Juno News - Ontario sells out for vaccine passports

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

00:00:06.660 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.640 Coming up, vaccine passports, civil liberties, election gaffes,

00:00:16.580 and the party leaders debate for the very first time.

00:00:20.960 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:24.500 Hello and welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:30.820 This is the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:00:33.740 It is Friday, September 3rd, 2021.

00:00:37.120 And I'm going to take a bit of a break from the federal election for the first part of this show

00:00:42.720 because I have to delve into Ontario's vaccine passport announcement, which came out on Wednesday.

00:00:50.660 Now, this is one of those things where I hate to say I told you so

00:00:54.640 because I actually don't like that I was right about it.

00:00:56.900 But months ago, I said vaccine passports are inevitable. 1.00

00:00:59.940 They're going to come even in places where we think they won't.

00:01:03.060 They're going to.

00:01:04.560 And I didn't like that I was making that prediction.

00:01:07.060 It wasn't an endorsement.

00:01:08.220 It was just a reality.

00:01:10.080 And yeah, I must admit, I got a little bit optimistic

00:01:12.360 when I heard Doug Ford saying things like this months ago.

00:01:16.160 Will your government provide an actual card or proof of vaccination?

00:01:20.580 And if not, why not?

00:01:21.940 Well, I've never believed in proof.

00:01:24.180 Everyone gets their proof when they get the vaccination.

00:01:26.580 You're right.

00:01:26.940 Anything can be fraudulent.

00:01:28.140 Right down from money to certifications.

00:01:31.680 I just know we aren't doing it.

00:01:33.060 Simple as that.

00:01:35.040 And we're just going to move forward.

00:01:37.100 Now, if it's federal, getting across the border, that's up to the federal government.

00:01:42.140 We'll see what they decide to do.

00:01:43.820 I'll be talking to the prime minister tonight, but the answer is no.

00:01:47.560 We aren't going to do it.

00:01:48.360 We aren't going to have a split society.

00:01:50.200 Yeah, that sounds good.

00:01:50.980 We don't want a segregated society.

00:01:52.900 Vaccine passports are wrong. 1.00

00:01:54.380 Not going to be introduced in Ontario.

00:01:56.600 Well, at least until he said this.

00:01:59.220 And that's why we're adopting an enhanced vaccine certificate.

00:02:03.580 We'll hear from Minister Elliott and Dr. Moore shortly.

00:02:06.820 But after in-depth discussions with our medical experts,

00:02:10.000 we've landed on a vaccine certificate policy that is based on evidence and best advice.

00:02:16.720 It's a policy with the following key principles.

00:02:21.000 Vaccinations will be mandatory for certain indoor settings where the risk of transmission is highest

00:02:26.620 because of masks aren't always worn, including restaurants, bars, and casinos, among others.

00:02:32.620 Enforcement will be led by by-law officers, will be reasonable,

00:02:37.700 and will rely on individuals and businesses to do the right thing.

00:02:43.200 The policy will not apply to outdoor spaces where we know the risk of spreading COVID is low,

00:02:49.580 except for nightclubs because of the higher risk of these settings.

00:02:53.540 We will accommodate legitimate medical exemptions

00:02:57.660 and will be closely aligned with other provinces that have introduced similar policies

00:03:03.040 while ensuring we design and implement a policy that makes sense for Ontario.

00:03:09.820 These measures will be in place as of September 22nd.

00:03:13.540 It's amazing how quickly civil liberties can erode

00:03:16.220 when you have a population that isn't prepared to stand up for them

00:03:19.480 and governments who don't seem to care about them.

00:03:22.340 Ontario has joined many jurisdictions around the world, and yes, across the country,

00:03:27.540 in now implementing a vaccine passport.

00:03:30.200 Starting in September on the 22nd, just in a couple of weeks,

00:03:34.380 you will need to show proof of vaccination if you want to go to a restaurant,

00:03:38.740 go to a movie, go to a gym, or access other aspects of civil society

00:03:44.080 because the government has said you must.

00:03:47.520 Now, not only does this mean that people who are not vaccinated

00:03:50.940 are unable to access these parts of civil society,

00:03:54.360 like something as simple as going to a restaurant,

00:03:56.340 but it also means that businesses are forced to ask this.

00:04:00.480 You're forced to not just be vaccinated if you want to do these things,

00:04:03.980 but disclose this by talking about it,

00:04:06.900 by showing evidence to some restaurant hoster, hostess,

00:04:10.780 or the person working the front counter of your gym.

00:04:13.740 To say nothing of what happens with the data,

00:04:16.980 especially when they move to the second phase of this vaccine passport announcement in October,

00:04:21.540 which is going to be a scannable QR code.

00:04:24.380 So all of a sudden, you and your name, your identity,

00:04:26.920 are linked to your vaccination status in some system, some central system.

00:04:32.140 And you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to not like that,

00:04:35.800 to find it's a little bit creepy when businesses and organizations

00:04:39.600 and the government are tracking your data in this way.

00:04:44.040 So this is something that I would like to see more opposition to,

00:04:47.820 but most people now are so desperate to get on with their lives

00:04:52.340 that they will take and are taking absolutely anything the government throws at them.

