A Fraser Valley pastor's epic fail using legal tricks to avoid accountability for violating COVID-19 restrictions
Since Rev. John Koopman was fined in 2020, his appeal was dismissed, Charter arguments rejected, claim of 'abuse of process' denied, and he's finally set to be sentenced next month
(Note: This is an example of a story that fell through the cracks in a dwindling media landscape in the Fraser Valley and across B.C. There were a great many court proceedings I was keeping track of when I was suddenly fired in June 2023. Even then, so few people were paying attention to the courts in the Fraser Valley that the removal of just one person, i.e. me, meant that most justice matters in the region have gone unreported since then. This case was reported up until the start of a 10-day hearing in June 2024 and then, crickets. The provincial court decision referred to here was issued almost four months ago. This is the first reporting in any news media - PJH, Jan. 29, 2025)
Five years after the pandemic first rocked our economy, shut down our institutions, and thousands of people started dying every day, a Christian pastor from the Fraser Valley will finally be sentenced for his refusal to follow simple public health orders that almost every other religious leader was following.
Rev. John Koopman of Chilliwack Free Reformed Church began his many years of grandstanding against COVID-19 measures on Dec. 6, 2020 when he held a church service he knew was in violation of the gathering and events orders. That grandstanding should end Feb. 28, 2025 when he is sentenced after the Oct. 4, 2024 rejection of his ironic “abuse of process” application.
On that day in 2020, nine months after the declaration of the pandemic and when gathering restrictions were put in place to slow the spread of the virus by B.C.'s Public Health Officer (PHO) Dr. Bonnie Henry, Koopman decided he was done letting the PHO stop him. It was time to ignore corporeal law and follow the word of his god, which apparently not all church leaders had access to.
Koopman and a handful of others held in-person worship at their respective churches. There are likely many more, but a few included: Free Grace Baptist Church and Valley Heights Community Church both in Chilliwack; Riverside Calvary Chapel in Langley; and Immanuel Covenant Reformed Church in Abbotsford.
The church leaders were fined but refused to pay the fines. Then they got the Calgary-based Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) involved to fight the tickets.
(The JCCF have been involved in several defences of people who believe laws they don’t like don't apply to them. People such as trucker convoy organizer Tamara Lich and anti-LGBTQ mouthpiece Barry Neufeld. Incidentally, in 2021, JCCF president John Carpay was charged with obstruction of justice and intimidation of a justice system participant for hiring a private investigator to follow a Manitoba judge to try to catch the judge violating COVID rules.)
This all could have been over four years ago when Koopman and the other church leaders were first told they were wrong by BC Supreme Court Justice Chrisopher Hinkson in a March 2021 ruling. Justice Hinkson found that the Province’s top doctor’s orders did infringe the right to religious freedom, but that infringement was justified and fair because Charter-protected freedoms were balanced with the need to stop preventable deaths.
In short, the violation of their freedom to worship under Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was found to be superseded by Section 1, which allows for limits to be placed on rights and freedoms when necessary to serve the public interest.
That should have been the end of it and, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see it actually was.
Yet the grandstanding continued.
The JCCF filed an appeal in April 2021, which was dismissed by the BC Court of Appeal in March 2022. In August the trial of three pastors began and in November 2022, Judge Andrea Ormiston found Koopman guilty.
Still, not done fighting, the JCCF really wanted to make the Charter argument. So in April 2023, Judge Ormiston summarily dismissed the claim at an evidentiary hearing, the determination being that the case had no reasonable chance of success since the Supreme Court already settled the Charter matter in the Hinkson decision in 2021.
Surely now the good pastor’s grandstanding was complete? Nah.
In May 2023, JCCF lawyer Paul Jaffe then filed a application claiming “abuse of process and bad faith.” Koopman and other church leaders argued that their prosecution for violating public health orders involved the PHO abusing process and the charges should be dropped.
“Dr. Henry acted dishonestly and in bad faith while banning in-person worship services in 2020 and 2021, granting immediate exemptions to Jewish synagogues while ignoring exemption requests from Muslims and Christians,” according to a June 2023 JCCF news release.
What emerged in the hearing, and in Judge Ormiston’s Oct. 4, 2024 decision, was that not only was Koopman’s claims of abuse of process false, the truth of the matter was quite the opposite. Public health officer (PHO) Dr. Bonnie Henry bent over backwards to specifically accommodate these churches within days of the illegal church gatherings.
“Most significantly, the PHO wrote directly to the applicant on Dec. 18, 2020, personally inviting him to make a case‑specific request for reconsideration,” Judge Ormiston wrote in her decision. “She referenced the fact that she had already considered and granted these types of requests. This was not the first time the PHO communicated directly with Pastor Koopman. This evidence strongly contradicts the applicant's argument that the PHO was looking to sweep aside religious freedoms. This correspondence completely undermines the broad accusations that the PHO acted with an arrogant disregard towards Christians generally, or Pastor Koopman specifically.
“It is nothing short of remarkable, in my view, that at the time, in the crush of a global health emergency of December 2020, the PHO wrote directly to Pastor Koopman and invited him to make a reconsideration request that gave her something to work with.”
Dr. Henry could have ignored Koopman’s bellyaching about not wanting to follow the gathering orders. Not only did she not ignore him. Not only did she not discriminate against him. Dr. Henry bent over backwards to try to accommodate him. But Koopman decided following due process through the PHO meant acceding authority to her over the word of god.
You can't make this up.
“In my view, this evidence points to the exact opposite inference that the applicant wants the Court to draw,” Judge Ormiston wrote. “In other words, this correspondence does not suggest that the PHO treated the applicant and similarly concerned church leaders with arrogant disregard. She appears to have treated them as people deserving of special standing.”
Koopman apparently wanted to consult with the PHO regarding COVID restrictions before they were imposed, but when this didn’t happen, he did not seek exemptions through the PHO’s process to do so.
“By this point, Pastor Koopman had decided engaging with the reconsideration process was tantamount to preferring the PHO's authority over the word of God,” Judge Ormiston concluded in tossing out his claim of abuse of process.
Ironically, few people have abused judicial process and wasted time in court and showed disdain for public health officials and taxpayer dollars than Reverend John Koopman over what is now almost half a decade.
I'm no lawyer, but after going through the timeline of this case I find it hard not to conclude that he is a nothing but a vexatious litigant and should be treated as such.
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Paul J. Henderson
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