Juno News - Trudeau plans to drop border mandates – don’t celebrate just yet

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:05.200 This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:10.860 Hello and welcome to you all.

00:00:13.540 This is The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North,

00:00:15.900 Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show, Wednesday, September 21st, 2022.

00:00:21.480 I know we just spoke yesterday, but there's been so much happening.

00:00:25.980 we thought we'd throw a little bit of a wrench into the schedule and talk about all these things

00:00:32.900 that are happening here. And what I'm going to say is this great period of transition insofar as

00:00:39.320 vaccine mandates in this country are concerned. And there is a little bit of good news. I started

00:00:45.280 out at the beginning of yesterday's show talking about this report in the Globe and Mail that was

00:00:50.180 suggesting the federal government is on track to get rid of the border vaccine mandate, its own

00:00:55.240 border vaccine mandate as of September 30th. Now, I think there are a bunch of caveats and

00:01:01.420 asterisks I need to put in place here. Number one, they're not deciding to go in and get rid of it.

00:01:07.520 They could do that today if they wanted. What they're doing is just letting it expire if the

00:01:12.120 reports hold and not renewing it. So they're taking the very cowardly approach here and not saying

00:01:18.480 the time has come to end it. They're just sort of just letting it just go, die on the order paper,

00:01:23.860 pocket veto, whatever you want to call it. The second aspect of this is that nowhere in anything

00:01:31.060 the government has said have they given us an indication that the rescinding of mandates of

00:01:37.340 restrictions is ever something that we can accept is permanent. And this is the key theme I want to

00:01:44.160 tackle in today's program. I want to discuss what's happening with the ARRIVECAN and the border

00:01:48.880 vaccine mandate and also the lawsuit against the federal government that we had a hearing for in

00:01:54.320 court today on the vaccine mandate for air travel. This is the legal challenge being waged by Sean

00:02:00.800 Pickard, Carl Harrison, two names you might not know, and a couple of names you may well know,

00:02:05.460 like Brian Peckford, the former Premier of Newfoundland, and Maxime Bernier, who we had

00:02:10.400 on the show yesterday, the leader of the People's Party of Canada. All of this is to say right now

00:02:16.640 we're looking at this whole bundle of restrictions that have existed and exist in some form at the

00:02:21.580 federal, provincial, and municipal level. And all of these things are interconnected. And we saw

00:02:27.700 through the entirety of the pandemic, a lot of buck passing where, you know, if you complain to

00:02:32.100 a federal politician, they say, oh, well, you have to talk about the provinces. They're the ones that

00:02:36.220 do lockdowns. And then you talk to the provinces and they say, well, yes, but the federal government,

00:02:39.920 I mean, they're the ones that did this. And what we saw here was not a jurisdictional issue. It was

00:02:45.460 a cultural issue. We had a culture in government that wanted restrictions, a culture in government

00:02:51.380 that wanted mandates. And more shockingly and more dangerously, a culture within large swaths

00:02:57.280 of the population that invited this, that wanted this, that looked to government and said,

00:03:02.100 I want you to regulate me more. Regulate me harder, daddy. That's what I want from you. I want

00:03:08.000 the government to crack down on me. I don't want freedom. This freedom thing makes me uncomfortable.

00:03:12.240 it's a little overrated. I want you to regulate me. And they say that because they want the

00:03:17.580 government to regulate their unvaccinated neighbors. So I'm going to be talking a little

00:03:22.260 later on in the show about this ad campaign that the city of Toronto yanked. They pulled the plug

00:03:27.440 on yesterday, thanks in large part to people like you that spoke up about this. And that is an ad

00:03:34.060 campaign promoting vaccination on children. And we'll talk about that in a little bit. But let's

00:03:39.520 talk about the mandates here. So there are a number of them, and even if we all look at them

00:03:44.020 as being part of one general thing, one big basket of mandates, they are actually different. They're

00:03:49.940 authorized by different orders. They're authorized by different ministries. They have different

00:03:54.040 expiration dates, and they have different implications, constitutional, legal, and

00:03:58.220 otherwise. The case that was before the federal court today was the vaccine mandate for air and

00:04:05.020 rail travel. This was the thing that Justin Trudeau announced during the federal election.

