Manitoba's top doctor says he's been target of online threats during pandemic

WINNIPEG -

Manitoba's top doctor discussed the slew of online threats he's faced during the pandemic in a news conference Monday afternoon.

In Monday's regular COVID-19 update, Dr. Brent Roussin, the chief provincial public health officer, was asked several questions about receiving threats. He said he's received many throughout the entire pandemic.

"I think email type threats or at least low-level threats were pretty common throughout all stages of the pandemic. So that was probably daily or at least weekly," he said.

Roussin said the threats have increased in the past few months.

"During this third wave, things have been stretching out, so I've been getting more and more severe ones," he said. "Ones that have been reported to me that people have seen in social media that have had some law enforcement involvement in it.”

Roussin said he hopes the threats decline as Manitoba starts to reopen.

"It's troubling to see that. We've all been working hard for it to just try to get to the place where we are now. We are able to loosen some of these restrictions, so hopefully, those threats too are a thing of the past," he said.

The questions about threats were sparked by claims that a private investigator was hired to follow Court of Queen's Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal.

Joyal is presiding over a case where a group of seven Manitoba churches are challenging the province's public health orders, arguing they have violated religious freedoms. He claims the investigator was trying to catch him breaking COVID-19 public health orders and embarrass him.

The group representing the churches, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, admitted and apologized for hiring a private investigator.

When asked about the incident, Roussin declined to comment.