Juno News - Growing Resistance to Vaccine Discrimination

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:06.620 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:13.060 Coming up, growing resistance in Canada and around the world to vaccine discrimination

00:00:17.700 and Justin Trudeau's unwillingness to call a spade a spade when it comes to communist Cuba.

00:00:24.980 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:30.000 Hello and welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:35.500 This is the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:00:38.540 It is great to have you aboard the program and I want to talk about the other side of the coin

00:00:44.260 that we started down the road of discussing in my previous show this week, which is vaccine discrimination.

00:00:51.060 And a lot of this has been coming from individuals and businesses and activists who think that

00:00:56.240 you should be required to be fully vaccinated to basically be a member of society.

00:01:01.940 And in the UK, it's worse.

00:01:03.600 In parts of Europe, it's worse.

00:01:05.260 We see pushes for it here.

00:01:07.180 I talked last week about this website in Toronto, Safe2Do or Safe2Do or Safe2Do.

00:01:14.040 I don't know how they pronounce it.

00:01:15.480 But it doesn't matter because the website's gone.

00:01:17.420 This was a website set up by a Toronto lawyer to give companies the right to basically brag

00:01:23.920 about having fully vaccinated staff and also to set out vaccine requirements for customers.

00:01:30.760 There was one restaurant notably called Chanticleer in Toronto, which said you are going to be,

00:01:36.080 if you want a table inside, you've got to be fully vaccinated.

00:01:39.800 That website's been shut down.

00:01:41.660 It didn't even last a week.

00:01:43.220 The guy who created it said that all of the businesses that were putting their names on

00:01:47.900 there and saying, yes, we require vaccinations for customers and staff were getting backlash

00:01:54.240 from people because there were more people that were annoyed with these policies than

00:01:59.320 there were people who welcomed them.

00:02:01.940 And I think some of it was unkind.

00:02:03.780 I mean, certainly people were going and leaving all these one star reviews.

00:02:07.040 And whereas I think the best way to protest a business is to simply not shop there.

00:02:11.320 And that's what individual consumers have a right to do with any company for any reason.

00:02:16.800 But there was a cautionary tale in it, which is that by and large, people are resistant to

00:02:21.540 this idea of being forced to do something, even if in a lot of cases they would have done it anyway.

00:02:27.480 And we're starting to see this with vaccination policy.

00:02:30.700 And I'm going to talk about very briefly some of the protests we're seeing in Europe of people

00:02:35.060 who by and large, if you look at the stats, are vaccinated, but don't like that the government

00:02:39.500 is getting a little bit too big brotherly when it comes to enforcing it.

00:02:45.040 But let's talk about, as I said at the beginning, the other side of the coin here.

00:02:48.660 So you go back a week and a half, Good Life Fitness, the largest gym chain in Canada says,

00:02:53.320 we don't care if you're vaccinated or not, just come work out.

00:02:55.980 Not a policy.

00:02:56.980 It's the absence of a policy.

00:02:58.720 That gets Good Life subjected to an absolute deluge of criticism and attacks on Twitter.

00:03:04.320 That is what ultimately creates this mandatory vaccine show-off website, safe to do.

00:03:10.600 Then there's a gym in Etobicoke that decides to go completely the other way on this, seeing

00:03:16.440 that there are a couple of gyms that are talking about mandatory vaccination.

00:03:20.520 The Fearless Boxing Club, Etobicoke is just on the outskirts of Toronto, says that it will

00:03:26.040 not accept anyone who has been vaccinated at the gym.

00:03:30.180 So it's like the opposite of no shoes, no service.

00:03:33.000 They're saying no shoes, no problem, or no vax, no problem.

00:03:36.380 And if you are vaxed, we've got a problem.

00:03:39.020 Here's the line on Facebook from Mohamed Abedin, who's the co-founder of the gym.

00:03:44.160 He said, I didn't get the shot.

00:03:46.220 My family won't be getting the shot.

00:03:47.620 My friends won't be.

00:03:48.880 All the members of our gym won't be.

00:03:51.020 And then he says this, for the safety of our members, the Fearless Boxing Club will no

00:03:56.760 longer be accepting those who received the experimental COVID vaccine.

