2023-07-01 Canada Day No Rally
Sarah A. Choujounian; Scarborough-Guildwood Byelection July 27th
I missed the start of the College of Nurses of Ontario disciplinary hearing June 30th and only caught about an hour of the hearing this morning before they adjorned for lunch.
It appears that Ms. Choujounian is under considerable financial pressure after having $315K in costs awarded against her earlier this month for a liable suit she attempted to bring last year. Her lawyer, Alexander Boissonneau-Lehner indicated that he is unable to continue representing Ms. Choujounian, although he declined to explain why, citing client confidentiality. Mr. Boissonneau-Lehner was asking the tribunal to adjourn for 30 days to give Ms. Choujounian a chance to get new counsel.
There were some pretty testy procedural exchanges between Megan Elizabeth Shortreed, the lawyer for the College and Mr. Boissonneau-Lehner. However, what I found more concerning was the tribunal and even implicitly Mr. Boissonneau-Lehner were treating Charter 2b Freedom of Expression solely as a right of Ms. Choujounian to be balanced against the College’s mission to “protect” the public. The whole tribunal seemed to be missing the point that Freedom of Expression is a fundamental public good in itself. I want Nurses to have wide latittude to be able to be able to speak out about treatments, because there are always side effects to medical interventions. Speaking out is essential to improving those interventions. How can you trust somewhat that isn’t free to say what they are thinking. If they have wackadoodle ideas, I’d rather know that, than have it repressed through censorship.
The three members of the tribunal are not lawyers and it was obvious they were struggling with how to balance all the competing issues and they weren’t getting much help from the three lawyers. Hopefully the Jordan Peterson judicial review will eventually give some guidance here.
I wasn’t able to listen in the afternoon to find out how the tribunal ruled.
There is a provincial by-election Thursday July 27th in Scarborough-Guildwood to replace Mitzie Hunter who ran for mayor. Ford is in such a rush that that is not even a Monday. Please let us know if you find out about an all-Candidates debate.
No Rally on Canada Day
We will be back next Saturday July 8th.
Other rallies on Saturday:
Presumably there is a noon rally at Queen’s Park north side this weekend.