00:04:09.780 I don't have the clip because it just bothers me too much to see it, but it's where he said,

00:04:14.100 and I think it was in Calgary, you know, yeah, you don't have to be vaccinated, but you don't

00:04:18.100 have a right to get on a plane. You don't have a right to sit beside someone who's vaccinated.

00:04:22.520 He was just like making, just scoring political points off this idea of segregation. And he

00:04:28.120 announced during the campaign that he was going to ban the unvaccinated from planes and trains, 0.99

00:04:32.520 Not quite automobiles. He didn't go the full John Candy, Steve Martin film title, but certainly from planes and trains. 0.89

00:04:38.780 And he did it. He made good on that promise in, I think it was October, maybe November, just a couple of months later.

00:04:46.480 This challenge, the federal government rolled back in June, this order in council.

00:04:52.860 The government rolled back in June, which meant as of June, you could, if you were not a vaccinated person, get on a plane or a train in this country.

00:05:01.760 And I said at the time, no one should be grateful to the government for rolling this back.

00:05:06.140 No one should be grateful to the government for handing you back a freedom that they never

00:05:10.140 had the right, and I just mean morally, that they never had the right morally to take away

00:05:14.320 from you.

00:05:15.040 And what was fascinating is that this case, which was filed by, in large part, Maxime

00:05:20.480 Bernier, who, interestingly enough, has a novel argument here.

00:05:23.740 He isn't just a Canadian who says, yeah, you know, I might want to go visit my grandmother

00:05:27.460 or I might want to go and take a vacation to Tofino or something like that.

00:05:31.200 he said, I am a federal politician. It is my job to travel this country. And right now I am unable

00:05:37.860 to do that. So I'm unable to engage in the duties that I need to engage in as the leader of a

00:05:43.960 federal political party. So today the federal government was trying to have this lawsuit

00:05:50.200 thrown out. So they weren't actually hearing the case today. What they were hearing was

00:05:54.600 a motion to dismiss. So the federal government brought a motion saying to the federal court,

00:05:59.440 we don't really need to hear this case because the mandate's gone. And if you listen to the lawyer

00:06:05.160 representing the Attorney General of Canada, as I did all morning, his argument was, I mean,

00:06:10.680 there is no mandate, Your Honor. So why are we having the mandates gone? The unvaccinated can

00:06:15.560 fly. All the people that brought this lawsuit can fly. What's the big deal? Well, the big deal is 0.64

00:06:21.040 that there was a time when they couldn't. And this government thought it was entirely legitimate to

00:06:26.960 do that. This government thought it was entirely legitimate not only to look at its citizens and

00:06:31.280 say you don't have the right to travel unless you are vaccinated, but also to effectively say you

00:06:38.840 don't have the right to leave this country because we're not going to let you get on a plane and even

00:06:44.360 take a one-way ticket to a country that doesn't care about your vaccination status. And when the

00:06:50.260 government got rid of this in June. It did not say, we're sorry, we got it wrong, we will never

00:06:57.820 do this again. No, no, no. What the government said was, we are temporarily suspending the mandate.

00:07:06.800 Temporarily suspending. We totally might bring it back if the situation warrants it. Maybe there'll

00:07:12.840 be a new variant of concern. Maybe we will just see a surge in cases in the winter. Maybe we'll

00:07:18.160 just do some polling and find out the Canadians really, really, really don't like those dirty 1.00

00:07:22.260 unvaccinated people. And we can just take away a few more of their liberties to win some votes 0.99

00:07:26.960 in the Vote Rich GTA. Who cares? They said it was a temporary suspension. So by the government's

00:07:32.520 own admission, they didn't even get rid of the air travel vaccine mandate. And it was laughable.

00:07:39.240 If you watch the discussion that was taking place in court today, the government was saying,

00:07:43.660 I wish I could record it. You're not allowed to record judicial proceedings, even when

00:07:48.100 they take place virtually. But the government's lawyer was saying, well, you can't listen to it.

