Really good article from the Toronto Star detailing the meritless legal attempts to get out of trouble by OPP Const. Gabriel Proulx after getting in trouble for defying COVID-19 protocols.
He’s been arguing that certain laws don’t apply to him.
In Canada, his sovereign citizen type arguments are called Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Arguments (OPCA). Much like sovereign citizens, they don’t believe laws apply to them and, as the article describes, sometimes they will claim to operate their own legal system that they believe takes precedence over the traditional court system.
OPCA is a term coined by Alberta judge John Rooke in a divorce case. He did a point by point repudiation of OPCA tactics which has become the gold standard in Canada and in other countries. That was Meads v Meads, a 736-paragraph detailed explanation about the ridiculousness of pseudo-legal arguments.
Like many who try these arguments, this tactic will not work.
An expert offered their opinion on why some people engage in these tactics. One reason is that they are often driven by desperation.
“They become susceptible to people who tell them that if only they buy this snake oil, their problem will be solved,” Warman said.
“They take what may be a bad situation and they turn it into an awful situation,” he said, “where their families are destroyed, where they end up losing their homes, where their interpersonal relationships are destroyed.”
You can read the article in its entirety here.