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Dear CANS members and supporters. I hope this newsletter finds you well. We are near the closing of 2024. It feels like so much has happened this year! Below is a re-cap and also what is to come:
Arguing for Public Interest Standing in January and receiving a decision seven months later that, while not a win, still provided us with a decision favourable to the Judicial Review. We have mixed feelings about the decision especially when one considers that the protector of the public interest is supposed to be the Attorney General of NS, a named party in the Judicial Review around ultra vires and bad faith actions; not exactly public interest material.
The announcement by Nova Scotia Health (NSH) that they were finally dropping their ill-informed policy around Covid-19 inoculations for Healthcare workers. Although this was good news, it was 2.5 years overdue and NSH (a private charity organization) made no effort to acknowledge the harm that their policy had done; a policy created outside of their legislated authority the Health Protection Act (the same legislation that the Respondents also acted outside of). There is something worth pondering here: NSH receives the majority of its funding from public funds therefore they cannot discriminate against or deny service to any Nova Scotian as their service is pre-paid. To deny health care services because a person isn't wearing a face mask or refuses to disclose their private medical status is not in the purview of NSH as a pre-paid for 3rd party service which relies on public money to exist.
Preparing and submitting a Supreme Court Ex-Parte Injunction for an affected individual against NSH to prevent them from terminating her job at an arbitrarily contrived deadline. This was an interesting experience. Under Ex-Parte rules one doesn't inform the party being restricted and the timeline is a hearing within 48 hours. The Supreme Court Justice did not allow the injunction without NSH being informed but did enforce the 48 hour rule. The Injunction kick-started discussions around back-pay because it states clearly that NSH acted outside of it's legislated authority. I encourage all affected healthcare workers to review the argument in the Brief of the Injunction found in this folder.
A member of our Board is supporting self-represented individuals in court with Covid-era summary offence tickets by helping to write their legal arguments and prepping them for Court. This was an opportunity to put the bad faith and ultra vires activity in front of the Judiciary because it needs to start sinking in hard and fast.
Hosting a Townhall to meet some of the HRM Mayoral candidates (watch recording here). There is much apathy with voting of late and this was clear with voter turnout under 40% according to HRM's numbers. We wanted to give equal face time to each candidate as only a small handful had been offered a chance to speak about their platform at events. The candidates who attended had real life experiences as working Nova Scotians and readily engaged in Q&A with the crowd. My hope is that each of the candidates share all their good ideas, as members of the public, with the new mayor.
Getting ready for Mootness. We are in Yarmouth Court on Friday December 06 for an all day hearing on Mootness. As most of you know, the Respondents submitted a Motion in August of 2022 to strike the Judicial Review as moot since the Orders were no longer in effect. We've commented previously on how insignificant a motion this is in the face of all the harm, segregation and fractured relationships which resulted from the Orders. The Respondents re-filed the Mootness motion with one change: a new affiant who will be testifying. The affiant was the managing director for Communications Nova Scotia from March 2020 to May 2023 and had "knowledge of the timing and content of various iterations of the Public Health Order issued by the Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Robert Strang".
For anyone interested in attending the virtual option for the hearing, please carefully review and follow the instructions here.
The surprise "snap" Provincial election is taking place on November 26th. We can speculate on all the reasons why the party in power is doing this but the more important information is that there are groups of aware individuals who are organizing (either as Independents or under the umbrella of a new political party) and running either in this election or preparing to run in the next:
"Nova Scotia United (NSU) www.nsunited.ca will be putting forward candidates in this provincial election to avoid being de-registered (which Elections NS has the power to do). As per the Election Act, a registered party must nominate 10 people during a provincial election. These nominees will be holding space for NSU so that they can remain a registered party and continue to build over the next 4 years. There is a lot of work to be done between elections to run a successful campaign, reach out if you feel called to participate in growing this grass roots political party"
"The Independent NS Initiative https://independentns.net is comprised of a group of concerned citizens committed to educating voters about the electoral process, with a focus on independent candidates for election as Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) across NS, in the next election. We are not a political party. Nor are we associated with any political party. We exist simply to
- educate voters about a 'new way to vote'
- help communities recruit an Independent Candidate to
represent them
- offer guidance to communities on running town hall
meetings
- and to provide Independent Candidates with information
about their MLA career."
Please support these brave groups as much as possible through funding or volunteering.
I wanted to re-share an interview we did on how the Yarmouth Judicial Review affects all Canadians because the information received in the Record for the Review (back in October of 2022) includes a lot of Federal level direction and information. Each province would have been provided with similar, if not the exact same, set of information and instructions because each province was part of coordinated pandemic-response meetings and efforts.
Interview for Judicial Review update and Call for Donations
A call out for donations. We are a fully volunteer Board and have dedicated several hundreds of hours of our time and energy in order to keep this door-to-justice open via the Judicial Review for Nova Scotians and Canadians. If you are able to donate any amount, it will be most gratefully accepted.
There are multiple ways to donate:
1. E-transfer to donations@thecans.ca
2. Donate directly on the website (https://www.thecans.ca/donations/)
3. Cheque: make out to Citizens Alliance of Nova Scotia; 91-3045 Robie st unit 5, Halifax NS B3K 4P6
Thank you!
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