Adrian Zita-Bennett

The Attorney General of Canada brought a motion to strike JoAnne Cyr-Walsh’s amended statement of claim, which arose from her arrest at the “Freedom Convoy” protest in Ottawa and subsequent prosecution.

The court struck the claims alleging the Attorney General of Canada is vicariously liable for the conduct of municipal police officers and provincial Crown Attorneys, finding these claims are doomed to fail.

However, the court allowed the Charter challenge to the invocation of the Emergencies Act and related regulations to proceed, provided the plaintiff amends her claim to include a prayer for relief and reliance on s. 24(1) of the Charter.

The court also struck several paragraphs of the amended claim as improper pleadings and ordered costs against the plaintiff.

The court struck Daniel Hartman's claim against the Attorney General of Canada and the Minister of Health, which alleged negligence and misfeasance in public office following the death of his son after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.

The court found that the government’s public health actions and communications were directed to the public at large and did not create a private law duty of care to individuals.

The claim was dismissed as it was plain and obvious that it could not succeed, even with proposed amendments.

Campbell Drug Stores Ltd. brought a motion to redesignate the Crown's discovery representative, arguing the initially designated representative lacked personal knowledge of key events related to an alleged second contract for surgical gowns.

The Attorney General of Canada opposed, asserting the Crown's primary role in designation and that the representative was not "demonstrably unsatisfactory." The court granted Campbell's motion, redesignating Jeffrey Smallwood as the Crown's representative.

The court found that a fair and meaningful discovery required examining an individual with personal knowledge, especially where credibility was central to the dispute over contract formation, and rejected the argument that the motion was premature.

The applicant, a federal inmate, sought a writ of habeas corpus challenging her security reclassification from medium to maximum and her involuntary transfer from Grand Valley Institution for Women (GVI) in Ontario to Nova Institution for Women (Nova) in Nova Scotia.

While the security reclassification issue became moot as she was reclassified to medium, the core of the application concerned whether the inter-provincial transfer constituted a deprivation of residual liberty and if the transfer decision was reasonable and procedurally fair.

The court found that a lateral transfer between maximum security institutions, even inter-provincial, does not constitute a deprivation of residual liberty, as it does not impose a more restrictive physical constraint or loss of more than mere privileges.

The court also found the transfer decision to be reasonable, based on evidence of the applicant's continued attempts to introduce contraband, and procedurally fair, as the "gist" of confidential information was provided as permitted by the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.

The application was dismissed with costs awarded to the respondent.