It Was Never About a Virus

As I am sure we are all aware:

Tam’s original sins remain totally unexplained — at an official inquiry, for example, hint hint — never mind expiated. For days and weeks in early 2020, while our peer countries were closing borders and preparing for a pandemic, Tam assured us “the risk to Canada is low.” She lied that World Health Organization rules prohibited us from closing borders. She told us masks were worse than useless, and the only excuse anyone can offer is that she was fibbing to prevent Canadians from hoarding PPE. (I think she actually believed it. Either explanation is a firing offence.)

Remember the utterly incoherent advice the Public Health Agency of Canada provided to incoming travellers in the early days? Remember the built-to-fail, purely political quarantine hotels that Tam said weren’t necessary until they suddenly were — just as she said 14-day quarantine at home wasn’t necessary until it suddenly was? We were weeks if not months behind most of our peer countries. Regardless of your position on any given restriction, none of it made any sense.

Most of the day-to-day restrictions we lived with were provincial creations, of course. And Tam’s provincial colleagues fared little better. British Columbia’s Dr. Bonnie Henry was hailed as a hero early on — “she has guided B.C. with a deep empathy, with vulnerability, and with decisions that have been proven over and over to be right,” a Toronto Star columnist gushed. Henry even had the flaming chutzpah to publish a self-congratulatory book about herself.

Not long later she found herself facing down a revolt from parent groups and school districts over her belief younger students needn’t mask up at school. She flip-flopped, then waved away any suggestion British Columbians had lost confidence in her. (Henry has always clearly been far more skeptical about masks than her counterparts.) The restrictions she implemented, the businesses she allowed to open and those she ordered closed, were as bewildering and obviously politically motivated — who’s going to complain least while we seem to be doing something? — as in every other province.

Henry was perhaps the most strident Canadian voice insisting that COVID-19 transmission at school was nothing to worry about. It was a lovely idea. I wanted to believe it! But why would COVID-19 be the one bug kids don’t give to each other at school like it’s their job? More recent evidence impugns Henry’s overly confident stance, as do internal emails published last year by online news outlet Capital Daily suggesting she was deliberately downplaying the risk.

The flipside of Henry’s stance was Ontario’s, where public-health officials (municipal and provincial alike) signed off on the longest school closures in the developed world “for the sake of the children” — i.e., literally the people we needed to worry about least. Now schools are a mess of behavioural problems and learning deficits. Some kids seem to have gone downright feral.

Dr. David Williams, Henry’s preternaturally hapless counterpart at Queen’s Park until mid-2021, hit rock bottom early that year (along with the Progressive Conservative government). On March 19, Williams signed off on new regulations that would allow outdoor dining in some relatively low-transmission jurisdictions. Restaurants stocked up, brought on staff, bought patio furniture … and then two weeks later, amid a surge in cases that everyone saw coming, Williams signed off on a month-long province-wide shutdown — a totally inexplicable change from the regional approach the government had been using.

The fact is, public health officers have always been political actors, beholden at least to some significant extent to their political bosses. And that has always been awkward, conceptually: If your job is to give your best advice behind the scenes and then support whatever the government decides anyway, how are you anything other than an unelected cabinet minister?

This basic arrangement worked when our biggest problems were botulism-infected alfalfa sprouts, or heat warnings, or MMR vaccination rates, or even SARS for that matter. Under the strain of a world-class health emergency, however, it crumbled like meringue. Politicians often sounded ridiculous, and doctors looked even more so supporting them … because they’re doctors.

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 COVID-19 vaccines were authorized in Canada during 2020 and 2021 without being subjected to the country’s safety tests as required under established drug regulations, revealed an accountability watchdog.

An investigation into COVID vaccines found that the jabs were “neither safe nor effective,” said the nonprofit National Citizens Inquiry (NCI) in a Sept. 15 post on X. The organization published a report Thursday detailing the flawed mechanism through which the vaccines were granted “approval” in Canada.

“It is important to understand that the COVID-19 vaccines were never approved under the traditional approval process for drugs in Canada,” stated the report (pdf). Instead, Health Canada, the federal agency responsible for national health policy, approved the vaccines through an alternative authorization process—an interim order. ...

Canada's Food and Drug Regulations require that a drug can only be approved in the country after its safety and effectiveness are demonstrated to the Minister of Health. Then, the minister considers whether the benefits outweigh the risks, following which, approval is granted.

Instead of following regulations, the Minister of Health sanctioned an interim order on Sept. 16, 2021, which exempted all COVID-19 vaccines from normal review and approval. This provision usually allows the minister to override normal regulations in situations of “significant risk” to health, safety, or the environment.

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Capt. Martel said when his squad arrived in downtown Ottawa on Feb. 18, they were placed 15 feet from the "front line" established by police officers on the corner of Rideau Street and Sussex Drive. He said the police were able to move approximately 150 metres forward over the course of many hours due to the protesters' refusal to move.

"There were no projectiles that were thrown or anything. We could hear some yelling, but they just stayed in place," he added.

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Never forget that the government froze the bank accounts of Freedom Convoy supporters—and the list it used to track those supporters was illegally hacked by a third party. If you can lose access to your money, the government can pretty well do as it pleases to you.

 

No, he didn't walk away a free man because the process is the punishment:

A Calgary pastor was sentenced to 60 days in jail Monday for his role in protests against COVID-19 public health measures that blocked Alberta’s main Canada-U.S. border crossing for more than two weeks.

But a judge in Lethbridge, Alta., gave Artur Pawlowski 60 days’ credit for time already served, meaning he walked away from the courthouse a free man.