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Shawn Buckley

Welcome back to the National Citizens Inquiry as we begin our final afternoon in the city of Vancouver, province of British Columbia. I’m pleased to announce our first guest for the afternoon, Gail Davidson. Gail, I’d like to start by asking you to state your full name for the record, spelling your first and last name.

Gail Davidson

Certainly. My name is Gail Davidson. That’s G-A-I-L  D-A-V-I-D-S-O-N.

Shawn Buckley

And Gail, do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Gail Davidson

I do. I will relate to you international human rights law and Canada’s obligations to what I believe to be true, and I will be also giving you opinions and analyses that I believe are properly centred on my knowledge of that law.

Shawn Buckley

I’ll take that as a yes, and I’m sorry, you wanted to affirm, and I didn’t notice my note. I apologize for that.

You are a retired lawyer who has worked for the past 20 years in international human rights law, advocacy, research, and education. Is that right?

Gail Davidson

Correct.

Shawn Buckley

Would you add to that, or is that a good introduction? I think it’s important for people to understand that you’re an expert in international human rights law.

Gail Davidson

Sorry, what was your question, Shawn?

Shawn Buckley

Well, I’m just wondering if you wanted me to add to that because I think it’s important that—

Gail Davidson

No, I think that’s an ample description unless you want me to add to it or you want to add to it.

Shawn Buckley

I just want the people that are participating and watching your evidence to understand that you truly are an expert in international human rights law. So 20 years of experience as a lawyer is pretty good in that field.

So we’ll go on. I will advise, you’ve written the article called “The Right to Say No to COVID-19 Vaccines,” and Commissioners that is entered as Exhibit VA-4, and that’ll be available to the public online also as an exhibit.

So Gail, I’ll just let you launch in because you’ve come in to give us a presentation [Exhibit VA-4b] on your thoughts with COVID and international law, and I know that actually you’re going to need most of the time to get through that, so I’m just going to invite you to start.

Gail Davidson

Thank you very much, Shawn.

The reason why I didn’t want to be introduced as an expert, if I can just briefly say to the people that are watching and the Commissioners, is that I’m going to be talking about international human rights law and Canada’s obligations under that law, specifically with respect to the panoply of rights that were restricted with mandates and measures and policies introduced since March of 2020.

My opinion about the law is that it only works if it belongs to everybody, and increasingly it is something that is only known by experts. So my hope that I want to do today is to run through some particulars of international human rights law as it relates to the restrictions of rights. So here we go.

[Index]

I’ve just got a little bit of an index of the things I’m going to run through: the rights violated since the World Health Organization declaration that COVID-19 was a virus; Canada’s international human rights law obligations; the rights to informed consent, and I really appreciate what Mr. Kuntz said about there not being any rights, and I want to talk about the possibility of there being rights.

I want to talk about what are rights that can be restricted and rights that cannot ever be lawfully restricted. Then I want to say a few things about what should have happened. And then the right of all of us, individuals and society, to remedies for the violations. And then I want to talk briefly about what can be done now.

[A. Importance of IHRL]

So the importance of international human rights law [IHRL]: I want to emphasize that to you—to the maintenance of democracy, rights, and the rule of law in Canada; the seriousness of the violations; what the state duties are to ensure remedies and the fact of truth, accountability, redress and measures to prevent recurrence and my opinion that you definitely cannot rely on the state to invoke those remedies, as one of the commissioners, Mr. Drysdale, well knows from his own efforts;

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and lastly, the need for individuals and groups to work towards ensuring those remedies, restoring rights, re-establishing democracy, and the rule of law, which is a process, obviously, by this Inquiry that has already begun.

[A.1 Restrictions of Rights Unlawful]

I’m of the opinion that virtually all of the restriction of rights were unlawful in this way: they were non-compliant with requirements of restrictions under international human rights law of lawfulness, legitimacy, proportionality, and temporariness.

They were not—this is the next point I think is very important to understand—the restrictions were not supported by the information and debate that was necessary, absolutely necessary, to assess or contest the risk or the lawfulness of the mandates or to allow any kind of periodic review or to allow even a judicial review. And also, some of the restrictions were unlawful because they applied to rights that can never be lawfully restricted.

And then I’m going to talk about they were unlawful because they effectively denied access to remedies and a little bit of that was profiled by Lindsay Kenny’s testimony this morning, where—one of the cases of her doing an FOI—she referenced waiting 20 months to hear that there basically wasn’t anything, long past the 30 days.

[A.2 Democracy to Despotism]

So basically after the WHO Declaration, governments all across Canada engaged in widespread and systemic violation of rights and imposed measures that caused a good deal of harm to everybody. These restrictions paved the way for further measures to destroy democratic governments and entrench authoritarian rule.

Some examples of that are the federal Agile Nations Charter that heralds easing of laws and procedures to speed up marketing and public consumption of corporate products, thereby, although increasing profits for corporations, definitely increasing harm to consumers.

Another example is the Health Professions and Occupations Act in British Columbia, which has already been passed but is not yet enforced. And that Act will criminalize the delivery of personalized health care; entrench despotic lawmaking; create involuntary pharma markets through mandatory vaccination for health care workers; violate freedom from ex post facto laws; and allow laws and rules adopted by any organization or any government anywhere to become law in BC.

This, of course, would allow adoption of things like the controversial amendments to the International Health Regulations and the WHO Pandemic Treaty [WHO Pandemic Preparedness Treaty], I’m just forgetting what it’s called. So that’s two examples of the way this is not over.

So when people used to talk about getting back to normal, what normal is, we’re not getting—back—to normal. We’re staying in normal: what normal is, is despotic lawmaking and authoritarian rule. That’s what’s been put in place. That’s the normal.

[A.3 Rights to Informed Consent]

So I want to talk about rights to informed consent, and there’s three of them I want to talk about. The first one is informed consent to medical treatment and the right to refuse treatment and the right to revoke consent, and I’m just going to refer to that as “informed consent.”

And the second one is freedom from coercion or force to accept a medical treatment not voluntarily chosen, and I’m just going to refer to that as “freedom from coercion.”

And the third one is freedom from non-consensual medical or scientific experimentation, and I’m just going to refer to that as “freedom from experimentation.”

And of course, I’m saying that all of those were— They weren’t just violated, they were actually extinguished because, of course, once people went ahead and got an injection to which they hadn’t consented, then basically their freedom had been extinguished.

