A transcript of the entire interview between Québécois lawyer Dominic Desjarlais and lawyer Dr. Reiner Fuellmich is available beneath the video below. To watch just Mr. Desjarlais speak, start the video at minute 47:51.
Lawyer Dominic Desjarlais
(47:51 – 1:04:09) Reiner Fuellmich: Okay now Dominic Desjarlais from Canada, can you hear us?
Dominic Desjarlais: Yes. Hi Reiner. Hi everybody. Nice to be here. It’s a pleasure to be part of this committee of lawyers at an international level. Thank you, Reiner for inviting me to participate. Well, I work in Quebec Montreal Quebec, so as you know Canada has some provinces and each of the provinces deal with the situation in their own way, on their own public health act. Whatever they call it in each province. The federal Government decided not to invoke the emergency act, so they’ve let each province deal with their own problem, so I’m dealing with the Quebec Government measures, which are pretty much the same as in Ontario.
. . .
A democracy defending Canadian movement can be accessed here.
. . .
Right now, the situation is the following, we have social contact jurisdiction that we cannot go to see friends or family in your house, a bit like Francis was explaining, we have a curfew depending on the region and the provinces either from eight o’clock at night till five or nine thirty at night until five. We also have mandatory masks in all office space for the workers in office space, mandatory masks in schools for children six years old and up all day. There’s also a mandatory mask if you go and do another activity with somebody who’s not from your household, let’s say you go for some kind of another activity you need to wear the mask, so it’s pretty extreme the measures we have in Quebec.
I have been working since last, also as Renata has talked about we also have vaccination for the health workers, it’s not necessarily directly mandatory because if the worker refuses to be vaccinated they have to take three PCR tests a week, okay, and if they refuse to take the three PCR tests a week they need to see if they can be relocated in some other functions or tasks, you know without contact with the public, and if that’s not possible they have to go home without pay. So in a certain way it’s not mandatory but it’s mandatory because it’s coercion, so we are also facing this since a couple of weeks ago that the Governments imposed on some of the health workers this way to proceed and the way they did it is that most of the health workers in Quebec are on collective bargaining agreements, so basically it’s the Government running the hospitals and the healthcare institution, so they adopted the ministerial order modifying the collective bargaining agreements to impose that process to the health workers, so it makes things a bit complicated because then the health workers have to go through the union, and from what I’ve heard some of the unions they don’t want the hack because you know – I’m not going to say it’s pre-planned, but the information we have is that most of the unions we have heard of from health workers is they don’t want to go ahead with attacking the employer on this issue, but it has been going on for two weeks so it remains to be seen how it will unfold. So that’s the kind of measures we have in Quebec.
So, I’ve been working as a laywer, an independent lawyer, I’ve been doing civil and commercial litigation and I’ve been a lawyer for twenty-two years and in my twenty-two years I’ve prepared (inaudible) to deal with this situation because I’m one of the few lawyers in Quebec, I heard Renata talking about the fact that there’s approximately one hundred lawyers in Italy working on this. When I’m in Quebec I can count the lawyers doing what I’m doing on my left hand so that’s one of the problems we have, we’re very few lawyers working on cases like this and my client was a non-profit organisation, has been put in place to protect the rights and liberties of the people so that’s the context in which I’m working right now, so I filed two legal reports so far. I filed a recourse an habeas corpus application to quash the curfew we have in Quebec. I filed that in January and it was answered by the Government saying they presented a motion to dismiss saying it was not habeas corpus because curfew could not be considered as detention, a bit like what you were talking about earlier Francis here, you know…
Reiner Fuellmich: …but that’s weird, isn’t it?
DD: Yes, so the habeas corpus principal in Canada is pretty wide, it’s to assert liberty interest and I was pretty confident that it would stand as an habeas corpus so the debate was not on the merits but on the fact of whether there was a habeas corpus application that could be brought forward for the curfew or just a judicial review application to review the act of the Government, and unfortunately after (inaudible) arguments the judge ruled in favour of the Governments saying that my application did not qualify as an habeas corpus because curfew could not be considered as detention on the Canadian law. I was transferring to a judicial review application, which is a longer process, and as Francis explained it gives a lot of liberty to the Government to justify the measures, whereas an habeas corpus as soon as you’ve proven an infringement of your liberty interest the burden is transferred on the Government to justify it, that’s why I took the habeas corpus route. Unfortunately, the superior court judge did not agree and for strategic reasons I decided not to appeal because I wanted to move forward my judicial review application as quickly as possible because the appeal process would take a long time.
Also, I filed a month and a half ago a lawsuit attacking the root of the problem, so the root of the problem being whether or not there are still circumstances justifying maintaining an health emergency situation under the public health act here in Quebec where you need to have a grave and imminent and serious threat for the health of the population so I’m attacking that on the basis of all the studies and the data that has been accumulated over the last year and the studies that came out, and recently in January they said that it considered COVID-19 as a mild flu so with .14 percent of fatality rate so I’m attacking that, and at the core of my lawsuit is the PCR test. Just from the beginning I saw that the PCR test was a big problem because as I discussed with Reiner on other occasions there’s proof right now in the Portuguese decision relates it and the recent Weimar and Austrian decision relates it with the cycle amplification that they run the test by ninety-seven percent of the scientific evidence, ninety-seven percent of the results are false positives. So I’m attacking that at the root and I have two experts working very hard on finalising a report, actually they’re from Great Britain Francis, so one of them is Clare Craig she’s a pathologist and the other one is Tanya Klymenko she has a phD in molecular biology, they are working very hard to, and Clare was one of the twenty two researchers who debunked the Corman-Drosden report last year with Michael Yeadon and all other experts, so she’s working on my case.
