The plaintiffs’ attorneys argued that their rights under the Charter had been violated by public health restrictions imposed on the management of the COVID-19 pandemic. The court records cite the plaintiffs as Calgary-based Baptist Churches and Medicine Hat, a gym operator and two others. The defendants are the County of Alberta and the Chief Medical Officer (CMOH) Dr. Deena Hinshaw. The lawsuit also seeks to determine whether the Provincial Cabinet Committee on Public Health Orders instructed Hinshaw to impose restrictions that were stricter than its recommendations or targeted specific groups of citizens. The lawyers involved agreed to allow Judge BE Romaine to ask Hinshaw three questions at a private hearing. These questions were:
Have you ever been led by the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers, including the PICC and EMCC (the “Council of Ministers”), Dr. Hinshaw, impose stricter restrictions on your CMOH orders than the ones you recommended? Has the Council of Ministers ever asked you to impose stricter restrictions on specific groups such as churches, gyms, schools and small businesses than you have recommended? Have you ever recommended to the Council of Ministers that the restriction should be lifted or relaxed at any time and that the recommendation was rejected or ignored by the Council of Ministers?
Crown prosecutors have sought to shield Hinshaw’s response, claiming it is “public interest immunity” and arguing that discussions with the cabinet on COVID-19’s pandemic policy must be kept confidential.
However, in Romaine’s decision of 26 April, there is a compensatory public interest in revealing Hinshaw’s answers to the three questions that outweigh its public retention. “Therefore, the answers to the questions will be part of the minutes of the hearings,” the ruling said. Jeffrey Rath, one of the plaintiffs’s lawyers, called it “a landmark decision”. “And I think it’s really encouraging and invigorating to see that the courts really put the public interest in transparency in relation to decisions that have affected and ruined so many lives in the province of Alberta,” he said. The decision will also have “far-reaching implications” for Cabinet secrecy in Canada, Rath said. “The decisions we are challenging are no longer Deena Hinshaw decisions and that the judges seem to accept Deena Hinshaw’s testimony that all the decisions in question are in fact decisions of the Cabinet, when the Cabinet itself was trying to hide behind “by Dr. Hinshaw and pretend that these were medical decisions,” he said. “So I think the whole chestnut can be thrown out the window.” Rath added that he still has questions about whose idea it was to announce “The Best Summer Ever” in 2021. “It was an order from Deena Hinshaw or it was Jason Kenney for political reasons, you know, who was trying to make a Calgary Stampede and come out and turn pancakes in the middle of a pandemic, which may or may not have led to the Delta wave. ” he said. “We need answers to these questions. The whole process for us seems to have been very ad hoc, they invent it as they go along.” Both Hinshaw and Health Secretary Jason Copping declined to answer any questions about the judge’s decision. Read the decision below:
