I want to have it understood that the following is my opinion alone. If any reader has reason to think I’m wrong I stand to be corrected by reasoned argument and I welcome the improvement in my understanding which I may gain thereby.
Rebel News reporter Tamera Ugolini interviews Suzanne Coles:
As a former prosecutor turned paralegal, Suzanne Coles had concerns that people were being misled legally and that this misinformation would cause a ricochet effect for poor precedent setting and bad law.
Suzanne Coles is concerned that bad legal advice is hurting the freedom movement and good legal advice is the only way to get our cause justified. Let’s listen to what she has to say. And I hope I have listened and understood.
Suzanne is a licensed paralegal who worked in Defence for some years and then as a prosecutor for 5 years. She was put on unpaid leave and then fired because she was ordered by her employer to get the Covid vaccination and she refused to comply or co-operate by disclosing her medical information. So she’s got plenty of reason to be as stomping mad as any of us in the same situation.
But if you want to win your case for freedom and thereby to help establish the legal precedent in case law, or Common Law – and yes Common or Case law is the soul of the law, if I understand correctly – you need to leave your emotions outside the courtroom. Every time a case is won or lost, that establishes a precedent which may affect future cases. Let’s say a case is lost in Ontario because the plaintiffs did not present their arguments properly in accordance with legal ethics or base their arguments on established, provable fact but only on an emotional argument not backed by evidence, that loss may affect a case being argued on the same basis or similar circumstances in another province. It muddies the waters to clog up the courts with what are essentially frivolous cases. This makes it more likely that other complaints may be judged to be frivolous. Precedent can cut both ways, either strengthening civil rights or weakening them.
If you argue that a store or its employees are violating your civil rights by demanding that you wear a mask or get a vaccination or be asked to leave, you will lose. Any and every store owner has the legal right to admit or not admit anyone to the store for any reason. Imagine you were a store owner, or even just the owner or renter of your apartment and were told you have no right to determine who you may or may not admit to your premises, so that anyone may just walk in on you declaring it is their right to do so? Law must be law for all or it isn’t law at all.
This brings us to our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Now I’m certainly not giving anybody legal advice. If you want that get a lawyer.
But here is my understanding as a layman of what the Charter is and what it isn’t. The Charter was signed by all the provinces and given Royal Assent in England in 1982, thereupon severing Canada finally from Britain. It supersedes the former Bill of Rights. It protects certain groups from discrimination, groups defined as protected under the Charter. It protects disabled people, people of “colour”, homosexual people, people of any recognized religion or ”race” from being discriminated against because of their disability, or skin colour, or sexual preference, or religion or perceived “race”. If you are denied entrance to a store because of your membership in any of these protected categories you can invoke the Charter.
Yes, the Charter does say all citizens have the rights to the human freedoms we used to take for granted like freedom of speech, movement, association, privacy and the like. But does the Charter have any teeth to protect these general rights in court? None that I can see. The real protection is for the “groups” that can be cut out of the herd, in effect gradually but inexorably balkanizing our body politic and weakening our national unity and the rights of all, in my opinion.
But membership in one of these protected categories must be proven by evidence; to prove you have a disability, for instance, (one which isn’t obvious to sight) to even begin to argue discrimination you must have a doctor’s diagnosis in writing to back up your claim. Just saying your disability is that you won’t wear a mask because you don’t like it will get you nowhere. If you want to prove any discrimination charge on the basis of the Charter you must be a member of one of these protected groups. Otherwise, if you are ordered by a store to wear the mask or leave you’d better leave if you don’t want to be arrested for trespassing.
That’s the problem, in my view as a layman, with the entire idea of our Canadian Charter: by saying such and such a right is guaranteed for some protected category of people the Charter automatically tends to imply that protection against discrimination is limited to those groups. Since Bill C-16 was signed into law in 2016 a new protected category was added. One can now claim a Charter violation if one has been discriminated against because of their “gender identity”. There has not yet been a case brought on that basis as far as I know. Could it be?
If I’m disabled that can be proved, if I am “of colour” that is at least physically obvious; if I was discriminated against because of these facts, that can at least be argued and the outcome is not cut and dried by any means. But Bill C-16 went further into very muddy waters by protecting ‘gender identity’ because no definition of “gender” or "identity” is logically possible. It comes down to what I feel, not what is physically definable. I “identify” that I am the opposite “gender” or any “gender” I decide I’m feeling like or may self-define regardless of my appearance or deportment? What else can I “identify" as and is that protected too?
