Juno News - People in BC are still being fired over Covid vaccines (Ft. Harley Sims)

00:00:00.160 Thousands of government workers in British Columbia have been fired by the province for

00:00:04.620 not taking the COVID vaccine or not revealing their status. And the province continues to

00:00:09.580 fire people to this day now in April 2022. Why is this still going on? I'm Candice Malcolm

00:00:14.960 and this is the Candice Malcolm Show. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast.

00:00:29.720 So over the weekend, it was revealed that thousands of public health care workers in

00:00:33.060 British Columbia had been laid off after previously being put on unpaid leave for not

00:00:38.620 following the VAX mandate rules being enforced by the province. Well, last Friday, a group of

00:00:43.460 fired employees tried to issue an emergency injunction in order to keep their job, but a

00:00:48.580 judge threw their case away. And so more people continue to be fired over these really mundane

00:00:55.160 punitive vaccine policies in British Columbia. It seems like they're lagging behind the rest of

00:01:00.960 the province, the rest of the country in eliminating these kinds of restrictions. And joining me today

00:01:05.940 to talk about this is True North reporter and editor Harley Sims. Harley is based out of British

00:01:11.780 Columbia. He's a senior editor investigative reporter with True North. He holds a PhD in English from

00:01:16.760 the University of Toronto. He currently lives in the Fraser Canyon of British Columbia. And he's been

00:01:22.620 doing lots and lots of reporting, exclusive reporting for us on at True North. Harley, thank you so much for

00:01:27.960 joining us. That was a pleasure, Candice. So the news that I got out of BC was that you guys were

00:01:34.480 finally getting rid of your vaccine passport. Your vaccine card will no longer be in use, which is sort of

00:01:39.440 some good news. We could definitely talk a little bit about that. But I want to talk about this court

00:01:43.640 case and this injunction that was thrown away by a judge. So can you walk us through what exactly

00:01:48.220 happened?

00:01:50.220 So towards the end of the summer, the beginning of the fall, BC Public Service had signaled that it was

00:01:57.620 going to be requiring 30,000 employees to be vaccinated in order to keep their jobs. Now, this

00:02:04.660 was just kind of mentioned, it was said, this is coming. And Bonnie Henry has put out, I believe,

00:02:11.420 14 different health orders that have been affecting different sectors, contractors, healthcare workers,

00:02:22.080 public servants. But in this case, the policy was announced. And it was not actually defined

00:02:29.820 until a month later. Policy 25, it was called. Public servants were expected to get two shots 0.77

00:02:39.440 before November 22nd. But what is interesting is on November 19th, which was a Friday,

00:02:46.580 the Horgan government passed an order in council that made that law that if public servants did not

00:02:53.440 get those vaccinations, they could be fired with cause. And fired with cause is the worst way you can

00:02:59.420 be fired. Assaults, thefts, you are denied benefits, you are denied EI, you're just thrown out the

00:03:07.260 window type thing. And so, you know, anybody that's worked in politics knows that when you pass

00:03:13.280 legislation on a Friday, it's called taking out the trash, you do it because the media is asleep,

00:03:17.460 no one's paying attention. That's what they did. So the following Monday, non-compliant public

00:03:23.880 servants, we were put on unpaid leave, forced onto unpaid leave. There is there are several

00:03:30.080 organizations, but one the BCPS employees for freedom represent 500 civil servants, both unionized

00:03:39.060 and non-unionized, vaccinated and non-vaccinated. But they were involved in this constitutional challenge

00:03:48.220 to the vaccine mandate that's supposed to be coming in May. Now, in the meantime, four of the

00:03:54.800 petitioners, I think there are nine now, but there were four original petitioners, had filed for an

00:04:00.160 injunction to keep from being fired before that hearing. Now, they're already on unpaid leave.

00:04:06.800 They're not getting paid. So the question was, why not just drag it out a little longer?

