Juno News - Soldiers who refused Covid shots still face barriers to re-enrolment

00:00:00.000 Well, let's pivot to this. I mentioned the Freedom Convoy. This is a relic in some ways of an era

00:00:14.500 that many people would rather move on from an era in which Canadians were segregated along the lines

00:00:20.000 of their vaccine status. And we saw people that were forced out of jobs they had had for years,

00:00:25.140 careers they had for years, and people who bravely put on a uniform for this country that were told

00:00:31.120 they were no longer fit to serve Canada in the Canadian Armed Forces because they would not get

00:00:36.240 vaccinated against COVID-19. Well, a story from the Epoch Times this week says that at least some

00:00:43.460 Canadian Armed Forces members have been given waivers that allow them to serve once again if

00:00:49.220 they were previously sanctioned for not getting the COVID vaccine. I wanted to talk about this with

00:00:53.860 Catherine Christensen, a lawyer with Valor Law. Good to talk to you again, Catherine. Thanks so

00:00:58.500 much for coming on today. Good afternoon, Andreas. Good to be back. So let's first off start with

00:01:04.780 what's actually changed here. What has the Canadian Armed Forces done? Well, first of all, the mandate

00:01:10.440 still exists for Canadian Armed Forces members. Certainly anyone who isn't vaccinated, isn't getting

00:01:17.140 deployed, isn't eligible for promotion. Although I can tell you that some of the people who stood up

00:01:23.860 and managed to stay serving have been promoted, have been on deployments without vaccination. So

00:01:29.500 there's some confusion there. But apparently last fall, they quietly brought in a policy that

00:01:35.900 anyone who would receive a 5F, which is unfit for service release category, strictly because of the

00:01:44.520 COVID mandate, would be allowed to re-enroll and that their applications were welcome. And with the caveat

00:01:54.360 that all 5F reapplications have to be approved by the Chief of Defense staff. So if you get past the

00:02:01.240 recruiting application piece, the Chief of Defense staff has final say. Now, I have had clients of mine who

00:02:08.200 were 5F'd approach recruiting centres, certainly since last fall, even as early as last month here in March,

00:02:16.120 and the recruiting centres won't even take their application. But then I got news directly from a

00:02:24.040 recruiting source that indeed this policy is now back, that they are allowed to apply. Now, in Noah's

00:02:31.800 Chartier's article, he points out that they say they've only had one person apply under this relaxed

00:02:40.920 policy. And I'm going to question that because I know that for sure that there has been a lot more

00:02:46.920 than one person try to apply and been turned down at the recruiting centres. Well, and I would also point

00:02:53.080 out here, I mean, while this might be on the surface, something that looks quite positive, it doesn't

00:02:58.040 really get to the crux of the issue here, which is that they still have, as you know, the mandate,

00:03:03.160 they've never really apologised for it. They've never done anything to say, hey, we want you back.

00:03:09.080 It seems like they're just dealing with the fact that very few people are wanting to go into the

00:03:13.800 Canadian Armed Forces right now. They've got a recruitment crisis. And I think they're trying

00:03:17.080 to really dance around the real root of the issue here. Yeah, well, the real root of the issue is,

00:03:23.640 two years ago, these same people were told they were unfit for service, that they were not any

00:03:30.680 type of person that the Canadian Armed Forces wanted. And now, all of a sudden, they're quietly

00:03:35.640 saying, oh, no, come back, but come back without return, necessarily return to your same trade.

00:03:43.880 What about compensation for the time you were off, if you were that qualified, that they want you back?

00:03:50.040 I'm thinking that there's a bit of a conundrum they've got, because if they allow them back, 0.90

00:03:57.560 they're defeating their own defence, because we've got lawsuits against them in the courts right now.

00:04:05.320 I'm being able to stand up and say to the court, well, these people were supposedly unfit for service

00:04:11.880 and needed to be permanently released, but now they're okay to come back. That's a bit of a dilemma.

00:04:18.600 Yeah. And the mandate itself is particularly absurd now, because if you had had two doses of the COVID

00:04:27.000 vaccine in 2021, your protection is zero at this point. You have no benefit over someone who did not

00:04:35.800 get vaccinated at this point. I mean, so let's even assume there was a benefit in 2021. There isn't now.

00:04:40.920 So the idea of clinging to this mandate just defies any sense of science. And really, I had spoken to one

00:04:47.880 veteran about this a couple of years ago, and he had said that basically it was a compliance issue more

00:04:53.720 than it was a medicine issue. They wanted to weed out the type of person that didn't want it more than 0.98

00:04:58.840 there was any, you know, strategic or operational reason that it needed to be there.

00:05:03.960 Exactly. Because let's face it, going into this mandate of General Ayers, they'd already gone through

00:05:12.600 working in the nursing homes. So ground zero, where a lot of the deaths took place, we had armed force

00:05:18.280 members there, and not one of them died of COVID from that exposure. So that's pre vaccine.

00:05:24.680 So then they bring in this vaccination and decimated the Canadian Armed Forces because they've lost so 0.83

00:05:32.840 many people over it, as well as the woke agenda is also to blame. But they lost a lot of very capable

00:05:39.880 people with exemplary military records, just because of the people standing up and saying, No,

00:05:47.000 I'm not going to take it, whether it's against my religion, whether I don't have informed consent,

00:05:52.280 or I want my bodily autonomy, or I have medical reasons that I can't take it. And now that they're

00:05:59.320 desperate, they seem to want them back. We had you on the show back in June when you had launched,

00:06:06.040 I think it was like a $500 million lawsuit representing hundreds of soldiers at the time

00:06:11.640 about this. And I just wanted to ask, I know these things can take years, but what's the status on that

00:06:15.800 one now? Well, it's been interesting, because we ended up launching a second mass tort after the

00:06:23.000 first one came out and people approached our office. So we're up to about 458. And the two lawsuits,

00:06:29.240 they were only a few months apart from filing, but they've caught up to each other, because it's the

00:06:33.800 same Crown lawyer, and they've been playing some games. We've filed, we sent them our affidavit of

00:06:40.680 documents, which is basically a list of our evidence. And they reply, they didn't reply back.