[A.4 Some IHRL Guarantees of Rights Violated by Mandates]

Now, some of the international law guarantees of rights violated by mandates are the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [UDHR];

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the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR]; the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights [ICESCR]; the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment [UNCAT]—and I’m going to refer to those prohibitions under the Committee Against Torture, to make it shorter, the Convention Against Torture and Other Ill Treatment, and by that I’m including the other cruel, inhuman, degrading; and also the American Declaration on the Rights of Duties of Man [ADRDM].

[B. Rights Violated by Mandates and Policies, UDHR Rights]

Now if I can just shock you or trouble you to go through this list of rights that were violated by mandates and policies, and I won’t read them all out because it’s too long a list. But you can see how long, and I’ve divided them up according to what instrument guaranteed them.

So you can see they start off with the big one, equality and non-discrimination; freedom from torture and ill treatment; equality before and the equal protection of the law; access to effective remedies for rights violations, that’s a very big one. Another big one, access to independent impartial competent tribunals to determine rights; privacy and movement; freedom of belief; freedom of opinion and expression, that’s a huge one. Assembly and association to take part in governance; work and free choice of employment; adequate standard of living; education to participate in cultural affairs, and so on.

[B. Rights Violated by Mandates and Policies, ICCPR Rights]

And then there’s another two pages: right to life, liberty and security of the person; freedom from ex post facto laws; due process, fair trial and access to judicial review; freedom from coercion to adopt a belief other than by choice, that’s one of the freedom of belief, freedom of religion rights—that’s what we call, never subject to any kind of lawful restriction.

[B. Rights Violated by Mandates and Policies, ICESCR Rights]

And ending up with the rights under the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights [ICESCR] of the rights to health and the rights to work.

[B. Rights Violated by Mandates and Policies, UNICAT and ADRDM]

Now, the rights under the UN Convention Against Torture and the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man.

[C. Canada’s IHRL Obligations: Sources]

If I can talk for a few minutes, just so you’ll have an understanding that when the Canadian government or the BC government or any kind of non-state actor, where the restrictions have been promoted by the state and allowed by the state, when they sweep away the rights and there’s not even a mention of— I’m wanting to tell you these things because I want you to know that the rights are protected. But the situation is such that we’re going to have to work together to take back the law because obviously, otherwise, there’s just more rights, terrible violations ahead.

Okay, so some of the sources of Canadians’ international law obligations are its membership in the United Nations and the Organization of American States [OAS] and the charters and declarations that Canada’s accepted when they became a member of those.

Customary International Law [CIL], and that’s just a body of law that it’s rules and standards that our states have accepted over the years and are considered to be part of law, even if they’re not protected by treaty. And those include obvious things like slavery and non-refoulement to torture and so on. Peremptory norms: those are norms that are accepted and recognized by the international community as norms from which there can never be any limitation and also treaties to which Canada is a state party.

[C.1 The Rule of Law]

So I’d also like to briefly mention the rule of law and the reason why I want to mention that is because I’ve just heard people that we think of as being responsible using the term the “rule of law” as if it meant the “rule by law.” In other words, meaning if it’s a law, if it’s made by anybody like Bonnie Henry or if it’s made by the federal government or whoever it’s made of, then you have to obey that law otherwise you’re violating the rule of law.

So Canada has a legal duty to uphold the rule of law, which is described by the Universal Declaration on Human Rights,

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as essential to avoid, quote, “recourse is a last resort to rebellion against tyranny and oppression.” And that was certainly something that Mr. Kitchen referred to in his very capable presentation. Instead of reading to you what the United Nations describes the rule of law is, I’m just going to paraphrase it and say that the rule of law requires that laws be properly purposed; properly passed; equally applicable to all people; and that there be measures in place to ensure equality, accountability, and access to an independent judiciary to determine rights and to prevent and remedy the arbitrary abuse of power.

So obviously none of those things are happening at all in Canada or even properly understood even though the Canadian Charter, as another person has just said, starts out applauding the supremacy of the rule of law as a governing principle in Canada.

Shawn Buckley

I’m just going to jump in because the way you first said that, I think, will leave some of the audience people participating in your testimony confused. Because you used the rule of law, and then you’re talking about any law Bonnie Henry made, which is exactly your opposite point. So the rule of law really is governments being held to the same law that every party—whether they be a person or an organization—are all subject to the same laws. The laws are transparent.

Gail Davidson

That’s right.

Shawn Buckley

And that we have access to a fair judicial process to enforce those laws. Okay, so I just wanted, I knew that’s what you’re trying to communicate, and I just didn’t want there to be any confusion, so thank you.

Gail Davidson

Thank you, Shawn.

[C.2 IHRL Binding on Canada]

The international human rights law—you could be asking, is that really binding on Canada? And I just want to briefly tell you that the Supreme Court of Canada has confirmed, first of all, with respect to the source of customary international law that that’s automatically adopted into Canadian law without any need for legislative action.

With respect to treaty law, the treaties that I mentioned, the Supreme Court of Canada has determined on many occasions that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms must be interpreted to provide at least as much protection as that provided by the treaty laws, the treaties that Canada has signed or ratified.

[C.3 Obligations to Protect Rights/Remedy Violations]

And now the obligations, international human rights obligations to protect rights include the duty, of course, to respect, protect and ensure rights for all without discrimination; to prevent violations; to investigate allegations of violations and take appropriate action against those determined to be responsible; and to provide victims with access to effective remedies.

[D. Informed Consent, Freedom from Coercion: Freedom from Experimentation]

The three rights of all the rights that I’ve listed in those earlier slides that I’m going to concentrate on are the rights to informed consent, and these rights— The right to informed consent is protected by several treaties: all three of those big treaties that I mentioned, and it’s also protected as an essential right. A right considered essential has special status, and that’s a right that is necessary to protect other rights.

So for example, I’ll just used the right to freedom from torture. The access to effective remedies is an essential right and access to judicial review of complaints of torture are essential rights to the recognition, protection, and maintenance of torture—because obviously, if those two rights weren’t there, then any state or non-state actor could commit torture and get away with it, which is what one of our concerns is here.

Freedom from coercion is protected as a prohibited ill treatment under the Convention Against Torture, and arguably in my view, is also a peremptory norm and protected by measures under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

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Freedom from experimentation was defined and established by the Nuremberg Code, and that’s a freedom that can legally never be restricted or suspended or tampered with in any way. It’s also considered a peremptory norm of international law. And so in my view, and probably in the view of a lot of the people giving testimony before the Commission, of course, the vaccines that were the products—the pharma products, I should say that were marketed as vaccines—were and still are reasonably considered in the experimental stage,

and as there still is no long-term data available on the long-term efficacy and harm of them. And the intermediate data indicates that the benefit is much more temporary than ever thought in the beginning and the harms appear to vastly outstrip any possible kind of benefit.