00:07:52.780 And they're politicians. You can't listen to what cabinet ministers say in press conferences or

00:07:57.580 press releases. That's not the law. So they were saying you can't look into the future and make a

00:08:03.580 judicial determination based on something that might happen in the future. And interestingly

00:08:08.500 enough, the idea of just not listening to or trusting the words of liberal cabinet ministers,

00:08:14.000 I actually don't disagree with in principle, but this is one of those rare cases where they're

00:08:18.960 being remarkably transparent about what they want. And they want the right to just at a moment,

00:08:24.520 at the drop of a hat, flip a switch and say, we are no longer going to allow this temporary 0.99

00:08:30.560 reprieve, the unvaccinated, get your rear ends off airplanes. You don't belong there. 1.00

00:08:36.700 And incidentally to that, I mean, it's not incidental, but unrelated to the core idea,

00:08:41.780 The government has also talked about changing the definition, as you may know by now, where they've said what the up to date will be the term that matters, not the fully vaccinated, but the up to date.

00:08:52.420 You have to have been vaccinated within however many months, six months, 90 days, nine months, three weeks, you know, basically by the time your coffee gets cool, you need to go and get another booster.

00:09:03.020 So when it comes back, it could be even more restrictive and more stringent.

00:09:06.540 so the federal government has never accepted that what it did was wrong and that is so key here

00:09:14.520 because right now we have the reports that say the federal government on September 30th is going to

00:09:19.360 make a rive can optional the federal government is going to make it so that you no longer need

00:09:23.760 to be vaccinated to enter the country so if you've got a friend that lives in the United Kingdom or 0.89

00:09:28.380 Mexico or France or oh I don't know Tajikistan doesn't matter that has wanted to come here but 0.99

00:09:34.500 can't because they're unvaccinated, they will, as of September 30th, be allowed to come here. 1.00

00:09:40.360 This means that cross-border truckers will now be allowed to come to this country if they are

00:09:47.020 unvaccinated, which is so key. This is, remember, the core idea that sparked the Freedom Convoy less 0.89

00:09:52.940 than a year ago. So as of September 30th, this may be what's happening. But when I mentioned

00:09:59.880 earlier the process that the government has not admitted it's wrong the government has not admitted

00:10:05.720 that it aired the government has not admitted that it didn't have the right to do this they're just

00:10:10.040 saying or they will say it's no longer necessary so as though everything that happened was entirely

00:10:17.720 valid entirely reasonable entirely correct and that's why the fight has not ended and i don't

00:10:23.080 think will end for quite some time now i should say in the interest of transparency here the

00:10:27.800 federal government has not actually acknowledged this reporting that it is going to do away with

00:10:32.840 this stuff on september 30th quite the contrary omar al gabra who is the transportation minister

00:10:39.240 has not really said one way or another his claim is that no decision has been taken take a look

00:10:45.800 over there why remove a right can at this point uh look first of all a right can is a critical tool

00:10:52.360 to process travelers with the requirement of the vaccine mandate so we're asking it's a tool that

00:10:59.800 helps process arrivals as they arrive so you want to keep it mandatory beyond September 30th

00:11:04.600 there's no decision has been made we are as we've said all along we're we're we're constantly

00:11:10.960 assessing the situation and making decisions based on the information so you think it should

00:11:14.840 remain beyond September 30th that's great he just like doesn't know the answer so he just

00:11:22.100 walks away. I don't know if this is like a minister that actually just hasn't like checked

00:11:25.920 his email lately and doesn't know that people more important than him have already made the decision

00:11:29.640 or if this is a case of a guy that just genuinely is, I mean, maybe the report was wrong. I mean,

00:11:35.520 who knows? Justin Trudeau might, because he hates the Globe and Mail. So for all we know, this is

00:11:40.280 like the Globe and Mail got it right. Now the federal government is changing their minds just

00:11:44.080 so that the Globe and Mail doesn't get vindicated. It's like they couldn't do that with SNC-Lavalin

00:11:48.420 because that story did get proven right.

00:11:50.620 But with this, they're like,

00:11:51.540 okay, we were going to let it expire,

00:11:52.980 but Bob Fyfe said we were going to.

00:11:55.360 So let's renew it an extra month

00:11:57.040 just to really stick it to Bob Fyfe.

00:11:58.780 That might be the strategy

00:12:01.160 the liberals are after here.

00:12:03.380 But no acknowledgement from the federal government

00:12:05.280 that in nine days,

00:12:06.640 there is going to be this momentary reprieve.

00:12:11.500 And there is this old challenge in this country,

00:12:16.180 if I can call it that.

