SHOULD CITIZENS WHO REFUSE TO GET VACCINATED HAVE THE SAME RIGHTS

3 who are reported to have died from Covid also suffered from an average of four comorbidities).11 As of October 29, 2021, over 90% of those over the age of sixty in Canada have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19.12 And yet – and yet – a year and a half later, we continue to forfeit more and more freedom as the actual threat of Covid becomes smaller and smaller. [...] Where it can be justified that an artificial limit is in the “interests of society,” and where the artificial consequences are proportional to the risk the limit aims to mitigate, an artificial limit may be placed on the freedom of citizens.19 Where a limit on freedom is not justifiable, whether it is violently enforced or not, such a limit is coercion.20 Free citizens may act, think, and speak wi. [...] “Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law: 1 The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. [...] In Canada, artificial limits on freedom must be demonstrably justified and “the onus of proof … is on the person seeking to justify the limit, which is generally the government.”22 The Moral and Legal Obligation Because vaccine mandates limit, at minimum, the freedom of peaceful assembly, they may be analyzed with the Oakes test. [...] To be upheld, governments would need to provide proof that the legislative goal is “pressing and substantial,” that there is “proportionality between the objective and the means used to achieve it,” that mandates are “rationally connected to the objective,” and that mandates impair Charter freedoms “no more than is reasonably necessary to accomplish the objective.”23 As discussed above, if vaccine.