[D.1 Informed Consent]

Okay, so just to talk a little bit about informed consent, not too much because Mr. Kunz covered that very well. But to be valid there has to be capacity; there has to be access to information about the health risk; about the treatment, the benefits and risks of the treatment; about alternatives, the benefits and risks of alternatives; about the benefit or risk of no treatment.

And the law requires that this information be given to the person by— The next thing that it requires is information about the particular consequences for the patient, in other words, things particular to the person who’s going to accept or not accept the treatment. And so that has to obviously be provided by somebody with knowledge of that, and as you know, the injections were held in all kinds of places, in gymnasiums and on buses and in pharmacies. And in BC, the list of people authorized to give the vaccinations is quite long, and they were virtually never given by people’s personal physicians. And the personal physicians, in any case, turned out to be risking their right to practise medicine were they to caution a patient or express caution to the public in the acceptance of the injections.

[D.2 Freedom from Experimentation]

Now freedom from experimentation, of course, that’s a huge one. That is an absolute right that can never be restricted at any time, under any conditions, and it’s considered essential, also as being essential to the right to life, security of the person, and [freedom from] torture.

[D.3 Informed Consent, Freedom from Coercion]

I wanted to let you know—what in April of 2020—what Canada said the law was at that time in Canada with respect to freedom from coercion. What happened is that somebody had made a complaint to the Committee Against Torture about Canada using coercion to sterilize First Nations females. And the Committee of Torture reviewed their report in Canada’s defence and so on and said that the coerced sterilization was a violation of Canada’s obligation under the Convention Against Torture.

So one of the things Canada then filed with the Committee Against Torture was what consent was in Canada. And it’s interesting to look at because one of the things that they say in their report is consent must “be informed, meaning that certain issues must be discussed with the patient prior to consent being obtained,

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“such as material, expected consequences of the proposed treatment, special or unusual risks of the treatment, alternatives to treatment (and their risks), the likely consequences if no treatment [is undertaken, and] the success rates of different/alternative methods of treatment,” and so on. You get the idea that they’re saying, that’s a protected right and that’s the scope of the right that’s protected in Canada.

[D.4 Informed Consent: Nuremberg Code]

Freedom from experimentation was of course recognized and codified in the Nuremberg Code, after the Nuremberg trials following the Second World War. And the duties with respect to the type of consent, the scope of consent, is quite similar to what Canada said is the law in Canada—including that the information must be given by the person that is going to administer the treatment and the consent must be witnessed and be in writing.

[E. Derogable and Non-Derogable Rights, Derogable rights]

Now I just want to talk a bit about derogable and non-derogable rights, and if you don’t mind me using those words, I’ll just tell you what they mean at first.

So a derogable right is a right that under international human rights law that can be conditionally subject to restriction under certain conditions. And the two conditions are this: some of the treaties specify that certain rights—like, their right to freedom of expression; the right to association; the right to assembly; the right to movement, no movement is not included; the right to security of the person—can be restricted in certain circumstances.

However, the rights have to apply with those conditions that I mentioned before—of lawfulness, necessity, proportionality, legitimacy and temporariness. Also, the risk has to be established, and there has to be available to the parties that are affected by this, the information required to assess whether or not each of those things—so whether or not it’s necessary; whether or not it’s legitimate—that says, would the restriction address the risk? Whether it’s proportional: like, is the restriction causing more harm than the harm that it’s reducing? And also, it always has to be temporary and subject to assessment.

The second category of rights that are derogable—they can be restricted—are rights that are where the restriction is necessary during an emergency to protect other rights and/or to maintain the rule of law. Again, they have to fulfill those conditions.

[E.1 Non-Derogability of Rights]

So let’s talk a minute about non-derogable rights because that’s a really important category. And non-derogable rights are rights that can never be lawfully restricted under any conditions, including war or public health crises.

And so categories of those is if it’s a peremptory norm: like, freedom from torture is a peremptory norm; freedom from experimentation is a peremptory norm; equality and non-discrimination are peremptory norms; access to effective remedies are peremptory norms.

The second category is, as I mentioned before, rights that are essential to the maintenance of other rights. And the third category is identified by treaty as non-derogable.

[E.2 Absolute/Non-Derogable Rights – Peremptory Norms and Essential Rights]

So peremptory norms, I’ve just listed some of the rights there that are peremptory norms: crimes against humanity; equality and non-discrimination; and so on, ones that are essential rights.

[E.3 Absolute/Non-Derogable Rights – Treaty Rights and Jurisprudence]

I’m just going to hop to the next slide. The rights that are the most non-derogable, the rights where it’s not controversial—it’s not controversial, can this right be restricted or can it not?

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Those are the rights where the treaty says that they can’t be ever restricted and rights that are peremptory norms.

Now rights where they’re essential rights and rights where the jurisprudence—in other words, the decisions of treaty-monitoring bodies and special procedures, and so on, say this right has got to be considered as non-derogable—that’s more controversial, so that’s arguable. So for instance, with the right to education and the right to work, the various UN bodies have said those should be considered to be rights that can never be subject to restrictions.

[E.2 Absolute/Non-Derogable Rights – Peremptory Norms and Essential Rights]

So just to back up, the ones where you really can’t argue about it at all are freedom from torture; equality and non-discrimination; right to effective remedies; right to judicial review; freedom from experimentation; freedom from ex post facto laws. And what that means, that’s freedom from being convicted or punished for something that was not a law before you did the act, and so that includes things where the offence was created after the person committed the act. But it also includes things where the offence or the misconduct, or whatever it is, was so ill-defined that you couldn’t possibly know it before you did it, and you couldn’t even possibly know it enough to defend it.

So for instance, under the new Health Professions and Occupations Act, it’s both a crime and a misconduct to promulgate false or misleading information, and of course, there’s no definition of false or misleading information. So you’d find that out like at the end of your trial, I guess.

So that’s an absolute right—freedom from ex post facto and illegitimate charges actually.

[F. What Should Have Happened?]

So just talking about what should have happened. All governments at every level should have provided and ensured disclosure of all relevant information, and widened opportunities for debate because they were imposing measures that had been decided upon in secret. They hadn’t been decided upon under the scrutiny of elected representatives in parliaments or legislative assemblies; they had never been subjected to the kind of notice that lawmaking in a democracy requires.

In British Columbia, they were announced at press conferences if you can believe it. But they weren’t really press conferences because there was no questions allowed or answers given, one or the other. And if you didn’t know that there was going to be a press conference, then how would you know about the law.