00:12:17.320 Not that old, I guess,

00:12:18.240 because a couple of years where people say, oh, the mandates are all gone. What are these convoy

00:12:22.420 people protesting? What are these people having these freedom rallies over the summer and the

00:12:26.440 fall? What's their problem? Life is back to normal. You can hang out with your unvaccinated

00:12:31.060 friends. You can go and go to a restaurant. You can get on a plane. What's the big whoop?

00:12:36.820 The problem is there needs to be a reckoning and there hasn't been a reckoning. There needs to be

00:12:41.360 understanding by a court, by a government, by the political body in Canada, that this never should

00:12:49.780 have happened in the first place. And it's enraging to me. And I'm not an angry person. I don't get

00:12:56.760 mad a lot. In fact, sometimes people legitimately complain. They write me emails saying, why am I

00:13:02.080 not mad? How dare I tell a joke? How dare I smile? Because if you aren't able to laugh at the

00:13:08.040 absurdity of the world. And in some case, the callousness of the world, if you aren't able to

00:13:12.380 laugh at it, then quite frankly, you're going to die a painful, miserable death because you're

00:13:17.020 just going to be consumed by so much negativity. So I choose to turn negativity into something

00:13:21.440 slightly positive, slightly empowering. And it also means that when I do feel mad, it ultimately

00:13:26.520 has more meaning. So it does madden me. And I say this as someone who, and again, some people may

00:13:32.460 not like this, I made the decision early on to get vaccinated. Now, whether the definition of

00:13:37.940 fully vaccinated sufficiently changes that I will be just like a dirty, stinking, anti-vaxxer, 0.95

00:13:45.560 whatever you call it at some point, maybe. But as it stands, I am fully vaccinated. 0.93

00:13:50.360 And I was never directly affected by the mandates about which I have railed so fervently and so

00:13:58.180 passionately for years, because it didn't matter to me. It wasn't about me.

00:14:02.460 it was about how fundamentally wrong it was that anyone thought this was an acceptable criterion

00:14:09.340 to divide this country to divide the people in the country as though moral worth stems from

00:14:15.740 vaccination and not from something else and i would happily happily spend time in a room full

00:14:22.780 of 50 unvaccinated people before i spent time in a room with 50 people that think

00:14:27.740 segregating the unvaccinated is acceptable public policy. And that is, I think, a tremendously

00:14:34.280 important thing here, that so many of the people that were standing up were able to fly. And I did

00:14:40.440 fly throughout this. And I don't say that to gloat. I did this because it was important and it's a part

00:14:44.120 of my job to get from one part of the country to the other. But it bothered me, and it should

00:14:49.060 bother everyone in this country, that the federal government wanted to make fundamental movement,

00:14:55.060 this thing that had a precondition of vaccination status even as it became more and more apparent

00:15:02.040 that these restrictions and mandates and rules were not saving lives we're not doing anything

00:15:09.140 towards the stated objective which has had no science i mean keith wilson a lawyer who's been

00:15:15.040 on this program a number of times he's one of the council representing brian peckford in the case

00:15:19.980 that was before the federal court today he was saying you know if you think that the government

00:15:23.700 really had a strong evidentiary basis to put forward this travel mandate, you should actually

00:15:29.740 look at the government's own evidence, which show a scramble to try to come up with one.

00:15:34.960 They had already decided what they were going to do and were trying to find a way to justify

00:15:39.420 and rationalize it. And they decided on an outcome and then searched for rationalization.

00:15:44.900 They searched for justification. And the body of evidence filed by the federal government,

00:15:50.320 court evidence not medical evidence does not actually have the medical evidence

00:15:55.300 so what we've seen here is a vaccine mandate regime that was driven not by science by politics

00:16:02.620 and the worst kind of politics the kind of politics that the liberal government

00:16:06.620 accuses everyone else of engaging in this divisive hateful nasty anti-human politics

00:16:15.560 and it's not going to be over if the government is just dangling your liberty in front of you

00:16:22.600 like a carrot saying, if we feel like it, because that's all they need, if we feel like it in the

00:16:28.080 winter, you don't get to go on that family vacation. So just, I mean, imagine, and there

00:16:35.240 may be families like this where you've got a mom and a dad and they're both, I don't want to be

00:16:40.380 heteronormative, but you know what I mean, two parents and they're both vaccinated and they've

00:16:44.640 got a few children. One of them's a teenager who, for whatever reason, didn't want to get vaccinated.