00:04:58.860 And this is one of the big problems with this.

00:05:01.760 And I'm going to be talking about this with Christine Van Gein in just a few moments time.

00:05:05.920 But I want to talk about just a couple of aspects of this that jumped out at me.

00:05:09.660 Number one is the fact that we are now living in a two-tiered society.

00:05:14.540 We were already moving down towards that road, but we're there.

00:05:17.880 It's over.

00:05:18.560 The stratified society about which I've been warning you for months is here.

00:05:22.320 The segregated society around which Doug Ford himself said,

00:05:26.500 well, maybe we don't want to go down that road.

00:05:28.600 It's here.

00:05:30.080 I'm fully vaccinated.

00:05:31.440 And just as I respect your choice to, for whatever reason, not get vaccinated,

00:05:35.000 this is my choice, and we should all be happy enough just respecting other people's decisions

00:05:39.940 and moving on.

00:05:41.080 Those who want this aspect of protection, this element of protection, get it.

00:05:44.780 Those who don't feel it's necessary, have that right.

00:05:48.440 But we are now in a society which does not respect individual choice.

00:05:53.180 A society that I would say does not respect the individual.

00:05:57.440 Just take a look at this story.

00:05:59.040 So hours after the vaccine passport announcement came from Ontario,

00:06:03.300 you had a church, a pastor from a United Church saying that he's sad that churches weren't included.

00:06:10.560 You had someone from a synagogue saying the government didn't go far enough.

00:06:13.940 They should have also mandated vaccination at churches.

00:06:17.800 What Jeff Doucette of the Anaskill and Tyrone United Church said is,

00:06:21.820 I'm disappointed, honestly, I don't understand how a place of worship is any less important,

00:06:27.100 he's referring to, than a restaurant, a gym, etc.

00:06:29.820 I need to have a double vaccination to go in to eat, but I don't at my church.

00:06:35.600 There was someone else from this Toronto Star story quoted from the Temple Sinai congregation

00:06:40.480 who is saying, yeah, they're going to introduce their own vaccine certificate

00:06:44.160 because they think the government should have gone so far as to mandate it.

00:06:47.880 Now, I don't think that businesses, organizations, places of worship should be mandating vaccination.

00:06:53.940 But I do respect that that's an individual choice that a business could make.

00:06:59.420 And it's shameful that these groups, these organizations are saying,

00:07:03.020 we think the government should regulate us into requiring vaccination from those wishing to worship here.

00:07:09.800 You know, I've been a Christian for many years,

00:07:11.340 and the message of the day has always been, how can we open our doors to more people,

00:07:16.140 not how can we close them off to people?

00:07:20.260 Churches have always been in the relationship building game, in my view,

00:07:23.320 at least the good ones, not in the relationship destroying game.

00:07:26.520 But this is what was happening months ago when Ontario was still not introducing a vaccine passport.

00:07:31.960 You had businesses saying, we demand the government regulate us.

00:07:35.660 And by extension, we demand the government regulate the citizens and regulate the population.

00:07:43.180 Because these people, I mean, and again, I think these are a minority.

00:07:46.300 I don't think most restaurants actually want to be enforcing vaccination status.

00:07:52.360 I could be wrong.

00:07:53.280 I know the restaurant industry right now is having enough trouble getting staff.

00:07:56.980 I know that they are dealing with significantly reduced capacity limits because of the government.

00:08:01.820 They have bigger fish to fry right now than having to start checking papers upon entry

00:08:08.060 to make sure that the person who wants to sit down and have a chicken Caesar salad on a Tuesday night,

00:08:13.460 the dish and the day have no relevance whatsoever.

00:08:15.900 But I just thought of saying it.

00:08:17.740 But they're the ones that now have to go and look and make sure,

00:08:20.380 do you have your vaccination?

00:08:22.440 Okay, yeah, you can come in.

00:08:24.640 Or no, you can't.

00:08:25.640 Because now you're turning people that really ought not to be enforcers of your personal healthcare decisions

00:08:32.960 into exactly that, enforcers.

00:08:35.960 That's what it is.

00:08:37.340 Remember early on in the pandemic when snitch culture was the big problem?

00:08:40.960 You had people calling bylaw officers on their neighbors

00:08:43.740 because they might have had one too many people in the backyard or something like that.

00:08:47.720 Now we are just moving this, moving this snitch culture into a different form of puritanism, 0.98

00:08:53.040 a different moral panic, which is the expectation that certain areas of society should be closed off

00:08:59.560 to those who are not vaccinated.

00:09:02.480 And in this, inherent in this, is a distrust in vaccines, oddly enough.

00:09:09.500 Because if people who are vaccinated are saying,

00:09:11.820 I'm not comfortable being around unvaccinated people, 1.00

00:09:14.040 then what the heck was the point of getting vaccinated in the first place?

00:09:19.020 And yeah, I mean, from everything we've seen,

00:09:21.120 it is possible if you're vaccinated to get COVID.

00:09:23.920 And what we know is that your risk of going into the hospital is virtually nil.

00:09:27.880 Your risk of dying is virtually nil.

00:09:30.000 You might test positive.

00:09:31.440 Maybe you'll even have some light symptoms.

