Juno News - February 01, 2022Ending all COVID-19 restrictions is not a radical idea
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Summary
In this episode, I discuss the mass protest that took place on Parliament Hill this past weekend, and compare it to what public health officials in Canada have been saying for months. I also discuss the parallels between the trucker vaccine mandate and what other countries like the United Kingdom and the United States have been doing.
Transcript
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So much that can be said about what happened on Parliament Hill, downtown Ottawa, this past
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weekend, all the people who descended upon our nation's capital to make their voices heard. But
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I want to focus on one particular angle, which is comparing one of the key messages of the broad
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spectrum of individuals who converged on our nation's capital, comparing it with what public
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health officials have recently said here in Canada from coast to coast. So the original message that
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got all this started, truckers convoy moving from the west coast and culminating in Ottawa, was say
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no to the truckers vaccine mandate, that it was unnecessary, that it would cause supply chain
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issues. That was the original concern. And then of course this became something much larger, became a
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symbol for people who were frustrated with all these overbearing COVID-19 rules. And one of the
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main messages that we saw there was end the mandates, the broad mandates, whatever they are, demanding
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people, you must do this, you must do that. Let's roll back those rules. Now what's very interesting
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is Canadians have watched for months now as many other countries have been doing the same. We've
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watched as the United States has found a way to basically live their lives, regardless of what part
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of the country they're in, whether they're Democrat states, Republican states, most of them have
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ruled, have rolled back overbearing rules. Then we've seen as the United Kingdom has said no more
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COVID-19 rules at all. And for someone to say, I want to live like that, like they're living in New
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York state, like they're living in this democratic state or that Republican state or like in the United
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Kingdom, I don't think that's particularly radical, particularly when you combine what some chief
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medical officers throughout Canada have been saying. Like Dr. Bonnie Henry just last week,
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she's BC's top doctor saying, we've got to start treating this like we would the flu and be prepared
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for us rolling back these rules. Dr. Kieran Moore, Ontario's chief medical officer saying very similar
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things. Dr. Eileen Davila, Toronto's chief medical officer who's really presided over some of the most
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aggressive COVID rules we've had in this country. She said things very similar. So when you have
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people protesting saying basically that they want rules similar to what the UK has, what the US has,
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and kind of consistent with what public health officials are saying, well, I think that should
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really open our eyes to what's going on. I mean, they're protesting Justin Trudeau, yes, but Justin
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Trudeau was stubbornly refusing to roll back the trucker vaccine mandate at a time when why are you
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adding new rules and new layers when we're all talking about having fewer rules. So I think when
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you put it into that perspective, you realize what is the key message of what all these sort of
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different voices were saying on Parliament Hill. They were saying we want fewer COVID rules and yet public
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health officials saying, well, yeah, we probably should. And then of course, other countries very
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similar to ours, very close to us doing it just that way. I don't think that's an unreasonable request at all.