Juno News - Pilots take legal action against federal vaccine mandate

00:00:00.000 I want to turn our attention to this proposed class action that's been filed against the

00:00:13.740 federal government, specifically Transport Canada, and it is a proposed class action

00:00:18.940 on the vaccine mandate for people in the aviation sector specifically, which was

00:00:24.960 technically done under different orders than the general federally regulated workplace vaccine

00:00:30.960 mandate. But this was an order that meant flight attendants, pilots, other people working in this

00:00:36.860 industry would be terminated, would be suspended, would in some cases be coerced into early

00:00:43.100 retirement. And we'll talk about that in just a couple of moments here. But there is a proposed

00:00:47.460 class action that's been filed on behalf of Free to Fly Canada. There are three representative

00:00:53.040 plaintiffs, Greg Hill, Brent Warren, and Tanya Lewis. But ultimately, anyone who is affected

00:00:58.880 by this, if the class action is approved and certified, will be a beneficiary of this. So

00:01:04.660 basically, unvaccinated employees in Canada's aviation sector. I want to welcome to the show

00:01:09.940 from Free to Fly Canada, Greg Hill, who is a pilot with a major Canadian airline and joins me now.

00:01:16.360 Greg, it's good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today.

00:01:19.480 Thanks so much to be, appreciate being here, Andrew. Thanks so much.

00:01:22.740 Now, I should say, I actually happened to meet you on a flight when you were working and you got

00:01:27.460 me safely to my destination, which I appreciated. So in your case, you've been able to go back to

00:01:32.920 work. But for some of your colleagues, that wasn't the case, as I understand it.

00:01:37.460 Yeah, it's been quite a journey. I think for all of us, the last two or three years have almost

00:01:41.860 disappeared into a somewhat dark gray continuum. So it's hard to remember exactly what happened when,

00:01:47.440 but certainly those of us that were out of work for an extended period of time, remember that well.

00:01:53.280 And as you point out, there are some of my colleagues who are not back to work when the

00:01:59.080 mandate was suspended last June. The majority did go back to work slowly over the next month or two,

00:02:04.920 generally speaking. But there are a group of employees at WestJet, for one thing, that refused

00:02:11.640 to sign a very egregious piece of memorandum of understanding, essentially agreeing, which required

00:02:21.360 them essentially to go against their conscience and say, well, WestJet did respect my charter rights, WestJet

00:02:28.020 did respect human rights, sign this document, and then you can have your job back. And to their

00:02:33.000 credit, as far as I know, to a single man and woman, they refused to do so because these are

00:02:38.660 people of principle that we're not going to compromise based on conscience. So I appreciate

00:02:43.480 you bringing that up because there does seem to be a pervasive attitude that we're past this,

00:02:48.120 that we've moved on. I was just speaking to a friend of mine that's in healthcare. We've got a

00:02:52.620 couple in my local community, and people think they've all gone back to work. Well, they haven't.

00:02:56.400 There's a cabal amongst the hospitals, certainly in the province of Ontario, that is not bringing

00:03:01.700 them back to the detriment of the population as a whole, who are short of doctors and nurses and

00:03:07.500 other staff in hospitals who they simply have not brought back. So it's a great thing to bring up

00:03:11.640 because it's not well understood. Let's talk about what the actual, we don't need to get into the

00:03:17.480 legal weeds, but what is the real objection here? I mean, as I understand it, the case really hinges on

00:03:23.380 that the government was forcing violation of the contracts that you and your colleagues had. And

00:03:29.380 I mean, obviously, we know that there are, in some cases, pretty stringent protections

00:03:33.800 through collective bargaining that have been fought. And then the government just comes in

00:03:37.680 with this mandate that trumps that. Right. Well, I mean, the primary strategy

00:03:42.680 and the angle here. And listen, we've sat back and watched the, I'll call it challenging judicial

00:03:50.340 landscape in this country for the past year or so. And I think that's, we're certainly hopeful to our

00:03:58.520 credit. And that isn't to disparage anyone who's made a viable effort to make headway legally,

00:04:04.600 but it's enabled us to get some understanding of where the courts are at right now. And it is a

00:04:10.540 challenging environment. And so out of that, this is what we put forward. And what you're alluding to

00:04:17.160 is what's called inducement. That we, as you said, we've fought hard as employees to have a standing

00:04:24.680 with our companies and an agreement. And listen, at the end of the day, we want the success of the

00:04:29.680 airline industry. We want people to be traveling, not staying in their 15-minute cities or otherwise.

