Legislative proposals submitted by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith
Executive Summary
Without amendments to Alberta’s Public Health Act, Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health (CMOH) is now in a position to exercise near-absolute power over the lives of millions of Albertans, for an indefinite period of time, if he or she determines that a public health emergency exists. This dangerous situation has been exposed as the result of the Alberta Court of King’s Bench interpretation of the Public Health Act in Ingram v. Alberta (Chief Medical Officer of Health), 2020 ABQB 806 (CanLII).
Two aspects of the Public Health Act, as interpreted in the Ingram court ruling, are particularly troubling.
First, the Court ruled that elected representatives should have no effective oversight over health orders that violate the fundamental Charter freedoms of conscience, religion, expression, association and peaceful assembly. Implicitly, the Court appears to have ruled that the CMOH may, without any oversight from legislators, also violate the Charter right to bodily autonomy and privacy by way of vaccine mandates, which impose second-class citizenship on those who decline to get injected.