Juno News - November 26, 2021
Politician says only "anti-vaxxers" oppose mandatory vaccination
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Summary
Coming up, the rise of fully-vaccinated anti-vaxxers, mixed messaging on childhood vaccination, and a look at the new government throne speech. Plus, an update on the Botswana vaccine pandemic.
Transcript
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This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
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Coming up, the rise of fully vaccinated anti-vaxxers, somehow.
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Mixed messaging on childhood vaccination and a look at the new government throne speech.
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It is great to have you aboard the program today on this momentous occasion.
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No, I'm not talking about Thanksgiving, American Thanksgiving,
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although I do wish our American viewers and listeners a happy Thanksgiving.
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I know this one is in South Africa, courtesy of Botswana.
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The researchers are saying they don't yet know how bad it's going to be.
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I don't even know. I lost track in the Greek alphabet of where we are.
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You'd think it stopped at Delta, but we actually went all the way up to,
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I think, like Mu and Nu or something like that.
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Maybe this is Omega. Maybe it's Kappa Alpha Theta.
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Maybe it's the Sigma Chi variant. I don't know.
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It's just when you look at the public health press releases,
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it's just like a nice stroll down sorority or fraternity row in a college town.
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As I've said, you have to get through the Greek alphabet at least once before the pandemic ends.
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And the never-ending pandemic continues, especially in Australia.
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We did Austria last episode. We're doing Australia today.
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I don't think they're the same place. They just sound very similar.
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Although when I was in Austria a couple of weeks ago, I did see they had an Australian pub,
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which I probably thought was good to confuse a couple of wayward travelers.
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In any case, in Australia, which is just permanently locked down, it feels like,
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especially in some provinces and some inter-regional travel in Australia as well.
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You can't necessarily, as an Australian, go across the country
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because their different districts have their own rules on this.
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So it's incredibly locked down, and it's an island, so in a lot of cases, citizens are trapped.
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But then you hear this sort of rhetoric from their overseers.
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Now, this gentleman is the chief minister of the Northern Territory in Australia.
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So, for lack of a better term, the premier of this particular region.
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And his name is Michael Gunner, and he has overseen a very significant vaccine mandate,
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which doesn't quite go so far as Austria's does to mandate vaccination for everyone.
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But it comes pretty close, because the Northern Territory vaccine mandate basically applies
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As the government's website says, it is mandatory for workers in certain settings
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to get the COVID-19 vaccination and show evidence of this to their employer
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And as far as workers requiring vaccination, they include people who work with children,
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So retail, finance, hospitality, veterinarian, beauty, gym.
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So basically, anything you do that involves you interacting with someone
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Now, I have been firmly against vaccine mandates.
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I believe vaccination is a matter of personal choice.
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Despite being fully vaccinated, this is my belief.
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And the reason I share my vaccination status with you is because despite being fully vaccinated,
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despite having the double Pfizer, to Michael Gunner in Australia,
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There was a time in Parliament where you called people anti-vaxxers because they,
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if you were vaccinated because they had opposition to the mandate,
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you called Federal Senator Malandiri-McCarthy a champion of the vaccine and anti-vaxxer
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because it wasn't 100% supportive of your mandate.
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I wonder, do you think at all that your rhetoric around calling people anti-vaxxers,
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some of whom were vaccinated, has had an impact at all on vaccine take-up in parts of the territory?
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If you are anti-mandate, you are absolutely anti-vaxx.
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I don't care what your personal vaccination status is.
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If you support, champion, give a green light, give comfort to, support anybody who argues against the vaccine,
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Your personal vaccination status is utterly irrelevant.
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If you campaign against the mandate, if you campaign against people being vaccinated in vulnerable settings,
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teachers in classrooms, I'll be really clear, at that point in time,
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people were actually supporting the idea of a teacher being unvaccinated in a remote community classroom
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And if you are out there in any way, shape or form campaigning against this mandate,
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We are absolutely going to make sure as many territories as possible are vaccinated.
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That is our best protection against this thing.
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And if you look at the Doty model, and it's only come out since,
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that says we have to double dose 80 in remote communities, five and up,
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I think you'll see our vaccine mandate is absolutely crucial to protecting lives,
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And I will never back away from supporting vaccines.
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And anyone out there who comes for the mandate, you are anti-vax.
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You may remember a few weeks back, I spoke about Merriam-Webster Dictionary
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deciding that anyone who was against mandatory vaccination was an anti-vaxxer.
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And this is why that story was relevant, because this sort of rhetoric and language
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It doesn't matter if you're fully vaccinated or not.
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If you think that your vaccination status has anything to do with being an anti-vaxxer,
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Like that could be a line right out of some politician from Monty Python.
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If you think whether you're vaccinated has anything to do with being an anti-vaxxer,
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I'm like, well, yeah, I think it actually has quite a bit to do with it.
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So if you're pro-civil liberties, if you're pro-personal choice,
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if you're for individual decision-making with health,
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you are just a dirty, filthy, stinking anti-vaxxer.
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Even if you think that vaccines are God's gift to the world,
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you support the miracle of modern medicine, you were first in line,
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you're just an anti-vaxxer if you support choice.
