Amin Dagher calls it entrapment. The owner of Hair Cru Salon in Calgary was closed for haircut services during the province-wide moratorium on personal care services — but that didn’t stop Alberta Health Services inspector Anne Hoang from allegedly peeking under the shop window blinds and begging Dagher to giver her a much-needed trim.

Laws preventing government officials from entrapping citizens into lawbreaking are in place to avoid situations just like this. It is as if a police officer went to a local school to try to convince an honour roll student to sell him some drugs. The kid doesn’t have any — but given the financial incentive, maybe he will go astray.

What Anne Hoang reportedly did to a struggling local business owner was not just wrong, it was a pathetic abuse of government rules that are already hanging by a thread when it comes to public goodwill.

“The actions of Ms. Hoang in requesting Mr. Dagher give her a haircut are repugnant and a gross abuse of power,” Dagher’s lawyer said in a press release.

“In a time when the government seeks to justify its destructive lockdown policies and rights infringements by claiming that adhering to public health restrictions is the kind thing to do, the cruelty of AHS inspectors using the allure of much-needed income to target and ticket small business owners is especially hypocritical.” 

Dagher is being represented by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, and has pled “not guilty” to the fine of $1,000.