather works against the judge's opinion.
If the Canadian authorities declared an emergency on some other basis, then, that is the basis to be scrutinized further. If the Canadian authorities re-defined pandemic then that action can be tested on the basis of reasonableness. IT WOULD FAIL THAT TEST.
The judged cited statistics that relied heavily on PCR as the measure of infections. This is a fatal flaw in the judge's opinion. And the reliance on PCR works to show arbitrariness.
The same sort of arbitrariness flows through the various assumptions made including that the government had the authority to declare an emergency and that such a declaration was itself lawful when entirely dependent on PCR statistics. Likewise, the assumption that it was reasonable to prolong the government's actions on the notion of asymptomatic spread of infection is likewise a fatal flaw in the government's defence.
It is painfully obviious that a so-called test that does not test for infection, does not test for infectiousness, and does not test for illness is hardly a reasonable test for infection, infectiousness, and sickness. IT CANNOT LOGICALLY PROVIDE A REASONABLE BASIS FOR DETENTION. The government might claim ignorance or incompetence but its measures are arbitrary nonetheless.
That the measures serve to stigmatize follows the finding that the measures do not effect what the government claimed as its purpose. The detentions were set up as disincentives against the exercise of freedom of movement.
That has been the effect. It has unlawfully burdened Canadian travellers. It has deterred others who would otherwise have travelled. And by the various public declarations of public health authorities, government actors, and commentators, the very notion of traveling during the supposed emergency has been described as irresponsible and so forth. The stigma has been smeared onto citizens exercising their freedom of movement.