00:04:12.380 But after deferring the decision for a week, Justice Ross at the BC Supreme Court in Victoria

00:04:20.220 decided on Friday that no, an injunction would not be issued, that these employees will continue to be

00:04:26.600 terminated. And these are all precedent setting cases, basically. Every other lawsuit is looking

00:04:34.060 at them and saying, okay, well, how does the decision bear on ours? And so the decision at this

00:04:39.020 point is, no, the courts will not stop anybody from being fired in British Columbia over these vaccine

00:04:46.200 mandates. So going ahead, anybody that's been put on unpaid leave can be fired. And it's just a

00:04:53.460 question of seeing where the constitutional challenge goes in May. It's interesting. I know we have a

00:04:59.600 little bit of an internal debate at True North, jokingly, about which province has the most severe,

00:05:05.380 strictest COVID restrictions. And you tend to think it's British Columbia. So first of all,

00:05:12.060 why do you think BC is worse than other provinces? And what is it about the culture and the government

00:05:18.180 in BC that makes them so ardent in issuing these kind of heavy handed edicts?

00:05:26.660 That's a good question. Because growing up in the north of BC, we kind of had our world and I didn't

00:05:33.340 really, I wasn't really aware of the reputation of BC as wacky. I think BC has reputation as being

00:05:39.340 wacky politically across the country. And so it wasn't until we moved down south that you started

00:05:44.360 to see, you know, why it is different scandals like that that happened. But in the case of COVID,

00:05:51.000 actually, it was the other way around. I mean, I was speaking with a lawyer about this this week.

00:05:56.600 I think a lot of the country was a little bit envious that we had Bonnie Henry in the beginning,

00:06:01.440 because she seemed pretty laid back. She didn't lock down British Columbia, she lifted the mask

00:06:06.920 mandates at one point. And she seemed pretty level headed. But as time progressed, BC came to adopt

00:06:15.180 the same kind of strict measures that the rest of the country did, but also just different language

00:06:19.860 that was used. I think it was around winter, like the winter COVID lockdowns for Omicron,

00:06:26.560 that all of these really draconian measures started coming out. And they were more precautionary.

00:06:32.540 Keep in mind, this was this, we see this coming, let's, let's, let's lock down just in case.

00:06:37.840 And one of the things that Bonnie Henry said was that non vaccinated people cannot gather. They cannot go

00:06:45.240 to the homes of vaccinated people, they cannot go out. And keep in mind, they were already denied entry 0.90

00:06:50.520 into theatres, restaurants, gyms, anything like that. Aside from that, the mandates continue in British

00:07:00.740 Columbia, even as the other provinces are rolling them back. And not just, you know, the prairie

00:07:06.200 provinces, you know, like Saskatchewan and, and Alberta, but Ontario, Quebec, even Nova Scotia, New

00:07:13.600 Brunswick, which a lot of people may not be paying much attention to. They were pretty, pretty strict to

00:07:18.480 they're pretty draconian. Remember, New Brunswick had denied, given grocery stores, the ability to deny

00:07:24.380 people entry based on their VAX status, and then rolled that back. But, you know, Nova Scotia, New

00:07:29.980 Brunswick, even removing their VAX mandates. Even then, British Columbia was still moving ahead with a

00:07:37.120 mandate for private sector, healthcare professionals, dentists, chiropractors, therapists,

00:07:45.400 acupuncturists. There's a ton of them. I wrote a story on it. And there's, I think it was 19 different

00:07:51.300 regulatory colleges. But she was still moving ahead with that, requiring them to be vaccinated 0.80

00:07:56.840 or not be able to practice. And so this idea that the BC has become an outlier, it's out of step with

00:08:03.860 the rest of the province or the rest of the country now. Even still, with public servants being fired,

00:08:09.900 health care workers not being able to get their jobs back, Alberta is inviting them back. I spoke

00:08:15.520 of a parametric from Alberta a couple weeks ago who's going back. Public servants are going back to

00:08:20.140 work in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. And across the country, we're turning around. BC is sticking to

00:08:28.720 this hard line. And I don't know why it is. I'm not a legal professional. But judges do have to be aware

00:08:36.320 of the precedents their decision set. And so I can't help but suspect this has gotten so big

00:08:41.440 to pull that brick out that causes the whole thing to fall down.

