Marco Navarro-Génie, president of the think tank Haultain Research Institute, takes issue with the order under which the Pawlowskis were arrested, calling it “a grotesque abuse of power.”

In a liberal democracy, people have the constitutional right to challenge rules and to oppose rules that they believe are unjust or ill-intended,” he said.

“The second issue, of course, is that lockdowns have no basis in science. These are absolute experiments. We have never in the history of humankind done this kind of thing where entire societies, entire countries, are locked down.”

Navarro-Génie said the medical establishment has no business advising governments to constrain and confine the population of healthy individuals.

The recently released book he co-authored, “COVID-19: The Politics of a Pandemic Moral Panic,” states that “political actors” and “moral entrepreneurs” saw an opportunity to use the pandemic as a means to expand and consolidate their power.

He suggests that the best approach for the Alberta government is to reopen the province and put the focus on protecting the most vulnerable.

“If people are still afraid, those who are afraid, they have the right to be afraid. They should stay home and figure out ways for themselves,” he said, but “this forcible confinement of entirely healthy populations in a liberal democracy needs to stop.”