Bob Mackin
A B.C. Supreme Court judge is charging a Flat Earth, anti-mask protester only $750 in costs after ruling Mak Parhar wasted the court’s time with a “patently absurd and nonsensical” lawsuit.
Parhar sued B.C. Premier John Horgan, Health Minister Adrian Dix and Attorney General David Eby in New Westminster last November. Parhar had been arrested and jailed four days for ignoring federal quarantine laws upon his return from a Flat Earth convention in the U.S. last October.
Anti-masker Mak Parhar (centre) at a Flat Earth convention last fall in the U.S. (Facebook)
Except, Parhar deliberately used an Internet boilerplate not recognized by any Canadian court of law.
The Attorney General of B.C. sought $1,000 in costs against Parhar, but Justice Murray Blok decided April 16 on the $750 lump-sum instead.
Blok heard the case for several hours on April 8. It involved two lawyers for the B.C. government, another for the federal government and another for the New Westminster Police Department. The B.C. government lawyers successfully argued that Parhar’s case should be thrown out because it is a version of what an Alberta judge called an “organized pseudolegal commercial argument.”
That is a fancy way of saying Parhar’s case wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.
“The plaintiff rejects any suggestion that he is bound by, or that this proceeding is any way subject to, the Rules or, for that matter, even most societal conventions, including how he is to be referred to or addressed,” Blok wrote.
“For the sake of simplicity I will refer to him as the ‘plaintiff’ and to the other set of parties as the ‘defendants’ although I fully appreciate that he rejects those terms and in his initiating document he utilized his own terms. Similarly, he rejects the use of the name that was bestowed upon him at birth (Makhan Singh Parhar), viewing it as an artificial construct that does not identify him as a person. Instead, he stylizes his name in a fashion associated with OPCA litigants (i:man:Mak of the Parhar family).”
Parhar called himself a prosecutor and demanded to use a courtroom in New Westminster for his so-called “Parhar Court” trial against those that caused his arrest for violating the Quarantine Act. He also claimed the four lawyers for the defendants in the hearing on April 8 had no standing and that the B.C. Supreme Court was a fraudulent entity.
New Westminster courthouse (B.C. Courts)
“The plaintiff interrupted his submissions at one point in order to yield the floor to a colleague [Ontario’s Christopher James Pritchard], who made a few remarks, though the colleague emphasized he does not act for the plaintiff. These comments were generally to the effect that the plaintiff has a right to a trial by jury so that he may be judged by the people, and that this Court and its rules have no jurisdiction. He said ‘contract makes the law’ and the plaintiff had not consented, which I took to mean the plaintiff had not consented to be subject to the provisions of the Quarantine Act or the Rules.”
Blok ruled that Parhar abused the court process by filing documents “to utilize this Court’s infrastructure for the purposes of his fictional court.”
As for Parhar’s arrest, the judge said “it was a hard way to learn that laws do not work on an opt-in basis.”
Parhar still has an opportunity to challenge the Quarantine Act charges, Blok wrote, “which hopefully he will do on more conventional grounds” during a Provincial Court trial.
Support theBreaker.news for as low as $2 a month on Patreon. Find out how. Click here.
