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They sold all their other properties to pay legal bills and mortgaged their home. Their marriage broke down. They are elderly and their lives are destroyed. And the case is far from over. Indeed the contested properties, badly dilapidated in the tender claws of the state, are being sold without any pettifogging determination whether the seizure was lawful.

Yes. In Canada. To be sure, if the CCF does not run out of donations, a court may someday rule that the Reillys never should have lost their property. Then, after various appeals, a fresh legal battle can commence over whether they were sold for an appropriate price and if not what should be done. Some day the Reillys’ estate may even be awarded costs. But Juggernaut doesn’t care. It has unlimited access to our money and is determined to make an example of this couple for some unimaginable purpose.

The human cost of this ghastly process is enormous. You would have to be literally insane to put yourself in the Reillys position, so from a broad policy perspective it helps force the unfortunate in Ontario to choose between the street and government housing (curiously never seized because of drug trafficking). But what makes my blood boil is the direct individual cost of this aggressive attack on our rights.

Ontario’s broadly phrased and aggressively implemented legislation, originally aimed at organized crime, doesn’t just permit seizure of property on frivolous grounds. It allows the destruction of blameless lives, through an abusive procedure whose intimidating cost, duration and stress is a feature not a bug.

Nothing can ever give the Reillys back the time lost, the further good deeds not done, golden years together in the glow of shared, lived ideals. So when Juggernaut comes for you, best to roll over before everything that matters to you gets it, right?

No. Never. We must stand up for the Magna Carta promise of due process and swift justice that is our birthright. Donate to the CCF if you can. Raise your voice. Stand together as citizens. Denounce this unCanadian trampling of rights and resolve that it shall not continue.