Not Reserving Judgment

Not Reserving Judgment


Episode 12: Was the Trudeau government's "assault weapons" ban legal?

November 02, 2023

On Episode 12 of Not Reserving Judgment, we walk you through a new federal court decision that upheld the Trudeau government’s so-called "military-style assault weapons ban"; we tell you about a new study that found vaccine passports did little to increase uptake of vaccines; and we discuss whether government officials violate free speech when they block constituents on social media.


Stories and cases discussed in this week's episode:


  • Justices weigh rules for when public officials can block critics on social media (SCOTUS Blog)
  • Lindke v Freed transcripts (SCOTUS)
  • O'Connor-Ratcliff v Garnier transcripts (SCOTUS)
  • Parker v Canada (Attorney General) (Federal Court)
  • Impact of a vaccine passport on first-dose SARS-CoV-2 vaccine coverage by age and area-level social determinants of health in the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario: an interrupted time series analysis (CMAJ Open)
  • Pam Palmater testimony to Senate committee claiming Indigenous people have right to bear arms (X.com)
  • R v Hasselwander (CanLII)
  • R v Montague (CanLII)
  • Can We Really Inject Our Way Out of This Pandemic? (C2C Journal)
  • Amir Attaran's tweet on why Holocaust education is discriminatory (X.com)
  • Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC)
  • Joshua Sealy-Harrington's tweet on genocide (X.com)
  • Pandemic Panic: How Canadian Government Responses to Covid 19 Changed Civil Liberties Forever (Amazon.ca)


Not Reserving Judgment is a podcast about Canadian constitutional law hosted by Josh Dehaas, Joanna Baron, and Christine Van Geyn.


The show is brought to you by the Canadian Constitution Foundation, a non-partisan legal charity dedicated to defending rights and freedoms. To support our work, visit theccf.ca/donate.