Juno News - September 03, 2021Ontario sells out for vaccine passports
Episode Stats
Words per minute
174.25044
Harmful content
Misogyny
7
sentences flagged
Hate speech
11
sentences flagged
Summary
Coming up, vaccine passports, civil liberties, election gaffes, and the party leaders debate for the very first time! The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now on the True North Network's The Andrew Lawrence Show.
Transcript
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.
00:00:24.500
Hello and welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.
00:00:30.820
This is the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
00:00:37.120
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.
00:01:04.560
And I didn't like that I was making that prediction.
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?
00:01:24.180
Everyone gets their proof when they get the vaccination.
00:01:37.100
Now, if it's federal, getting across the border, that's up to the federal government.
00:01:43.820
I'll be talking to the prime minister tonight, but the answer is no.
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,
00:03:30.200
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
00:03:47.520
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,
00:04:06.900
by showing evidence to some restaurant hoster, hostess,
00:04:10.780
or the person working the front counter of your gym.
00:04:16.980
especially when they move to the second phase of this vaccine passport announcement in October,
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.
00:05:01.760
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.
00:05:18.560
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.
00:05:31.440
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
00:05:41.080
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.
00:05:59.040
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,
00:07:20.260
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.
00:07:53.280
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.
00:08:17.740
But they're the ones that now have to go and look and make sure,
00:08:25.640
Because now you're turning people that really ought not to be enforcers of your personal healthcare decisions
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
00:09:02.480
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?
00:09:21.120
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.
00:09:33.500
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
00:09:49.980
They're now saying vaccines do not work well enough
00:10:02.060
And they can't mandate vaccines in the way that they can send a doctor
00:10:06.580
But what they can do is make it so inconvenient
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
00:10:27.100
After the vaccine passport announcement in Ontario on Wednesday,
00:10:31.880
appointments in Ontario's vaccine booking portal doubled.
00:10:39.960
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.
00:10:52.160
is that there is this tendency to lump anyone who's not vaccinated
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
00:11:08.280
But there are a lot of people who are not just,
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,
00:11:24.700
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,
00:11:38.180
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.
00:12:00.560
And there are going to be no ways, no ways to avoid this
00:12:11.680
a complete absence of civil libertarian pushback on this.
00:12:17.340
from the Canadian Constitution Foundation in a moment.
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.
00:12:37.220
We have people who have been fined for violating lockdowns.
00:12:44.840
We are in the midst of the Super Bowl for civil liberties lawyers.
00:13:00.880
was the last time the Canadian Civil Liberties Association tweeted.
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.
00:13:30.100
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.
00:14:39.360
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
00:16:09.540
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
00:16:51.660
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.
00:26:24.520
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?
00:29:12.860
So if I don't get the vaccine, I'm not going to get the transplant.
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.
00:29:47.300
Well, so it's damned if you do and damned if you don't, in my case.
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
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.
00:31:10.980
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,
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.