00:04:33.540 We want them moving about the world freely as free citizens. So ultimately, that's what we want.

00:04:39.540 And doing our part to get people safely, as I did with you on that one day, and it was a pleasure

00:04:44.540 to chat with you briefly. We have these agreements. Well, this interim order came in and it induced a

00:04:54.640 breach of that contract. I mean, just as an example, and it's been a beef, at least of mine

00:05:00.280 personally, and I'm sure with a bunch of my other colleagues, is it was stated that we were on a leave

00:05:05.220 of absence? Well, I mean, there's no such thing in any contract I know of an involuntary leave of

00:05:12.240 absence. The aviation industry is prone to all sorts of ups and downs. It trends with the economy

00:05:19.100 or with things like asinine COVID policy, for instance, right? So you've got circumstances where

00:05:24.980 former military guys, let's say, will say, hey, there isn't a lot of work for me here right now,

00:05:30.180 or I may be furloughed. So I'm going to go back to the military, I'll take a leave of absence and

00:05:35.040 I'll go back for two or three years. But there's nothing contractually that says you will involuntarily

00:05:40.920 be put on a leave of absence. So that's just just one example. Well, we've had people suspended,

00:05:46.460 which is a better word for that. It's not actually leave of absence or terminated. So that's

00:05:52.180 that's a simplistic angle. And again, I fly airplanes. I'm not an expert in the law. But

00:05:59.060 that's kind of a 35,000 foot view of what we're looking at here. Let's talk about a little bit

00:06:06.040 here, where the liability lies. I know the proposed suit is against Transport Canada, who issued the

00:06:11.300 mandate. But in your view, were the airlines themselves, you know, winning participants in

00:06:17.120 this? Or were they victims of this? Because I know when it came to the vaccine mandate for

00:06:20.420 passengers, for example, you know, it's Air Canada or WestJet flight attendants that are,

00:06:24.540 you know, demanding you hand over your proof of vaccination, but it's not their fault. They're

00:06:28.680 enforcing a rule that is coming from a government mandate. When this came up, did the airlines push

00:06:34.760 back against the government at all? Or was their view that, you know what, anything that lets us,

00:06:38.640 you know, keep moving on and get the bailout money is fine with us, we're just going to go along with it?

00:06:43.780 Yeah, I mean, you're touching on on a number of pieces that we've been fairly vocal about over the

00:06:48.300 past couple years, I guess, you know, as much as I'll say, they were they were pretty enthusiastic

00:06:54.340 in employing these there. Once we were past that October 29 deadline, when this interim order came

00:07:01.720 out, it was fairly common if you were speaking with a manager and we pushed back hard. I mean,

00:07:06.440 individually, a lot of my courageous colleagues were quite vocal. And of course, the management was

00:07:13.000 was prone to typically say, Hey, you know, what do you want us to do? Well, we've got to run an

00:07:17.140 airline, we're just, we're just, we're doing what we need to do. It's the government's, the

00:07:22.200 government's fault. And there's certainly obviously, this is our point that it was, it was, it was pushed

00:07:27.580 and forced down this road. But even before this, this came out, there was all sorts of things

00:07:32.820 happening within the industry that that seemed fairly enthusiastic. And at the end of the day, I mean,

00:07:37.740 they want to make money. So it's understandable, but we can't live in a society where we just take

00:07:43.520 these, these God given rights and toss them out the window. And then the point being on this end of

00:07:49.220 it, you know, if you want to use an analogy, even with your home life, if somebody comes into your

00:07:54.060 home, a group of people and ransacks it runs down the road with your possessions, you're not typically

00:07:58.540 prone to just sit in your house and shrug and say, Well, at least I still have the four walls to sit

00:08:03.760 within. And that's essentially what's happened. The majority of people have gone back to work,

00:08:08.180 but there's been, there's been no willingness to, to replace the lost income. And it's not just lost

00:08:14.140 income. People, there's intangibles here as well. People lost their marriages, they lost their homes,

00:08:20.320 they lost relationships and all sorts of things directly related to the loss of loss of employment.

