Supreme Court will not hear challenge to COVID-19 fines

Montreal police intercept a man trying to flee during a curfew on December 31, 2021. The 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew was aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19. (The Canadian Press/Peter McCabe)

The people who received statements of offence for contravening the health measures imposed by the Legault government during the COVID-19 pandemic will not receive a refund.

The five people who had been trying to obtain such a ruling ended their legal battle before the Supreme Court on Thursday, which refused to hear their request to appeal the unanimous decision handed down by a three-judge panel of the Quebec Court of Appeal on Jan. 24.

As is its custom, the highest court in the land gives no reason when it rejects an appeal request. By doign so, it simply backs the decision the appellants were trying to overturn.

Failure at every stage

The five individuals - Lily Monier, Stéphane Blais, Richard Girgis, Denis Larrivée and Sonia Grewal - had, in fact, failed at every stage of their legal proceedings.

To obtain the cancellation and reimbursement of the fines associated with the statements of offence, the plaintiffs alleged that "COVID-19 does not represent a serious threat to the health of the population of Quebec, real or imminent, and that there is and was, therefore, no valid reason for the state of health emergency (...) to have been maintained in Quebec in relation to COVID-19 until June 1, 2022."

They went further, asserting that the state of health emergency had only been declared "for political and opportunistic reasons."

Unconstitutional measures?

On the basis of this assertion, they argued that the curfews, the bans on home meetings and gatherings, the suspension of sporting, educational and cultural activities and the closure of establishments linked to these activities, the imposition of vaccine passports and the wearing of masks all represented violations of their rights and were therefore unconstitutional.

However, Superior Court Judge Michel Pinsonnault ruled in June 2023 that "the lifting of the public health emergency made judicial review and the conclusions seeking to declare Section 119 of the Public Health Act, as well as the decrees, ministerial orders, and the health measures enacted under them, null and inoperative, moot."

"In the case where the present dispute has become moot, the court is not obliged to rule on the merits of these issues," the judge said.

However, the judge did point out that "according to the National Institute of Public Health, during the first months of the pandemic, the SARS-CoV-2 virus infected more than 50,000 Quebecers, requiring more than 6,000 of them to be admitted to hospital and resulting in the death of more than 5,000 people."

Reckless and abusive request

According to Justice Pinsonnault, the plaintiffs' desire to obtain reimbursement of the fines highlighted "the reckless, even abusive, nature of their recourse, as they are clearly attempting, by means of a favourable judgment rendered in these proceedings, to overturn or invalidate an undoubtedly significant number of judgments already rendered in the context of the pandemic since March 2020."

On appeal, Justices Martin Vauclair, Benoît Moore and Éric Hardy had acknowledged that "the effect of the judgment is to put an end to the litigation and to deprive the plaintiffs of a substantive answer to their question."

However, the court reaffirmed that the mootness of the case "cannot be doubted. The applicants are seeking a declaration that decrees or ministerial orders that no longer apply are null and void or inoperative."

The three judges noted that even if the applicants had suffered various inconveniences as a result of the health measures, "for all these cases (...) the appeal for judicial review as brought is of no relevance or use, since these possible actions must be the subject of separate proceedings."

In other words, if the applicants believed they had suffered prejudice, it was up to them to make their representations individually.

They took the same line on the question of reimbursement of all the fines resulting from the offences. The Court of Appeal thus invited each offender to put forward his or her arguments: "even assuming that such a remedy is legally possible, which the Court does not rule on, (it) is impracticable and the litigants involved can always, in the proper forum, invoke a violation of their rights in the course of their proceedings." 

-This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Sept. 26, 2024.