Former N.L. premier suing feds over COVID travel vaccination mandate

The only surviving signatory of Canada’s 1982 Constitution and Charter of Rights and Freedoms is challenging the Canadian government in court over COVID-19 vaccination mandates.

Brian Peckford, a former premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, is claiming the mandates that require people to be vaccinated for travel by plane or train in Canada are unconstitutional.

“I believe firmly that what the governments are doing … the measures that they are using, which restrict our rights and freedoms, are violating the key parts of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is part of the constitution of our country,” Peckford told Gormley on Wednesday.

Peckford was referring to the 10 provincial, three territorial and singular federal governments in Canada.

Calling the 1982 Constitution Act the “supreme law of the land,” Peckford asserted the right for governments to override the rights given to Canadians in the Charter have “not been proven by any of these governments.”

Peckford said Section 1 of the Charter allows governments to override these rights, but feels that’s not applicable in these circumstances because they would only apply to “a dire situation in the state.”

Section 1 of the Charter “guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

Peckford said that would include issues like war or insurrection, or some other circumstance that put the state in peril. He does not believe a “virus (with) a 99 per cent recovery and less than one per cent fatality” rate rises to that level of concern to justify governments infringing on Canadian Charter rights.

The purpose of including Section 1 in the Charter, Peckford said, was to have those values be permanent “unless some very dire circumstances presented itself.” Applying this to COVID mandates is not fitting, Peckford maintained.

Peckford is specifically challenging the federal requirement that all persons boarding a plane or train in the country be vaccinated against COVID-19. He said the travel ban affects all Canadians.

“When I launched (the challenge) last week, it was deliberate … We were aware that this was something that all Canadians could understand,” Peckford said.

According to Peckford, the mandate interferes with Section 6 of the Charter, which refers to mobility rights. The section states every Canadian citizen has the right to enter, remain in and leave the country, and has the right to move to and take up residence in any province and to pursue work in any province.

Subsection 3 states those rights are subject to “any laws or practices of general application in force in a province other than those that discriminate among persons primarily on the basis of province of present or previous residence” and “any laws providing for reasonable residency requirements as a qualification for the receipt of publicly provided social services.”

Peckford said any Canadian travelling — for work, to visit family or any other reason — is affected. He referenced receiving many letters in recent days from Canadians, sharing how they have been negatively impacted by the COVID-19 travel mandate.

Putting these mandates in place to incentivize Canadians to get vaccinated, Peckford said, is also not appropriate and does not uphold the freedom of choice the Charter is meant to support.

Peckford said the goal of the lawsuit is to see the vaccination requirement for travel in Canada eliminated, calling it “unconstitutional.”

“Even before this pandemic started, experts from around the world had indicated that there were ways to handle these kinds of circumstances,” said Peckford, who asserted that governments have reacted without considering other options for adapting to the pandemic.

Currently, Peckford said he’s waiting to hear from the Canadian government to move forward with the case.