THE TRUTH ABOUT THE ILLEGAL HINSHAW ORDERS
Late on Monday, July 31st, Justice Barbara Romaine declared every Hinshaw Order before the Court in the case of Ingram v. Alberta to be “ultra vires” the Alberta Public Health Act. What this means in English is that every order issued by Deena Hinshaw throughout the Great Panicdemic of 2020-2021 and 2022 were completely illegal.
In essence, Deena Hinshaw’s view of the practice of public health medicine is that the treatment of patients or the provision of medical advice should always be tempered through a CYA exercise that involves having an ill-educated politician (in Kenney’s case a divinity school dropout) make your medical decisions for you to avoid blame and ultimate responsibility.
Hinshaw acted like a surgeon in the middle of surgery pausing to call Jason Kenney to find out whether Kenney wanted the patient to live or die. Certainly for many Alberta business owners the unlawful CMOH Orders promulgated by Hinshaw were in fact, actual death warrants.
According to Justice Romaine, had Deena Hinshaw simply acted as the Dictator of Alberta and made all of her orders bankrupting businesses and driving suicides in the province of Alberta personally, without Kenney’s involvement, Justice Romaine would have found the Orders to be perfectly legal. Romaine J. states at paragraph 56 and 57 of her judgement:
{56} While involvement of public officials may be desirable and even necessary, this involvement should have been structured in a way as to mitigate the risk of political priorities interfering with the informed and well-qualified judgement of the CMOH, as provided in the Public Health Act without ignoring the underlying public interest.
{57} In conclusion, I declare that the impugned Orders were ultra vires the Public Health Act because they were based on an interpretation of the Public Health Act that gave final decision-making authority over public health orders to elected officials.
The 90 page judgement contains very few pages of actual binding precedent. All of the commentary made by Justice Romaine on the Charter issues can be completely disregarded as obiter (irrelevant) commentary on the basis that the entire Charter analysis is predicated on the remarkable, hypothetical suggestion that IF the orders weren’t patently unlawful, they would have been constitutional.
Canadian Justices are required by binding appellate level authority not to engage in constitutional speculation. Notwithstanding this clear direction from the superior courts Justice Romaine felt that she needed to provide her hypothetical views of the constitutionality of the provisions “in case she was wrong” about the Orders being unlawful. The decision is rife with judicial opinion not supported by the record and contains numerous errors of fact and law not consistent with the law or the record. A good example of this is the completely uncritical view taken of Deena Hinshaw’s testimony. Deena Hinshaw’s testimony was rife with half truths and unsupported conclusions given the weight of scripture by Justice Romaine. Deena Hinshaw testified that non-pharmaceutical interventions in Wave 1 dramatically reduced hospitalizations while completely ignoring the exponential increase in COVID cases and hospitalizations following the advent of the Mandatory Masking Order in August of 2020.
At paragraph 282 Justice Romaine states:
[282] As indicated previously, Dr. Hinshaw was a credible witness. She was calm, patient, well-informed and extremely professional, even in the face of somewhat abusive cross-examination. The cross-examination did not affect her credibility in any way. While she may have been mistaken with respect to her ability to allow elected officials to make final decisions under the Public Health Act, she testified that she had “done her best throughout the pandemic to monitor the health of Albertans” and provide advice and recommendations to protect their health based on the best evidence available. I find no reason to doubt this.
This finding ignores many of the damning admissions made by Dr. Hinshaw that go directly to her credibility. When Deena Hinshaw was asked if she knew how many suicides were driven by her CMOH orders she remarkably admitted that she had no idea and that we needed to ask the Chief Medical Examiner that question. When she was asked whether she had asked the Chief Medical Examiner how many suicides were attributable to her Orders she said “No”.
When asked as to whether she contacted the Chief Medical Officer of Uttar Pradesh about the efficacy of Ivermectin in reducing COVID mortality she again answered no.
Her testimony indicated that the extent of her knowledge of the COVID vaccines being “safe and effective” were that she relied on Dr. Tam and PHAC to provide that advice. There is no evidence that at any point, Dr. Hinshaw conducted independent research or even demanded that Canada provide copies of the vaccine contracts which are being withheld by Canada. At a recent Committee hearing Liberal MP Anthony Housefather admitted that the vaccine contracts were being withheld on the basis that they contain language that confirms that the COVID Vaccines are not warranted by their manufacturers for either safety or efficacy and that they were rushed to market without adequate safety trials. The fact that the CMOH of Alberta failed to conduct any due diligence on this issue prior to repeatedly repeating the “safe and effective” mantra contrary to publicly available evidence is shocking to say the least. I wasn’t aware that the University of Alberta taught its medical students that they should treat their patients on the basis that no critical thinking is required as long as Dr. Tam says its ok.
Leaving aside the real credibility issues from Dr. Hinshaw’s testimony, the fact that Deena Hinshaw has been paid well in excess of a million dollars as CMOH without her even understanding the nature and extent of her authority or decision-making ability under the very statute that empowers her is bordering on gross negligence.
This entire debacle is yet another example of why Premier Smith needs to break up AHS and fire AT LEAST 20% of the top ranks of AHS and the Ministry of Health.
Jeffrey R.W. Rath B.A. (Hons.), LL.B. (Hons.)
Foothills, Alberta
08/02/2023