00:08:45.940 Well, it's so interesting, Harley, because I would say since the Omicron wave last December,

00:08:50.880 last November, is when we really started to realize, I mean, there were a lot of sort of people

00:08:55.520 in scientific communities whistleblowing, saying that this vaccine isn't as effective as it's being

00:09:01.180 sold as. And I think that the world sort of acted that out. And we live that over Christmas time,

00:09:06.720 when we realized that, hey, being vaccinated doesn't actually stop you from getting Omicron

00:09:11.560 people, people who are double, triple vax, including our own prime minister, are still getting this

00:09:15.880 virus. And so, you know, not only is the COVID vaccine not effective at stopping COVID, as we were

00:09:22.880 told, but also, you know, this idea that we're going to demonize and disenfranchise and bully and

00:09:31.480 exclude people who have made a medical choice that we don't agree with, that's not a very good way to

00:09:36.080 run a society. And I think that there has been a lot of retrospective thinking and soul searching.

00:09:42.840 And here on the Candace Malcolm Show, I've interviewed so many people who sort of pick up on this and

00:09:47.260 discuss this issue that demonizing the unvaccinated was a huge mistake. And the division that it caused

00:09:54.440 is something that we need to work on mending. And yet, you know, the story that you just told in

00:09:59.360 British Columbia, it's like they haven't gotten that, they haven't reached that point, they haven't

00:10:03.200 gotten that message, they don't look at the data, or they haven't seen the sort of broader picture of

00:10:09.260 the sort of second and third effect causes of COVID, things like, you know, more Americans under the

00:10:15.440 age of 65 died of alcohol than died of COVID. In Canada, it's very, very similar, the diseases of

00:10:22.600 despair, suicide, depression, drug overdoses, you know, younger people, people under 60, 65, they die

00:10:31.700 much more from these things than they do from COVID. I just, I can't really wrap my head around why

00:10:37.400 British Columbia is so out of step and why these discussions aren't being had. Do you hear people

00:10:42.540 having these discussions publicly, people in media, you know, academia, public intellectuals,

00:10:48.240 politicians, is this message out there in British Columbia? Or do people just listen to a different

00:10:54.400 set of stories, and they're kind of burying their head in the sand when it comes to the changes that

00:10:59.440 we've seen in our knowledge and in our approach to COVID?

00:11:02.200 I guess I could say there's a lot of confusion, but there's a lot of anger at this point.

00:11:09.640 I don't think a lot of people understand why the province is moving ahead with this, I'm sticking to

00:11:15.780 it, when the data is becoming clear, you could argue it was clear a long time ago. I mean, my children

00:11:23.540 are in school, I just got a form the other day that has like a, it's a liability release in case of

00:11:30.880 COVID. Okay, well, why couldn't we have had that before? You know, you just, you know, if the kid

00:11:35.640 gets COVID, you know, you don't sue the school type thing. But I wrote a story about a dentist about a

00:11:42.440 month ago, who was subject to the private sector vaccine mandate. And it's worth watching because he

00:11:48.740 just lays it out. He's furious. I think he says, you know, Bonnie Henry should his regulatory

00:11:54.600 college should tell Bonnie Henry to crawl back into the hole she came out of. Because it doesn't make 1.00

00:11:59.360 sense anymore. And he says at this point, ignorance and malice are indistinguishable, because the data

00:12:05.380 is so clear, why is she sticking with it? It can't be it doesn't matter if it's ignorance or malice, it's just

00:12:10.320 it's effectively the same thing. But as far as talking to other people, I've spoken to a lot of

00:12:14.780 people, I've talked to lawyers, union officials, academics, a lot of people who are affected by

00:12:22.960 this mandate, and on the wrong side of the mandate, they don't want to speak publicly about it. And

00:12:29.420 it's because exactly because of the stigma you mentioned, there's still a huge amount of stigma

00:12:34.600 about coming out and saying not only are you unvaccinated, but you're against the vaccine

00:12:40.920 mandates. Going back to work, what's that going to be like? Speaking to the Alberta paramedic, Kate

00:12:48.420 King, a couple of weeks ago, she said, for healthcare workers who are unvaccinated who've

00:12:52.780 gone back, it's like, no one wants to talk about it. She described it like being like an abusive