00:06:47.160 And then so I went into the court to force them to give me a list of their evidence. We've now ended

00:06:52.040 up in case management, and we are before the case management justice next week. And I'm looking forward

00:06:58.280 to hearing the Crown lawyer defend why he can't give me a list of his evidence to defend. Because at

00:07:05.000 this point, they've got no evidence. And the longer they delay, the better it is for me. Because now

00:07:11.960 we're well over 300,000 pages of evidence of wrongdoing in the Canadian Armed Forces. So they

00:07:19.480 keep delaying, it's just going to get worse. I seem to recall, and I might be mixing up the case,

00:07:24.040 but when there was the lawsuit against the federal air travel vaccine mandate, I think the applicants had

00:07:31.480 a similar issue and that it was like pulling teeth to get the government to provide the evidentiary

00:07:36.520 basis it had for this policy, which I mean, maybe in politics, you can get away with fudging on the

00:07:41.560 evidence. But in a court, there is still a process that if you don't provide evidence for your side of it,

00:07:46.040 you don't actually have a case, do you? Right? Yeah. So this is exactly what my motion in January,

00:07:51.160 when I filed it, was saying, Well, if they don't want to provide me with any evidence to defend, then I

00:07:57.880 want leave of the court to bring a summary judgment, give us what we asked for, because you can't

00:08:02.200 defend against what we've claimed. They're in a bit of a situation here because CAP is well known

00:08:10.600 for blocking any access to information requests. But we spent two years very quietly asking for

00:08:18.280 information through access to information requests. And we collected hundreds of thousands of pages of

00:08:24.360 evidence before they even knew we were bringing a lawsuit, because not one of those requests came

00:08:28.600 out of my office, they were all done by private individuals. So we've kind of gone around, done an

00:08:35.640 end run around them. And we have a lot more evidence, I think, than they realized that we have, we would

00:08:40.200 have going into the lawsuit. So I also, sorry, go ahead, Catherine. Yeah. Yeah, in my opinion, I think

00:08:48.840 they're also trying to delay moving into depositions, where I'm going to be calling General Eyre, General

00:08:56.760 Cadu, General Fortan, Admiral McDonald, all of those are going to be called to testify under oath. And

00:09:05.560 when General Whalen's court martial was coming along the day before they wanted to have Eyre testify at

00:09:12.600 that, they dropped the charges to keep him from having to testify under oath. So interesting.

00:09:17.640 Well, they're terrible. They're terrible with access to information requests. I filed one in January

00:09:23.160 about tampons in washrooms on army bases, because, you know, they were all getting removed by soldiers

00:09:29.960 that thought it was nonsense when there's a tampon dispenser in the men's washroom. And that's still

00:09:34.600 taken over three months, and I don't have the records yet. So I feel I have to buckle in for a long

00:09:38.760 wait. I'm amazed you got all you did in two years, given how DND has been on these requests in the past.

00:09:44.280 Well, the Information Commissioner has actually been very helpful. She has actually brought lawsuits

00:09:48.920 against the CAF to get documents that we have asked for. The longest access to information requests,

00:09:56.040 I thought it was a long time, but there's some that have been years and years and years, and they still

00:10:02.040 don't have that information, even though they're entitled to it. So we did it, we kind of outmaneuvered

00:10:10.040 the system, which is what my clients hired me to do. Because after we tried the injunction,

00:10:16.040 I said, Okay, we're gonna go deep, we're gonna go dark. And I've got all military people who are

00:10:21.720 really good at keeping secrets if they have to, and very smart and very motivated. And they did

00:10:27.080 fantastic work for me. Yeah, it shows what happens when you alienate a very skilled, dedicated group of

00:10:33.160 people, and they have an axe to grind time on their hands. And those skills that were previously being

00:10:38.120 deployed for the country, and now are being deployed against the bureaucrats in the department.

00:10:42.760 Keep in mind that these are people who know that the documents exist, because they wrote the documents.

00:10:49.000 Yeah, so they know what to ask for, which is so key. It's not just a fishing expedition, right?

00:10:53.240 Yeah, yeah. They're like, Well, here's my chain of command. And I know I had emails with all of

00:10:58.360 these people. And in some cases, they still had the email, they, you know, they brought it with them.

00:11:04.520 So we knew to send in the actual information requests to get it legitimately through the process.

00:11:10.680 And then they'd say, Well, though, that doesn't exist. And we go, yes, it does.

00:11:17.400 Well, good stuff. Well, wish you well on this, Catherine, please do keep us posted as you work your way

00:11:21.720 through the system here. I sure will. And we're also bringing a vaccine injury one. We've got

00:11:27.720 lots of members of the Canadian Armed Forces who were injured from the Moderna vaccine. So that's

00:11:32.600 coming up, too. All right. Well, appreciate that very much. Catherine Christensen from Valor Law

00:11:37.480 out in Alberta. Thank you so much, Catherine. Take care, Andrew. Thanks for listening to the Andrew

00:11:41.720 Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

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Juno News - April 28, 2024

Soldiers who refused Covid shots still face barriers to re-enrolment

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