And also, as Ms. Kenny said, she’s still not able to get any information from the Ministry of Health in British Columbia as to the information that went into informing the myriad of public health orders and guidances that have been issued since. I think the first one was March the 15th; I think it was four days after the WHO declaration.

So there should have been adherence by state and non-state actors with Canada’s international law obligations—and possibly they just don’t know them—and the prohibitions against restrictions of the absolute or non-derogable rights and adherence to the conditions for the restriction of rights that can be restricted.

There should have been parliamentary oversight of the mandates and the policies. The information, debate, and oversight necessary for assessment of risks and mandates and policies should have been made available. And there should have been some provisions made for equal access or any access to judicial review of the mandates.

Now the access to the judicial review: I’m separating that differently from [access] to an impartial judiciary. Because, of course, the judiciary, they’re just people so they’re subjected to the same kind of propaganda and censorship,

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and so, obviously, many judges are going to want to just do what Mr. Kitchen said—reduce the Charter argument without hearing it.

But as far as the equal access to judicial review: you see, people were stripped of their employment income and stripped of their business income, and there was no provision made to say, “Well, we’ll give those people legal aid. So we’ll make a new category of legal aid.” That would have made a huge difference because not only would it have enabled people who had been robbed of their income to go to lawyers, it would have encouraged a lot of lawyers to take on challenges to the mandates and policies, both the ones by state and non-state actors.

[G. Duty to Investigate Serious & Gross Violations of Rights]

Now I want to talk a bit about the state duties to provide remedies because that’s very important. And so all of those treaties, the three big treaties—human rights treaties I mentioned—they all impose mandatory duties on states to ensure investigation of serious or particularly of serious or gross rights violations. And the investigations have to fulfill a whole raft of conditions, but I’m just going to mention some of them.

The investigations have to be independent, competent, transparent, and capable of leading to proceedings to determine facts, identify perpetrators, impose accountability, and grant reparations for victims. And that’s like a truism of law in general.

If you don’t have remedies and, of course, in this current situation where the complaints would be saying that the violations were either imposed or promoted or allowed by state authorities, then a) the state is just not going to investigate them, but b) the state isn’t competent to investigate them. Because, as for instance, as happened with the Emergencies Act Inquiry, that was— I saw that from the get-go as a sham because of the procedure for appointing the commissioner and then the control that the Liberal caucus had over changing the Commission’s mandate to not comply with the statute but to look into the circumstances of leading up to the emergency measures.

Now I just want to refer briefly to the basic principles and guidelines on the right to a remedy for victims of gross violations of international human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law.

[G.1 Duty to Investigate]

So I just wanted to say, looking at all the case law from international tribunals and so on, there’s no one definition of what constitutes gross. Like if we’re going say, “Okay these were violations of international human rights law,” there’s no one definition of what is considered gross or serious. But determinations of those qualities of the very serious human rights violations include reviewing the quantity of victims; the planning of the violations; the nature of the violations; and the denial of effective access to measures to prevent, punish, and redress violations.

So I think it’s pretty clear to me, that’s my opinion, that these violations of rights are correctly considered gross violations and, therefore, triggering the highest level, to the full rights to investigation and so on.

[G.2 IHRL Rights and Duties to Ensure Remedies]

The next slide, the human rights slide, it’s just laying out some of the things to which victims and society is entitled in the case of these kind of violations. They’re entitled to the truth,

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establishment of the truth. They’re entitled to know what was done by whom, to who, and what was the harm and what can be done to prevent it in the future. And that includes redress for victims and accountability for perpetrators, which there’s a wide range of things that can be considered as accountability. And the last thing that is included in their rights to redress is measures of determining and ensuring measures to prevent recurrence.

[H. What Can Be Done Now?]

So what can be done now? As I say, history certainly proves time and time and time again that when the state has been involved in a significant, certainly a serious or gross violations of human rights, the state is never going to be willing and is never going to be competent to do investigations.

If I could just tell you a tiny story about Patrick Finucane. Now this was just one violation. Patrick Finucane was murdered in 1989 while he was having dinner with his family, his young family. And his wife was Geraldine, and she believed—this was in Northern Ireland—that he was murdered by the Royal Irish Constabulary working with the Secret Service arm of the United Kingdom Armed Forces. So she kept peppering them with pleas for an investigation that was independent. She made so much fuss that the United Kingdom held six investigations, and she finally took the matter to the European Court of Human Rights. And of course, the U.K. government was saying, “What is she on about, we’ve had six investigations.” And the Court said, “No, there’s never been an investigation.” All of the investigations were controlled and carried out by state authorities, who were the very authorities that Geraldine Finucane believed on reasonable evidence were—so anyway, that was just an example.

So what can we do?

I think that we have to do everything in our power: we have to submit reports and complaints to international authorities, to the United Nations and the Organization of American States and authorities monitoring bodies, identifying the unlawfulness of the mandates, the bit-by-bit evidence of what the mandates were, how they were imposed, and the injuries that abounded from the mandates.

Domestically, I think that we have to ensure the widest possible public access to information about the illegality and unlawfulness of the measures and about the right and the importance of gaining redress. And there have to be widened opportunities for public conversation and public debate. I liked what Mr. Kitchen said in his submissions: He said he tells his clients, “don’t muzzle yourself”; those weren’t his words, these are mine. “Don’t censor yourself,” those were his words. He said, “have conversations, talk about it.” And this, very important in my view, Commission is fueling that need for public conversation.

And also, I think we have to ensure that people have information about the initiation of civil and criminal proceedings by individuals and groups within Canada.

[Conclusion]

We have to pursue all avenues. In order to sort of take back the law—and that is, take back law that is rights-based—then we have to continue to work together to re-establish democratic lawmaking, access to information, and dialogue at all levels in order to restore and protect the rights of all.

In my view, we have to keep working to gather and preserve evidence.

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That’s one thing that’s very important about the Canadian COVID Care Alliance hearings, in my view, because they are gathering and preserving evidence. And pursue tribunals at all levels, then to take that evidence and determine and expose facts and recommend measures for accountability for perpetrators and reparation for victims and measures to prevent recurrence.

And that is so critically important in my view, and it’s up to individuals and groups— because states certainly will block anything—to find peaceful ways to work together: to take back the law and re-establish democracy, re-establish democratic lawmaking; re-establish the right to access to information and dialogue; and to ensure that wrongdoing is exposed and held accountable, victims are redressed, and there’s appropriate measures put in place.