00:08:27.040 I'm glad you mentioned that because I think oftentimes people who are disconnected from the

00:08:32.540 situation would say, Okay, yeah, they were suspended for a bit, they got their jobs back,

00:08:37.000 everyone move on. But but it is very difficult to move on when you're one of the people that has just

00:08:41.760 gone through what you've described there, which I don't think is difficult to imagine. And you also

00:08:46.300 look at the the way that it would breed some fairly nasty thinking among colleagues when, you know,

00:08:52.640 all of a sudden you've been outed in, you know, for this one thing, and then you go back and your

00:08:57.020 colleagues probably know why you were gone. And there might be some some discontent there. And,

00:09:01.980 and also just people that were forced out of the industry, which I heard a lot of, you know,

00:09:05.960 people that own businesses that were shut down, that just decided, Okay, maybe there's no point,

00:09:11.100 and I'm going to go and get a job that's not fulfilling, but you know, I could work it. I mean,

00:09:14.620 I know that when I looked at some of the comments that have been made by Free to Fly, people that were

00:09:18.880 wouldn't have retired, they weren't ready to retire, they didn't want to retire. But it was just all

00:09:23.600 right, well, maybe I have a few years left, this is something I'm going to do now. That's not a win.

00:09:27.640 That's not a win. They're still victims of this. No, and I appreciate you bringing that up. It's

00:09:32.040 essentially retirement under duress. And I just put top of my mind, there's like two faces and in my,

00:09:37.160 my brain of guys that I have enormous respect for, that refused to concede. And that's the road they

00:09:42.200 went down. And they made it clear they weren't retiring because it was it was time to hang up the

00:09:46.120 headset, and move move into retirement, it was done because of, because of the the mandate. So, you know,

00:09:54.760 as relates to, to the work environment, I will say for the vast majority of my colleagues, and the

00:10:03.080 flight tech is a fascinating place, you're essentially locked in a closet with somebody

00:10:07.000 for hours and hours at a time, right. So the conversation can be simulating, and it's typically

00:10:12.760 not terribly heated. But I will say when it does kind of come up, and it inevitably does people talk

00:10:18.120 about what you were doing last summer, and it was like, well, working in a little manufacturing

00:10:22.600 plant or whatever, and you'll have a conversation, the majority are incredibly supportive, up to and

00:10:27.800 often including saying, I got so much respect for you. And I did not want to go down this road. And I

00:10:32.600 wish I would have held out myself. There's the odd person that typically just, it's awkward silence

00:10:38.520 for a few seconds, and you talk about something else, right? Because you, you're not going to get into

00:10:42.680 it, you've got another five hours before you get to Seattle or something, right. But for the most part,

00:10:47.800 certainly the the visceral feeling as we as we what, you know, ended up later last year was don't

00:10:55.880 come near me with a booster, amongst the majority of my colleagues.

00:11:00.280 Yeah, and I think that was the turning point for a lot of Canadians when there was that one press

00:11:05.160 conference, I can't remember when it was, it was around the time they had suspended the vaccine

00:11:10.440 mandate, the broad sort of array of them. And you know, the Health Minister Duclos had said something

00:11:16.200 along the lines of, you know, it's just as temporary suspension. And then there was another

00:11:19.720 press conference where they talked about reevaluating their definition of what it meant to be fully

00:11:24.600 vaccinated and re reconstituting that around being up to date. And there were a lot of people that got

00:11:30.680 their two doses, maybe even they got their third dose that were being told by the government that,

00:11:34.760 you know, there could come a time where you're unvaccinated, because we've just changed what it means.

00:11:39.320 And I think a lot of people that were kind of on the cusp, like you've just talked about,

00:11:43.320 really did draw a line in the sand there, or would have had the government really gone ahead

00:11:47.480 with that and said, No, no, no, now you need a booster every three months to be considered

00:11:51.560 fully vaccinated. Because at that point, you are no longer your own individual, insofar as you ever

00:11:58.200 were, you are no longer making your own choices, if your job is contingent on renewing your vaccination

00:12:03.320 status every three, four, six months. And, and I think there was a fear among a lot of people that

00:12:07.560 that that's where we were headed. Well, and I would I remember that distinctly,

00:12:12.200 because because I was actually working in a manufacturing plant at the time. And I took a

00:12:16.360 little break from gluing pieces together to watch that press conference. And I remember thinking,

00:12:22.840 wow, and I would almost suggest it was somewhat of a trial balloon by the government to see what kind of,

00:12:29.160 what kind of feedback they were going to get. And we are living in a little bit of a Truman show,

00:12:33.960 I would say here when it comes to the state as a whole. And, and even with with these mandates

00:12:40.120 themselves, if you look at us here in the aviation sector up in Canada versus in the states,

00:12:45.320 the the troubling reality, and I think this is something everybody needs to take as a takeaway,

00:12:51.240 is collective action matters when it comes to standing up when it matters of conscience. Because

00:12:58.680 at the end of the day, it was somewhat of a cost benefits analysis. And sadly, once we got

