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By Caden Fanshaw

Court

Judge dismisses COVID-19 health order violations facing Lambda Cabaret

Dec 9, 2022 | 3:59 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – Nearly a year after making waves in the Prince George community, the court case between the Lambda Cabaret and Northern Health has been settled in the nightclub’s favour.

This comes after several COVID-19 public health order violations were issued back in early 2022 by Northern Health.

BC Judicial Justice Brent Adair dismissed all charges against the nightclub due to a lack of sufficient evidence. Over the proceedings, Adair felt the prosecution was not able to provide proof beyond a reasonable doubt the offences occurred.

“I can tell you this is big news, not just for Prince George, but for Canada. And, you know, you have a lot of very, very happy people in Prince George right now about this result,” said defence lawyer Saron Gebresellassi.

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Northern Health provided a statement in response to the decision claiming they were “very disappointed.”:

“Northern Health is disappointed at the outcome of the hearing with respect to certain tickets issued by Northern Health for failing to comply with orders previously issued by Northern Health.”

” It was Northern Health’s view it had reasonable evidence necessary to support enforcement of the tickets issued.”

Vancouver-based Criminal Lawyer Kyla Lee said she is not surprised at the result of this case, Lee said you can’t just take video off of social media and call it evidence.

Based on the high standard of law in British Columbia, both for the prosecution to continue with charges as well as for a judge to find someone guilty.

“Just because these people were found not guilty related to this event does not mean that every COVID-19 court trial is going to result in an acquittal or is going to lead to prosecutors withdrawing outstanding charges,” said Lee.

The evidence:

This comes after several occasions the Lambda Cabaret was open to the public while breaching public health orders, and in breach of an additional closure order put into effect by Northern Health.

Videos posted on the Lambda Cabaret’s Facebook page showed the scenes inside the nightclub with pro-freedom rhetoric. Several videos between February and March 2022 showed dozens of patrons not wearing face masks indoors.

As the videos went viral on social media, CKPG News asked BC’s Provincial Health Officer what she thought of the scenes.

“You know, it’s really just a slap in the face to our healthcare workers,” said Dr. Bonnie Henry, BC’s Provincial Health Officer at the time.

Northern Health later told CKPG News they were aware of the breach of public health orders and issued an immediate closure order for the nightclub along with several tickets for violating public health orders, ignoring masking rules, and failing to check vaccine passports. Those violations included several thousand dollars in fines.

Previous coverage detailed the enforcement measures.

The result of this case now has Northern Health engaged in a full review of the proceedings, in a statement the health authority said they have had success in similar cases in the past.

“Northern Health will be reviewing and considering the Court’s decision with respect to these tickets, as well as other recent public health enforcement-related decisions, in order to better understand why the Court found that the evidence was not sufficient to meet the necessary threshold. Northern Health, and other health authorities across the Province, have previously been successful in obtaining civil court orders/injunctions with respect to the enforcement of such COVID-19 Orders, including with respect to the party ticketed in this case.”