00:16:50.580 So that family has been unable to travel by air for much of the last year. And on June, they find

00:16:56.780 out that, okay, we're actually able to regain our rights as citizens. So they book a flight for the

00:17:01.120 winter. Well, there's no guarantee that family will be able to take that family vacation in December

00:17:08.920 that they booked in June, in good faith, because the government, by its own admission, is saying, well,

00:17:14.640 I mean, a new variant comes along and who knows, we may have to do that as though they're passengers, as though they don't make a choice.

00:17:22.600 So how dare the federal government say this is moot?

00:17:25.240 This is no longer a logical argument to have before the court when they're the ones saying that this could very much be a live issue in the winter and beyond.

00:17:36.220 When the provincial government has not ruled out reinstating mask mandates, reinstating vaccine passports.

00:17:42.380 Now, the political climate may have changed to such a point where they don't want to do this.

00:17:47.160 But the point is there would be nothing legally stopping them.

00:17:51.400 And my message to government is you don't just get to say we're moving on from this.

00:17:56.020 You don't just get to say we're not going to have any scrutiny.

00:17:58.300 We're not going to have any oversight because we've just decided this is no longer something we want to do.

00:18:03.700 No, they need to be told they can never do it again.

00:18:07.580 They need to be told by a judge.

00:18:09.760 They need to be told by a panel of appellate judges.

00:18:11.860 they need to be told by the Supreme Court of Canada, no, this was illegal. You didn't have

00:18:16.440 the right to do it then. And ergo, you won't have the right to do it in the future. And that's what

00:18:21.920 the air travel vaccine mandate case is all about. It's about making sure that the government knows

00:18:27.420 it is unconstitutional, it can't do it again. And it's what these other restrictions are all about.

00:18:33.300 I mean, take a look at the Emergencies Act. The government revoked its emergency just before the

00:18:37.960 Senate was about to vote. And the Senate, we all know, may not have voted to uphold Justin Trudeau's

00:18:43.040 fake emergency, which was like, you know, that they honked and bounced a little bit too high

00:18:47.980 in the bouncy castle or something. So the Senate may not have supported it, which would have been

00:18:52.300 a tremendous political blow to Justin Trudeau. So he says, emergency over. Does that mean we

00:18:58.640 avoid the scrutiny of the Emergencies Act just because he decided on his own to rescind the

00:19:03.640 emergency. No, the whole point is that so much power has been put in these individual hands

00:19:08.140 that we need to have a guide for the future. Now, I fully admit that I am not the most optimistic

00:19:14.560 person when it comes to Canadian courts. The courts have been far too deferential throughout

00:19:19.880 the entirety of the COVID pandemic to governments. And I feel that is quite possibly what's going to

00:19:25.400 happen in the vaccine mandate case, but they have to try. And if that doesn't work, then you have

00:19:30.720 to turn to the citizens and make sure that the citizens of this country are not prepared to go

00:19:35.600 along with this. Remember, this was a vote getter. This was not an overall unpopular decision by the

00:19:41.720 government. This was very popular. And there is something very shameful in that. And I would look

00:19:47.600 to all of these other Canadians who didn't appreciate that they may have had people in

00:19:51.540 their own lives that they were completely okay to sign away the rights and freedoms of.

00:19:55.180 and I hope those people grow up, and I hope those people learn. I had a few weeks ago on this show

00:20:01.880 Rupa Subramanya, my colleague here at True North, who was a big supporter of vaccine passports a

00:20:06.680 year ago, and then she eventually changed her mind. I said, yeah, you know what? I saw they

00:20:10.000 were wrong, and I said we need more of that, more of that. People that at one point, for whatever

00:20:15.400 reason, buy into the hysteria. They buy into this narrative that freedoms are contingent on

00:20:21.240 vaccination status and eventually realize that that is not the way to do things. And I think

00:20:26.160 there are a lot of Canadians that are in that boat that are progressing and moving to this point

00:20:30.180 where we have to make it so politically unpalatable that a government would never

00:20:34.540 dare. And that's where we are. And I want to just segue this to another discussion,

00:20:40.360 which is related not to the mandates in general, but this idea of dehumanizing people

00:20:45.900 based on vaccination status.