00:13:02.760 right down to the wire in that date, it was a fairly small crowd of people across all sorts

00:13:08.840 of industries that were willing to say, I'll give up my job, I'll give up my home, I'll give

00:13:13.000 up whatever it takes, because I'm afraid of the right things down the road, right? Jordan Peterson

00:13:19.560 talks about that, it's not necessarily courage, it's understanding the bigger picture. Whereas in

00:13:24.440 the states, there was a couple airlines where there was enough guys and gals that and I'm not 0.84

00:13:29.160 talking 40 50%. It's not a big number. I don't know what it is, let's say it's 10 or 15%. You said

00:13:34.520 don't come near me with that thing or I'm not flying your airplane. And the airline did a cost benefits

00:13:39.480 analysis and thought the airplanes aren't going to move and it's going to fall apart in a hurry.

00:13:43.880 And so as we go forward, this this COVID was it was a season, I'd say we've got very deep seasons of

00:13:50.040 challenge coming up, you speak to them all the time, Andrew, and unless people are willing to stand up,

00:13:56.280 and the biggest of all, in my view, be willing to give things up, give up comfort, give up convenience,

00:14:02.760 give up status quo, give up your reputation, because a lot of us conceded based on what people

00:14:08.280 are going to say about us. And that's a pretty low threshold. But unless we're willing to really do that,

00:14:14.280 we're in for a real, real deepening season of challenge ahead. And I think that's got to be our

00:14:19.880 takeaway as citizens of this once great nation.

00:14:23.080 I'm being told by my producer that the longer you talk, the more our viewership just keeps going

00:14:28.680 up. So what you're saying is resonating with people. And if you're watching live, do share it.

00:14:33.160 And I think what you mentioned there, Greg, is incredibly important in that a lot of the

00:14:36.920 problems that I saw from, well, with the COVID restrictions, of which there are many, is that

00:14:41.720 they were inherently meant to divide and isolate people so that they couldn't do exactly what you

00:14:46.920 just described. I mean, when it was literally illegal to go and have dinner with a neighbor or a

00:14:52.040 friend or a family member, you can't actually sit around a table and talk about why this isn't right

00:14:56.840 and talk about what you're going to do and plan and plot and scheme and all of these things.

00:15:01.160 And I mean that in more of a joking way than isolation, right?

00:15:04.360 Yeah, exactly. And I think the same thing here. I mean, you have pilots and flight attendants and

00:15:08.440 other people in the sector that have very strong unions that we were talking about earlier.

00:15:12.120 And all of a sudden that union is not really standing up in the way that it could.

00:15:16.760 Well, and it was really, they essentially left the room. Let's be honest. I mean, that's what

00:15:24.680 happened. We've got all sorts of things happening in aviation right now. We see WestJet going out on

00:15:30.600 strike. And in some of the unions across the country, like the very next morning, I'm talking

00:15:34.200 within eight hours, had a one or two page statement to all of their thousands of members about how we

00:15:39.160 need to stand in solidarity. And it's a little bit of a thorn in the side of guys and gals who were

00:15:45.800 about to be terminated and termination for a union. It's, it's like thou shalt never go there. I mean,

00:15:51.640 I can give stories of, of pilots that have done pretty rough things over the past 10 or 20 years

00:15:57.560 and the union fought hard to keep them employed. And you've got people for a matter of conscience

00:16:01.640 that's just said, I'm not going to go down this road, not because of myself, but honestly, because

00:16:05.880 I love my kids and my grandkids. And I don't want them to live in a world where the state can do this

00:16:09.720 to us as, as citizens. Uh, and, and the unions were silent. They said nothing. And I'm not talking

00:16:15.400 for a couple of days or weeks. I'm talking, we were going to our union saying, uh, you haven't

00:16:19.880 mentioned us for six months, nine months, we've been out of work and we're going to be terminated

00:16:23.960 in a month. Could you maybe just mention that we are here in the background? Um, it's a little

00:16:29.000 bit hard to, to, to swallow. And I will say, uh, I'm not saying this out of, out of resentment

00:16:35.560 or bitterness, because I think that's a very dark place that, that we can go as well. And you see

00:16:39.640 that in, in, in, uh, I would say the like-minded community a little bit, I think we've got to,

00:16:44.280 we've got to take a deep breath, keep our wits about us, be the adults in the room,

00:16:48.200 uh, see ourselves as leaders, uh, across the nation. What we desperately need right now are

00:16:53.560 men and women of principle who are willing to lead this country back to where it needs to get.

