GraceLife Church has been charged with violating COVID-19 public health orders. What does that mean?

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Another Sunday service at the GraceLife Church went ahead defying public health orders west of Edmonton, March 7, 2021.Another Sunday service at the GraceLife Church went ahead defying public health orders west of Edmonton, March 7, 2021. Photo by Ed Kaiser /Postmedia

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GraceLife Church in Parkland County and its pastor, James Coates, have been charged with violating COVID-19 public health orders and are scheduled to appear in court in May. Postmedia spoke with Eric Adams, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Alberta, about what those charges mean.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

What does it mean for GraceLife Church to be “charged as an entity?”

The basic premise is that organizations, corporations,or in some cases, perhaps religious institutions – what the law is calling here an entity – may be guilty of a public health order offence, in the same way that an individual may be for breaching or violating a particular health order. And because these health orders apply to gatherings, if it is an organization that is hosting the gathering, then you need a mechanism to hold the entity accountable for the violation of law.

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If GraceLife were to be found guilty, what repercussions could it face?

There are two routes to penalizing those structures. One is most commonly through fines to the organization. Organizations and churches have assets. Those assets can be the subject of fines that the organization is forced to pay. Secondly, there can sometimes be personal liability for the leadership structure of an organization so the officers and directors of a corporation may in some cases be held liable for wrongs of the corporation, but that’s a more limited set of circumstances.

Could the church be closed down?

It’s really a question of what the remedy is called for in the provision of the public health order itself. But then, somewhat complicating the matter, is the notion of civil contempt. It’s very unlikely that a public health order would close a religious institution. But there could be civil contempt orders against an institution which demand that it complies with public health orders. I’m not sure whether someone would contemplate ordering a church closed. It seems unlikely to me given freedom of religion. But at some point, if an institution has chosen no commitment to comply with the law, and is indicating that it will continue to break the law, then that would pose a challenge for enforcement by the courts.

Why have RCMP not gone in and fined attendees during services that are allegedly violating the public health orders?

There are two active constraints that the police are mindful of in dealing with religious organizations. The first is the Charter’s protection of freedom of religion and more generally religious freedom, as a fundamental value in our free democratic society. The imagery of worshipers being arrested, being thrown out of their houses of worship, facing criminal prosecution as a result of practicing their faith is a very difficult image for a society that believes in freedom to contemplate. It really would be the very last resort, I think.

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The second is a longstanding provision of the Criminal Code. Section 176, subsection 2 says everyone who willfully disturbs or interrupts an assemblage of persons met for religious worship is guilty of an offence. I suspect that police are mindful of Section 176 and mindful of their duties under this section to both uphold the law of public health orders and the law of the Criminal Code in relation to their own conduct.

They’re going to work very hard to try to accomplish two goals simultaneously. One is compliance by the GraceLife Church of public health orders. The second is the preservation of the dignity and freedom of worshipers. Those two things may lie in some tension, but that’s the tricky balance that the RCMP and public health officers are trying to walk in deciding when and how to enforce public health measures.

ajunker@postmedia.com

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