00:04:01.100 Our current members, including doctors, nurses, teachers, parents, and many youth feel safer

00:04:06.280 waiting until more research is done on the side effects being discovered right now.

00:04:12.180 And the outrage to this is insane.

00:04:14.900 I did a quick story about it over at True North.

00:04:17.500 And there was a fairly mixed response.

00:04:19.720 There were some people who said, yeah, this is great.

00:04:22.060 I want to go there. 1.00

00:04:23.100 Other people that I don't think missed the point, that we're calling them reckless and stupid 1.00

00:04:27.760 and super spreaders and all of that. 0.99

00:04:30.660 And there are a few people.

00:04:31.680 I just want to say this very quickly.

00:04:33.400 A few people were sending me emails about this thing called vaccine shedding, which is basically

00:04:37.780 this idea that you can contract someone's vaccine secondhand.

00:04:42.280 It's not true.

00:04:43.360 There's no such thing as vaccine shedding.

00:04:45.480 There's something that's very rare called viral shedding, but that's not with vaccines

00:04:49.580 that are made the way the COVID vaccine is made.

00:04:51.580 So the idea is if someone is vaccinated, no matter how much you hate the vaccine, it's

00:04:55.900 going to do absolutely nothing to you.

00:04:58.620 And we should all as individuals in a supposedly free society be welcoming and celebrating people

00:05:04.920 making their own choice, which means if you're vaccinated, great.

00:05:08.120 If you're not vaccinated, that is completely your choice.

00:05:10.640 Let's not have either group start trying to force the other to do something they don't

00:05:14.940 want to do or not do something they do want to do.

00:05:17.540 So what he's doing here, I think, at the fearless boxing gym is basically saying, you know what,

00:05:24.060 let's just go down the road of two can play this game.

00:05:27.980 If you can mandate people to be vaccinated, I can mandate people to not be.

00:05:33.240 Do I think this is what is in the interest of building a cohesive society?

00:05:38.220 No.

00:05:39.020 Do I find it amusing?

00:05:40.800 Nonetheless, yes.

00:05:42.400 And that's basically where I'm at on this.

00:05:44.600 If this is just being done to troll people, I say, well played, well done.

00:05:50.260 You prove the point very well.

00:05:52.240 Because all of the people who to defend mandatory vaccine policies at businesses have been saying,

00:05:57.200 ah, well, it's a private business.

00:05:59.000 They have the choice.

00:06:00.340 Don't seem so keen on their libertarian bona fides when the business is using its autonomy

00:06:06.640 and its prerogative to do what they're doing at this gym in Etobicoke.

00:06:10.920 Now, all of a sudden, oh, well, no, no, no.

00:06:12.540 That's a public health risk.

00:06:13.640 You can't do that.

00:06:14.620 That's discrimination.

00:06:16.100 Well, which is it?

00:06:16.880 Do private businesses have the right to make these decisions for themselves or do they not?

00:06:22.440 And this is why what I said on Monday's show I think needs to be restated here, which is

00:06:26.960 that we should have a government that's completely hands off on this, that's letting individuals

00:06:31.640 make their own decisions.

00:06:33.040 And yes, is letting businesses make their own decisions.

00:06:36.000 But as individuals, as a society, we should not be supporting at all this trend towards

00:06:44.320 vaccine discrimination, which is looking increasingly like the norm and not an exception if you look

00:06:50.780 at what a lot of activists are calling for.

00:06:52.720 And vaccine discrimination is wrong and it's impractical and it is going to set us up for

00:06:58.900 dangerous consequences in the long run.

00:07:01.440 And here's why.

00:07:02.980 And this is why vaccine passports and vaccine certification has been such a big issue for

00:07:08.660 me because if we start down the road of having these things, of having basically a green pass

00:07:16.080 or a vaccine passport or a vaccine certificate, whatever, to access elements of society, that

00:07:21.680 infrastructure is going to outlive COVID.

00:07:25.020 The infrastructure to set up mandatory vaccines, to set up vaccine passports, is going to be

00:07:30.720 there longer than this particular virus or this particular pandemic will.