Is “gender” the same as sex? Ask any Gender Studies professor or student (yes I did ask a graduate student in Gender Studies) and you will be told that gender has nothing to do with sex. This introduces absurdity into the law. I can prove I have male genitals and male sex. But how do I prove or how does anyone disprove my feelings? Gender Identity is basically a matter of fashion or lifestyle or culture, basically feelings. Bill C-16 attempts to make feelings protected by law. But only if I have the audacity to stomp into a courtroom with my feelings about my “gender”. Just how many “genders” are there? Better consult the latest university student newspaper for the latest entries into the gender circus; there were at least 60 since last I checked.
Is there a court system which has shown its teeth by levying fines because of “gender identity” feelings? Yes there is. It’s called the Human Rights Tribunal. We have one in BC that recently ruined the businesses and livelihoods of women who refused to wax the genitals of a man who “identified” as a woman. To me this was a case of the BC Human Rights Tribunal destroying rather than enhancing human rights. But I’m not a lawyer.
Off topic I’m sure. I was talking about pandemic/Covid/mask and vaccine mandate issues. Does the Charter protect me? Let me see … I don’t have a “colour” since I’m “white”. Isn’t there a Pantone colour to match my skin? Nope, I’m colourless and therefore out of luck. Same with “race” – since “race” is one of those words that get more nebulous and not more clear the closer you look at them – I don’t have a “race” because I’m “white” (I’m of the White Race? Hoo boy! Better not say that!). I don’t have a disability that any doctor can certify, no missing limb or even a mental disability, so I’m out of luck there again. I like girls so my “sexual preference" matches up with my genitals at birth as it does for 95% of the general population so I’m not a protected homosexual. I’m not a Muslim or a Jew or a Hindu. I “identify” as a Christian (but I don’t belong to any church or sect) and Christianity is certainly a recognized religion but was I discriminated against because I’m a Christian, by my own unsupported emotional testimony? That sounds like an even tougher case than a “gender identity” case. If I were a woman I could, I suppose, try to claim discrimination by male chauvinists. But could I? Under the laws of Canada women and men have exactly the same legal rights and have had for many decades.
That’s my problem with the Charter. I don’t belong to a Group that is specifically protected. I’m a citizen of Canada. Our system is theoretically democratic, one adult citizen = one vote. My liberty as a citizen … what protects that? The Charter says I have free speech, freedom of thought and conscience, freedom of movement and association, freedom of religion. But does that have any teeth in a court of law? If my “human rights” are now under the jurisdiction of a Human Rights Tribunal which protects certain designated “groups” by giving them these human rights as basically a privilege? Where are we going with this? I thought my democratic human rights were mine as a citizen, indeed as a human being, English Common Law said so, I thought. But now that we have a Charter and Human Rights Tribunals to back it are human rights now essentially privileges which are mine because the government gives them to me?
There’s no use bothering with this argument anymore. Canada has gone off into uncharted territory. It’s called Liberal in Canada but the liberals who struggled for human rights in the past wouldn’t recognize this Canadian beast. Our Liberalism is now an active campaign by a governmental culture which sees itself as the sole repository of rights and freedoms which it distributes at the pleasure of those who enjoy power in government.
There’s no use saying this situation doesn’t exist. It does exist. It’s plain to see, as Tamera Ugolini says, that our institutions we assumed would protect our common-law human rights are in disarray. The government, provincial government most powerfully, can take away our rights by law at its discretion.
But I’m not a lawyer. So my pessimism is unfounded and unhelpful. There is still our legal system. And law is something living and changing all the time. Time is, as Suzanne says, on our side.
To prove in court that a vaccine mandate is unwarranted and should be struck down is more possible today than it was even six months ago. Back then the evidence was that the Covid vaccines were 90% effective. Now the companies themselves and the CDC are saying that they are 40% effective. It is more than possible to bring evidence backed by the CDC that the Covid vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna and the other companies are causing injuries and deaths on a mass scale and that they do not prevent transmission any more than they prevent the disease. It is quite possible to present evidence that there is absolutely no justification for declaring any “emergency” situation regarding Covid-19 or any of the alleged “variants” because it is becoming more obvious and provable that there is no real epidemic any more alarming than the annual flu season. And as for “cases” identified solely by PCR “tests”, the bogus and unreliable nature of the PCR assay is also provable. All that has better evidence available to be presented in court than was the case even six months ago.
All you need is to have your documentary proof in hand and your duckies in a row when you walk into that courtroom. You need – we all need – good lawyers. We’ve got a lot of great lawyers on our side. People like Suzanne. What is needed is patience. If you fly off the handle you certainly won’t hit the bullseye.