Constitutional rights crushed as lockdown protester found guilty of violating COVID-19 stay-at-home order
Widespread lockdown orders in Canada throughout the COVID-19 pandemic saw the constitutional right to peaceful assembly and protest trampled on. Now, three years later, an individual who challenged this unjust overreach was convicted of violating lockdown restrictions in an Ontario court.
An Ontario man challenging harshly imposed COVID-19-related lockdown restrictions since 2020 has been found guilty nearly three years later.
Graham Walker’s alleged crime is peacefully assembling, protesting, and distributing press materials in front of Cobourg’s Victoria Hall, at a time when Premier Doug Ford had declared a third state of emergency and stay-at-home order since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.
Improve ventilation to help reduce the spread of #Covid19 indoors. Open windows regularly, even for a few minutes at a time, to replace indoor air with outdoor air. This helps remove viral particles indoors. Learn more: https://t.co/hO50RjOOYe pic.twitter.com/CXc917vsmG
— Health Canada and PHAC (@GovCanHealth) March 1, 2022
Walker was sentenced today in Cobourg’s provincial courthouse, where he received a “finding of guilt, and a conviction registered” according to Justice of the Peace Jack Le Blanc. He is ordered to pay the original fine amount of $750 plus costs.
“A ‘reasonable person’ would have tried to limit their contact with others to evade getting the virus themselves or to stop from passing it on, as is the intent of the legislation,” read Le Blanc’s decision.
Tamara Ugolini talks to anti-lockdown protesters from Cobourg, Ontario on all things related to the pandemic, including the response from the local government.
— Rebel News (@RebelNewsOnline) May 27, 2021
FULL REPORT by @TamaraUgo: https://t.co/I9FjItA5h7 pic.twitter.com/4kLzPJhsyU
Yet evidence that outdoor viral spread exists has never been produced. Conversely, ventilation has always been paramount in the dissipation of pathogens, with outdoor air being the most effective ventilation system.
This would make any reasonable person recognize that the imposition of stay-at-home orders is perversely ironic.
It’s all hands on deck with the Cobourg Gestapo, threatening and fining peaceful #EndTheLockdown protestors, while crackheads get their next, uninterrupted fix mere metres away. Police Chief @ChiefVandeGraaf’s order obviously prioritizes public safety#onpoli pic.twitter.com/jnufO00ZMG
— Tamara Ugolini 🇨🇦 (@TamaraUgo) April 10, 2021
At the time of Walker’s fining in May and April of 2021, Cobourg police Chief Paul Vandegraaf said enforcing lockdown orders was taking an “emotional toll” on the town's police force and was costing “in excess of $8,000 in overtime expenses each weekend.”
The restrictions were said to prioritize public safety, and yet Chief VandeGraaf sent dozens of officers to the scene of the weekly protest, despite open-air drug use proliferating in the area unabated.
Walker says that he intends to appeal the decision.
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