00:12:57.900 relationship, walking on eggshells, whereas before, there was an eruption of abuse and hatred and

00:13:05.500 condemnation of people that didn't want to disclose or take these vaccines. Now everyone's just kind of

00:13:10.940 looking the other way and there's no healing. So I think this again goes along with what we've been

00:13:15.880 talking about all along is these policies have created huge sociological problems. Now, you can't

00:13:25.100 bring in something like this, just call them orders and not expect them to create huge chasms in

00:13:30.200 society, between people, demonizing people. We talk a lot about the Charter of Rights,

00:13:39.440 the Constitution, provinces have their own human rights codes. And I know when it came to the Freedom

00:13:45.120 Convoy, a lot of people couldn't understand why the Constitution didn't kind of take shape, come down

00:13:50.320 and protect them from this. What's going on here? And I know that a lot of lawyers, the sign of the

00:13:57.020 Free North Declaration, Bruce Partey's talked about it, G.J. R. Brown talked about it with Andrew

00:14:01.480 Lawton. The law, the legal system is made up of people. It's made up of lawyers and judges and

00:14:07.980 they're all people. And if they are not willing to rule a certain way or stand up for certain things

00:14:17.080 or kind of lean certain ways, then none of these documents mean anything. And so I think that was

00:14:21.480 why it was important with Charlene LeBeau from the Justice Centre I spoke with on Monday.

00:14:26.020 She said, we just need one good decision. We just need one judge to look at our evidence,

00:14:31.020 our very compelling evidence and say, no, this is done. This is over. We have to stop doing this.

00:14:36.640 And she just said it would be a domino. It would start, other judges would start agreeing the

00:14:41.620 precedent would be set and they would start falling. Right now, we've only ever seen jurisdictions

00:14:46.740 removing vaccine mandates voluntarily. The city of Victoria did it, which is funny because that's

00:14:53.280 where the B.C. Supreme Court decision was. They removed their principal vaccine mandate.

00:14:57.540 Richmond has removed its mandate and brought back workers, given them back pay. Why are some of

00:15:02.620 these things happening and not others? It's just, it's day to day at this point. And it's really

00:15:06.440 frustrating, I think, for observers who want to make sense of it.

00:15:08.900 Well, it teaches us a lesson, Harley, that our democracy and our institutions are not as robust

00:15:15.680 as we would have expected. Like you think, okay, the government is blatantly abusing our charter

00:15:20.900 rights. That's why we have a charter. So let's uphold it and let's stop these abuses. And yet,

00:15:27.140 you're right, we haven't seen that through the courts. We haven't seen that through challenges.

00:15:32.700 And the example that we're talking about on the show today is for example of that, why we need to

00:15:37.140 create more robust institutions and we need to have more advocacy when it comes to

00:15:41.640 the legal profession as well. So let's talk about the decision or the announcement that British 0.84

00:15:47.640 Columbia had that they're finally getting rid of their vaccine mandate, vaccine passport system.

00:15:54.620 Do you think that this is sort of a good sign that the government is ready to move on from all of

00:15:59.920 this? And what does it mean sort of in the day-to-day lives of British Columbians who are not

00:16:05.340 vaccinated? Like, will they be able to have full access to society or are there still some things

00:16:09.460 that are being held on to? Well, careful with our language because the vaccine passport isn't being 0.82

00:16:17.420 strapped here. It's being lifted. And I think Bonnie Henry has been very clear that the government will

00:16:24.160 support places that want to keep using it. And that has encouraged individual businesses to use it.

00:16:30.440 Restaurants all had to use it. Theatres all had to use it. Gyms all had to use it. 0.87

00:16:34.920 But just because the government is stepping away and saying, okay, we're not going to

00:16:39.220 enforce this anymore, doesn't mean they're not going to encourage the continuation of these policies.

00:16:46.300 And like everywhere else, mask mandate was dropped a couple of weeks ago, March 11th, I believe.