00:09:33.500 But the whole point of the vaccination for those who sought it

00:09:36.220 was for protection against an unpredictable world.

00:09:41.380 So why now are these goalposts moving politicians saying

00:09:45.160 the opposite of what they've been saying to get people vaccinated

00:09:48.560 for the last year and a half?

00:09:49.980 They're now saying vaccines do not work well enough

00:09:52.620 unless anyone and everyone is vaccinated.

00:09:55.620 Unless there is a vaccination requirement

00:09:59.040 when you're out in the world.

00:10:02.060 And they can't mandate vaccines in the way that they can send a doctor

00:10:05.280 door-to-door to jab people.

00:10:06.580 But what they can do is make it so inconvenient

00:10:09.200 that people feel they have to get vaccinated

00:10:12.580 or that they are going to lose their job if they don't.

00:10:15.500 Make it so that it's virtually impossible to function in society

00:10:19.180 if you are not vaccinated.

00:10:21.260 But at that point, it's not a choice.

00:10:23.420 It is not a choice at all.

00:10:25.160 Just look at this number here.

00:10:27.100 After the vaccine passport announcement in Ontario on Wednesday,

00:10:31.880 appointments in Ontario's vaccine booking portal doubled.

00:10:36.160 They doubled.

00:10:36.920 Now, the health minister, Christine Elliott,

00:10:38.820 didn't give the exact number.

00:10:39.960 But what they were saying is that the number of appointments doubled.

00:10:42.880 Now, the government's probably touting its own accomplishment here.

00:10:45.780 So take it with a grain of salt.

00:10:47.400 Although it's not surprising if it did.

00:10:50.220 Because one of the big things we've seen here

00:10:52.160 is that there is this tendency to lump anyone who's not vaccinated

00:10:56.400 in this category of being an anti-vaxxer.

00:10:59.700 This is the way they are maligned by the media and by politicians.

00:11:03.460 Justin Trudeau was talking about them in very harsh terms

00:11:06.700 on the campaign trail the other day.

00:11:08.280 But there are a lot of people who are not just,

00:11:11.700 they're not anti-vax.

00:11:12.620 They're vaccine hesitant for whatever reason.

00:11:15.020 Or they just haven't gotten around to it yet.

00:11:17.520 Maybe they just don't see themselves as being at risk.

00:11:20.820 And a lot of those people are the ones who, yeah,

00:11:22.940 will be rushing out the door if they're told

00:11:24.700 they need to be vaccinated if they want to go to a restaurant.

00:11:28.040 We know universities and colleges are mandating these as well.

00:11:31.360 And interestingly enough, almost every public university in Ontario,

00:11:36.140 in fact, I think every one of them did,

00:11:38.180 introduced a vaccine mandate for students, staff, and faculty.

00:11:41.820 And then the government came and regulated it anyway.

00:11:44.860 So if there was just one holdout, maybe two holdouts,

00:11:48.380 the government had to make sure to bring those into compliance as well.

00:11:52.540 Because that's what all of this is about.

00:11:54.740 It is not about public health.

00:11:56.160 It is about compliance through and through.

00:12:00.560 And there are going to be no ways, no ways to avoid this

00:12:04.900 the more this power goes unchecked.

00:12:09.240 And I must say there is an absence,

00:12:11.680 a complete absence of civil libertarian pushback on this.

00:12:15.480 As I said, we'll talk to Christine Van Gein

00:12:17.340 from the Canadian Constitution Foundation in a moment.

00:12:20.180 The Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms

00:12:22.280 has been good on this as well.

00:12:23.760 But take a look.

00:12:24.380 This is the Canadian Civil Liberties Association Twitter page.

00:12:28.720 Now before, hang on, I'm not going to show it just yet.

00:12:31.580 Before you look at this, I want to just set the stage for you.

00:12:34.740 It has been 18 months of the pandemic.

00:12:37.220 We have people who have been fined for violating lockdowns.

00:12:40.620 We have churches that have been shut down.

00:12:42.740 We have pastors that have been arrested.

00:12:44.840 We are in the midst of the Super Bowl for civil liberties lawyers.

00:12:50.400 And now we have vaccine passports.

00:12:52.720 Okay, now let's look at the Twitter page.

00:12:54.960 Nothing since August 6th.

00:12:58.060 August 6th, almost one month ago,

00:13:00.880 was the last time the Canadian Civil Liberties Association tweeted.

00:13:06.400 Before that, it was August 3rd.

00:13:08.400 The last one was about Liberal Party misusing facial fingerprinting.

00:13:12.640 The tweet before was about access to abortion in New Brunswick.

00:13:16.340 Before then, there was a question about free speech in the Toronto Star.

00:13:21.240 Before then, there were issues about the federal government's online harms consultation.

00:13:25.440 Have you noticed there's nothing about COVID?

00:13:28.520 Nothing about COVID at all.

00:13:30.100 So the civil liberties lawyers, the official Civil Liberties Association of Canada,

00:13:33.940 many would argue, is completely unconcerned, it would seem, with vaccine passports.

00:13:39.800 Let's take a look at what its counterpart in the United States, the ACLU, has said about vaccine mandates.

00:13:47.600 Far from compromising them, vaccine mandates actually further civil liberties.

