Alberta government sought to censor pastor accused of violating COVID-19 rules, defence argues Fakiha Baig Bookmark Please log in to listen to this story. Also available in French and Mandarin. Log In Create Free Account
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JASON FRANSON/The Canadian Press
A lawyer for an Alberta pastor accused of violating COVID-19 rules says the province’s health agency decided to penalize the church leader as a way to censor him.
James Kitchen told the trial of James Coates that his client was charged the same day he preached a sermon criticizing Alberta’s leadership on the pandemic.
WINNIPEG A Stanford University medicine professor and health economist who has been a vocal critic of pandemic lockdown measures is defending his stance in a Manitoba courtroom. Jay Bhattacharya, one of the three authors behind the Great Barrington Declaration, was called as an expert witness for 10 applicants who have filed a constitutional challenge against Manitoba’s public health orders. The court case, led by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, was brought forward by seven Manitoba churches and three individuals. They’re arguing the province’s measures infringe on their charter rights to hold religious and public gatherings and gather at people’s private homes.
Trinity Bible Chapel in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada | Facebook/Trinity Bible Chapel
A judge in Ontario, Canada, has allowed authorities to temporarily lock the doors of a church that has refused to follow provincial restrictions on gatherings aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19.
The attorney general’s office for Ontario had police lock the doors of Trinity Bible Chapel of Waterloo through next Saturday to prevent in-person worship services.
The move came as part of a temporary injunction against the chapel in which Justice John Krawchenko concluded that closing the church was a matter of public safety.
“The risk of irreparable harm would be too great to ignore,” said Krawchenko, as reported by the CTV News. “The only way to ensure compliance is to lock the doors to the building, but not to their ministry.”
Posted: May 03, 2021 3:00 AM CT | Last Updated: May 3
The Church of God Restoration in Manitoba, seen from above, on Nov. 22, 2020. The church and its pastor have been fined for breaking public health orders, including in December 2020, when more than 100 people attended a service while the area was in Code Red for having a COVID-19 test-positivity rate of 40 per cent.(Submitted)
Seven rural Manitoba churches hope to convince a judge that the province s lockdown measures are unjustified violations of Charter-protected freedoms of conscience, religion, expression and peaceful assembly and that the chief medical officer of health failed to consider the collateral social and health costs of locking down society.
James Coates. (Screenshot: GraceLife Church of Edmonton/YouTube)
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An Albertan pastor heads to court this morning to stand trial for allegedly violating Alberta public health orders by holding worship gatherings in violation of gathering size limits.
James Coates remained in police custody for over a month after being arrested in mid-February and refusing to agree to bail conditions. All but one of his charges were dropped in March, with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms saying at the time that Coates and the JCCF wanted to contest in court the constitutionality of limiting worship gathering sizes.