Juno News - April 07, 2022


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


Episode Stats

Length

29 minutes

Words per Minute

176.08531

Word Count

5,108

Sentence Count

289

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

4


Summary


Transcript

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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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.