Open Letter to BC’s Human Rights Commissioner, in Response to Urging the Reinstatement of the Mask Mandate

To BC Human Rights Commissioner Kasari Govender,

I am taking the extremely unusual step of writing to a public official, not merely out of concern but filled with outrage at the letter you wrote to Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry urging her to reinstate the mask mandate. I dare say this initiative of yours runs counter to your mandate to protect your constituents’ human rights, and that I, as a patient with a medical mask mandate exemption armed with only a doctor note not worth the paper it’s been printed on, have been fighting the opposite way for the last few months just trying to get medical care, buy groceries, not to end up on the streets, or even in jail.

Mass panic and bigotry surrounding those restrictions has basically turned society against those perceived as noncompliant, in the gravest civil rights crisis I have witnessed in the 43 years of my life, in a country that was once reputed to be a champion of human rights and the envy of the world. I used to volunteer on the front lines of homelessness until recently, and have heard countless stories of people who have been left behind by pandemic restrictions, especially those like me with exemptions that have turned them into pariahs and criminals. This is no longer a free country, and I blame the government for instigating this crisis both by engineering mass hysteria and by demonising anything resembling dissent, which are notoriously characteristic of authoritarian states.

You want to hear my own experience, as someone left behind? I had to fight to get medical treatment at the ER of the Royal Jubilee Hospital, and by fight I mean butt heads with medical staff who lied both on my medical records and to law enforcement in order to have me forcefully removed from the premises. I’ve also butted heads with the staff at a grocery store, the Market on Yates, who likewise had me charged with mischief under false pretences, and the police likewise flouted my rights knowing the staff was provably lying. I’ve been turned away from more locations than I can count, always under false pretences, and since I live in a homeless shelter which enforces its own parallel mask mandate I was perpetually one hair breath away from being kicked out of my place of residence by staffers who think other people’s civil rights don’t apply to them.

And you want to reinstate it to appease people who think wearing a mask of their own isn’t enough? Allow me to state just how far apart our respective stances are: these pandemic restrictions have turned the meek and conflict-avoidant model citizen that I used to be into a COVID mandate protester and an anarchist. I had never before taken a political stance before this, yet it’s turned my life upside down to the point I had to fight back for the sake of my continued survival. I’m currently looking into filing a flurry of human rights lawsuits because that’s the only thing in my arsenal that I know people fear more than COVID. Your job is to protect the rights of people like me and help us fight back, and yet you’ve just urged the Provincial Health Officer to double down on it for the sake of people who somehow don’t feel safe enough and never will.

COVID is not going away. I’m now fighting the likes of you on every available channel to make sure our rights don’t go away either. Shame on you and your office.

Sincerely
Martin Girard