By Lee Harding, Western Standard
Those with high hopes for constitutional challenges against vaccine mandates may be disappointed, according to Queen’s University Law professor Bruce Pardy.
In an interview with the Western Standard, Pardy said the Charter protects the people in some ways, but not as much as freedom advocates would like.
“The Charter only limits governments in the specific ways that the Charter describes. Sometimes people carry around this idea that in order for laws to be valid, they have to be justified as fair, or provide evidence that they make sense, or that they are generally in keeping with the idea of our Charter rights, and none of those things are true,” Pardy said.
“The legislature can do whatever it wants within its jurisdiction unless there’s a specific Charter right that you can cite that limits that ability. And so, in the case of some of these COVID rules, it’s difficult to point to a specific right that’s been infringed because of the way they’re worded and because of the nature of the restriction.”
If people think the government is discriminating, they’re right, Pardy says. But he said that doesn’t automatically mean governments can’t discriminate.
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Bruce Pardy is the executive director of Rights Probe (RightsProbe.org) and professor of law at Queen’s University.