Offenses related to sanitary measures | The state strikes back

Anti-sanitary leaders who collected $1,550 tickets during the pandemic, shouting loudly that they were “illegal” and “unconstitutional”, risk losing their homes after being dismissed in quick succession before the courts. The state has started targeting different assets to recover its due, learned The Press.

The Attorney General of Quebec has obtained in recent days legal mortgages on houses belonging to Stéphane Thibault and Pascal Antonin, two notorious anti-mask and anti-vaccine leaders who have accumulated dozens of statements of offense for violation of health decrees.

Stéphane Thibault, a trucker from Repentigny who had created the protest group Yellow Vests Quebec before the pandemic, undertook a tour of the province in April 2021 to challenge the ban on non-essential travel between different administrative regions.

With his “Patriote-Mobile”, a car surmounted by huge anti-vaccine posters comparing the compulsory wearing of a mask to “abuse”, he taunted the police in videos that he broadcast live on Facebook.

“Did it be fun! Do they [les policiers] don’t know the law! “, he laughed, while affirming that the fines for violation of the health decrees were” illegal “.

Mr. Thibault has just had the Attorney General impose a legal hypothec totaling $11,761 on his house in Repentigny, resulting from seven guilty judgments pronounced against him for violations of the Public Health Actin three administrative regions.

If he fails to pay what he owes, he risks seeing his house seized, and the proceeds of the sale could be used to reimburse his fines at the end of a sale under judicial authority. If necessary, he would also be forced to pay fairly high bailiff’s fees.

Mr. Thibault did not respond to our interview request.

$50,000 in fines

Pascal Antonin, who participated in numerous demonstrations with anti-vaccine activist François Amalega Bitondo, was also imposed a legal mortgage of $14,828 on a house he co-owns in Rivière-Rouge, resulting from nine unfavorable judgments concerning statements of more than $1,600 for violations of the Public Health Act.

Mr. Antonin was pleased to have received a total of thirty statements of offense for violation of health decrees. “I must have it for $50,000 [et] there’s no way I’m paying anything,” he said in a recent video he posted on Facebook.

He maintains that he has no wages that can be seized, and that his vehicle is not registered in his name.

Pascal Antonin refused to grant us an interview. The residence of which he is co-owner is already the subject of a notice of exercise of a mortgage right for non-payment of mortgage loan, reveal public documents consulted by The Press.

The Association des huissiers de justice du Québec (AHJQ) claims that some of its members have also been mandated by the State to seize movable property, such as vehicles or other valuables, for the settlement of unpaid fines related to COVID-19. The Ministry of Justice specifies that it can also seize wages or bank accounts against recalcitrants, and that as a “very last resort”, it could make a “request for the imposition of a sentence of ‘imprisonment’.

“It’s time and energy lost for the courts, but the main loser in this type of approach is always the citizen who stubbornly refuses to pay, because all the legal costs will end not be recovered by the government”, commented Simon Beauchesne-Paquette, president of the AHJQ.

Challenges rarely successful

Between 1^er April 2020 and November 30, 2022, a total of 43,082 statements of offense worth $65.2 million were issued for violations of the Public Health Act, indicate data from the Ministry of Justice. The conviction rate in the courts is around 96%, the ministry says.

Many lawyers and activists have tried to have these statements of offense invalidated by having them declared unconstitutional, without success to date. This is the case of anti-mask leader Mario Roy, who this week failed to have the Court of Quebec invalidate a fine of $ 6,500, which he considered “cruel and abusive punishment”, for having organized a song festival. which brought together hundreds of participants in an orchard in the midst of a pandemic.

The Court, basing itself on a decision of the Court of Appeal which recognized the validity of the health decrees in January 2022 (the judgment Stanislas Bricka c. Attorney General of Quebec), rejected Mr. Roy’s request, stating that his claim of infringement of his fundamental rights was “obviously doomed to failure”. Mr. Roy’s trial has taken place and he will know his fate in early 2023.

Next January, another anti-health measures group very active during the pandemic, the Foundation for the Defense of People’s Rights and Freedoms (FDDLP), will try to have the health decrees declared “null and ineffective” and will ask the Court to order the Attorney General to “take all reasonable steps to ensure that citizens who have received a ticket […] be reimbursed”. The FDDLP’s arguments are largely based on reports by dissident European scientists, including the controversial infectious disease specialist Christian Perronne.

The president of the FDDLP, Stéphane Blais, assures that he himself paid for a statement of offense which he received for having demonstrated without a mask during a rally against health measures. “As long as there is no judgment that proves us right, it is certain that if we collect dozens of tickets, we must be responsible for our actions and assume the consequences,” he said. he commented.