In my view, the National Citizens Inquiry is doing just that—giving voice to people that previously didn’t have a voice; giving public access to information that was previously suppressed about the virus, the risk of the virus, whether or not there was a pandemic or not a pandemic; the products marketed as vaccines treatment, and prophylaxis not provided or denied, and the injuries suffered. One of the hopeful signs is that in Victoria today, BC health care workers have gathered from all over the province to go to attend the Legislative Assembly and support a petition being presented that opposes the Health Professions and Occupations Act that I referred to.

In closing, I just wanted to say a few words about the importance of information, and so if you don’t mind, I’m just going to read from this.

In a climate of censorship and propaganda, there can be no such thing as informed consent to experimentation or to any kind of informed consent because the information necessary to understand the relevant issues is not provided or available. Informed consent requires access to comprehensible information, reliable information about the risks and benefits of treatment, the risk and benefit of alternatives, the risk and benefit of no treatment, the consequences for the particular person.

Since March of 2020, instead of information and instead of encouraged or even allowed debate, there was censorship and propaganda: propaganda designed to compel and coerce acceptance; information and debate questioning the risk of the virus, the existence of the pandemic, the safety or efficacy of the mandates themselves and policies was effectively censored.

Doctors bold enough to ask questions or caution against the use of the pharmaceutical product marketed as vaccines, whether they did that to patients or to the public, were suspended from practice and cited for misconduct.

There was no informed consent. There could be no informed consent because there was no information, information was suppressed.

[The need to combat impunity]

And in ending, I just wanted to say a word about the brutality of impunity, so why it’s so important to insist,

[00:50:00]

to increase our peaceful efforts to have all these matters redressed. I just want to cite the names really, I won’t bother saying what they said, of two people who so passionately believed in the necessity for accountability.

One of them is Baltazar Garzón. He’s probably, as you know, the Spanish judge who issued the international arrest warrant against Augusto Pinochet for torture. And the other one is Ben Ferencz, who recently died. He was the chief Nuremberg trials U.S. prosecutor, and he worked all his life to ensure that there would be accountability for grave violations of domestic and international human rights law.

Those are my submissions, thank you.

Shawn Buckley

Gail, thank you for that presentation.

It seems to me that based on your presentation, that you would be of the opinion that the way Canada handled this pandemic, even just administrating the vaccine, the way that we did it, would be a violation on many fronts of international law obligations that Canada is a party to.

Gail Davidson

Sorry, what did you say?

Shawn Buckley

I’m asking, based on your presentation, I’m presuming that you’re of the opinion that Canada violated international law and how we went about administering the vaccine.

Gail Davidson

Oh, completely.

Shawn Buckley

Right, yeah. I mean, so obviously even just on informed consent—I think you made it absolutely clear that there couldn’t be an informed consent—even included things like options to other treatment options as part of that. And you presented a slide to us on Canada’s response to the finding about sterilizing Native women, and it included the information about other treatments. And so, on many levels, we’ve violated international law on how we’ve proceeded it.

Gail Davidson

Oh yes, absolutely on many levels, yeah on every level. You see, because rights are all interdependent: so very often when one right is restricted, suspended, or extinguished, then that creates a kind of a waterfall of restrictions of other rights.

I can’t think of an instance during the imposition of policies that restricted people’s rights to privacy, movement, work, equality, the right to refuse medical treatment—I can’t think of a lawful instance where that was lawfully done.

It was as if, overnight, the democracy collapsed. And even though many could argue it had been very shoddily operating prior to that or it had already been, you know, in the ICU unit. But overnight, lawmaking moved from Parliament to—we didn’t know where it moved—we didn’t know where it moved: it was to decisions made in secret on the basis of still unknown information and then announced at press conferences.

Shawn Buckley

If I can emphasize, sorry.

Gail Davidson

One of the things I think people might want to do now, is to go, sort of what Lindsay Kenney’s doing or join on to her work: to take specific public health orders and then go through the order. So, for instance, the public health order made in BC most recently on April the 6th is 28 pages long—and to go through page by page, paragraph by paragraph, and say, “How is this unlawful, illegitimate, disproportionate? How is this unlawful, this order?”

But then I guess you have to go to a tribunal or court with that because I’m sure that everybody that’s testified before you will have told you the same story,

[00:55:00]

that when they tried to communicate with the federal government or the provincial government about these issues, they never received any response other than perhaps an automatic bounce back.

Shawn Buckley

Well, it’s interesting because you’ve raised 2 points. What we’ve heard at this Commission, and we’ve had many days of hearings, is that basically you would never receive actual information back. And it’s something that you just raised.

So we’re being subject to these orders, but we’re actually not being given the scientific basis: we’re just being asked to follow the science without it being provided. And not one single public health officer—not one single person that would be cited by the media to support these—would debate any other scientist who had an opposite view. And the calls for debate were made, and they were made publicly. So we’ve been subjected to this three years of this single narrative, and anyone correct me: is there a single example of a public health official or somebody who is cited by the mainstream media to support the government narrative who has actually accepted an invitation and debated a scientist that disagreed? There is none.

And so the second thing you touched on is, well, maybe we have to go to the courts. But the difficulty is we’ve had lawyer, after lawyer, after lawyer attend these proceedings, and I ask the lawyer, every lawyer that attends, I ask the exact same question: I basically say, “Look, we have experienced the most serious intrusions into our rights, into the civil liberties that Canadians have ever experienced, including in wartime. And can you identify a single case, a single case that would act as a brake or a check on similar government action going forward?” And the answer from every lawyer is no. And if I’m asked that question, the answer is no, I’m not familiar with a single case.

So I was going to actually ask you, is there any redress for Canadians in international courts or international forums, being that our courts have not put a single brake or check on government action going forward?

Gail Davidson

Yeah, that’s a wonderful question Shawn, and I would say the answer to that is yes and no. I would say no, there’s no opportunity for effective remedial action, and yet I would say, yes, there is because one of the big remedial actions that’s needed is information and megaphoning that information.

So for instance, if in June, that’s the next session of the Human Rights Council, if people wanting to make a human rights statement about the situation, a) got a space to speak and had accreditation, and then you’re in the UN Human Rights Council room, and if you can make a statement, there’s people from 190 countries that hear your statement. And not all statements are very well presented so if you have a really good statement and a good presenter, you do make a noise. If you make a report to the Human Rights Council or the report to the Committee Against Torture or a report to the Special Rapporteur on Health and so on, those things all do get attention, and they’re all part of the evidence-gathering and evidence-preserving process.