I have experts from France, from Switzerland I have an epidemiologist, I have an infectious disease expert, I have a public policy health expert who used to work for the WHO, and also I’m working, also the lawsuit I filed attacks the root of the problem so the emergency, whether or not there’s an emergency health situation that’s justified, it attacks the PCR test and we also attack the fact that the Government is renewing, without going in front of the legislator, the health emergency every ten days only by decree without the debate, so there’s no debate by the legislator on the issues. The Government just renews the public health emergency every ten days and imposes the measures with a very close group of eighteen people, and they don’t necessarily give us all the scientific or so-called scientific evidence that they base their decisions on.
So, the Prime Minister and the public health act officer admitted on many occasions that the measures they are imposing there is no science behind it, no product or justified science behind it, okay in press conferences, so that’s pretty amazing. However, we’re stuck with the same kind of problem, so also my case attacks the constitutionality of the measures and the proportionality test that you talked about Francis, we have the same on the Royal Charter one of the measures are proportional to the end that they want to prevent, but the problem that we have in Quebec in Canada the decisions I’ve read so far the judges on interim injunction hearings they apply the precautionary principal to the extreme.
Reiner Fuellmich: Yeah.
DD: I’m going to give you the following example, there’s a case that was filed in Quebec an interim injunction for the masking of children. So it proceeded on the basis of the file of an interim basis on the emergency hearing and the judge acknowledged that there were some harm caused by the mask and that it was not really useful, but on the other hand the Government did not present any scientific evidence and he said well first of all there’s a presumption that the measures adopted in the publics interests so the other party has to show that the suspension of the measure would be in the public’s interest, so the burden is on the plaintiff plus he said I have the scientific evidence from the plaintiff but on the other hand we have a virus and there’s a risk caused by the virus and as slight as the risk can be we cannot afford it, so that’s an application of the precautionary principal to the extreme.
Reiner Fuellmich: It’s standing it on its head.
DD: Exactly, so that’s why I said we’re in some kind of legal maze, okay where we enter the maze the door was shut after we entered the maze, but we don’t see the exit door, y’know so that’s the analogy I make, so we’re in kind of a situation where we have to scratch our heads as lawyers, try to find a way to bring the issues as effectively as possible before the court, and that’s why I’m working very hard with my experts because when I go to court on some motions or some interim injunction motions I want to be able to show at least some expert evidence to the court, but to a complete extent do I give the court the best picture possible, not just claims of scientific evidence because some lawyers in Canada, from what I read, they ran to court quickly without scientific evidence and they were kicked out pretty quick, so we need to be careful as lawyers to make sure that we present the best case possible and make sure that we don’t create bad precedents, so that’s why I’m working very hard with my experts, but as I said I’m one of the only lawyers doing what I’m doing in Quebec, so I cannot defend all the cases.
I also have the mandate to bring in an application to cancel the mask mandates for school children and also for adults, so I’m working on many fronts on many issues, but it’s complicated.
Reiner Fuellmich: Yes we have the advantage now that we’re all connected of being able to exchange these expert opinions and put the experts in touch with everyone else …
DD:…that’s what I was going to say, yes that’s what I was going to say, Reiner. Being part of this group I took a lot of notes from Renata said and from what Francis said. I think we have a mutual interest to share information, to share legal, just to help each other, for example if somebody is considering doing something in this country and we have similar legal principals, even if we don’t have similar legal principals, the science is the same…
Reiner Feullmich:…yeah…
DD: …the logic is the same, so we have an advantage to connect to each other and I think you very much, Reiner for putting together this group because that’s the way we’re gonna get out of this.
Reiner Fuellmich: Exactly.
DD: Share information, share strategies, and share ideas. I think we’re gonna find a common thread on what to attack, how to attack it and do, as Francis said, find the best case possible for a certain issue because your case is as good as your facts, and if you have bad facts you’re gonna have a bad case you’re gonna have a bad result, and even with good facts and a good case you can have a bad result – as we’ve seen.
Reiner Fuellmich: You’re right we have to be careful not to create bad precedents, so we have to be careful to choose our cases at the court of law…
DD:…also there’s lawsuits that were filed in Canada, two major lawsuits were filed in Canada, I know there’s one on masks that was filed a couple of days ago. I’m in touch with lawyers in Canada, the US, of course with you Reiner, also with lawyers in France, so I’m glad to be in touch with lawyer in Italy and from England and other countries, so let’s all work together. It’s complicated, it’s doable, but we have to put all our efforts together and I salute all the lawyers who are working on COVID-19 cases right now, because it’s a huge task and when we got into law school, we never imagined that one day we would be in such a situation and such a case, so I salute you all for all the work that you’re doing.
Reiner Fuellmich: And vice versa, Dominic. Well thank you very much, Dominic. This is interesting and we will continue to cooperate because you’re absolutely right, it’s the only way to go. We have to have this international legal cooperation and that will get us over the last hill that we need to…
DD:…and if I can, Reiner, once we find some common thread that’s how we can bring it to the international level, because when we have decisions in each of our countries we’re gonna see where the courts are willing to go and then we can find the flaws in what the other side in doing and then take that and bring it to the international level.
Reiner Fuellmich: We will. Thank you, Dominic.
DD: Thank you, Reiner.
Vivienne: Thank you so much.
The transcription above was copied from a site which can be accessed here.