After pushback from police and civil liberties advocates over extending police powers to enforce enhanced COVID-19 measures, the Ontario government walked back some of its new guidelines. However, there are still constitutional issues with the current policy, says Joanna Baron, executive director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation. “A police officer now must have ‘reason to suspect’ an individual may be participating in a gathering, and that it is ‘in the public interest’ to question them,” Baron said in an interview. “This raises the spectre of the right to silence (Section 7 of the Charter) and the right against self-incrimination (Section 13). Both ‘reasonable suspicion’ and ‘public interest’ are extremely broad, subjective categories, and the law essentially imposes an onus to disclose your purpose for being out.” On April 16,  to combat the rise in COVID infections and hospitalizations, the Ford government introduced new, tighter restrictions and extended the initial four-week …