00:16:53.380 And again, people screaming, how can you abandon us like this, Bonnie Henry? You know,

00:16:57.360 you're going to create another wave and all this. And it's like, there's nothing preventing people

00:17:02.420 from continuing to wear them if they don't want to, or sorry, if they wanted to. So I think that

00:17:08.600 places like government buildings, like for example, pools, skating rinks, things like that,

00:17:14.800 they will drop them as necessary. Universities, again, like other provinces, like U of T just dropped

00:17:21.280 a mandate after it was challenged. It'll be bit by bit, you'll see it crumble. But I don't know if

00:17:28.500 people are as relieved at this point. We've seen this before, we've seen the restrictions drop,

00:17:35.800 we've seen masks drop, we've seen capacity limits drop. What's happening now, though, is the dropping

00:17:43.740 of something that came in at the end, which was the vaccine passport. I think the only reassurances we

00:17:48.840 have at this point is it'll be very difficult to bring the vaccine passport back in once it's been

00:17:54.140 dropped, especially with the waning efficacy of these vaccines. You're not going to be able to

00:17:59.220 bring it back in unless you're going to be able to, you know, force people to get third and fourth

00:18:03.700 shots, which, you know, I wouldn't have passed them. But it's at the moment, the holdout province

00:18:10.500 is kind of on the same page as everybody else right now. And we're keeping our eye on them,

00:18:14.520 though. Nobody's, nobody's breathing easily at this point. One of the things that I find sort

00:18:20.860 of shocking, because, you know, we had the terror convoy, we carried, we covered it very, very closely

00:18:25.080 at True North, and you yourself were one of the top reporters covering it. And from my perspective,

00:18:33.080 and so many others, we saw it as a huge victory in terms of changing the public conversation,

00:18:38.220 raising issues around, you know, people wanting to get their life back, sort of the silent

00:18:42.660 majority of people coming out and saying, we don't like all of these restrictions. We don't

00:18:47.920 like this division in our society. And we started to see a whole bunch of the restrictions get

00:18:52.260 dropped. One of the things that still is there is the original mandate that they were protesting

00:18:58.940 against, which is a requirement that truckers continue to have to show a vaccine mandate or

00:19:04.100 passport in order to do cross-border trips. And again, the whole issue was that, you know, we'd had

00:19:11.440 this huge wave of Omicron that was indistinguishable, whether you were vaccinated or unvaccinated. We

00:19:16.240 learned that the vaccine mandate system doesn't work. The vaccine doesn't protect you. It doesn't

00:19:20.320 stop you from getting COVID. It doesn't stop the spread of COVID, which was why we were told we

00:19:24.740 needed them. And yet in January, so after the big wave, after things were starting to settle down again,

00:19:31.760 and then we saw an end in sight to COVID, Trudeau imposes this restrictive, punitive, mean-spirited

00:19:39.600 rule. And yet it's still in place. You know, I think that we kind of forget that, that, you know,

00:19:45.620 the truckers have been stomped down by Trudeau. He used excessive force for the Emergencies Act,

00:19:50.340 and he's still maintaining this policy. I'm wondering if you've heard from, you know, many of

00:19:56.520 your contacts and people in the trucking world about this, how is it impacting the sort of day-to-day

00:20:02.100 life of truckers and the ability of trucking transportation companies to get their product

00:20:08.400 to market? I know that we're now talking about, I mean, it's incredible how the economy is starting

00:20:14.240 to crumble in terms of massive inflation, you know, the cost of living just going up, the gas

00:20:19.960 prices going up. But then also, you know, when we hear talk of food shortages in certain parts

00:20:26.420 of North America, it's wild to hear about that, while at the same time we're stopping truckers from

00:20:30.740 being able to do their job. So I'm just wondering if you have any update for us or anything you've

00:20:35.500 heard on this topic lately. We just wrote a story earlier this week saying that livestock feed is

00:20:45.940 going to be affected by this in a terrible way, that trucking companies were, and trucking companies

00:20:55.460 have always had a hard time finding drivers. I mean, let's be clear with that, but it's making it worse.

