Claims that mask mandates and vaccination requirements to do certain things are violations of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms are common in anti-mask and anti-vax communities. But those claims don't have much truth to them, according to an expert on the Canadian Constitution.

University of Regina Emeritus Professor John Whyte, who was involved in the creation of the Constitution, said the government can place reasonable limits on rights.

"There are real limitations on these rights, and the antivaxxers are just crazy when they say 'It's against our Charter rights." Our Charter rights are really, really complex and really, really a product of ongoing reconcilliation between strong human needs for autonomy - very strong, very powerful need for autonomy - and an equally powerful need for society to self-regulate in an effective way."

Section 1 of the Charter states that rights and freedoms identified within are not absolute.

"The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."

A test was created in the R. v. Oakes case of 1986, which is known as the Oakes Test, which determines whether a limit on a right or freedom is "reasonable" and "demonstrably justified." The goal of the legislation must be "pressing and substantial," the means to achieve the objective must be proportional, there must be a rational connection between the limit and its goal, the limit must impair the right or freedom as little as possible, and the "final balancing" must have proportionality between negative effects of the law and its benefits.

Whyte, a former deputy justice minister for Saskatchewan, said laws that have been implemented by the provinces would likely pass the requirement set out in the Oakes Test.

"It's going to be hard about crossing over the threshold since the epidemiological evidence is not totally clear and constantly emerging. It's not wrong for the state to regulate a little bit on the nervous side, on the wary side, leaving no stone unturned in trying to stop the spread."

Whyte said there are two balancing acts at play with regulations aimed at preventing the spread of the coronavirus.

"The first weighing is the weighing between a COVID transmission and liberty, and the second kind of weighing is the weighing between personal decisions about your body, and the cost to the capacity of the state to save people's lives."