00:16:58.600 And the way to do that again, is to count the cost to say, I'm willing to give things up for the next

00:17:03.880 generation and the generation after that. Because if we don't again, uh, we're in for a dark season

00:17:10.360 here. Seeing the airplane behind you. I think I know the answer to this question, but I do have to

00:17:16.840 ask, why did you even want to go back? I mean, after what happened to you, which I imagine would

00:17:21.960 feel like a tremendous affront to you as an individual that, you know, your, your contributions,

00:17:26.680 your service, your identity didn't matter. Why did you want to go back into that world after?

00:17:31.000 Um, actually it's funny, that picture, I was sitting more like this the other day and I

00:17:35.960 thought that my head's in the clouds. I hadn't really thought of that. I typically sit here

00:17:38.920 when I do interviews, but my daughter painted that for me. It's, it's a favorite, but, um,

00:17:44.440 that's a good question, Andrew. It's not when I get asked normally. So I,

00:17:47.400 you know, I gotta, I gotta take a moment. I, I, I wrestled with it. Um,

00:17:53.240 I wrestled with it a fair bit. I, I guess on some level we fought hard and, and I do,

00:17:59.800 if I'm going to fight for something, I try to think about it fairly carefully.

00:18:03.160 And so if I'm fighting for my job back, it's, it's a, a little bit disingenuous when you get

00:18:07.160 the opportunity to say, no, I'd rather, uh, I'd rather do other things. Um, the vast majority of

00:18:12.840 us got into aviation because for me, when I was 13 years old, my father was a military man. I flew

00:18:17.560 around in a C-130, which I ended up flying myself in the military and I love it. We love the job. Um,

00:18:23.560 it's, it's different every day. It's challenging, you know, insert all of the cliches that you've

00:18:27.240 probably heard before. I don't want to go on and on about it, but it's a fantastic job.

00:18:31.400 Um, it affords all sorts of, uh, perks and otherwise. Um, but at the same time, uh,

00:18:36.920 we did fight to, to, to get our jobs back. Um, the, the job affords, uh, other opportunities.

00:18:44.760 And then part of that is what I'm doing here with you now is advocating for things that,

00:18:48.280 that I'm passionate about. Um, and so that's, that's the long and short of it is, uh, is we

00:18:54.440 fought, we fought long and hard to get here. Uh, I put in a full career in the military before I got to

00:18:59.800 this job and the other blunt, um, honest piece is aviation. Unless you've got some other skill,

00:19:08.280 I didn't work, you know, go to dental school on the side or anything else. It doesn't transpose

00:19:12.200 terribly well to other employment. So I found myself at three o'clock in the morning, uh, shoveling

00:19:17.080 parking lots and things during my, my year out of work. Um, so some of it's just the practicalities

00:19:22.520 of, uh, of getting back to a, to a good job that, uh, that we love. Uh, but it was difficult. Um,

00:19:29.800 but I would say that the moments that I have run across, uh, managers that I have run across other

00:19:34.280 union members, I I've been, I've been meticulous, I believe in being careful with what I say,

00:19:39.880 with being professional and trying to be kind in the way I say it. So I have no shame when I come

00:19:43.480 across these people, I wasn't rude or personally disparaging, but there's times when I, I sense a

00:19:48.600 difficulty, uh, on their part individually with, with our encounters, because I, some of the things

00:19:54.520 that have been written and said, I just scratched my head and I think, yeah, man, you're a smart guy.

00:19:59.400 Uh, but you've kind of hung up your conscience along with common sense in doing this, but people

00:20:05.160 will do strange things sometimes for, uh, for a sizable paycheck. Uh, and then that's part of the

00:20:10.920 problem is the government has got us by the paycheck or got many of us by the paycheck. And we've got to

00:20:15.480 learn, um, a not to get ourselves in so deep that we, we run out of choices, um, and, and to create

00:20:22.200 a life around us where we are able to make some independent choices going forward. And I know a

00:20:26.440 lot of people are doing that as well. Well, I appreciate your, your service and also appreciate

00:20:31.400 your taking a stand in, in this way and joining us today. I've got a fair bit of travel coming up this

00:20:35.960 summer for work, so I'm sure I'll, I'll see you in the skies again. I certainly hope to, but, uh,

00:20:39.800 uh, Greg Hill from Free to Fly Canada. Thank you so much, Greg. Thanks for the opportunity,

00:20:44.280 Andrew. Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True

00:20:49.000 North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - May 21, 2023

Pilots take legal action against federal vaccine mandate

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