00:07:34.740 And it means that when the next thing comes along, all they have to do is kind of snap

00:07:40.200 their fingers and they have this ready-made tyranny in a box that they can apply to whatever

00:07:45.960 the so-called experts deem is the threat du jour.

00:07:50.340 So these things are not temporary and not fleeting.

00:07:54.140 You look at all of the companies that have set up COVID policy.

00:07:57.980 Let's look at hotels, for example.

00:07:59.500 I was at a hotel not long ago that, like most hotels, had severely reigned back

00:08:04.660 its service, arraigned in its service, including housekeeping because of the COVID-19 issues.

00:08:11.160 And they're in a jurisdiction that is completely open, no public health restrictions, no mask

00:08:15.840 mandates.

00:08:16.420 They're still not doing daily housekeeping service.

00:08:18.900 Now, I would say this probably has more to do with the hotel being cheap than anything

00:08:23.980 to do with health, anything to do with public health guidelines.

00:08:27.340 It's certainly not coming from a government regulation.

00:08:30.040 But things that existed for temporary reasons for the pandemic have a tendency to remain

00:08:37.220 in place.

00:08:38.680 It's like the old, I mean, it's not a joke, but the old observation about the income tax

00:08:42.400 in Canada being a temporary effort for the war.

00:08:45.860 And here we are, however many years later, a hundred and some odd still paying it.

00:08:50.920 Things that are meant to be temporary.

00:08:52.760 Government does not do temporary.

00:08:54.720 Government only expands.

00:08:56.220 It never contracts.

00:08:58.140 So all of these regulations and requirements and policies and these infringements of liberty

00:09:02.840 will become permanent if they are not stopped and prevented from getting off the ground in

00:09:10.000 the first place.

00:09:12.260 And this is why a lot of these people that we see saying, well, yeah, I mean, I am a little

00:09:17.860 bit uneasy with it, but you know, it's a pandemic.

00:09:20.280 Like these people will live to rue their qualifications that they're applying to these

00:09:26.500 things.

00:09:26.900 If you are not going to stand up for liberty now, you are never going to get another chance

00:09:32.460 to do it.

00:09:34.580 And it's not you.

00:09:36.220 My friend Mark Stein says it best.

00:09:38.700 He says the problem with saying that you aren't going to die on this hill or that's not the

00:09:42.560 hill to die on is that eventually you run out of hills.

00:09:45.040 And we're going to be at that point pretty darn quickly if people do not start standing

00:09:49.960 up and saying no.

00:09:52.180 And if you look at Europe, for example, which is not a place that generally speaking, most

00:09:57.640 people associate with unbridled liberty.

00:10:00.520 But in Europe, people are protesting in very large numbers at what's been happening there

00:10:05.800 in the United Kingdom, where again, you need a vaccine passport if you want to do certain

00:10:10.840 things like go to a large concert.

00:10:12.420 France, where even something as simple as going to a cafe requires proof of vaccination.

00:10:18.120 Effectively mandatory vaccination in France has caused thousands of people to line the

00:10:23.160 streets.

00:10:24.220 Italy going in a very similar direction.

00:10:26.160 The government trying to mandate vaccines or vaccine passports and the people are not 1.00

00:10:30.380 having any of it.

00:10:31.320 Greece.

00:10:32.020 Greece hasn't even gone the full distance with vaccine passports, but people are protesting

00:10:37.580 the government there because they think it's going to start being targeted towards youth,

00:10:41.600 towards minors.

00:10:43.260 And in a lot of cases, you have parents that are not anti-vax at all.

00:10:46.380 They've been fully vaccinated themselves, but they draw a line when it comes to their

00:10:50.120 kids.

00:10:50.440 They say, well, hang on.

00:10:51.760 I can kind of decide my own risk level.

00:10:54.120 But now you're talking about vaccinating my 14-year-old, my 15-year-old, my 12-year-old.

00:10:59.140 That's a bridge too far.

00:11:00.680 So Europe, which has had, for the most part, more aggressive lockdowns, not as prolonged,

00:11:07.660 but more aggressive lockdowns, Europeans are standing up and saying, we do not want anything 0.80

00:11:12.660 to do with this.