00:13:53.660 They protect the most vulnerable, people with disabilities and fragile immune systems,

00:13:58.040 children too young to be vaccinated, and communities of color hit hard by the disease.

00:14:03.360 The ACLU, which historically was on the front lines of protecting free speech, individual freedom,

00:14:09.320 constitutional rights, says mandatory vaccines are actually more pro-civil liberties than opposing them.

00:14:17.620 We are living in a Freaky Friday world right now, and the people that should be carrying, 1.00

00:14:22.620 the people that should be leading the fight, are not doing that at all.

00:14:26.400 Now, one person who's never shied away from this fight is Christine Van Gein,

00:14:30.360 the litigation director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, who joins me now.

00:14:34.980 Christine, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today.

00:14:37.520 Hey, Andrew. Thanks for having me on.

00:14:39.360 I want to break this down here, because I find that when a lot of people are talking about

00:14:44.380 vaccines and vaccine mandates, they tend to conflate what are two very distinct questions,

00:14:50.160 which is, you know, should people get vaccinated, and should the government be able to really

00:14:54.420 segregate society along the lines of vaccination, which is what vaccine passports certainly do, 0.95

00:15:00.360 and what the Ontario announcement does. Let's talk about this, because there are a lot of people

00:15:05.040 that I've talked to, and I know you've talked to as well, who are very much pro-vaccine,

00:15:09.140 but are against the vaccine passport. And I was wondering if you could elaborate on that a bit.

00:15:14.000 Oh, I am one of those people. I am pro-vaccination.

00:15:17.460 I am vaccinated. I'm double vaccinated. My family's vaccinated.

00:15:21.680 I think anyone who's able to get vaccinated should choose to do so.

00:15:26.060 You know, I'm a civil liberties advocate, and I'm really passionate about the right of people to

00:15:31.740 make their own choices about their own lives. I think there's all kinds of things we would choose

00:15:36.540 people they would do differently, but we don't get to run their lives for them. So I think we need to

00:15:43.000 protect the right of people to make choices about their own medical treatment. And yes,

00:15:47.540 vaccinations and medical treatment, that decision needs to be based on consent. And as we take

00:15:55.220 options away from people, for example, by limiting their ability to access public spaces,

00:16:01.520 then it ceases to become a choice and becomes more and more coercive. And I think that's the

00:16:08.220 problem with vaccine passports.

00:16:09.540 There are a few different issues here. One is just the fundamental question of should

00:16:15.120 your vaccination status have a bearing on what you can do in civil society? There's also the

00:16:21.040 disclosure aspect of this. Should you have to disclose your decisions to the host who works

00:16:25.860 at the local restaurant or to the ticket taker at a concert venue? There are also other issues that

00:16:30.700 are coming up as well. Like one that I've thought of is equity. Not everyone has a smartphone. Not

00:16:35.420 everyone is going to be comfortable putting it on that device. And then there's the privacy aspect.

00:16:40.580 What happens when someone scans your QR code? When you take all of these different dimensions here,

00:16:45.680 what do you think is the strongest argument against them if you were to walk into a court

00:16:50.020 challenging this?

00:16:51.660 That's a great question because we are considering doing that very thing of challenging it. So there

00:16:56.860 are three rights that I think are mostly engaged. The first is Section 7, life, liberty,

00:17:01.580 and security of person. Most compelling is security of person of those rights because it needs to be

00:17:08.260 an informed consent that you decide what you put in your body. I think Section 8, privacy rights,

00:17:16.040 could be engaged. Now, I don't have a whole lot of concerns about people carrying around a physical

00:17:21.080 piece of paper showing it with a piece of ID to a waitress. I think that minimally engages your

00:17:27.880 privacy rights. But the more and more digital this becomes, I've seen some pretty shocking stuff

00:17:34.640 that's happening in Australia about what they're doing. They're using smartphones to track movement

00:17:40.540 and things. We're not doing that in Ontario yet, but there have been a lot of things our

00:17:45.380 politicians have said we're not going to do. So I am concerned. I'm watching on privacy rights.

00:17:50.800 The strongest to me is Section 15 equality rights, specifically in Manitoba and British Columbia,

00:17:58.300 where the vaccine passports do not have any exemptions for people who can't get vaccinated

00:18:04.260 for medical reasons. Premier Ford has said if you can't get vaccinated for a medical reason,

00:18:09.660 you can be exempt from the vaccine passport program. We don't have the details of what that's

00:18:14.540 going to look like yet. But on its face, that's less discriminatory than the Manitoba and British

00:18:21.940 Columbia policies that do not include any exemptions, including for people who have had a first dose of

00:18:30.140 the vaccine and had a serious adverse reaction. Those people, you're kind of out of luck, can't go

00:18:35.680 to all kinds of public spaces if you had that unfortunate adverse reaction happen to you.

