Germany, Austria, Italy, and the United States are among the 11 countries which reject these International Health Regulations as unjustified violations of their sovereignty and democracy.
However, Canada and most other countries seem eager to submit to WHO authority when responding to a future public health emergency. If followed and applied, these regulations give the WHO director-general the sole authority to declare a “Pandemic Emergency,” which could trigger lockdowns, border closures, mask mandates, vaccine passports, digital health surveillance, and whatever other human rights violations that the WHO might design.
By agreeing to the International Health Regulations, Canada is essentially agreeing to let the WHO determine when a public health emergency exists, and what policies Canada must implement to deal with it.
Fortunately, the WHO has no police force, no army, and no courts to enforce its edicts. Therefore, it ultimately cannot impose its will on any country, regardless of whether or not a country has adopted these regulations. Still, the regulations are relevant when countries like Canada treat them as “binding.”
Transferring decision-making power over our own health-care policies to an unelected international organization based in Geneva undermines Canada’s sovereignty, democracy, and government accountability. The constitutional principle of democracy means that Canadians have a say—through their elected representatives—as to what laws we are governed by. There is no real accountability, practically speaking, when unelected and unaccountable foreign bureaucrats impose laws on Canadians.
Further, Canada’s Constitution expressly gives the provinces exclusive jurisdiction over health care. Federal jurisdiction is limited only to marine hospitals. While completely lacking the legal authority to run health care in Canada, the federal government wrongfully ignores the Constitution by threatening to withhold funding from any province that insists our Constitution be respected.
Under the banner of “complying with the WHO,” federal politicians can impose WHO-directed, Charter-violating policies while evading public criticism by claiming that they are “just following international rules.” Canadian politicians can skirt accountability simply by blaming the WHO and falsely claiming that they have no other choice. Hopefully, one or more premiers will object, and remind Ottawa that health care is exclusively a provincial responsibility under the Constitution.
Lockdowns, travel restrictions, and vaccine passports are obvious violations of our Charter-protected freedoms of association, conscience, religion, peaceful assembly, travel, and mobility, and our Charter-protected rights to privacy, life, and liberty. Frighteningly, the International Health Regulations emphasize censoring “misinformation,” which violates freedom of expression. In a free country, citizens make up their own minds about what is true or false; the government does not decide on our behalf what might constitute “misinformation.”
Apart from Canada’s Constitution, complying with WHO policies is demonstrably foolish in light of our recent experience with them. Although not required to do so, Canada’s federal and provincial governments followed WHO recommendations in 2020 and the years thereafter, imposing draconian lockdowns. The WHO followed the lead of communist China.
Lockdowns failed to prevent COVID from spreading, including into Canadian nursing homes where the virus claimed about 80 percent of its victims. Lockdowns may have temporarily slowed down the speed at which the virus inevitably spread, but lockdowns did not stop COVID from reaching every Canadian in every city, town, village, and hamlet. In court challenges to lockdowns, governments were not able to present persuasive evidence that lockdowns had saved lives.
Why entrust the WHO with even more decision-making power in future health crises
International cooperation, including treaties to promote health and environmental protection, does not require that countries agree to obey a supra-national authority. Canada can work effectively with other countries for the common good, without surrendering our sovereignty to unaccountable globalists by pre-emptively agreeing to obey WHO edicts.
Canada should withdraw from the revised International Health Regulations. We should retain our ability to respond to crises in a manner that protects Canadians, respects the will of the Canadian people, and preserves their Charter rights and freedoms.
John Carpay, B.A., LL.B., is president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (jccf.ca).
