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OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) – A federal judge said she will reserve her decision on whether to allow legal proceedings to go ahead against the Canadian government’s travel vaccine mandates.
Lawyers from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) said that the mandates have impacted over 6 million Canadians.
People’s Party of Canada (PPC) leader Maxime Bernier, former Newfoundland Premier Brian Peckford, and five others with legal help from the JCCF appeared in court on Wednesday. Other legal counsel represented others in the court challenging the travel vaccine mandates.
JCCF lawyers argued that the court case against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s travel ban on the vaccine free, on behalf of its applicants, was a violation of charter rights and should not be tossed out.
In the summer, federal government lawyers filed a motion with the court asking them to throw out the legal challenge.
Bernier told LifeSiteNews that the “day went well from our perspective. It was mostly based on technical arguments on both sides.”
“We argued that the judge should allow the case to proceed because it’s important for Canadians to know if these COVID restrictions, the travel ban for the unvaccinated in particular, are constitutional or not,” said Bernier.
“The fact that the ban has now been lifted is irrelevant because it could be reinstated any time.”
Last fall, Trudeau announced a mandate that anyone travelling by air, rail or sea would need the COVID shots to travel both domestically and internationally.
After much outrage and protests which included the Freedom Convoy and even pressure from the industry and travel groups, the Trudeau government announced a “suspension” of the COVID jab mandate for travelers and federally regulated transportation workers on June 20.
On Wednesday, lawyers representing the government claimed that the lawsuits are now “moot” as the travel mandates have been “suspended.”
However, lawyers for Bernier and Peckford argued that a ruling is needed on the travel mandates so that they can never be imposed again on Canadians, as they were a violation of charter rights.
