Witness Testimony

Maurice Gatien, a lawyer called to the Ontario Bar in 1971, testified about representing individuals charged under COVID-19 emergency legislation and described being suspended by the Law Society of Ontario in September 2022. He recounted defending clients charged under the Reopening Ontario Act for participating in rallies and described what he characterized as widespread intimidation, including doxxing, harassment, and personal incidents following his public advocacy. He also described walking 110 kilometres to Ottawa during the Freedom Convoy to protest what he viewed as suppression of rights and institutional silence from legal and medical regulatory bodies.
Gatien introduced the concept of the “Bold Lie,” drawing analogies from financial fraud, advertising history, and psychological experiments such as the Milgram, conformity, and Stanford prison studies. He argued that public messaging during COVID-19 relied on fear-based narratives, asserting that the population was told both that COVID-19 posed universal lethal risk and that vaccination was the sole solution. He cited local mortality statistics from Eastern Ontario, which he reorganized by age, stating that deaths were concentrated in older populations and that under-40 mortality was negligible, and questioned the proportionality of public health responses and media framing.
He further criticized vaccine procurement contracts, describing them as one-sided agreements that included advance public funding, liability protections for manufacturers, taxpayer-funded marketing and distribution, and no profit-sharing or clawback provisions. He referenced large pharmaceutical profits and past regulatory fines as part of his concerns. Gatien concluded that Charter rights were effectively suspended during the pandemic without adequate parliamentary oversight, that dissenting professionals faced institutional pressure, and that foundational constitutional principles require vigilance to prevent future overreach.