00:18:40.680 So on its face, that is, I think, the strongest possible challenge that could be mounted against

00:18:48.300 this policy. I know these are constitutional challenges you've laid out. Looking below that,

00:18:53.660 I've got a fair share of issues with a lot of the human rights tribunals, but on human rights

00:18:58.440 ground, is there a viable challenge here as well, whether you're talking about in Ontario, which has

00:19:03.000 very broad protections on creed and also on medical status? Yeah, I mean, I'm not super convinced

00:19:10.160 that the creed aspect is a strong argument against getting vaccinated on religious, or I guess creed

00:19:20.140 grounds, which is not super elaborated ground. Belief is protected in their charter as well. It's not,

00:19:28.100 it has not been well considered by the court. So I also think that the religious reasons not to get

00:19:34.800 vaccinated are very few. You know, you have, you have to prove a lot to show that you have a real 0.82

00:19:41.360 genuine religious reason why you can't get vaccinated. You need to show sincere belief.

00:19:47.940 You need to show, you know, that you're living your life in this particular way. And I think that's

00:19:53.680 hard to, hard to show. And remember your rights, your religious rights, any rights, almost a number of

00:20:00.880 your rights under the charter can be limited under section one. So your religious freedom can be

00:20:06.220 limited. Um, I think that that is, is maybe just a harder case to make out constitutionally than the

00:20:13.620 equality rights for people who are pro vaccine and they have experienced some sort of disability.

00:20:19.460 So imagine a person who developed there, there can be rare, but they happen neurological reactions to

00:20:28.400 the vaccine and they go for a physical therapy in a gym. Uh, they can't get the second dose of their

00:20:35.880 vaccine, but they can't enter the gym where they get their physical therapy. Um, that is so

00:20:42.500 discriminatory in my mind. I think that that is a really clear case. I'm actually speaking to someone

00:20:47.940 later today who is in a situation like that. I think that's a very good example. And I know in

00:20:54.160 the lockdowns, there was a challenge along very similar grounds, people whose physical wellness

00:20:59.160 depends on, on being able to work out in a gym. You mentioned section one of the charter. We've seen

00:21:04.760 that used in a number of COVID related court challenges. Most recently, I think hotel quarantine,

00:21:10.180 or they might've been a few beyond that as well. And it seems like courts have taken a very liberal

00:21:15.840 application in saying that, you know, with a pandemic, all bets are off. Is that likely to

00:21:21.500 happen with a vaccine passport challenge as well? Yeah, as well, we were involved in the quarantine

00:21:27.180 case. We obviously were not happy with the outcome in that quarantine hotel case where, um, the court

00:21:33.980 didn't even take it to section one. It didn't even get to section one analysis, but under section one,

00:21:40.400 the way the analysis works is you need to just first you show that a right is engaged. Let's use

00:21:46.500 the example of your quality rights. For example, these people who can't be vaccinated for medical

00:21:51.320 reason, um, their rights are engaged, but then you get to the section one analysis. If the right is

00:21:57.440 being limited, how is that limit justified? The government needs to show three things to show

00:22:04.240 that it's justified. It needs to be minimally impairing. So it can't, um, limit the right more than it

00:22:09.380 needs to, to achieve the goal. It needs to be rationally connected to the objective. So it has

00:22:15.420 to actually, the policy you're imposing actually has to actually help achieve that goal and it needs

00:22:21.480 to be proportionate. So it can't do more harm than good. And the government needs to pass on all three

00:22:25.680 of those parts of the test. And I think when you look at the failure to create medical exemptions in

00:22:32.720 particular for people who can't get vaccinated, we know it's not minimally impairing because Ontario

00:22:38.700 is creating medical exemptions. If Ontario thinks it's necessary and possible to achieve that goal,

00:22:46.100 um, with the goal of reducing, you know, the spread of COVID in these indoor settings

00:22:51.620 while still having medical exemptions, if Ontario can do it, why can't Manitoba and British Columbia?

00:22:57.340 I think that that, that absolutely fails in the charter one scrutiny. And that's why that's one of

00:23:01.920 the cases we're looking at doing. And I know you've been focused, I think rightfully so on the legal

00:23:07.100 aspect of this. And I know there is also a political dimension of this that we haven't

00:23:11.820 yet seen, but I still think when you look at vaccine uptake, it's very high. So the idea that

00:23:17.560 such an extreme measure is needed when people are doing their part to use the government's language

00:23:23.440 on this, it just doesn't seem to be a justified step. Yeah. We have a huge, huge voluntary uptake of

00:23:31.300 vaccination in this country and in this province as well in Ontario. That's great. That's wonderful.

00:23:36.300 I think people should go and get vaccinated. I think the government should make vaccination

00:23:41.100 easy, convenient. They should educate people about the value, the reason vaccination is a good idea.

