The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered the gravest restrictions on rights in Canada since the 1970 October crisis, warns the Canadian Civil Liberties Association in a damning new report obtained by the Star. In a 60-page study to be released Friday, entitled “Canadian Rights During COVID-19,” the watchdog said it has been a half century since the country was plunged into such peril. Even though the kidnapping happened in Quebec, civil liberties were suspended across the entire country,” the report says. “A public health pandemic became mischaracterized by governments as a public order crisis, thanks to public anxiety, anger and fear,” the study notes. Governments and decision-makers across Canada should therefore understand the pandemic as having a discriminatory effect on elderly persons’ civil and human rights,” the report says.

Source: thestar June 19, 2020 12:00 UTC