Now having said that, certainly if we look at history, there’s a very long list of unremediated, terrible crimes. But I feel that with this situation, there is a real opportunity for success that would be unprecedented simply because the violations occurred over so many countries. And there’s people from all of those countries popping up more and more and more and more of them saying, “This wasn’t right, something has to be done.” So I think that yes, it is. Sorry for giving such a long answer: yes, it is useful to go to international bodies;

[01:00:00]

no, you can’t look to them for a solution.

Shawn Buckley

Right, for an actual remedy.

Gail Davidson

Yeah.

Shawn Buckley

Those are my questions. I’ll ask the commissioners if they have any questions for you.

Commissioner Kaikkonen

Thank you for your testimony. I have a number of questions. I’m not sure I can get them all out because my head’s just spinning right now, but I’m going to try.

You said Canada violated its own laws, and it did. But how do ordinary, hardworking Canadians get access to those who actually violated the laws? Allowed for this to happen? So access to the judiciary, the cost is prohibitive. We’ve heard that from testimony. Ordinary people can’t get a judiciary that is fair and transparent.

We have a photo that circulated of our Supreme Court judges announcing that they were all vaccinated. How does that work in favour of the person, who is standing in front of a judge, who is opposing these mandates? They keep going on and on and on. How do we get a fair trial, justice, due process that works, where the cost is not prohibitive?

You had suggested here a new category of legal aid. Well, anybody who’s been in the legal aid system or tried to get through the legal aid system knows that it’s one-sided, and yes, it helps the legal profession, but it doesn’t help ordinary, vulnerable populations who are trying to get justice or access to justice.

And then just to take it one step further: when it comes to just the judiciary, it is an independent arm of government, and yet we’re not getting judicial decisions that respect that people with principles have decided to stand for their rights and are willing to take on government and get a fair decision.

We’re looking at what was alluded to earlier about some of our truckers who are still in prison or under restrictions on what they’re allowed to say. Politicians who have been ousted from the legislatures in this country who are not allowed to speak freely. So where do we start? As ordinary Canadians, just to get that judiciary to listen, and I don’t think it’s the international bodies that are going to help. It’s in Canada. Canada violated its laws.

Can you speak to that please?

Gail Davidson

Okay, so basically, can I just paraphrase what you’re saying?

Commissioner Kaikkonen

Sure can.

Gail Davidson

If I’ve read you right, you’re basically saying, “Look, how on earth would you get a fair hearing of any of these issues? And how would you know the actual perpetrators?” Does that kind of fairly say what you’re asking?

Commissioner Kaikkonen

Well, we talk about the judicial system, and we believe it to be fair and that there’s due process and that anybody who has to access the judiciary will get their concerns and voices heard.

And yet we heard from James Kitchen that the Charter violations that we’ve all endured over the last three years, the court can say, “Yes, we’ll listen to this court argument or this Charter challenge, but we’re not going to listen to this.”

And yet the courts, the judiciary, as I understand it, is supposed to be totally independent from government and yet they followed suit, and they all became one mind. And I think that that’s the bigger picture: every nation in this world followed this COVID narrative and they were all one mind. They were all doing the same lockdowns and mandates. Primarily, we saw it in the Western nations, but certainly in other nations that were not considered the Western nations, this was happening too. So these lockdowns go bigger than just Canada, but we can’t reach to those international bodies to get heard.

What we can do is reach the municipality that’s around the corner in our jurisdictions. We can reach the provincial government and our federal government in this nation, that’s under the supremacy of God and rule of law. And yet even with that closeness, that proximity of government to us, we have not had access. And then you think of the judiciary who’s picking and choosing which Canadians’ rights or voices are eligible to be heard and which ones aren’t. Where is the fairness?

What would you recommend in Canada that stops the violation of laws so that ordinary, hardworking Canadians can have their voice heard, they can speak freely, they can put their money into a pot and go in front of the judiciary and fully expect a decision that is fair or at least heard, their voices heard?

Gail Davidson

So one of the things that you’re saying is that the judiciary is not impartial, it may be not even independent at the present time. And

[01:05:00]

certainly, it’d be fair for you to say that because one of the things that happened, let me see now, it was last year the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada decided to actually express his personal opinion about the lawfulness of the Ottawa protests. And he characterized the Ottawa protesters as the beginning of anarchy and that their actions had to be denounced by force. And this was maybe in support of Mr. Trudeau calling the Ottawa protesters—with whom he refused to have any kind of debate whatsoever—vilifying them as having unacceptable views, posing a threat to Canadians, and championing hate, abuse, racism, flying racist flags, and stealing food from homeless and various things. Those are all things that Mr. Trudeau said. So it’s true, that’s what will definitely lead to things like the judge that Mr. Kitchen was in front of saying, “No, I don’t want to even hear that argument. I’m not interested; I’m dismissing it without hearing that.”

And I imagine, that’s going to happen many times, and if the abuses had only occurred in Canada, probably there wouldn’t be a very big chance of any remediation, of any effect of pushback. But the human rights abuses have occurred in many countries with many different legal systems, and by legal systems I mean they have different legal cultures, you know what I mean? The legal culture in Canada is, perhaps, except maybe for the criminal bar, they’re a very kind of a compliant culture, less so in the United States, different again in the U.K. And so there’s definitely court actions coming up in many countries, even in Canada.

There’s a decision that’s under appeal right now, the judge’s name is Bennett, I can’t tell you the name of the case because it’s letters, because it has to do with children. But it was a wonderful decision where it was a family matter whether or not children should be forced to be vaccinated, and the judge said, “No, all of these issues”— When he was asked by one side, to say, “Look obviously, they have to get vaccinated; this is what all the public,” this is an Ontario case, “this is what the public health officer said.” The judge said, “No, these are all controversial issues.”

So that’s just an example of one judge. So I don’t think it’s an easy thing to push back or get any eventual remedies, but I think it’s a very necessary thing. Because in my view, what we’re looking at is, if we don’t do that and if we don’t persist in taking hopeless cases to deaf tribunals—until there’s a tribunal that hears the issues and is willing to consider them impartially—then we’re facing a kind of authoritarian rule where rights won’t have to be stripped because we just won’t have any. There will just be privileges for people who demonstrate that they’re compliant and who demonstrate that they’re willing to be compliant to the extent of turning in people who are not. So for instance under the BC Act that I’ve talked about a couple of times, doctors are compelled to report on one another.

Shawn Buckley

Before the commissioners ask another question, I just want to clarify the case, were you referring to the Ontario Court of Appeal decision that overturned the lower court decision on vaccination?

