In the middle of a weirdly classless and tone-deaf August 30 news release celebrating some legal victories related to pandemic lockdowns, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms writes:
First, it's not clear why Carpay included the late Sheila Annette Lewis in that list since her notoriety had to do with getting a double lung transplant and not with lockdowns, but by praising Lewis for allegedly exercising her Charter freedoms, Carpay really stupidly gives away the game.
At no time was anyone trying to strip Lewis of her precious Charter freedoms; no one was demanding that Lewis get a COVID-19 vaccination against her will, ever. It was entirely her choice to refuse to be vaccinated, and no one was suggesting otherwise, so it's not clear what any of this has to do with alleged Charter violations.
What was happening was that Lewis was told very clearly that, without that vaccination, she was not eligible to be put on the transplant wait list; this was a perfectly legal and reasonable position by Alberta Health Services, whose job it is to allocate scarce organs and to maximize the chance of transplant success. Lewis was told this, and she chose to not be eligible.
No one forced anyone to get vaccinated and no one's Charter rights were violated. Carpay is entirely correct that Lewis exercised her Charter freedoms, as she had every right to do. She made her choice, and it killed her. She exercised her Charter freedoms, and now she's dead. That was always her call to make, and she made it.
Even the Court of Appeal of Alberta made it clear that Lewis always had the right to refuse vaccination, but she did not have the right to be free of the consequences:
"In the circumstances of this appeal, while Ms Lewis has the right to refuse to be vaccinated against COVID-19, the Charter cannot remediate the consequences of her choice."
It's just so strange for the JCCF to be bragging about Lewis' courage when, in the end, it killed her. I'm not sure that's something I would be boasting about.
BONUS TRACK: Unsurprisingly, Rebel News continues to grift off of this issue, and writes of "Joanie," who has also been dropped from a lung transplant wait list for (you guessed it) refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19:
But here's the weirdness. This issue is settled. Lewis' case in Alberta made it absolutely clear that the AHS had the authority to set its own transplant protocol, and the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear an appeal, quite correctly finding that there was no error in law in those judgments. That means there is no further argument -- it's settled that provinces have the right to set their transplant selection criteria, which makes one wonder:
What the hell is Joanie waiting for?
The above makes it clear that she will die without a transplant, and it's also highly unlikely that the rules are going to change, so ... well, she's going to die. Yes, time is going to run out. And if it does, once again, it will have been Joanie's choice, freely made. So what's the logic behind continuing to refuse the jab? At this point, what possible sense does that make? And who is encouraging her to keep fighting?
AND THAT'S UNFORTUNATE: This is from an August 12 post at Rebel News:
File under "Blog posts that did not age well at all."
6 comments:
I hve to wonder if Joanie is a real person. It seems like a fictional one would be more useful for the fundraising.
ValJ
Obviously, Carpay and his ilk mistake stupidity for bravery. This doesn't surprise me. The fascists always celebrate ignorance over intelligence. Intelligence & logic frightens and angers them. It's much harder to control intelligent people, and they are less susceptible to right-wing fascist propaganda.
I'm willing to believe she's real, as the PR shitstorm that would result from her being a fabrication would be too much for even Rebel News to handle.
"Joanie" is real. She was profiled, with her last name and a photo of her and her hubby, and was the subject of another Rebel Petition last year.
I wonder how how the Rebel reconciles their celebration of these voluntary and quite pointless suicides with their furious opposition to MAID?
Ah, John Carpay. The same asshole who (along with someone else) recently got smacked down in a Manitoba court and can no longer practice law in this province because he hired someone to spy on a judge during the Covid era.
Statement on Carpay & Cameron Discipline Hearings
Lawyers involved in judge surveillance banned from practising law in Manitoba, fined $5,000 each
Oh, and in addition to that, he's still potentially facing criminal charges for the same thing.
Lawyer faces 2 criminal charges after having Manitoba judge followed during churches' COVID-19 court challenge
It really isn't hard. There's a queue for organ transplants. If you're a bad risk, you are so far down that queue that you, well, aren't on it, because there aren't enough organs to ever get to you.
So if you choose to make yourself a bad risk, by not getting an important vaccination, that choice is yours, but the choice to jump the queue is NOT available to you. Someone with a better chance of surviving will get that organ.
I think the big framing problem we see with this is leaving out that other organ recipient. Framing it just around the vaccination-refuser makes it look like it's a choice between them getting the transplant, with not-great survival chances, and nothing. And that makes it seem like well, SOME chance is better than ZERO chance, so isn't it evil to DENY treatment? But that's not the choice. The choice is between the vaccination-refuser getting the treatment, with a poor chance of survival, and someone ELSE (who isn't being a dick) getting the treatment, with a BETTER chance of survival.
For any given set of lungs, someone is going to get them, and other people are not, and people who turfed their survival chances by deciding not to get vaccinated go in that second category.
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