00:23:46.980 Um, and, and the fact that so many people have chosen to do that, I think actually undermines the

00:23:52.380 case for vaccine passports. If so much of the population is vaccinated, what is the rationale for

00:23:59.080 restricting access to civil society for, for a very small number of people who have made a different

00:24:06.700 choice than we made? It's not going to amount to, you know, overwhelming the hospitals unless the

00:24:13.200 government can prove to us and the onus is on them that it's going to overwhelm the hospitals to have 0.92

00:24:19.040 this small number of unvaccinated people going into, you know, an art gallery. Um, then they don't pass 1.00

00:24:27.480 the test on section one of the charter. They need to show that there's an actual connection here

00:24:33.680 between the policy and the outcome they're trying to achieve. And not that I want to push the

00:24:38.840 government to go further with this, but I do find it interesting that employees of establishments where

00:24:44.760 patrons have to be fully vaccinated to go in are not required to be fully vaccinated. So that raises

00:24:50.020 the question of, wait, if the whole point is the only way to beat the pandemic is to ensure that

00:24:54.680 any restaurant is, uh, only open to vaccinated people, well, why are employees in a different

00:24:59.160 category? Hey, I mean, this is not the first time the government has done something that has a

00:25:03.980 rationality problem, right? Um, the fact that it applies to guests and not staff undermines the

00:25:10.060 rationale. Um, as many people have pointed out, uh, servers are not obligated to get vaccinated at

00:25:16.360 restaurants, but guests are, uh, even though we know that the outbreaks, at least, um, at least

00:25:22.580 anecdotally, they seem to be occurring more frequently among staff than, than between guests

00:25:27.620 at different tables. So I think that it undermines the government's own rationale. And look, I

00:25:32.000 understand why the government is not, um, mandating servers at restaurants to get vaccinated. I think

00:25:38.860 you create some practical problems both with the law, but more with the businesses themselves. These

00:25:44.640 are businesses that have been shut down for a long time and they're having a lot of trouble

00:25:49.400 retaining staff to begin with. Oh yeah. Yeah. If you tell a restaurant, you have to like, make sure

00:25:53.880 your staff are all vaccinated. I think the concern is that a lot of restaurants are going to have to

00:25:59.000 close again because of this. So I think that's, that's actually part of the government's decision

00:26:05.700 making process, but I do agree. It undermines the rationality of the, the, the, the vaccine passport

00:26:11.120 policy. We will certainly follow what you decide to do over there at CCF, Christine Van

00:26:16.920 Gein, litigation director for the Canadian constitution foundation. Thanks so much, Christine.

00:26:22.020 Thanks so much, Andrew.

00:26:24.520 That was Christine Van Gein, litigation director for the Canadian constitution foundation.

00:26:29.860 Before I move on here, I want to talk about this story, which is absolutely shameful and it's

00:26:34.240 distinct from vaccine passports in the sense that all of these other stories have been about

00:26:39.200 the regulations in Ontario, but I want to talk about it because it's kind coming from the same

00:26:44.900 place. And this is a very dark place. There is a woman who is in need of a transplant in need of

00:26:52.940 a lung transplant without which she will die. She's at a university of Alberta hospital. Her name

00:26:58.840 is Annette Lewis. She has idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, which is terminal and affects both of her

00:27:05.260 lungs. She's been waiting for a transplant for over a year, according to the justice center for 0.89

00:27:11.140 constitutional freedoms. And her lung capacity was at 40% just over two months ago. So make no mistake,

00:27:18.140 she is going to die if she does not get the transplant. Now the hospital is telling her that

00:27:23.540 she will not get this transplant at all unless she gets the COVID vaccine. Now someone in her medical

00:27:32.440 state, you may say, should get the COVID vaccine. But as it stands now, she's not. She doesn't want to. 0.99

00:27:38.980 And they are now threatening her with her life, essentially, by making this a requirement of

00:27:46.060 receiving a transplant. She recorded some audio of a discussion she was having with a member of the

00:27:52.640 lung transplant team. It's about 12 minutes long, so I'm not going to play the whole thing, but I am

00:27:56.960 going to play a couple of excerpts here. And I want you to actually take note of this.

00:28:00.960 The other thing, Amanda, and I think you anticipate that we're going to ask.

00:28:05.840 Yep. I know it's come before you even asked me.

00:28:08.960 Yeah. Well, we wanted to talk about the other important things too, right? Because making sure

00:28:14.120 you're safe and healthy as you can have you is important as well. So I spoke to my colleagues here

00:28:24.140 and we've had a program-wide discussion on it. And the policy is that we all pre-transplant patients

00:28:32.460 are to get their COVID shot. Our program has decided that we need to do everything we can to

00:28:38.980 optimize the benefit to our recipients and to optimize the use of our donors. So all of our

00:28:46.260 pre-transplant patients are going to be required to have the COVID vaccine.

00:28:51.580 So it's just what you're saying, like what you're saying to me, if I don't take the vaccine,

00:28:57.000 then I go off the donor list. Is that what you mean?

00:29:00.260 Yeah.

00:29:01.300 Yeah?

00:29:02.460 Yeah.

00:29:02.860 Wow. That's pretty scary.

00:29:11.380 Yep.

00:29:12.860 So if I don't get the vaccine, I'm not going to get the transplant.

00:29:18.640 Yes.

00:29:19.460 And, well, we all know what the end result of that is for me.

00:29:24.860 Honestly, and I don't say this lightly because I really do want to transplant you. I actually

00:29:31.580 quite look forward to your three months closed transplant. I'm kind of excited to see how

00:29:37.740 much you're going to, how much you're going to thrive afterwards.

00:29:45.360 Yeah.

00:29:46.400 Yeah. 0.97

00:29:47.300 Well, so it's damned if you do and damned if you don't, in my case. 0.93

00:29:51.620 Yeah. 0.53

00:29:52.100 So I'm going to leave that with you and what we'll do is we'll check in with you later this week.