00:20:48.460 And there's a bit of a victory for True North in here

00:20:51.180 because all of this has come about

00:20:52.540 in basically the last 24 hours.

00:20:55.120 And I'll set the stage here.

00:20:57.260 The city of Toronto launched on Friday

00:20:59.980 a five video ad campaign.

00:21:03.020 And in these five videos,

00:21:04.820 they were promoting the fundamental message

00:21:07.440 that vaccination is something you should do

00:21:10.000 for your children from six months to five years old.

00:21:12.740 The vaccines for COVID are not,

00:21:14.660 well, against COVID theoretically,

00:21:15.760 are now available for infants as young as six months old, right up to age five and then beyond.

00:21:21.640 And they were trying to promote this to communities that have lower vaccination rates. And quite

00:21:27.240 frankly, children at that age have low vaccination rates in part because the vaccines were just

00:21:32.500 approved. But also a lot of parents are thinking that it's just not necessary. The virus is mild

00:21:37.780 enough at this point. The vaccine doesn't protect against transmission. So it's just not necessary

00:21:42.960 to get a six-month-old or a one-year-old

00:21:45.220 or a four-year-old vaccinated against COVID.

00:21:47.760 And the city of Toronto evidently didn't like that.

00:21:51.240 And they ran five videos.

00:21:53.820 And I want to share with you all five videos.

00:21:56.640 They're only about 20 to 30 seconds each.

00:21:59.120 In fact, I think all of them are like just 20 to 22 seconds

00:22:02.060 with the exception of maybe one.

00:22:03.560 But they're all very short.

00:22:05.360 And oddly enough, I agree with like the first 80%

00:22:09.500 of most of them, but they all just go a few seconds too far.

00:22:12.560 And the first one I want to play is the one that went absolutely viral yesterday and I

00:22:16.780 think triggered most of the backlash.

00:22:18.640 I caught wind of it on Twitter and it was after everyone was tweeting about this that

00:22:22.600 I actually looked and found there were more of these things which had gone under the radar.

00:22:26.740 But this is one that effectively talks about kids being indoors and the harm of that, which

00:22:33.280 may sound like a message you agree with, but take a look.

00:22:42.560 Come on, can I go outside and play with my friends?

00:22:46.000 No, honey, there's still something going around.

00:22:49.860 Okay.

00:23:02.760 It's actually rather heartbreaking.

00:23:05.400 A girl who is being kept indoors by her mother, by a government.

00:23:09.580 I mean, it's not quite clear.

00:23:11.360 and the implication is that all her friends are able to play and have fun and have a good time

00:23:16.040 outside but she can't because she's unvaccinated is that why that it's not safe for her to be

00:23:22.060 outside playing this was the one that really exploded the one that bothered me the most and

00:23:27.860 again I may be alone in this one was this one that actually had an infant in it and that was 0.75

00:23:34.780 why I don't know that the girl I mean obviously this may just be like a really talented baby I

00:23:38.980 I mean, who knows?

00:23:39.800 Her facial reactions were perfect for the message they were trying to convey.

00:23:43.400 But it was telling parents not to miss certain moments.

00:23:46.120 Oh, again, a good message.

00:23:47.180 You don't want to miss moments with your children.

00:23:48.720 But, again, take a look.

00:23:51.820 Oh, you're so cute.

00:23:57.540 Yes, yes, you are.

00:23:59.760 Yes, you're very cute.

00:24:02.540 When can we see her?