00:20:59.580 It's like the same thing with vaccine mandates for healthcare. You've got a cruel industry that you are

00:21:06.560 now moving the ability of it to walk ever. This is a problem. As far as vaccine mandates go, I mean,

00:21:14.320 since the convoy was dispersed, you do see smaller efforts here and there. I know there was supposed to

00:21:22.200 be a big convoy in Victoria a couple of weeks ago that, you know, the city was preparing for. They're

00:21:26.980 even looking into ways of getting them, keeping them off the ferries from getting there. But the

00:21:34.180 thing is, number one, it's a federal mandate. And so a lot of the guys who are protesting, again,

00:21:41.440 they're not really political. So they may not necessarily know where this is coming from. They may

00:21:46.060 not understand how one mandate can be provincial and another federal, and even some can be

00:21:50.720 municipal, depending. So this remains a federal vaccine mandate that hasn't been lifted. And that's

00:21:57.780 why, you know, the convoy was in Ottawa as opposed to a legislature. But Trudeau is getting away with

00:22:03.660 this. He has not lifted anything. It is, you're right, it is spiteful. It's hateful. It's malicious.

00:22:09.380 You can just look at the curl of his lip when he talks about these individuals and their positions

00:22:15.800 towards his mandates and his rules. But I also know of many people who were forced out of work because

00:22:24.300 of vaccine mandates, tried to ride it out. But let's face it, this is British Columbia. It's extremely

00:22:32.460 expensive to live here. They couldn't last forever. They did go back and get the shots. They were

00:22:37.920 coerced into doing it. It's terrible. They're broken people in some ways. And I really hope

00:22:44.340 there is comeuppance for what's been done to them. But this is exactly what was intended in forcing

00:22:51.140 people out of work and crippling them financially, was to force them to get them. And so that's why I

00:22:59.680 know that most people who initially tried to oppose this have ended up getting the shots because you

00:23:07.280 can't last forever without, without pain. Well, I'm, I'm, I'm sorry to hear that. And, you know,

00:23:13.440 it's like, to what end, right? It's like, okay, you, you're spiteful. You hate these people. You

00:23:17.440 force them to get a vaccine that they don't want to get. To what end? You know, do you feel good

00:23:22.840 about yourself? I'm talking to Trudeau. Like, like, it's not like they're not going to get COVID.

00:23:26.920 They're still at risk of COVID. They're still at risk of spreading the, the, the virus if they get it.

00:23:32.920 It's just, it's really unbelievable. Well, there is, there is someone else who is taking a very

00:23:38.200 strong stand, uh, against this. I'm talking about James Topp, who is a retired or a veteran of the

00:23:44.200 Canadian Armed Forces. And he made the decision to march or to run or to walk. I believe he's

00:23:49.340 walking from Vancouver to Ottawa to take a stand against this divisiveness. You were the first

00:23:55.500 journalist to cover it. You were there at his launch, which was at the Terry Fox Memorial,

00:23:58.700 outside of BC Place in Vancouver there. Why don't you give us a little update about

00:24:03.140 Mr. Topp, where he is, how, how his progress is going. And again, what, what his purpose and what

00:24:08.760 his, what his goal is in, in this March. James is, is still in Alberta right now. I believe he's

00:24:15.460 going to make it into Saskatchewan by the 10th, because he put out a notice looking for places to

00:24:20.980 stay. Um, I mean, he's relying on volunteers, uh, um, you know, uh, to lay his roots for him. People

00:24:28.020 have been bringing him meals. They've been having tents. Um, he's been doing a lot of speaking and

00:24:32.620 I'm sure you've seen that he's, uh, he's spoken even as he's walking. I think he was on, uh, Viva

00:24:37.180 Frey's podcast the other day. I think he spoke for two hours. Um, but it's, it's, it's really cool

00:24:42.100 to watch him do that. Um, you know, trucks whipping by him on the highway. Uh, but, uh, James actually,

00:24:48.220 that was, this was a story that kind of fell on my lap because I did know James before this,

00:24:52.100 um, kind of, uh, overlapping circles of, uh, enforcement, military guys out here. And I was,

00:24:59.200 I was introduced to him a few weeks before he even chose to do this. Um, and he is a, I think,

00:25:04.740 28 year veteran, uh, regular forces, but also, um, reservist after that. Um, and he was a civilian

00:25:11.880 employee with the RCMP, both jobs hit by vaccine mandates. So he lost both jobs. Um, and so I did

00:25:20.380 speak to him to a couple of weeks before he even decided to do this. Um, I mean, he knew I was kind

