Restricting Freedom of Peaceful Assembly During Public Health Emergencies

Exploring a More Independent Freedom of Peaceful Assembly in Canada

There has been significant progress regarding the law on public demonstrations since the enactment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, the freedom of peaceful assembly, one of the four fundamental freedoms protected by section 2 of the Charter, is the least judicially explored freedom. Rather than undertake a free-standing freedom of peaceful assembly analysis, Canadian cou...

Crowdinforming During Public Health Emergencies: A Commentary

During the recent 2009 Novel H1N1 influenza pandemic, public health safety efforts included prevention and mitigation actions such as mass vaccination programs, community education focused on infection control, social distancing and how to avoid contracting and spreading influenza.[1-3] There were also programs to rapidly deploy caches of ventilators, antivirals and personal protective equipmen...

Transparency during public health emergencies: from rhetoric to reality.

Effective management of public health emergencies demands open and transparent public communication. The rationale for transparency has public health, strategic and ethical dimensions. Despite this, government authorities often fail to demonstrate transparency. A key step in bridging the gap between the rhetoric and reality is to define and codify transparency to put in place practical mechanis...

Public health emergencies: What Counts?

Public health, emergencies and the humanitarian impulse.

The global response to the tsunami disaster in south Asia on 26 December 2004 has been overwhelming. Approximately US$ 6 billion have been pledged in aid by citizens and governments, and authorities have offered military assistance and debt relief (W1). This outpouring of goodwill reflects the universality of the humanitarian impulse: an innate, altruistic urge to assist fellow human beings who...