2024-11-30 Saturday Peaceful Freedom Rally
11:00am - 12 noon Markham and Lawrence
Dr Trozzi appeal disastrous court ruling
which Lifesite news reprinted here.
Michael Alexander, Dr Trozzi’s lawyer spoke at the Toronto West Vaccine Choice Canada meeting on 2024-11-26 and explained and elaborated somewhat on the prepared statement in the link above. This got into some pretty intricate legal concepts which I do not claim to fully understand. I took notes as best I could and do not claim to have the concepts entirely correct. I’ve tried to highlight points Michael made that are not in the prepared statement or that elaborate on it. Numbers in [] refer to paragraphs of the decision:
This decision adds to and reinforces the Jordan Peterson decision. Peterson enabled the health colleges to regulate the form of health professionals expression, Trozzi goes a step beyond and enables health colleges to regulate the content of health professionals minority expression. According to Michael there was no statutory basis for this in the Ontario Emergencies Act, the Re-Opening Ontario Act or the Health Professions Act. Peterson was denied leave to appeal to the Supreme Court. I wasn’t able to determine if Trozzi is planning to appeal. This may be the law in Ontario for the foreseeable future.
This was an appeal, not a judicial review so the standard was correctness, not reasonableness [26]. Saying the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) tribunal was correct not just reasonable on all the issues in the appeal is the highest possible endorsement of the tribunal the court can give. This bodes ill for all the health professionals still in the COVID disciplinary pipeline, in Ontario at least.
The court ruled [80-82] that the CPSO could use their guidelines and policies as evidence of reasonable and probable grounds (probable cause in the US) to open the investigation in the first place. This is a subtle legal point that I don’t understand but I believe the decision lowers the threshold for professional colleges to launch investigations or at least confirms the current low threshold. Michael explained during the meeting that reasonable and probable grounds is a critical protection of the individual against the legal power of the state.
As in the prepared statement, Michael vehemently objected to [36] of the decision where the court ruled Dr Trozzi’s reports responding to the CPSO expert were not properly in evidence. Reading this paragraph before the meeting made me wonder what kind of a lawyer Michael was if he could not perform the basic legal task of getting Dr Trozzi’s report into evidence. During the meeting Michael expressed the same feeling that the court was attacking his competence as a lawyer at [36] and that this might negatively impact his public litigation career. I found the court was similarly harsh with Michael at [27], although Michael didn’t comment on this during the meeting. I haven’t reviewed his appeal submission and probably wouldn’t have enough legal knowledge to form an opinion on [27] anyway. Michael was concerned that [36] crossed the line to attacking counsel for defending an unpopular client. The ability of counsel to freely defend clients, however unpopular, is fundamental to maintaining the rule of law.
Based on this ruling, Michael doesn’t know how to defend Ontario health professionals from their Colleges any further. He believes the Supreme Court of Canada has eroded the Charter to the point where Ontario should opt out and pass a statute inspired by the Federal Bill of Rights to be the highest Ontario law. Meanwhile he is focused on defending municipal councillors who are ensnared in Charter freedom of expression battles over municipal codes of conduct. He is currently representing Pickering councillor Lisa Robinson in her battle over repeated suspension of her pay for statements she has made.
You can financially support Michael Alexander’s work at justiceformedicine
Edited 2024-11-30 to add partial comment received from Michael
I read the substack piece. It’s clear on the major issues. I can’t dictate what you write, but you might want to add that Dr. Trozzi’s reports were introduced into evidence with the consent of the College in a file referred to as the Joint Brief of Authentic Documents. Before the Court, the College argued that the Tribunal was correct in failing to consider the reports because they were not introduced as expert evidence. However, that is clearly false since they were already in evidence by agreement of both sides. It is true, nevertheless, that the reports were not, formally speaking, expert evidence since Dr. Trozzi cannot act his own expert. That, however, does not prevent the reports from being considered when assessing the expert evidence that both sides introduced. I covered these points thoroughly during my oral submissions while making reference to the Ontario Evidence Act and the College’s rules of procedure. But the Court simply ignored my arguments.
Rally at Markham and Lawrence this Saturday from 11:00am - 12 noon
Please bring a freedom related sign, flag, flyers etc. if you have them.
I will be at or near Markham and Lawrence, ending up directly outside Healthy Planet.