00:11:14.500 Because the whole point of enduring the lockdown, this is how it was sold to people.

00:11:18.240 Remember two weeks to flatten the curve?

00:11:19.840 Remember that?

00:11:20.380 Like, what, 16 months ago?

00:11:22.100 Two weeks to flatten the curve was short-term pain, long-term gain.

00:11:26.600 That was the basis of it.

00:11:28.900 So when you had people that were prepared to do their part, that were all in this together

00:11:34.500 shake, prepared to do their part because it would mean freedom on the other side of it,

00:11:39.540 people around the world are realizing that that promise of freedom is not actually materializing.

00:11:45.940 We did the lockdown.

00:11:47.380 We did, quote unquote, our part.

00:11:48.920 We stayed in place.

00:11:50.060 We avoided getting haircuts for months at a time.

00:11:52.940 We avoided restaurants.

00:11:54.200 Businesses bled.

00:11:54.960 We did all of this stuff.

00:11:56.260 And at the end of it, there's not a free society.

00:11:59.260 At the end of it, there's not this rumspringer where you just do whatever you want.

00:12:03.280 At the end of it is a society that is more restricted than the one that existed prior

00:12:07.780 to the pandemic.

00:12:08.600 A society in which you all of a sudden need permission.

00:12:12.400 Permission to engage in all of the things that you were banned from doing.

00:12:16.180 And you're supposed to celebrate that that's a step forward because, oh, at least a few

00:12:19.600 of these things are open.

00:12:20.520 This is why people, I think, are finally starting to realize, even people who weren't anti-lockdown,

00:12:28.440 that they were sold a bill of goods that the government simply isn't delivering.

00:12:33.040 And this is why a lot of the anti-lockdown people had it right.

00:12:35.980 You know, some people were prepared to say, I'm reasonable.

00:12:41.800 I will adapt.

00:12:43.840 I will do certain things differently.

00:12:46.680 But if the government is going to justify shutting everything down, it has to be willing

00:12:50.740 to actually open it all on the other end of it, which the government simply is not doing.

00:12:56.520 So my prediction on this is that there are going to be a lot more people doing what the

00:13:01.320 protesters in France and Italy and Greece are doing, saying to the government, this

00:13:05.320 is not what we agreed to, and we are not going to abide by this.

00:13:10.040 Because one of the most dangerous aspects of this pandemic is that there's never going

00:13:13.580 to be a natural off switch.

00:13:16.700 And this is the whole point.

00:13:17.660 But Jason Kenney, last week, I think it was, had made a comment about after the pandemic.

00:13:23.280 And he didn't, like, stand up like George Bush with the Mission Accomplished banner and say

00:13:26.880 the pandemic is over.

00:13:28.240 But I think he had tweeted something along the lines of, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah,

00:13:31.780 blah, after the pandemic.

00:13:32.860 And the media latched on to this.

00:13:34.820 There was a CBC story basically talking about all the experts that were concerned that Jason

00:13:40.320 Kenney thinks the pandemic is over.

00:13:42.520 And if you're in Alberta, it is.

00:13:44.020 You don't have to wear a mask.

00:13:45.140 There are very few public health restrictions.

00:13:46.960 Thousands and thousands of people gathered at the Calgary Stampede.

00:13:51.160 And there has not been a single uptake in cases and hospitalizations as a result that

00:13:56.620 can be linked back to it.

00:13:58.900 But Jason Kenney, who dares to say people are moving on with their lives, becomes pilloried

00:14:03.520 by the expert industrial complex.

00:14:06.320 And then you have this, the World Health Organization warning.

00:14:09.920 The World Health Organization warning that the pandemic is far from over.

00:14:14.640 So by the time this finally starts to wane, it'll be kicking up again just in time to get

00:14:21.300 your booster shots and it will become a permanent reality.

00:14:24.580 It will become the new normal.

00:14:27.240 And again, I go back to the concerns I raise about the infrastructure.

00:14:31.000 If the infrastructure is in place to basically require proof of vaccination to do everything,

00:14:37.540 to require tests for anything and everything, it's not going to go away.

