Bruce Pardy: Surveilling a judge was wrong, but we must keep a close eye on government officials msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Yet, the responses of the two different organizations couldn’t have been more different.
The most recent rogue was John Carpay, president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.
On July 12, he admitted that he had hired a private eye to not only spy on senior government officials in Manitoba to see if they were complying with COVID-19 restrictions, but on Glenn Joyal, chief justice of Manitoba’s Court of Queen’s Bench.
Joyal, who is hearing the case of seven rural churches that violated COVID restrictions by staying open, raised the matter in court, where Justice Centre lawyers are asking for parts of the provincial public health act to be declared unconstitutional.
The revelation that a firm representing Manitoba churches hired a private investigator to tail a judge, to see if he complied with COVID-19 public health orders, sent shockwaves across the country Monday. Any effort to intimidate a judge is not acceptable in a free and democratic society such as Canada, federal Justice Minister David Lametti said.
Four days after he realized he was being followed around Winnipeg, Court of Queen s Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal accepted the apologies of two lawyers for the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, a right-wing Calgary group, which is fighting Manitoba s public-health restrictions in court.