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EDMONTON, Alberta, February 24, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – A Canadian lawyer has sharply criticized Alberta Premier Jason Kenney for his “unconstitutional” COVID laws that resulted in a Christian pastor being arrested and jailed last week for holding a church service after Alberta Health Services had ordered that the church close its doors for violating provincial restrictions on gatherings.
“I understand that Premier Kenney did not personally order Pastor Coates to be arrested and imprisoned, and that the premier cannot personally release the pastor. But it’s because of Jason Kenney’s unconstitutional laws that Pastor Coates is in jail today, and for no other reason,” wrote John Carpay, president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, in a Feb. 22 column for the Western Standard. Carpay’s firm is representing Pastor James Coates and is seeking his release from prison.
Carpay slammed Kenney’s COVID health orders as “irrational, destructive, unscientific and undemocratic.”
“Like most people, Pastor Coates and his Grace Life Church near Edmonton were very concerned about the COVID-19 virus back in March of 2020, when Neil Ferguson of Imperial College frightened the whole world with his wildly inaccurate predictions. Governments blindly accepted Professor Ferguson’s fearmongering about COVID-19 being an unusually deadly killer that we should all be (very) afraid of. Ignoring their own data and statistics, governments continue to base public policy on the fears of March 2020, rather than the facts of February 2021,” he wrote.
“Pastor Coates is following the science. Jason Kenney is not,” he added, noting later in his piece how COVID-19 poses “no significant threat to children, youth, young adults and about 90% of the population, who have a greater chance of dying in a car accident.”
Carpay criticized Kenney for reacting to outcry over the jailing of the pastor with a Feb. 18 Facebook post in which the Premier promised that Alberta’s government “will always respect and protect the fundamental freedoms of religion and worship, period.”
Commented Carpay: “That is, except when pastors are put in jail for refusing to comply with unscientific health orders.”
Later in the same post, Kenney referred to the COVID laws as “safe and reasonable guidelines.”
Commented Carpay: “What Mr. Kenney describes as ‘safe and reasonable guidelines’ are joy-killing, coercive laws that force people into isolation and loneliness by banning the necessary social interactions that we need for our physical, mental, spiritual and financial well-being. Lockdowns (whether full or partial) produce anxiety, stress and depression even amongst those who have not been pushed into unemployment, poverty and despair.”
“There is nothing ‘safe’ about cancelling medically necessary surgeries, like the pace-maker surgery needed by Jerry Dunham, who was killed by lockdowns – not by COVID. There is nothing ‘reasonable’ about forcing businesses into bankruptcy, often destroying the life savings of honest, hard-working people. There is nothing ‘safe’ about taking away sports, recreation, social interactions and recreational pursuits from children and adults, forcing millions to experience life primarily through a two-dimensional computer screen,” he added.
Carpay took issue with Kenney’s claim that the public health measures are “designed to save lives.”
“But his government exercises willful blindness when it comes to lockdown harms. For example, his government is making no effort to study, or to report to the public about, the number of Albertans like Jerry Dunham who died after their medically necessary surgeries were cancelled. Nor does Mr. Kenney’s government want to know how many Albertans now have late-stage cancer because their diagnostic exams or surgeries were delayed by lockdowns. You cannot honestly claim to care about ‘saving lives’ while refusing to take a hard and comprehensive look at all lockdown harms, and the specific nature and extent of each kind of lockdown harm. But the Alberta government, despite its abundant resources, is not researching, tracking, monitoring or publicizing information on lockdown harms,” he wrote.
Carpay noted how more Albertans “die from drug overdoses than from COVID-19,” a fact back up statistics.
The lawyer also took Kenney to task for his stance that asymptomatic people are significant spreaders of Covid.
“I’ve asked the Alberta government repeatedly to provide the public with scientific evidence to support the government’s thesis that healthy people spread this virus. None has been presented to date,” he wrote.
A 2020 Chinese study of nearly ten million residents of Wuhan found that there was no “viable virus” that was able to spread in the 300 “asymptomatic positive cases” that were identified.
Carpay concluded: “Pastor Coates is following his conscience as well as science. Jason Kenney used to care about the former, and is not following the latter.”
Coates is currently in jail and awaiting trial after he refused to agree to bail conditions that he does not hold more church services that violate COVID-19 government restrictions.
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