Well, the lockdown is pretty much over in Alberta, yet the provincial government is nevertheless still cherry picking those Albertans who committed the egregious offense of merely trying to make a living. And the government is still pursuing legal actions against these individuals. Why? Sheila Gunn-Reed has the details.
00:03:57.800Well, here we are nearly a month out from the purported lifting of the aggressive and oppressive government lockdown restrictions
00:04:05.980that seemed to disappear on July 1st for, quote unquote, the best summer ever.
00:04:13.060The government is still continuing to prosecute dozens of these cases in our offices,
00:04:19.100continuing to aggressively defend our clients against some of these charges in the fight the fines campaigns.
00:04:26.320Now, we've successfully had dozens of them withdrawn or discharged,
00:04:31.120but the government continues to amp up its enforcement of some of these while withdrawing some of the more precarious charges and claims that they have against business owners
00:04:43.680and restauranteurs and regular Albertans pursuant to some of these regulatory charges.
00:04:52.160We've got a whole bunch of stuff happening on the whistle stop file and some of our other clients that have appeared in other videos.
00:04:59.660But most specifically, the fight the fines claims, we are going to fight these until the end.
00:05:04.440And whether or not the government wants to discharge these claims, try to save themselves some money and not being forced to actually run fulsome due process trials for each one of these,
00:05:18.400we will meet these every step of the way through the fight the fines program.
00:05:23.360Now, we haven't had, as I said, one conviction to date.
00:05:27.320That doesn't mean that the battle is over and we think that the government will cherry pick a couple of files that they will want to prosecute to the fullest extent
00:05:37.560to make an example of anyone who may have disagreed with some of the implemented lockdown restrictions.
00:05:45.980Now that the lockdowns are over in Alberta and Albertans are allegedly now enjoying their greatest summer ever,
00:05:52.700the provincial government is nevertheless still cherry picking those Albertans who committed the egregious offense of merely trying to make a living or trying to have some fun.
00:06:05.140And the government is still going after these people legally.
00:06:09.960Yet the ostensible policy reason has little to do with health and safety and, well, it has a whole lot to do with making an example of alleged scoff laws.