00:14:43.560 Companies have invested a lot of money in these things.

00:14:46.500 Governments have invested a lot of money and political capital in these things.

00:14:50.340 And nowhere in the last year and a bit has there been a reckoning from government or even

00:14:58.160 any recognition whatsoever that they've made mistakes.

00:15:02.840 Jason Kenney said something very important back in December when I was sitting down with

00:15:07.340 him and he admitted that, you know what, he thinks Alberta got it wrong by talking about

00:15:13.160 which businesses are essential and which businesses were not essential.

00:15:16.220 No one at the federal level, no one in other provinces that I've heard has actually admitted

00:15:21.840 this, has admitted that they screwed things up, which means they've got to continue the

00:15:27.260 lie that all of their public health measures were perfect and science-based and hunky-dory

00:15:32.780 and it was working and all of the success we've had has been because of it.

00:15:36.100 They have to continue to do that to save face.

00:15:39.760 And we are all the casualties of it because they need to basically buy their way out of their

00:15:45.440 bluff by keeping on with this.

00:15:49.200 And this is not about saying the pandemic isn't real.

00:15:51.720 It's about saying that governments have taken a heavy-handed approach and far from being

00:15:55.480 this temporary stopgap measure to get through the worst, it's become the new way that we

00:15:59.880 are all supposed to live.

00:16:03.560 So a vaccine passport is not benign.

00:16:07.860 A vaccine passport is not just the cost of living in a post-pandemic world.

00:16:12.180 It is a license for the government to continue this heavy-handed approach to your liberty,

00:16:19.820 to your mobility within and outside of your city, your province, your country in perpetuity.

00:16:27.700 And that's why it has to be a hill to die on for people.

00:16:30.560 There's no other way to look at it.

00:16:32.020 Welcome back to the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:16:41.540 I want to talk for a few moments, because we did talk in the beginning of the show about

00:16:45.700 all these protests in Europe, about a different set of protests taking place in Cuba.

00:16:51.960 As people, I mean, if you take the mainstream media's perspective on this, people are just

00:16:56.920 upset that the vaccination schedule is not exactly how it's supposed to be.

00:17:01.720 But the reality is people are trying to buck off their oppressors.

00:17:06.860 People who have been kept under the thumb of Cuba's communist dictatorship for decades

00:17:11.600 are finding the autonomy and empowerment to say no, to try to basically revolt against it.

00:17:18.600 Now, we've seen in dictatorships, revolutions fizzle out in the past.

00:17:23.100 I don't know what's going to happen here.

00:17:24.960 This does seem to have legs, as they say.

00:17:27.640 But a lot of what happens will depend on how the international community responds.

00:17:34.100 The Cuban regime has been doing what any dictatorial regime does, trying to put its

00:17:39.660 survival first and foremost.

00:17:41.440 And they are terrified of these revolutions.

00:17:43.980 It's the same as in Iran. 0.53

00:17:45.020 They have to clamp down on their citizens' rights, because if their citizens can speak

00:17:48.980 and demonstrate freely, the regime will fall.

00:17:51.680 So this is why the Cuban government has been arresting political prisoners.

00:17:55.860 There was this chilling video where Cuban security officers came to a journalist's house

00:18:01.500 in the middle of a television interview.

00:18:21.680 And Canada's response to this has been completely unsurprising.

00:18:28.600 Just like Justin Trudeau will never find an unkind word to say about China, with Cuba,

00:18:33.840 he has a personal relationship that clouds any desire he might have whatsoever,

00:18:39.100 which I don't think he has, to condemn Cuba's human rights abuses.

00:18:43.540 Cuba has made a mass arrest and appears to have shut down the internet on the island

00:18:49.340 after people took to the streets in unprecedented numbers to denounce the government.

00:18:52.680 Will Canada condemn the communist regime's oppression of dissent,

00:18:55.480 or do you agree with President Diaz-Canel that the U.S. embargo and Miami-funded mercenaries

00:18:59.260 are to blame for the crisis?

00:19:01.520 We, as a country, Canada has always stood in friendship with the Cuban people.