Gail Davidson

No, one that was made at the same time.

Shawn Buckley

Oh, like a week following?

Gail Davidson

Yeah, and the judge’s name I know is Bennett.

Shawn Buckley

Okay.

Gail Davidson

But that’s, yeah.

Shawn Buckley

Sorry, Commissioners.

Commissioner Kaikkonen

I’m just going to leave it at that. Thank you.

Commissioner Drysdale

Hello, and thank you for coming.

You know, when you were doing your presentation, I couldn’t help but thinking about the Charter of Rights, and you know, you read the Charter of Rights and if you’re not a lawyer, you think that they mean something.

[01:10:00]

And in the Charter of Rights, there’s a notwithstanding clause, which has been used to the peril of all Canadians.

So when I was listening to your presentation, I was thinking, is there a notwithstanding clause? And there appeared to be a notwithstanding clause. And your slide E talked about rights that could be abrogated and rights that couldn’t be. But when I read the language there, it’s a notwithstanding clause, you know, they can manipulate that into anything they want it to be, can they not?

Gail Davidson

Not at all, no, but I can see where you would think that.

But let’s take freedom of expression, for instance, just as an example. Now, in a lot of situations, the freedom of expression was just completely extinguished. And we had doctors having their licences summarily suspended, not after a hearing even, before the hearing. And then the hearing doesn’t take place for years. So basically, their whole career is ruined, their whole—it’s incredible.

But in international human law and Canadian law, freedom of expression is one of those rights that can be restricted. And it can be restricted in order to protect other rights that would be restricted if the freedom of expression wasn’t restricted. But the restrictions have to comply with certain conditions. They can’t be just things that—somebody waltzes out at a press conference and tells you that it’s all over.

Commissioner Drysdale

I understand that, but I’m looking at, I’m looking at slide E right now; could you put it back up, Dave? Sorry.

Gail Davidson

Slide D?

Commissioner Drysdale

Okay and it says, no, E. Sorry, E as in elephant. Yeah. There we go.

Gail Davidson

I got it.

Commissioner Drysdale

And it says “specifically allowed” is to be abrogated or derogable, whatever that word is. Legitimacy, temporary, movement, expression, lawfulness, necessary, proportionality. And it says, “necessary during an emergency to protect other rights and maintain the rule of law.”

Gail Davidson

Yes.

Commissioner Drysdale

The Canadian one is really the same wording. It says, “Well, these are your rights unless we figure they’re not.”

Gail Davidson

Yeah.

Commissioner Drysdale

And that seems to me that’s what that’s saying. And you get into things like Mr. Clinton arguing about what the definition of the word “it” is.

Gail Davidson

Yes. Right. Well, the difference between, I think one of the differences between— I think the Canadian Charter is a very weak constitution. And the weaknesses is exampled by section 1 that allows restrictions and just has that vague, you know, necessary and a democratic society, kind of thing, without any other conditions on it. And of course, the notwithstanding clause.

But one thing that I like about international human rights laws is Canada is also a party to the Vienna Convention on Human Rights. And one of the things that that convention says is that a state can never use domestic law as a justification for overriding their international human rights law obligations. But nobody’s ever argued that at the Supreme Court of Canada, as far as I know. Do you want me to just really quickly explain legitimacy, lawfulness, and necessity, and so on, what those conditions refer to?

Like to be lawful, it doesn’t mean to say it would be lawful just because there was a law. So let’s say Bonnie Henry or David Eby or anybody else made a law that restricted rights in British Columbia, that doesn’t mean the restriction is lawful because lawfulness contains a lot more qualities.

So to be lawful, a provision has to be, first of all, it has to be clear and precise enough to be known: both what the prohibition or allowance is; what the consequences of it are; and then it also has to be reasonable. And so,

[01:15:00]

it has to be in relation to something that can reasonably be understood and known beforehand.

And legitimacy means that the restriction has to be capable of addressing the risk to the other rights. And proportionality, that’s kind of the same thing, there has to be a balance there and temporariness.

But the thing that’s missing from people even being able to assess these things was information because the mandates and policies imposed since March of 2020, they weren’t like normal laws.

So they weren’t like, let’s say, we’re going to have a law restricting the speed limit on Highway 1 or something, or around schools. The information and the concerns that that was based on would be well-known. The risk that was being addressed would be well-known.

With respect to the closure of businesses, the masking, the distancing, the compulsory vaccination, all of those things were in reference to a risk that the public didn’t know anything about. They didn’t know anything about the regional or demographic risk of the virus. They didn’t know anything about what’s the information that says, if we restrict indoor numbers to 50 or 25 or 4, how does that address the risk? What is the risk to the people that are going there and how does that address it?

Whereas if you said, “Well, we’re reducing the speed limit in front of the schools,” like we could debate that and the reason why we could debate it because we know the information it’s based on. I think that the measures are unlawful—before you even look at those conditions—because of the absence and suppression of the information that was necessary to understand and assess the restrictions.

Commissioner Drysdale

My last thing that I want to talk to you about is, I think you just made a kind of off-hand statement when you were talking about judges. And you said, “You know, judges are subject to the same biases and propaganda, the rest of the Canadians are.” And I have to tell you that really bothers me. Let me frame that a little bit better.

When you go into a court, how do you address a judge?

Gail Davidson

Well, you know, it depends what level of court they’re in, but you have honorifics like Your Honour and Milord and Milady, and so on.

Commissioner Drysdale

Certainly. What’s the reason for that? Why when you go to court or King’s Court and you say Your Honour, why do you address the judge or why do I as a citizen address a judge with Your Honour?

Gail Davidson

Well, you know, gosh, I don’t think I could answer that for you adequately, but I assume that it’s so that people in court will give the decision-maker a certain kind of reverence.

Commissioner Drysdale

Doesn’t it also, I agree with that, but doesn’t it also work the other way, too? That when a lawyer or a citizen stands in front of the judge and says, “Your Honour,” they’re reminding the judge of their duty, which is higher than an ordinary person’s duty. They’re addressing them with “Your Honour” and they’re saying, “sir, I honour you because I know you’re going to be unbiased, and I know you’re going to be honest, and I know we’re holding you as a society above the others.” Isn’t that another?

Gail Davidson

I agree with you, I like your characterization. Yes.

Commissioner Drysdale

And furthermore, now this is a question that’s going to get us into trouble, and I may decide not to ask it. My question is, and I’ve heard testimony about this over and over and over again where our judicial—and from a retired judge, I’m not going to try to paraphrase what he said. But it appears that there’s a tool, and I hope I get the term right, there’s a tool called judicial notice where a judge can just say, “Well, there’s a climate emergency, therefore carbon taxes are constitutional.”

