Small town Ontario mayor ticketed for speaking at anti-lockdown rally

Fight The Fines

Reporting on and fighting the pandemic fines.

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Mayor of West Lincoln, Ontario, receives a lockdown summons for standing up for entrepreneurs in his community.

We expect politicians who campaign on doing certain things actually to do those things, right? So although politicians keeping their promises to voters even when it's not always the popular thing that will make the media happy is rare, some still do.

Mayor Dave Bylsma is one of those scarce political people who ran on a campaign to support small businesses. That's why he went to an anti-lockdown protest in April. After a little over a year of pandemic closures, Bylsma decided the Ontario lockdown on small businesses was no longer justifiable, and the harms outweighed the risks. There are other ways to mitigate the spread of COVID while not waging war on the economy.

But the cancel culture mob got its censorious teeth into the news that the good mayor had taken an anti-lockdown stance. They called on police to ticket the local politician for the crime of attending a political protest. Authorities responded to these calls for mob rule by ticketing the mayor after an intense local pressure campaign. Bylsma received a summons to court for breaching the public health order, which in this case meant speaking out against the public health order and its impact on his community.

During the pandemic, too many local politicians capitulated to the loud, irrational voices of the few and ignored the people who elected them. At Rebel News, we want to support politicians who actually do what they say, and stand up for their principles and the people who voted for them. They're so rare these days. And we don't think police enforcement should be dictated by the mob. If BLM protests were fine, then anti-lockdown ones are too.

That's why we are helping Mayor Bylsma fight that lockdown ticket in court through FightTheFines.com, at no cost to him. However, the fight is so much bigger than the mayor. Bylsma is just one of nearly 2,500 people being helped through our largest civil liberties project ever in partnership with the registered Canadian charity, The Democracy Fund. But we can't help anyone without the generous support of people at home.

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