00:19:07.100 We have always called for greater freedoms and more defensive human rights in Cuba.

00:19:14.560 We will continue to be there to support Cubans in their desire for greater peace,

00:19:21.020 greater stability, and greater voice in how things are going.

00:19:25.300 As we learned when Fidel Castro died, Trudeau sees him as this larger-than-life figure,

00:19:30.080 this magnanimous contributor to freedom and democracy and all of these other things.

00:19:34.660 Well, maybe he didn't say that, but certainly didn't care about all the things Castro did

00:19:38.280 to oppose freedom and democracy.

00:19:41.240 And then Trudeau picked up the buddy-buddy relationship with Castro's brother 0.70

00:19:45.240 and continues to not be willing to condemn Cuba's human rights abuses.

00:19:50.740 Well, he can, but it's very begrudging, as we saw in the last few days.

00:19:55.540 But here's the thing.

00:19:56.300 Cuba is benefiting from a lot of whitewashing in Canada.

00:19:59.800 And a lot of Canadians see Cuba as that place they can go for cheap vacations,

00:20:04.960 the place they can, you know, fly to, stay seven nights, eat and drink for,

00:20:09.140 and come back for like $600 Canadian or something like that.

00:20:12.780 The reality is that comes at a cost.

00:20:15.920 And the cost is that the Cuban government is not particularly interested in looking after its people.

00:20:21.840 There's a reason that if you go to Cuba, you have to exchange your currency for tourist pesos,

00:20:26.800 those which you can't take out of the country because Cuba is keeping control of its economy

00:20:31.320 and by extension control of its citizens.

00:20:34.480 And the fact that Canadians have either been oblivious to this or willfully ignorant to this 0.65

00:20:39.140 just because they can get a cheap vacation there is something that tends to creep into areas

00:20:44.440 where people do need to be taking a critical eye to Cuba.

00:20:47.660 Like, for example, the Canadian government.

00:20:50.160 It would be nice if when there is dictatorial oppression taking place,

00:20:53.500 our government would speak up, a government that never ceases to virtue signal about anything and everything

00:20:59.540 except for when there's actual human rights abuse taking place in China, in Cuba, or elsewhere in the world

00:21:06.580 if it's in one of those giant liberal blind spots.

00:21:10.300 The media is often no better at this.

00:21:12.800 The Canadian press decided to interview the people who are protesting against Cuban freedom protesters,

00:21:20.000 of which there are only a couple of dozen, and essentially start parroting communist Cuba talking points.

00:21:27.480 Ignoring the hundreds and thousands of protesters who are saying that what's happening in Cuba is wrong

00:21:32.920 and spotlighting a few people who are completely happy with the dictatorial communist status quo.

00:21:39.800 What we do about Cuba as a country is a complicated question.

00:21:43.860 Nation building, regime change, all of these things are understandably and justifiably controversial concepts.

00:21:50.000 But at the very least, you can call a spade a spade.

00:21:52.720 And that means calling an unfree country an unfree country

00:21:55.380 and not letting that get overshadowed by palm trees, cheap drinks, and white sandy beaches.

00:22:00.720 Or to Trudeau, a childhood family friendship with a murderous, brutal dictator.

00:22:07.380 We've got to wrap things up.

00:22:08.580 My thanks to all of you for tuning in.

00:22:10.580 I'm off next week, but we'll be back in a couple of weeks' time

00:22:13.120 with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show.

00:22:15.460 In the meantime, make sure you check out

00:22:17.260 Assaulted, Justin Trudeau's War on Gun Owners.

00:22:20.020 Latest episode came out talking about sports shooting.

00:22:23.320 It's a great series.

00:22:24.280 You don't want to miss it.

00:22:25.100 That's at assaulted.ca.

00:22:26.700 We'll talk to you soon.

00:22:27.720 Thank you.

00:22:28.160 God bless.

00:22:28.760 And good day, Canada.

00:22:29.860 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:22:32.060 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:22:37.260 The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:22:53.740 Bye.

00:22:54.100 Bye.

00:23:00.140 Stephens.

Juno News - July 24, 2021

Growing Resistance to Vaccine Discrimination

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