00:24:03.880 We would love to see her. 0.82

00:24:05.780 Squeeze those cheeks. 0.99

00:24:07.500 Look over here. 1.00

00:24:08.260 look over here oh cutie

00:24:11.300 don't miss those moments connect in real life and again the only way you can visit that newborn

00:24:21.280 the only way you can see that little cherub of an angel is if she gets vaccinated at however many

00:24:27.440 months old she is in that shot no pun intended on shot and the list went on and on this one again

00:24:35.100 talking about human connection, the importance of human connection. 0.57

00:24:37.980 Hey Siwon, what's up? Can you hear me? Hello Siwon, are you there? I can hear you. Can you hear me? Hello? 0.89

00:24:49.880 human connections stronger than internet connections i agree it's a shame he can't

00:25:06.920 just go out and see his friend face to face well he can he can oh but he's not vaccinated i guess

00:25:13.580 oh yeah there we go we have to push the vaccination message six months to five years old and i have

00:25:19.760 always as a general rule on this program steered away from talking about the science of vaccines

00:25:26.320 and i think the reason is very clear i'm not a scientist i'm a civil libertarian i can talk about

00:25:30.880 this issue and i find it more interesting and more important to talk about in the context of

00:25:35.600 civil liberties and the right to make the decision for yourself so the the reality is most people who

00:25:41.440 comment on this are not scientists so they're relying on the scientific expertise of others

00:25:45.680 And you can find scientists saying conflicting things.

00:25:48.260 So it's a matter of which person in the white lab coat you trust more than the other person

00:25:53.520 in the white lab coat.

00:25:55.520 But the one area where I do have more confidence speaking authoritatively, because the science

00:25:59.560 is so clear, is on the effect of vaccinations on children.

00:26:05.460 And the risk that is really at the core of why someone gets vaccinated is negligible

00:26:12.380 for children.

00:26:13.360 If you look at the numbers for the entirety of the pandemic, for the entire country of Canada, 39 children, 39 children have died and have been logged as COVID deaths since the very beginning.

00:26:24.840 Now, I do not want to diminish those deaths.

00:26:27.380 Any death, any death of a child, any death of a person is tragic.

00:26:32.060 But it's worth noting that in many of those cases, most of those cases, it is a death after a COVID diagnosis.

00:26:39.020 It's not even by the record keeper's own admission, a case where it's a COVID-caused

00:26:45.140 death.

00:26:46.280 If you're talking about a healthy child that doesn't have underlying health issues, that

00:26:50.640 doesn't have comorbidities, their risk of serious, serious ailment, hospitalization,

00:26:56.140 death from COVID is not what it is in an elderly person, a very obese person, someone with

00:27:01.300 a lot of underlying health conditions, and we shouldn't pretend it is.

00:27:04.100 Denmark, as just one example, a few weeks back decided to ban COVID vaccination of anyone under 18 unless they had an underlying health condition.

00:27:13.960 Because they said in Denmark's case, they said that the risks outweighed the benefits.

00:27:18.440 The UK has gone a bit of a different direction.

00:27:20.580 They've said it's available to kids as young as five, but they're saying it's non-essential.

00:27:25.000 And they're saying that you can't take a one size fits all position on this, which is effectively what the city of Toronto is trying to do here.

00:27:31.920 say that every child must receive the jab and cannot live a normal life, cannot engage with

00:27:37.640 the world around them, cannot do kid-like things without it. Now, the little glimmer of good news

00:27:43.900 here is that pretty much everyone thought those videos were awful. Even the city of Toronto has

00:27:49.480 acknowledged those videos were awful. Brad Ross, who is the chief spokesperson for the city of

00:27:55.020 Toronto, he has said they've been pulled. The city right now has paused the campaign and is trying

00:28:01.280 to go and reevaluate the meaning. Originally, he had said that they were retracted, but they didn't

00:28:07.180 really apologize for them. But I've seen some other reports. There's one in particular here

00:28:11.920 where he acknowledges that the message itself is just wrong. I'm reading an article in the,

00:28:18.660 I think it's Global News or it might've been CBC, but he said that the message is not sending,

00:28:25.740 or it's not sending the right message here. He's saying that even public health officials were

00:28:30.060 unhappy with them and hadn't seen them and hadn't reviewed them. I did a little bit of digging and

00:28:34.740 the videos, which cost $4,000 each, I think they should be demanding a refund on that, but it's

00:28:39.840 neither here nor there, were produced by some Toronto film program that mentors Black, Indigenous,

00:28:46.800 people of colour and LGBTQ2S, I think that's it, there might be another one in there, filmmakers,

00:28:53.820 and they do this in a way to, you know, try to foster the development of the media and arts

00:28:58.480 industry. And they're the ones that made the video. So at least it wasn't like some really

00:29:03.520 expensive $100,000 contract to an ad agency. But even so, the core message of this plays to parents

