A Saskatchewan man convicted of abducting his daughter to prevent her from receiving the COVID-19 vaccine has had another request rejected in the Court of Appeal for Saskatchewan. Michael Gordon Jackson applied to have the appellate court stay the proceedings with respect to his conviction and to suspend his probation order pending the result of his application for leave to the Supreme Court of Canada. However, this request was rejected, according to a court decision dated Aug. 26. Jackson was convicted of withholding his then seven-year-old daughter from her mother from December 2021 to February 2022. He was subject to a nationwide arrest warrant and was eventually found with his daughter in Vernon, B.C. He was then found guilty in Regina’s Court of King’s Bench in 2024 and appealed this decision in December of that year. That appeal was rejected by the Court of Appeal for Saskatchewan in May 2026. Following the dismissal, the Regina man decided to file an application for leave in hopes of having the case taken to the Supreme Court. The documents state Jackson was continuing his appeal against the probation order as a matter of principle. Justice Neal Caldwell wrote that although a previous Court of Appeal judge exercised the authority to suspend the probation order, Jackson is unable to obtain the relief he seeks in this application under the same section as that decision (s.683) because it only applies when an appeal, or application for leave to appeal, has been filed in a court of appeal not counting the Supreme Court. Caldwell added that Jackson had no other appeal or application for leave pending in the Court of Appeal specifically. “At the end of the day, I am not persuaded that I have the jurisdiction to make the orders Mr. Jackson has requested pursuant to s. 65.1 of the Supreme Court Act,” he said. Caldwell said he would have granted Jackson the orders he sought on his proposed terms if he had the jurisdiction to do so. “However, in summary, I conclude that s. 65.1 of the Supreme Court Act does not authorise me to make the orders sought in the particular circumstances of this application,” he said. “For these reasons, the application is dismissed.”
