00:00:00.000On Sunday, the Church of God in Elmer, Ontario, a town of less than 10,000 people southwest of Toronto, held a service with 47 people in attendance.
00:00:15.720Three days later, the Elmer police started tracking them down and writing what has been reported as $861 tickets for being in breach of, quote, emergency orders, unquote.
00:00:27.440For the police to do this, they must have recorded all the license plates in the parking lot, ran the ROs, that's the registered owners, tracked them down, and ticketed them.
00:00:37.640Looking at the org chart for the Elmer police, this must have taken up every on-duty officer for the 27th.
00:00:44.700For this, on the good side of the coin, no one was arrested, unlike the folks who were protesting in downtown Toronto on Saturday for the third straight week.
00:00:53.420Toronto police again arrested several folks for seemingly nothing more than engaging in their free speech rights.
00:01:00.100One wonders if any of these officers, or their superior officers who sent them there, have ever heard of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
00:01:08.440The Charter guarantees you the right to free speech and the right to free assembly.
00:01:12.420It is the paramount legislation in this country.
00:01:15.660No junior government can enact any legislation that supersedes the Charter.
00:01:19.980Doesn't matter what Premier Doug Ford or Mayor John Tory wants, the police have no authority not to follow the Charter.
00:02:49.660It's unclear what sort of a threat she posed.
00:02:54.040Meanwhile, in Quebec and Ontario, authorities have issued hundreds of tickets to businesses and individuals for not following government COVID guidelines.
00:03:03.680Literally, just for going about their business and trying to live their lives.
00:03:08.300Then yesterday, Canada's chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, announced she was contracting private security services in 35 cities across Canada to do home checks,
00:03:21.740to ensure people were following the regulations and staying quarantined as ordered.
00:03:27.140This is gone from the sublime to the ridiculous.
00:03:30.680There's no question the country's COVID response has been booted around the block by the federal government, right out of the gate,
00:03:37.980and watching their vaccine response shows nothing has changed.
00:03:42.760Most of the country is still in some form of lockdown, and people don't understand why.
00:03:50.520We were told initially we just had to disrupt our lives for two weeks to, quote, flatten the curve, unquote, to let hospitals get prepared.