00:29:11.320 that are so fearful, fearful of the world around them, that either furthers them trying to keep

00:29:17.420 their children isolated from the world, or it shames parents. Shames parents who, for whatever

00:29:21.620 reason, have decided that vaccinating their children against COVID is not something they

00:29:25.920 want to do. And when I spoke to Martha Fulford, the infectious disease specialist formerly of

00:29:31.820 McMaster University on the show a few weeks ago, I mean, she's been one of the loudest voices and

00:29:36.280 most important voices speaking up for children in this country. She said that, you know, the profile

00:29:41.880 is going to be different for everyone. And there are going to be myriad reasons why one person may

00:29:46.900 decide not to be vaccinated. Maybe it's religious views. Maybe it's just a commitment to natural

00:29:51.800 health. Maybe someone they know has had a bad reaction, but you can't individualize or you can't

00:29:58.480 de-individualize this and make it where we are saying that this is the path that everyone needs

00:30:04.880 to take. And it was a shameful ad campaign. Now, I think that when they say they're pausing it and

00:30:10.420 they're going to reevaluate it, I'm going to assume that these videos are never going to see

00:30:13.880 the light of day. And there are two more that I didn't play. If you want to look at them, you can

00:30:17.840 head to tnc.news and we have them in our story there. You can also head to my Twitter. I've

00:30:22.620 posted all the videos there. And I had like some Twitter troll respond to me and say, well, if you

00:30:27.900 think these videos are so terrible, why have you uploaded them? I said, because I think people need

00:30:31.880 to see them. I think people need to see them not to understand the message they're trying to

00:30:36.680 promote, but people need to see them to understand just how unhinged the rhetoric around vaccination

00:30:42.260 has gotten and what governments are promoting and governments are publishing.

00:30:47.380 And again, you know, my own position on this, the fight I'm taking up is not a fight against

00:30:51.580 vaccination.

00:30:52.040 It's this fight against emotionally manipulative tactics, these things that are these underhanded

00:30:57.560 ways of trying to coerce vaccination, like university vaccine mandates, where just last

00:31:02.900 year, Western University was touting a 99.5% compliance rate with its vaccine mandates,

00:31:08.600 which was unsurprising because everyone had to either get vaccinated or withdraw and only a few

00:31:14.460 of them were going to get exemptions. So of course you had a high rate because you weren't giving

00:31:18.360 people a real choice. You were taking away any real options they had. And this is why to go full

00:31:25.320 circle to how we started, vaccine mandates are so despicable and shameful because they say that

00:31:32.520 your body does not belong to you. Your body belongs to the state. And anyone who claims that

00:31:37.680 when there's a mandate in place, you still have a choice is missing the mark. When the government

00:31:41.700 is saying, yes, you have the choice. You can lose your job. You can lose the ability to travel. You

00:31:45.840 can lose the ability to enter the country without quarantine, or you can get vaccinated. That's not

00:31:50.780 a real choice. It's a choice in the sense that no one is lining up to stick a needle in your arm

00:31:56.700 involuntarily, but it's funny. The intersectionality crowd always talks about the effect of race and

00:32:03.500 class and gender and sexuality and religion and all of these things. And they say poverty is not

00:32:08.500 just about money, it's about standing and all of this. And it's amazing that they don't realize

00:32:12.320 that the circumstances and preconditions that they set out with these mandates are very similar.

00:32:17.960 It's not a choice if the circumstances eliminate that choice from you. We've got to end things

00:32:23.720 there. My thanks to all of you for tuning into the program today. We'll be back in just two days

00:32:28.700 time with another brand spanking new edition of fake news Friday alongside my colleague Harrison

00:32:34.120 Faulkner that's all coming up on true north and if you do want to support the work we're doing

00:32:38.060 which I think as I've demonstrated here is actually getting results that was true north

00:32:41.920 reporting that preceded Toronto yanking those videos yesterday you can head on over to donate.tnc.news

00:32:49.340 donate.tnc.news and I do hope you are able to if you enjoy the work we're doing so with that out

00:32:55.040 the way, have a great rest of the week, everyone. Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:33:00.360 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:33:02.900 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - September 21, 2022

Trudeau plans to drop border mandates – don’t celebrate just yet

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