"Quebec constable who refused to enforce COVID curfew banned from policing for a year"

"A Quebec constable who said he would not ticket people under the province’s COVID curfew has been banned from policing for a year.

According to information obtained February 5 by Blacklock’s Reporter, the Quebec Police Ethics Tribunal has banned Constable Maxime Ouimet from working as a peace officer for a year after he posted on Facebook that he would not enforce the province’s controversial curfew during COVID.

'Whether there were real consequences or not resulting from the Facebook posts, the fact remains it encouraged people to distrust the government and could even have led to civil disobedience,' wrote adjudicator Isabelle Coté.

'The Constable did not act on a whim. He had time to think about it and posted his message more than once,' she noted.

Ouimet had posted several comments 'expressing his disagreement with the health measures put in place by the government in order to counter the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.' He further questioned lockdowns and COVID mandates, including the Quebec curfew, which he promised he would not enforce.

At the time, Quebec has some of the strictest COVID regulations in the country and even imposed a curfew on their citizens between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. If caught violating curfew, they were subject to fines between $1,000 and $6,000."