TORONTO: The Justice Centre regrets to announce that the Ontario Superior Court of Justice has postponed the constitutional challenge to the Ontario government’s now-cancelled vaccine passport mandates. The hearing has been rescheduled for November 21 and 22, 2022.
Lawyers for the Justice Centre filed evidence on behalf of nine applicants, as well as extensive expert reports, in preparation to argue the unconstitutionality of the vaccine passport, which significantly impacted the lives of the applicants and Ontarians generally.
Before the hearing to determine if vaccine passports were constitutional, the Court asked whether it could hear a “moot” case, as there was no longer a live issue to be determined, and vaccine passports had not been in force as of March 2022. Justice Centre lawyers argued that the vaccine passport represented unprecedented and significant infringements on constitutional rights and that the public interest strongly weighed in favour of hearing the application on its merits.
While the Court was not inclined to hear the case on its merits for technical reasons, the Court permitted the case to continue, if the legal action was amended to overcome the technicality caused by the cancellation of the vaccine passport.
“This was a sound exercise of the Court’s discretion today. The vaccine passport regulation has been cancelled by the Province of Ontario for now, but the question of whether it was legal and constitutional is an issue of public importance which needs to be addressed by the courts. Cases of serious importance where the government significantly impacts the rights and freedoms of Canadians to go about their normal lives should not be set aside on a technicality,” states Jorge Pineda, a lawyer for the Justice Centre.