00:25:25.480 of looking for guys to talk about this and he just wasn't into it. You know, he just kind of started

00:25:30.580 beating on the punching bag and said, you know, maybe, maybe one day, but I just, I don't want to

00:25:34.700 talk about it now. Um, and then I, I saw him a couple of weeks later and he was, he was a new man

00:25:39.940 entirely. He had gone to the Surrey protests in February 12th. Um, and this was, you know, during

00:25:46.000 the convoy, uh, he went in full uniform. He decided to make a stand. Um, and he just, uh,

00:25:52.960 looked for media. He wanted this to tell his story. Um, and he decided that he wasn't going to,

00:25:58.440 to, um, hide from fear, fear of being canceled, fear of losing his pension. He said, you know, if,

00:26:03.820 uh, if, uh, Russell, uh, is it Russell Collins, um, Russell Williams, sorry, the, uh, murder and

00:26:12.260 rapist, um, who's in jail and Ontario can keep his pension. Why should he be worried about losing his,

00:26:17.880 um, over a vaccine mandate? Uh, so, uh, he appeared in full uniform. Uh, he looked for media,

00:26:23.660 CBC, I believe, heard about him and called the national defense to tattle on him. I think that was

00:26:28.680 the most media he got that day, but I did hear about it. I spoke to him in his house and, uh, he

00:26:34.340 was just inspired by the convoy. Like so many people, um, thinking you're alone in all this,

00:26:39.280 feeling, um, demonized. Uh, he saw people coming together and it, it, it renewed his faith in people.

00:26:46.520 And, uh, what's funny about James is that, um, he's walking across Canada. Um, it was, uh, the end

00:26:53.200 of March. He made into Alberta, a thousand kilometers in, and everybody's thankful towards

00:26:58.560 him. And the thing is, it's James gratitude towards them that is, this, this causing his

00:27:04.580 March. He said, working people built this country. He's proud to have defended it. And, uh, now he

00:27:10.100 just wants to defend them. Um, you know, uh, of course his job was taken from him, but, uh, he's

00:27:15.940 put a manifesto on his website, representing all those who have been forced to undergo a medical

00:27:21.480 treatment, forced out of job because of the medical treatment. And, uh, you know, he, he'll march

00:27:26.440 it with anybody who wants to stand by his side and he's going to be in, uh, Ottawa on, uh,

00:27:31.100 June 22nd. And he wants to sit down with any politician that has the brass to meet with

00:27:36.340 them, you know, talk to a man that walked 4,200 kilometers just to have a talk.

00:27:42.140 What an inspiring story. And I don't, I don't have high hopes that our prime minister will

00:27:46.260 pay any attention to it, but hopefully some other people will, uh, hopefully more and more

00:27:50.420 Canadians will learn about his story. I mean, just the fact that he went to a rally. I remember

00:27:54.480 we covered that rally in Surrey watching videos of it, uh, that, that inspired him so much.

00:27:59.040 Uh, you can only imagine how much more inspiration is coming from people learning about his journey,

00:28:04.080 uh, supporting him along the way, as, as well as all the truckers. I mean, they inspired

00:28:07.920 all of us to, to, to keep going. And I, I think that the more, the more people, the more Canadians

00:28:14.400 who come together around this cause, uh, around eliminating these horrible draconian policies,

00:28:20.040 uh, you know, we, we can continue to have that critical math mass and, and, and force governments

00:28:26.520 to make changes to your point, not just lifting these awful vaccine mandates, but, but eliminating

00:28:32.280 them entirely and, and ensuring that this kind of a system can, can never come back. That's what I'm

00:28:37.240 hopeful for. And I know that, uh, James is doing his small part. Uh, you're doing your part as well.

00:28:41.800 And, and we really appreciate that. Harley, uh, thanks for all your reporting and thank you for

00:28:45.720 joining the show today. Anytime, Candice. Thank you very much. Right. That is Harley Sims. I'm

00:28:51.160 Candice Malcolm, and this is the Candice Malcolm show.

Juno News - April 07, 2022

People in BC are still being fired over Covid vaccines (Ft. Harley Sims)

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