Halfway there! $2,800 of $5,600 in COVID fines dropped (so far) for mask-exempt woman

Fight The Fines

Reporting on and fighting the pandemic fines.

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Chantel Temple is an extremely normal lady from Weyburn, Saskatchewan, whose trip to the store ended with a spat with a police officer in front of her kids that resulted in a couple of expensive lockdown tickets. Through donations to Fight The Fines, in partnership with the registered Canadian charity, the Democracy Fund, a top Saskatchewan lawyer has been helping Chantel fight her tickets at no cost to her.

Chantel was doing some shopping at her local Walmart on April Fool's Day (I know!) with her three kids. The problem is, Chantel has a condition that makes her exempt from wearing a mask, and at the time, masks were mandatory in all retail outlets in the land of the living skies. After shopping largely without incident, Chantel was approached by a police officer and informed she was in violation of a public health order due to her exposed face. While the responding officers at the "crime scene" did not ticket Chantel that day, they issued her a summons at her home days later.

Chantel told the officer she was exempt from the mask mandate, but the cop wanted to hear none of it, demanding Chantel's ID like she was a criminal and later issuing her a ticket for $2,800 for not wearing a mask in the grocery store.

Fast forward to March. The never-ending cycle of lockdowns, along with the previous ticket for the crime of being mask exempt and in need of a pantry top-up, made an activist out of Chantel. She was at an anti-lockdown protest in March and along came the COVID cops to ticket her again. Chantel was hit with yet another $2,800 fine. A grand total of $5,600 in fines had been issued to this young Saskatchewan mom.

As quickly as the cops were issuing tickets, the Fight The Fines team got to work to fight Chantel's lockdown tickets. Recently we found out her lawyer, Luke Coupal from Caritas Law, was able to have the mask ticket withdrawn. One down, one to go.

Chantel still has a long way to go before that other ticket gets before a judge, but she's in good hands. To help Chantel and the approximately 2,500 people being helped by the Fight The Fines civil liberties project, please donate at www.FightTheFines.com. All donations to Fight The Fines qualify for a charitable tax receipt from The Democracy Fund.