Western Standard - August 25, 2022


Five Manitobans convicted of COVID 19 crimes

Mentioned
Sean Sass Gerald Bonheimer Victoria Cornick Alex Steigerwald Tobias Thiessen Patrick Allard Todd McDougal Sharon Vickner
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Episode Stats


Length

2 minutes

Words per minute

154.49

Word count

330

Sentence count

17


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The 5 convicted are Patrick Allard, Todd, Todd McDougall, Sharon Vickner, Gerald Bonheimer, and Pastor Tobias Thiessen. They admitted breaking the outdoor public gathering limits in 2020 and 2021. Based on a statement agreed to by the court and their lawyers, Provincial Court Judge Victoria Cornick convicted them.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 The five convicted are Patrick Allard, Todd McDougall, Sharon Vickner, Gerald Bonheimer,
00:00:06.220 and Pastor Tobias Thiessen. They admitted breaking the outdoor public gathering limits in 2020 and
00:00:11.800 2021. Based on a statement agreed to by the court and their lawyers, Provincial Court Judge
00:00:17.840 Victoria Cornick convicted them. Crown Attorney Sean Sass said all of the five individuals made
00:00:24.500 a point of violating the orders in a very public way. They encouraged others to break the law as
00:00:30.620 well. Thiessen, who is a rural church pastor, spoke at rallies against the COVID-19 restrictions and
00:00:36.780 held church services above the gathering limits. According to Sass, the four others continued to
00:00:42.540 speak and organize rallies after being ticketed. Sass said the repeated issuing of tickets did
00:00:48.320 absolutely nothing to deter these offenders. The COVID-19 fines are between $18,000 and $42,000
00:00:55.220 for each individual, which is based on how many offenses they were convicted of as tickets are
00:01:01.180 $1,296 each. The defense lawyers argued the fines were too severe for the crimes committed and asked
00:01:08.060 for the judge to impose a reprimand. Alex Steigerwald, a defense lawyer who represents four of the five
00:01:14.600 convicted, said they weren't breaking windows, they weren't rioting in the streets, my clients stood
00:01:20.060 up and protested for something they believed in. The five said they were already punished with two
00:01:25.320 losing their jobs and all spending time in jail after being arrested. Vickner said we were peacefully
00:01:31.980 publicly rejecting government overreach. Two of the convicted, Allard and McDougall, will appeal to a
00:01:38.140 higher court as they want to challenge the COVID-19 public health orders under the Charter of Rights
00:01:43.040 and Freedoms. Thyssen's church, along with other churches, lost a charter challenge in 2021 against
00:01:49.800 Manitoba's COVID-19 restrictions on public gatherings and religious services. The court ruled the
00:01:55.820 restrictions were allowed under the Charter because of a public health emergency.
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