The House of Commons of the Canadian Parliament approved Monday in a 185-151 vote the declaration of a public order emergency as proclaimed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week in response to the “Freedom Convoy” protests. Under the Emergencies Act (“the Act”), the federal government wields exceptional power to limit the rights and freedoms [...]
Ian Profiri is JURIST’s Chief Correspondent for Canada. He files this dispatch from Calgary. To say that it’s been a busy week in the Canadian legal world is an understatement. For the first time in its history, the Emergencies Act was invoked by the Prime Minister, recognizing that policing efforts to date in the capital [...]
Amnesty International Monday released a report attributing the “human rights catastrophe in 2021” to unequal vaccination distribution by pharmaceutical companies. The report revealed that major companies that produced the vaccinations used aggressive strategies to profit from the pandemic. Amnesty International issued a target for vaccination rollout to lower-income countries. However, it was found that Pfizer, Moderna, and [...]
Law students from the University of Ottawa are filing dispatches for JURIST on the “Freedom Convoy” protest in Canada’s capital that has paralyzed the city for over a week and has now spread elsewhere across the country. Here, 2L Brad Henderson assesses the problematic impact of the protest wave on recent provincial and federal public [...]
Premier Doug Ford declared a state of emergency in the Canadian province of Ontario Friday following substantial economic losses stemming from the so-called Freedom Convoy’s anti-vaccine mandate protests. in Ottawa and other locations, including the Ambassador Bridge linking Canada and the United States. Ford warned that there would be “severe” consequences for those partaking in [...]
“The greatest nations are defined by how they treat their weakest inhabitants.” -Jorge Ramos The COVID-19 outbreak has caused an upsurge in humanitarian crises, affecting millions of refugees across the globe. In these unprecedented times, the rights of the refugees are most vulnerable. Refugees are the forgotten ones, with the least access to essentials required [...]
During this entire period of three back-to-back lockdowns with a fourth coming soon, if there is a group who has suffered the most, it is the migrant laborers. When the lockdown was announced at very short notice and all transportation was immediately halted, these inter-State migrant workers became victims of this pandemic in a different [...]
Countries around the world are working to alleviate the vast challenges the COVID-19 pandemic is posing. Confronting this global problem isn’t possible without international cooperation. COVID-19 has implications for public health and the global economy. Endemic diseases contribute to the economic burden by impacting health, livelihoods, agricultural productivity and ecosystems. The SARS outbreak of 2003 [...]
In his famous novel, The Plague, Albert Camus discussed the idea of plague as being akin to a despotic rule under which everyone, starting from the warden to the humblest delinquent, was under a life sentence. This insight is true for any pandemic including COVID–19 because the infection spreading microbe infects both rich and poor [...]
Under the immense human and economic loss caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, some countries have mentioned that they are willing to file lawsuits against China. Do they have any basis for filing a lawsuit? In the current state of international law, is the claimant State required to prove negligence or breach of a international legal [...]