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This is the realm that they're trying to push people to.
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And when you look at the Northern Territory vaccine mandate,
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which goes beyond just people that work for the government,
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what they're actually doing is trying to mandate vaccination population-wide.
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They know they won't have a mandate to make vaccination mandatory a la Austria.
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So they take any realm of society they can control
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and they make vaccination required for that particular function.
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So working in the public service, working in a federally regulated sector,
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These are the things that the federal government is within its legal mandate to do in Canada,
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But what they're actually trying to do is get to 100% vaccination.
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They just know that they can't get away with showing up on people's doorsteps
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But that's why I pointed out in the previous show,
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Because if you don't believe that this could happen in Canada,
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This is something that we see more and more countries pushing the line,
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Basically anyone who works outside of a closed-off office
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or outside of self-employment is covered by this.
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If you're going to engage in any work with an Aboriginal community,
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with vulnerable people, with customers, with children,
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I mean, basically they're trying to cover everything.
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There are very few jobs that aren't on that list.
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this isn't really an original thought by any stretch,
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that this is all about control more than it is about specific public health guidance.
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the federal government in Canada extended its vaccine mandate,
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who will not come into contact with a single person,
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but certainly not anyone else in the public service,
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and still at risk of losing their jobs because of vaccination status.
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And I want to actually turn to the government's doubling down
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on refusing to pay out EI benefits for people who have been fired
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or are going to be fired because of not being vaccinated.
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This is a clip from Power and Politics on CBC with Carla Qualtrough,
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And again, not surprising, but still very angering.
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We had you on this program before the new cabinet was announced,
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and we asked you then whether those individuals would qualify for employment insurance.
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You said you were of the view that that would be the case.
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Do people who lose their job because they refuse to meet a vaccine mandate qualify for EI?
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Well, certainly it's not up to me to determine individual outcomes for individual cases.
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But as a matter of policy, Katie, if an employer has a policy that requires a vaccine,
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and as a result their employment is terminated,
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Now, after we did that interview, we had an employment lawyer, Paul Champ, on the program.
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There's no question that an employee can be terminated for it,
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but can they be denied employment insurance benefits?
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The provisions in the EI Act say that people are disentitled to benefits
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And I think refusing or declining to get a vaccine in most workplaces is not misconduct.
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Well, I think this will be tested, Katie, for sure, and it will be tested in court.
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The advice I've received from justice and justice lawyers is that we're on solid ground here,
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that if you, it would constitute, I guess, misconduct.
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But certainly, I'm not giving a legal opinion here,
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and we'll have to see how this plays out in the Social Security Tribunal and in the courts.
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But as a matter of policy, our position is that people would not be eligible.
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Now, of course, there will be extenuating circumstances,
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And I'm glad CBC featured in that package, by the way,
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I mean, why are you able to deny them benefits?
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Benefits into which they have paid, as all Canadians do.
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But the reason is that the government is viewing this as a with-cause termination.
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They're viewing it as though you basically stole something on the job
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and you're getting fired immediately without any recourse or any severance.
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What's missing from this is that the government has changed the definition
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Now, I'm against the vaccine mandate through and through.
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I'm going to keep saying it because I don't want anyone to get the wrong impression here,
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But if you were to get a job now, when the vaccine mandate is in effect,
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you're going to have a lot less recourse available to you
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if you get fired before your termination or your probation period is up
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For someone who joined the civil service before this vaccine mandate existed,
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we're going to fire you for not doing this thing you never knew you were going to have to do
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until we just decided it a couple of months ago,
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and we're not even going to pay you your severance is unconscionable.
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But the government does not want to look after these people.
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The government doesn't want to look after the unvaccinated.
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The government deplores people that for whatever reason are making that choice for themselves.
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They're trying to make it as inconvenient and untenable as possible
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to live and work and exist in Canadian society as an unvaccinated person
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They're trying to make it so that you can't go out to restaurants,
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Well, good, because you can't afford to do those things
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And as many stories as we see about labor shortages,
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we still have government's intent on putting these mandates forward
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And I want to say I do not care what decisions you make for yourself.
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We did a segment the other day on libertarianism.
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And not that I'm a libertarian party of Canada supporter
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in the sense that I don't have any political party.
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would make the world go a long way in the direction it needs to go.
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So my view on this is make up the decision for yourself.
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what rules they want to have for vaccination status or other things.
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But when government is making that determination,
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a government that has locked down people in their own homes effectively
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and now a government that is hell-bent on closing off
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or respect the decision of unvaccinated people,
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because I think this has been a long time coming,
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and you don't want to play ball with it anymore,
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and you don't want to do all this stuff anymore,
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Everyone should support the civil liberties of everyone else,
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even if you think that you're safe for the time being,
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And there's a reason I'm talking about Australia in this show
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because all of these responses are interconnected.
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And when government realizes what it can get away with
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well, all that does is add another tool to the toolkit.
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that believes there is a strong base of support
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The Canadian pandemic response for the last two years
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Most Canadians would vote for restricting the rights
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because a lot of them are not paying attention.
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oh, this flu looks to be a bit of a rough one this year?
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well, a mask isn't that much of an inconvenience,