Charter Rights

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
Fundamental Freedoms
- 2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: (a) freedom of conscience and religion; (b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication...
Legal Rights
- 7. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

All very well, and satisfying and comfortingly rational. Except for one thing: Someone else's freedoms may not impinge upon mine in a manner that may prove to be seriously deleterious to my health and well-being. This too is a basic reality. And we have laws in place, and carefully determined outlines of social contact within the social compact to ensure that, in effect, everyone's right to security of the person is recognized and valued.

When it comes to volunteering to give blood with the Canadian Blood Services, a screening process is employed, where volunteers are requested to fill out a questionnaire, to ensure that they are not potential carriers of disease which might infect others needful of blood transfusions. Canada experienced the horror of disease transmission through infected blood transfusions, an experience it has no wish to duplicate.

For that reason, along with good common sense, it is incumbent on the blood collection agency to ensure that those good-hearted citizens who respond to the plea to give blood are free from any manner of blood contamination that may prove injurious to the health of blood recipients. And those who do regularly give blood as volunteers, are very familiar with the contents of the questionnaire and the reasons for the queries.

Now a gay man who has taken umbrage with the protective procedure, claiming it to be an affront against his human dignity and his sexual orientation, protected under the Charter, seeks $250,000 in damages from the agency. This is a man who, with no malice aforethought, but secure in his belief that he was right, deliberately falsified his responses to the questionnaire and gave blood repeatedly.

When the Canadian Blood Services agency discovered Kyle Freeman's deliberate flouting of rules meant to protect the public, they filed a lawsuit against him. He had donated blood on numerous previous occasions to the Canadian Red Cross as well, the predecessor of the current agency. Which agency had been discredited when donor blood tainted with HIV and Hepatitis C changed the lives of many Canadians.

While fully knowledgeable that as a gay who enjoyed sexual relations with other gays meant that he would be ineligible to give blood, he set out to falsify his responses, and to continue giving blood. He is adamant that the Blood Services agency is at fault in their determination of his ineligibility because, although he is gay, tests have indicated he is not HIV-positive.

Which condition, of course, could change at any time, given his sexual orientation, placing him at relatively high risk, and by extension posing a potential risk through the donation of his blood. The extent of his hypocrisy is blatant, since he claims he is prepared to abandon his lawsuit against the agency, if they drop theirs against him.

He seems to enjoy splitting hairs, contesting the illegality of his position, while flagrantly and casually being responsible by his past conduct, of placing the recipients of his blood donations at risk of developing catastrophic health conditions. His considered opinion is that his 'rights' under the Charter have been infringed, with little consideration for the rights of others.

Since the executive director of the Canadian Hemophilia Society feels the current practise is in the "best interests of blood safety", we can assume we have it on fairly good authority that Kyle Freeman is seriously in error.