[01:20:00]

Or “I can’t hear your constitutional challenge because judicial notice: we just accept that the vaccines are—” And so I asked on a number of occasions in these hearings to various witnesses—has the judiciary failed us? And have they protected Canadians’ human rights?

Gail Davidson

I would say, no. I mean, I’m sure we can find cases where they have; the two cases that come to mind are both family law cases. The one that I referred to in an earlier family law case, both in Ontario, but I’m sure we could find cases in Canada. I know we can find cases in other jurisdictions, but how can I respond to that?

When I say the judges are just people, even though we call them the Lord, Milady, Your Honour, and we even bow a little bit when we do that, they are just people, you know what I mean? And the other thing: they’re not ordinary people because they’ve usually come from a socio-economic elite group, right? And maybe they live a bit of a cloistered life, so that’s a disadvantage.

But whenever there’s a political controversy, and certainly COVID is a huge political controversy, and the proof of that is the propaganda and censorship. If it had just been another flu or something, but there was obviously something else afoot. And so, whenever there’s a political controversy—like a war is a good example—the judiciary is always going to defer to the politicians. That’s the way it always goes, so there has to be a period of time before there’s any opportunity for real impartiality in assessing the actual evidence. That’s one of the reasons why I say it takes time. And also, I wanted to say this about judges, not everybody would agree with me, but judges aren’t revolutionaries.

The changes always come from the people that are coming to the court, and change takes a long time. And so, I really take my hat off to all the lawyers that have been taking cases for the enormous amount of work; sometimes they have had absolutely no advantage. But I see that they, to me, they do have an advantage because they’re climbing up that hill where they’re opening the door to information and knowledge. That has to be done in the judiciary same way as it has to be done in your apartment block or your street, or whatever.

Commissioner Drysdale

Well, you know, that is true. But isn’t there different levels of responsibility in society? In other words, if I pay you a dollar and a half to cut my grass, you have a certain duty, and if I say, you’re a judge and pay you $350,000 a year and call you Your Honour, isn’t there different duties there, different levels of duty and responsibility?

Gail Davidson

Well, yeah, I do. That’s the ideal, and I certainly subscribe to the ideal. But then, just to go back to the statements of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, you know, he’s undoubtedly a person who’s very, very familiar with his duties for impartiality and independence and competence, and yet he came out and spoke—he didn’t have to do that.

He came out and spoke as the Supreme Court of Canada against the Truckers’ Convoy when there hadn’t been any court in Canada who had said that what they were doing was illegal. In my view, it wasn’t illegal. The only court that had considered the legality of what they were doing, not in their actual decision but just in aside to comment, was the injunction brought against the honking, right?

And so he had to hear all the evidence from both sides and so it was all by affidavit. And he said, I’m paraphrasing, he said, “if they abide by my injunction to restrict their honking,

[01:25:00]

they can carry on with their lawful protest.” That was the only judicial— And Chief Justice Wagner must have known that, but that’s just an example of the court protecting the state in a time of political crisis or controversy. I’m not sure what you’d want to call it. I think that just always happens.

Commissioner Drysdale

You used the word—you were describing the judges and I’m not meaning to put you on the spot with this—but you said the “upper classes” or the “elite,” I can’t remember exactly what words you used. And it dawned on me when you said that, isn’t it interesting that the elite and the honourable have done less to protect our rights than the truckers?

Gail Davidson

You mean generally speaking?

Commissioner Drysdale

Generally speaking.

Gail Davidson

Yeah.

Commissioner Drysdale

There are always exceptions to every rule.

Gail Davidson

I think that’s very, very understandable. And I know that wasn’t really a question, it was a comment, if you don’t mind me saying that the people who are the privileged people—I mean, I’m a privileged person myself, but so this doesn’t apply across the board ever—but privileged people are people who have been rewarded by their society. So of course, they would be much more likely to comply, even with something that was not only unreasonable but obviously unacceptable, than would people who had had less privileges and had been more stomped on.

Commissioner Drysdale

That is extremely enlightening. Thank you for that.

Gail Davidson

Yeah, because the extent to which people believed the unbelievable, i.e., that Pfizer was going to, I mean, really, come on, that was so incredible that anyway, like everybody knew that whatever—and then, but what was even worse for me was that so many people accepted the unacceptable, of people being summarily overnight stripped of their essential rights, just stripped of them, just like that.

Shawn Buckley

Gail, you have phrased things in a wonderful way. And you have enlightened us today in a profound way. And your comment that the courts were protecting the state, I think, is going to haunt us. But you’ve given us some insights into the psychology of the courts as you see it. And I’m just saying, I think we owe you a debt of gratitude for sharing with us.

Now, for those who were watching the earlier dialogue between Commissioner Drysdale and Gail when section 1 was being mentioned, the text of that is that the “Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” And that’s the section that’s been the mischief for us.

So Gail, on behalf of the National Citizens Inquiry, we sincerely thank you for attending today.

Gail Davidson

Thank you for inviting me.

[01:29:12]

Final Review and Approval: Margaret Phillips, August 25, 2023.    

The evidence offered in this transcript is a true and faithful record of witness testimony given during the National Citizens Inquiry (NCI) hearings. The transcript was prepared by members of a team of volunteers using an “intelligent verbatim” transcription method.   

For further information on the transcription process, method, and team, see the NCI website: https://nationalcitizensinquiry.ca/about-these-transcripts/

Credentials

• Long standing member of the Law Society of BC, retired status
• Extensive experience in International Human Rights, Criminal and Family Law
• Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada, founder & Executive Director

Summary

As an expert, Gail Davidson outlines the importance of International Human Rights law to the maintenance of democracy, rights and the rule of law in Canada. She feels that all of the restrictions of rights were unlawful and she provides her lengthy and detailed view, of where and how, these occurred in the most serious and unprecedented manner ever in history.

Ms. Davidson provides a powerful example of how an unelected state actor, such as Bonnie Henry, abused and failed to uphold Rule of Law in implementing health orders. Measures were decided in secrecy by elected officials in parliament or assemblies and announced under the guise of so-called “press conferences”. Bonnie Henry implemented ongoing orders and mandates without debate, without public questionability, without presenting her claimed scientific basis.

There is hope for redress for all the unlawful violations Canadians have been subject to. Ms. Davidson shares her opinion, outlining a potential path through UN Human Rights Council. She says, pursuing redress through the Canadian courts while possible, will require great perseverance.