TORONTO: The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms will be in Toronto Federal Court on Wednesday, April 14, 2021, seeking an injunction to put an immediate stop to Trudeau’s quarantine hotels and facilities until a full hearing can be heard on the matter. The Justice Centre is urging the Federal Court to end the unconstitutional practice of forcing healthy air travellers who have already tested negative for Covid-19, to quarantine in federal facilities.
The Justice Centre originally filed legal action on February 17, 2021 against the Federal Government in response to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Order-in-Council forcing Canadians returning via air travel to be confined in quarantine hotels at a cost of $2,000 per traveller, even with possession of a negative PCR test. Travellers who arrive in possession of a negative antigen test for Covid are also being forced into isolation facilities.
The Justice Centre represents 11 individual applicants, including Steve Duesing in the comprehensive lawsuit and is advising dozens more. The non-profit national law firm and registered charity has received thousands of emails of outrage from travelling Canadians since the federal government first announced that all citizens, regardless of their reason for travel, would be forced to have a Covid PCR test in order to board an airplane to return to Canada, be forced to take another PCR test on arrival, and then be forcibly confined for up to three days at a personal cost of $2000 while waiting for a negative test result.
Anyone who tests positive after returning to Canada will be “immediately required to quarantine in designated government facilities,” according to Mr. Trudeau. If a traveller refuses, they will be issued a ticket, of up to $3400. On February 9, the government announced that anyone arriving by land without a negative PCR test could face fines up to $3,000. As of February 22, travellers were also be required to submit to another Covid test towards the end of a mandatory 14-day quarantine.
Canada has never before witnessed the incarceration of law abiding, healthy citizens, notes Jay Cameron, Litigation Director at the Justice Centre. Mr. Cameron stated that this oppressive measure is a direct violation of several fundamental Charter rights and freedoms.
“Quarantine, particularly of healthy or asymptomatic individuals, is the functional equivalent of house arrest and the Justice Centre will not allow it to continue unchallenged,” he states. “The forced isolation of Canadians contravenes multiple Charter protections, are unnecessary, and are not a minimal impairment of Canadians’ constitutional rights and freedoms. They are an oppressive overreach from a government that has lost sight of the restrictions on its power”.