Randy Hillier discusses his upcoming constitutional challenge against COVID restrictions

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This is just an excerpt from The Ezra Levant Show. To see new, ad-free episodes, which air Monday - Friday @ 8 p.m. ET | 6 p.m. MT, become a subscriber to RebelNews+. This episode originally aired on July 24, 2023.

On last night’s episode of The Ezra Levant Show, guest host David “The Menzoid” Menzies was joined by Randy Hillier, who was a duly elected member of the provincial parliament in Ontario and then became a “quasi-political prisoner” in his own province.

David brought up the last time he saw Randy, which was at an “illegal gathering” due to COVID mandates in Peterborough where they both got ticketed. He asked Randy what happened to his tickets. 

Randy responded:

Well, I still have about 10 provincial offences remaining, most of them are on hold until this week's constitutional matter is heard in the superior court in Toronto.

He went on to talk about his constitutional challenge:

And let me just preface this a little bit David for your audience. For over a year now, the crown has agreed that my constitutional challenge would be heard in an open court in person, and it would be held in the superior court. Late last week, I got notified that the interior courts are instituting a shadow ban on my hearing. So the shadow bans, your audience will be well aware, it's a term that we often use with social media. However, they unilaterally and arbitrarily decided that my court hearing would only be done virtually on Thursday, July 26th and Friday, July 27th.

And there can be no mistake in anybody's mind. What they wanted to do was to make sure that I did not have a public forum where people and my supporters and others could attend an open court to hear the arguments. These are strong, incredible arguments that are being advanced. If we're successful, it will do away with not only the rest of my provincial offences but do away with all offences under the reopening Ontario Act across Ontario, and hopefully also have a great impact in other jurisdictions as well.

David asked Randy what he thinks is the ostensible policy reason for making sure this is virtual, and if it’s simply to keep interested Canadians away from seeing the arguments they're going to present in court.

Randy answered:

So there is no justifiable reason to not have in-person court hearings. None of the courts have any mandates against vaccines, or masks or social distancing or any of that matter like that has been dispensed with in our courts. So what is the real excuse for them to at the last minute decide no, we're gonna change this? And you can be certain that had I been down in Toronto in an open court, there would have been some media attention, the public would have been there as well and one cannot come to any other reasonable conclusion that the courts and the government wanted to implement something akin to a shadow ban on this constitutional proceeding and make it so that few people understand what is going on. 

He explained to David what his main argument is going to be on Thursday:

Well, there, there's many, we've got arguments on the health, we've got arguments on the mental health and we also have, as you know, David, I was an elected representative at that time. And we also can say with certainty, the Constitution regards the freedom of expression, freedom of mobility, and Peaceful Assembly as foundational and fundamental rights not to be infringed upon without justification. And the infringement has to be proportional.

The two cases that are being heard on Thursday and Friday are for when Doug Ford's government instituted a complete stay-at-home order where people were not permitted to leave their homes unless they met one of the government's predetermined criteria such as getting necessary health care, going for groceries, etc.