Juno News - Canada's anti-child COVID policies are not the norm

00:00:00.000 It's time all of Canada really embraced the maxim that adults should not be using their

00:00:11.760 anxieties and fears about COVID-19 to hold our youth hostage. This is one of the things that

00:00:17.840 has frustrated me the most about the response to COVID for a number of provinces in Canada.

00:00:23.220 Ontario has been particularly bad about it when it comes to not putting our kids first. And there's

00:00:29.380 a number of examples that still continue. I mean for a lot of people the summer's actually been

00:00:34.100 pretty good. There haven't been that many restrictions. You've been out and about.

00:00:37.380 Many provinces dropped their mask mandates for months actually. People got to feel free from

00:00:41.940 those masks. They got to go about their business and hang out with friends and family. Do all of

00:00:46.220 the activities they love. Great news. Now as the fall returns a lot of people anxious about what

00:00:51.880 that means for coronavirus. Okay fine adults are going to make their choices. They're going to

00:00:56.680 deal with these issues. The news headlines. However they got to deal with it. Do what you got to do.

00:01:01.560 But here's the thing. Please leave our kids alone. What do I mean by that? I'm going to give you two 0.90

00:01:06.840 examples and these are examples basically comparing how the United Kingdom does things to how some

00:01:13.080 jurisdictions in Canada does it. Now it's different province by province. BC has actually largely been

00:01:19.240 the leader in terms of letting children live their lives in previous waves and so forth. Keeping schools

00:01:25.080 open and kids not wearing masks. In Ontario schools coming back in the fall kids all have to be masked

00:01:32.120 indoors even the kindergartners. Very frustrating. A lot of parents writing to me saying they're really

00:01:37.880 upset about that. I mean the small children. Whereas in the United Kingdom I'm just giving one example.

00:01:42.680 There are other countries that have similar policies. They say for the whole country masks in 0.93

00:01:47.320 schools. Kids, educators, staff members. They don't need to wear them. You're not doing it. It's not

00:01:55.240 happening. And I really wish Ontario and some other provinces in Canada which persist in an information

00:02:01.080 silo and that they only really know and consume news that comes from within their own province. They

00:02:06.440 only hear from doctors and epidemiologists who are sort of on the same page with their province's approach

00:02:12.360 and they're not actually broadening their horizons and seeing what's going on in other parts of the

00:02:16.680 world. And those parts of Canada which actually have very sort of well anti-child policies. I don't

00:02:22.360 know what else to call them. Those policies really restrictive on kids. That's actually the outlier.

00:02:27.080 That's not the norm for the western world. More people have to know that example. Another example is

00:02:32.280 when it comes to vaccines and vaccines for children and vaccines for young people. I can tell you in Ontario

00:02:38.360 there's there's a large appetite among many people to say we just got to approve these vaccines for

00:02:42.680 for small children not just the teens. It's currently approved for 12 to 17 year olds but for the small

00:02:47.320 children. You go hold on a second. I mean this is the job of experts to figure out whether or not the

00:02:52.520 risk benefit analysis actually says that this is something that should be done. Why are we pushing

00:02:57.560 for all this? Whatever your perspective on adult vaccines and clearly most adults in Canada are okay with

00:03:02.440 them because the vast majority of Canadians have in fact been vaccinated. The vast majority of adults

00:03:07.400 in those older cohorts. Whatever you think about the adult conversation. I mean in the UK they

00:03:13.160 actually recently redetermined that they're not going to be making vaccines available even to

00:03:19.480 younger teenagers. To 16 and 17 year olds yes they're making it available but under 16 they're not. So

00:03:25.880 there's an interesting disconnect here when we talk about vaccine passports for example in BC. This is

00:03:30.760 one example where BC does not have a child-friendly policy. BC and Ontario their vaccine passports

00:03:36.840 actually apply to people 12 and over anybody who is eligible to be vaccinated. So we've got this

00:03:43.480 situation where in the UK they're saying we're not even making the vaccines available to 13 year

00:03:48.200 olds. There are exceptions. There are certain underlying conditions where they will vaccinate

00:03:51.800 the 12 and 13 year olds but by and large it is not available to them there. Whereas in Ontario

00:03:57.080 and some other provinces a 13 year old can can be banned from having access to certain facilities

00:04:03.880 if they don't have two doses of this vaccine that they can't even get in the UK. I mean at the very

00:04:10.760 least one would think we can moderate the vaccine passports to make the teenagers the under 18s 0.96

00:04:15.800 exempt from all that. Whatever your position on the vaccine passports in general is surely

00:04:19.880 any reasonable person would agree why can't we exempt those younger people the people under the age of 18. 0.92

00:04:25.640 There you go just two examples of how I feel we've really got to do a better job of putting our

00:04:30.520 youth first. The persons who are at lowest risk of having a serious outcome of COVID-19 but I think

00:04:35.720 in many senses at highest risk of suffering poor consequences from lockdowns and well yes as the

00:04:41.800 reports say from vaccine side effects and so forth. I mean just let the kids live. Adults things to be

00:04:48.840 concerned about for sure. Older high-risk adults lots of concerns. I appreciate why people have those concerns

00:04:55.240 but please we gotta leave the kids out of it.

Juno News - September 06, 2021

Canada's anti-child COVID policies are not the norm

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