00:30:02.260 So a vaccine, which yes, is being given for someone's protection against a disease that

00:30:06.640 could hurt them, could hospitalize them, could kill them, is required, even though not giving

00:30:13.040 the transplant is definitely going to kill this woman. Talk about not seeing the forest through 1.00

00:30:21.140 the trees. I mean, good on this woman for having the courage to stand firm for whatever reason. I

00:30:25.920 don't know her. I don't know why she doesn't want to get vaccinated, but she's not afraid to have her 0.96

00:30:30.220 name heard. She's not afraid to share that audio. And the court is going to have to weigh in on this,

00:30:35.880 I'm assuming, because the JCCF is taking the Alberta hospital to court over this. But absolutely

00:30:43.000 a shameful display. We are going to allow you to die if you do not take this vaccine. This is where 1.00

00:30:49.540 people are prepared to take this. This is where people are prepared to enforce this. As I said,

00:30:55.100 this is now about enforcement more than it is about health. We've got to take a break. When we come

00:31:00.620 back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North. Stay tuned.

00:31:03.620 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:31:10.980 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show. Well, I've had my fair share of differences with the

00:31:16.580 Chinese Communist Party before, the Chinese regime and all of the different tentacles of it.

00:31:21.580 But this one is a bridge too far, I must admit. China bans men it sees as not masculine enough

00:31:28.700 from television. The Chinese government has told effeminate men that they can't be on TV

00:31:33.760 and broadcasters must promote a revolutionary culture. Now we know that President Xi has called

00:31:40.960 for a national rejuvenation. The CCP is enacting very tight controls on culture and that manifests

00:31:48.440 itself in how they regulate the state broadcast media in China. But what the directive from the

00:31:54.800 national radio and TV administration said is that broadcasters must, quote,

00:31:59.400 resolutely put an end to sissy men and other abnormal aesthetics. They used a slang term for

00:32:06.340 effeminate men called niang pao, which means girly guns. Now, I don't know how they define masculine,

00:32:12.180 but I fear that I would not be macho enough for Chinese television. And part of this is because

00:32:17.640 yesterday, ABBA released its first two songs in 40 years and I was listening to them on repeat. So

00:32:23.380 something tells me I might be just a little bit too effeminate for the Chinese Communist Party. So

00:32:28.380 China's coming for the Andrew Lawton show, potentially. That's the only thing I can take 1.00

00:32:32.520 away from this. But I kid and move on. Enough things to be worried about in the world. Don't need

00:32:37.400 to be worried about the Chinese sissy men purge that is evidently coming down the pipeline, 0.94

00:32:43.020 thanks to Chairman Xi. I'm going to talk about some federal politics here because we had the first

00:32:48.980 televised debate of the election last night, a French debate hosted by TVA. But I also want to

00:32:55.840 talk about a couple of gaffes on the campaign trail first. I know Justin Trudeau has had a few of them.

00:33:01.880 There was the Miriam Monsef moment. But I think anime Paul, the leader of the embattled Green Party,

00:33:08.760 or should I say the embattled leader of the embattled Green Party, accidentally endorsing

00:33:13.420 the Liberal climate plan is the winning gaffe so far. Here's what she said.

00:33:19.060 I'll tell the people of Canada that if you want a real plan, one that is going to grow our economy,

00:33:24.680 that is going to put us at the front of the competitive green economy of the future,

00:33:29.440 help us to join the green rush, then the only option in this election for you is the Liberals.

00:33:34.620 And you can count on us to work cooperatively and collaboratively with every party on that.

00:33:39.820 It's always good when you hear the Green leader saying the only option in this election for you

00:33:44.100 is the Liberals. Now, I think this went a little bit widespread on Twitter and she had to do a

00:33:50.500 cleanup video, which she tried to say, no, no, no, it's actually the Green Party you want to vote

00:33:55.900 for, not the Liberals. I promise. She had a little bit of a self-deprecating tone about it,

00:34:00.140 which was kind of nice to see. Here was her follow-up to it.

00:34:04.120 Hi, everyone. Well, it was bound to happen. You know, you do one press conference too many

00:34:09.720 without having had your lunch and there you go, saying things that definitely,

00:34:14.820 definitely are good for a meme. So what I meant to say is that if you want a real action on the

00:34:22.260 climate, if you want the real possibility of the strong green economy of the future,

00:34:27.340 if you want Canada to join the green rush that's going on globally, then there's one option and

00:34:33.720 one option only, and that is the Greens. Yeah, there we go. I was worried at the end she would

00:34:40.520 plug the Liberals again, but no. Freudian slip, perhaps, perhaps not. She seems to be a genuinely

00:34:45.600 decent person whose party is absolutely screwing her over. Her leadership is going to be very short 1.00

00:34:51.280 lived because she's not even going to win her own seat. Her entire party apparatus is against her. 1.00

00:34:55.620 If I were her, I would have just said, you know what, screw you guys months ago,

00:35:00.320 but she is plugging away. And this was one that certainly drew a bit of attention. In fact,

00:35:06.300 actually, maybe it was intentional because I think this is like the first time the media has actually

00:35:10.740 covered Annamie Paul, who wasn't invited even to the TVA debate. And also, I got to talk about this.

