CALGARY, Alberta (LifeSiteNews) – Top constitutional lawyers say the Canadian federal government’s much-maligned ArriveCAN travel app violates one’s constitutional rights, adding that people’s civil liberties on paper have been rendered ‘meaningless effectively in the real world” because of COVID.
“(ArriveCAN) it’s a violation of Section 6, sub one (of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms), which is the right to leave or enter the country,” Alberta-based civil liberties lawyer James Kitchen told LifeSiteNews.
“There is very little case law on this. The Charter is relatively young in history, it’s only 40 years old, and during those 40 years we have not had a lot of authoritarian governments with widespread liberty violations until the last few years.”
Kitchen continued, saying, “So, it has never been really tested, a lot of those rights have not really come up yet in court.”
ArriveCAN was launched in April 2020 by the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and made mandatory in November 2020.
“If you don’t submit your travel information and proof of vaccination using ArriveCAN, you could be fined $5,000,” the government says.
As it stands now, all travelers arriving in Canada must use the ArriveCAN app to submit their travel and contact information, as well as any COVID vaccination details, before crossing the border or boarding a flight.
Kitchen, who has been fighting COVID-related cases for some time now for his client base, noted that in his opinion, mandating the use of ArriveCAN with the threat of a fine for non-compliance means it does violate one’s entry rights.
“I would say, right there, the fact that if you don’t do this thing, we are going to fine you for doing this, is obviously a violation of your rights of entry,” Kitchen told LifeSiteNews.
He noted how if one is told that if they don’t submit their medical information, “you’re going to be fined $6,000 when you exercise your right to enter the country, what that effect is the penalization for exercising the right.”
“If you’re penalized for exercising the right then it’s a violation of the right, it’s the same legal effect,” Kitchen noted.
Section 6, or “Mobility Rights” of Canada’s Charter states, “Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada.”
Kitchen told LifeSiteNews that although it could be argued that ArriveCAN violates one’s mobility rights, winning a case against a ticket in court could prove hard due to what he said is a “woke” justice system.
Kitchen noted that as section one of the Charter states, a government can limit one’s rights so long as there are “reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society,” COVID has shown that judges think rights violations under this section are OK.
“With COVID, they universally agree that every rights violation is justified,” Kitchen told LifeSiteNews.
Kitchen noted that if a judge were to follow the law as it should be — as Section 1 was designed to be the exception, not the rule — if somebody was to challenge this, “they would win.”
However, the reality, Kitchen said, is that he can “almost guarantee” that if somebody were to challenge ArriveCAN violations in court, “they would lose” as the “courts on the issue of COVID, they are woke.”
“The woke thing is to invoke section one to justify any rights violations,” Kitchen told LifeSiteNews.
Kitchen said that normally he tells his clients that they can refuse to comply with the app and take the “relatively low risk of getting a ticket.”
Canadians have the ‘right to medical privacy,’ says legal expert
Sayeh Hassan, who serves as a lawyer for the Calgary-based Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), told LifeSiteNews that there are indeed many “serious constitutional concerns surrounding ArriveCan, including the right to privacy.”
“Canadians have the right to medical privacy, a right that has been upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada. The Mandatory requirement to use ArriveCan compels Canadians to provide their private medical information to non-medical practitioners, interfering with the right to freely enter Canada,” Hassan said.
She noted that there are “serious concerns about lack of transparency” with the ArriveCAN software and how it works.
“The recent glitch which sent a faulty message to 10,000 people asking them to quarantine is a good example of concerns surrounding the operation of this app,” Hassan told LifeSiteNews.
When it comes to draconian COVID rules, courts have ‘no interest’ in upholding charter rights, says lawyer
Kitchen told LifeSiteNews that the larger issue is that Canadians’ rights, because of COVID, have been rendered “meaningless effectively in the real world.”
“The courts in fact have no interest in upholding those rights,” Kitchen said.
When it comes to the privacy issue of ArriveCAN, Kitchen said violations of a potential search or seizure would fall under Section 8 of the Charter.
“When it comes to search, that includes medical information, medical status,” Kitchen told LifeSiteNews.
Kitchen noted that Section 8 of the Charter has its own “internal limitation” that a search cannot be an “unreasonable” search.”
He noted that the government would argue such a search would be “reasonable” even though it is not.
Kitchen said that as most Section 8 case law is in the criminal context, in dealing with drug dealers having their vehicles searched upon a traffic stop for example, “at least in the criminal context, Section 8 is a fairly well-protected right.”
This is unlike freedom of religion and association, said Kitchen, of which there is “no protection” when it comes to case law.
Kitchen told LifeSiteNews that if one had a reasonable judge, he could be swayed that a Section 6 violation under ArriveCAN would amount to an unreasonable search.
“Why is it reasonable to collect the vaccine status? It’s not, it’s a pretty significant invasion, it’s kind of like how the stigma attached to an unvaccinated person is like one having an STD. It’s equivalent to that,” Kitchen said.
“It is a serious invasion.”
Kitchen noted that “just merely to being asked to tick that box on the app before entering the county, those two rights have been limited.”
He said that the COVID jabs have absolutely no “impact on transmission and infection which is the only rational basis for doing this.”
“If we had judges that were level-headed and courageous enough to actually follow the law and follow the science and the facts, there’s no way this would stand legal scrutiny,” Kitchen told LifeSiteNews.
In an exclusive interview with LifeSiteNews, Ontario Dr. Ann Gillies recounted in detail being fined $6,255 for non-compliance with the ArriveCAN app after returning home via a land border.
The Canadian federal government admitted ArriveCAN has indeed wrongly placed fully jabbed people into quarantine.
Recently, news broke that David Crouch, who despite having four COVID shots, was told by the ArriveCAN app that he had to quarantine for 14 days when he got home.