Government COVID-19 emergency measures are 'death of civil liberties by a thousand cuts': report

OTTAWA — The many emergency laws and regulations introduced to target the COVID-19 pandemic have amounted to the “death of civil liberties by a thousand cuts,” a new report says.

The non-profit Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) on Friday released a lengthy document that reviews emergency measures introduced by federal, provincial and municipal levels of government in recent months, which authorized everything from unlimited spending powers to hefty fines for people who fail to practise social distancing. The organization asserts that those measures amount to a broad overreach of government powers that, left unchecked, threatens to become permanent.

“The pandemic has led to a thousand impositions on civil liberties that might feel minor alone, but which taken together represent an extraordinary change to civil liberties in Canada,” the report said.

Limits to civil liberties include government-led initiatives to curb “misinformation,” mandatory masks or temperature checks in private settings, restricted access to public settings, or even attempts to hinder “drive-in religious services,” the report said.

“Each of these constrain freedoms in what some might consider small ways. But taken together, they indicate a major shift in Canada towards a more designated, circumscribed, and government-ordered way of doing things.”

The study underscores the deep divisions that have surfaced in recent months, as the public grapples with the extent to which government should control public life in the name of safety.

Hefty fines issued by municipal police to people walking their dogs, for example, has been called an unnecessary overreach by some, while others argue that those fines might be seen as part of a broader need for compliance in order to curb the spread of the virus.

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The CCLA report does not outright dismiss the need for emergency measures to combat COVID-19, but said the inconsistent and sometimes illogical nature of those policies likely reduced their effectiveness, while also restricting civil liberties.

Bill 10, introduced by Alberta Premier Jason Kenney in response to the pandemic, “allows a single minister to exercise the awesome lawmaking power of a parliamentary majority for up to 6 months after the end of the emergency,” for example, while Ontario and Quebec “wove a dragnet of social distancing rules” enforced through punitive fines.

But the effectiveness and necessity of those sweeping powers remains unclear, the report said, while blatant policy shortfalls caused a high rate of deaths in seniors’ homes and in some cases a failure to provide safe haven for vulnerable populations. The city of Toronto, the report said, “dragged its feet on ensuring that there were adequate and safe housing solutions for people experiencing homelessness.” Homeless people were ” always an afterthought for leadership, at best,” the CCLA said, as were minority populations like Indigenous.

The CCLA rated a number of measures introduced by the various orders of government, giving an “F” grade to Alberta’s B-10 for being “radically disproportionate” to the threat of the pandemic. Nunavut’s initial public restrictions received a “D” but was later raised to a “B+” after the territorial government scaled back some of those limits. A decision by the Newfoundland government to close its border to non-residents received an “F” for its direct infringement on rights to movement.

The study’s conclusion calls on governments to lift emergency restrictions as soon as possible. It also argues that the public must begin to contemplate the way in which civil liberties improve public life overall, even if it comes at the expense of convenience or health in some cases.

“We cannot pretend anymore that there is some elusive balance between civil liberties and public health to be found,” it said. “Our civil liberties inform our public health, as much as antibody levels and body temperature. That China may enjoy a lower COVID infection rate today does not make it a society healthier than Canada, whose residents are legally entitled to enjoy freedoms unknown to that state.”

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