00:35:17.440 Jagmeet Singh, the NDP leader, was taking a page out of Justin Trudeau's book and handing out

00:35:22.580 poutine. Now, poutine is a Canadian delicacy. He did a bit of a Singh-esque twist on it by serving

00:35:28.700 Punjabi poutine, but in true NDP fashion, nothing quite works. The poutine truck broke down on the

00:35:36.820 way to the announcement and lost a wheel. Now, these are the people that think they can manage

00:35:41.840 universal pharmacare, but they can't drive a poutine truck from one point to another without losing a

00:35:47.980 wheel. Eventually, the poutine truck showed up and Jagmeet Singh was there to plug away his Punjabi 0.75

00:35:53.900 poutine. I don't know what was on it, but I'm sure it was absolutely delicious. Then he later went to

00:35:58.820 the debate stage in Montreal for TVA. I won't play clips from it just because I know there's a bit of

00:36:04.340 a language barrier there for a lot of people, but it was an interesting debate nonetheless. One of the

00:36:09.360 standout lines was Justin Trudeau threatening an election, threatening another election in 18 months

00:36:15.840 if he doesn't get a majority government. Now, this kind of affirms what a lot of people were saying

00:36:21.320 about this election call in the first place, which was that it's only there to serve Justin

00:36:26.280 Trudeau's political interests. He only wants a majority and nothing else. But now he's already

00:36:32.400 saying we need unchecked power. The liberals need unchecked power or we're going to be voting in 18

00:36:37.200 months. And if people are already not too thrilled to be voting now, holding over the possibility of

00:36:42.220 another election in a year and a half, likely not going to win anyone over. And I have to wonder

00:36:48.320 if Justin Trudeau knew that wasn't quite working because he was also pulling out all the other stops

00:36:53.300 at the debate, doing what the liberals have been doing for the last couple of weeks since the campaign

00:36:57.400 started, throwing at the conservatives all of the tricks. Oh, they're climate deniers. Oh,

00:37:02.860 they're going to bring you back guns and all of that. The liberals went, I mean, Justin Trudeau went

00:37:08.580 very harshly on Aaron O'Toole over firearms. And Aaron O'Toole, I will say I was very impressed with

00:37:15.640 how he handled it. He knows the file. He just said, well, no, listen, you talk about assault

00:37:19.240 rifles. Assault rifles have been banned in Canada for more than 40 years. And I do hope, and again,

00:37:26.640 perhaps I'm optimistic. We did that documentary earlier this year, Assaulted, Justin Trudeau's war on

00:37:32.180 gun owners, in which we try to demystify firearms for people who don't know about them, who haven't been

00:37:37.980 exposed to them. And I hope that people will actually listen to this because when Justin Trudeau

00:37:42.860 says the conservatives want to bring assault rifles back and Aaron O'Toole quite calmly says, well, no,

00:37:48.000 we aren't changing anything because assault rifles are already illegal. I hope Canadians will take that

00:37:54.720 and understand it and perhaps look into it a bit more because the reason that firearms have been able

00:38:00.560 to become such a powerful topic for the liberals, especially in Quebec, which has the history of the

00:38:07.120 a cool polytechnique massacre of 89 is because the emotions allow them to suspend facts, suspend

00:38:15.580 honesty, and have people buy into this myth about guns that doesn't align with the reality of them,

00:38:23.340 of what they are, of how to get them, of how tightly controlled they are, and of what the difference

00:38:28.400 between the different types of firearms is. Now, next week, we have the official leaders debates,

00:38:34.000 commission debates in Gatineau, the French and English debates. Those are on the 8th and 9th,

00:38:38.980 and True North has some stuff planned that you won't want to miss for the night of the English

00:38:43.100 language debate. And we'll have more coverage, of course, next week on what's happening on the

00:38:47.920 campaign trail. But I felt the vaccine passport announcement was a priority. And just if I can

00:38:52.460 go full circle back to that, yes, the civil liberties lawyers have been absent on this,

00:38:57.380 except for Christine Van Gein and a few others. But also a lot of political leadership has been,

00:39:02.360 in part because they support it, but in part because the leaders who might be against it,

00:39:07.640 like Aaron O'Toole perhaps, know that a lot of Canadians support it. Now, Aaron O'Toole has said,

00:39:13.220 as I pointed out in the previous show, that he is against vaccine mandates and vaccine passports

00:39:18.740 in some ways, but he's also saying it's a provincial responsibility. So that mentality,

00:39:24.100 while technically True gives license to the Doug Fords and the Francois Legaults and the

00:39:29.840 provincial premiers that want to put these forward. And so far, it's only really Alberta

00:39:34.480 and Jason Kenney that is definitively saying no to a vaccine passport, which is, I think,

00:39:40.960 very refreshing in a culture which is increasingly moving towards this segregation along the lines

00:39:47.040 of vaccination. In any case, we'll be back next week. Hope you have a fantastic weekend.

00:39:51.220 This is The Andrew Lawton Show. Thank you, God bless, and good day.

00:39:54.760 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:39:56.840 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - September 03, 2021

Ontario sells out for vaccine passports

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript