Juno News - Trudeau's vaccine mandate is unconcerned with civil liberties or science

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's most irreverent talk show. This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.980 Coming up, an in-depth look at vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, and civil liberties in the COVID era.

00:00:20.340 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:23.860 Welcome to the Andrew Lawton Show. This is Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North.

00:00:32.280 For our weekend shows, we try to shake things up a bit and do a deep dive into some of the big issues that we talk about on the show and some other fora,

00:00:40.260 and bring in some other voices to really delve into the implications of them.

00:00:44.560 And this weekend, we're going to do something very timely, which is talking about the vaccine mandate that Justin Trudeau's government just announced a couple of days ago,

00:00:53.080 requiring federal public servants to be vaccinated, even if they're going to be working from home,

00:00:58.420 and also anyone wanting to travel by rail or travel by air.

00:01:02.620 So we're going to talk about the implications of this legally, culturally, insofar as Canada's efforts to vanquish the pandemic are concerned.

00:01:11.440 And I have a great team of people that have joined me to tackle this.

00:01:14.720 We've got Anthony Fury, a True North contributor and also host of the fantastic post-media podcast, Full Comment.

00:01:20.940 We've got John Carpe, the president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms,

00:01:25.820 and also Aaron Woodrick, who's the director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute's Domestic Policy Program.

00:01:32.120 Gentlemen, thank you so much for coming on. Great to talk to you all.

00:01:35.220 Great to be here.

00:01:36.380 Great to be with you.

00:01:37.480 I want to talk to you about this first, Aaron, because this is from a policy perspective.

00:01:42.700 Before we get into some of the legal aspects of it, a fairly concerning development.

00:01:48.100 You've got the public sector union that represents the federal government employees saying that they had one day to weigh in on this.

00:01:55.180 And despite the fact that the liberals were campaigning on a similar program to this for several weeks in the election,

00:02:01.040 it seems like no one really planned it all that thoroughly.

00:02:04.240 Yeah, it's disconcerting to have a program that's going to have such a huge impact on so many people's lives.

00:02:09.560 And you don't really see any evidence that the government has consulted anyone, never mind the chief stakeholder involved, right?

00:02:14.880 I mean, this is a government that usually pays close attention to the public sector union.

00:02:18.920 Some would argue that they're a little too cozy.

00:02:20.840 And yet in this instance, you even see the unions themselves saying, well, nobody even bothered to get any input from us.

00:02:26.440 So I think it's more evidence that this is a policy that's sort of written on the back of a napkin.

00:02:31.160 It's not well thought out. You know, they've made a sort of very broad emotional case about vaccine, the need for a vaccine mandate,

00:02:39.420 but they haven't thought about any of the details or the implications or the needs for simple things like exceptions,

00:02:44.480 which, you know, virtually every other mandate and sort of rules around vaccinations for particular places has.

00:02:53.200 They have not really seemed to put much thought into it at the federal level.

00:02:55.980 And that's really disconcerting.

00:02:57.060 Yeah, let's talk about that, John, because we know that exemptions have been a key part of vaccine mandate discussions for several weeks and months.

00:03:06.120 Now, the liberal government has said that they're going to be very rare, very narrow and very onerous for people.

00:03:12.340 So they're trying to preempt against folks trying to just get a doctor's note or some religious exemption here,

00:03:17.860 which in and of itself seems to be a bit of a concerning priority.

00:03:21.080 But also the lack of accommodation on, you know, even allowing someone to work from home.

00:03:26.360 So the fact that they've specified here that even if you work from home, you're a remote worker,

00:03:30.980 you're not going to be in the office, you're going to have to be vaccinated to keep your job.

00:03:34.600 It sounds like by design they're not granting people much latitude here.

00:03:39.400 Indeed, that's it. It does sound like that.

00:03:41.860 And the legal aspect and the science are meshed in together.

00:03:47.240 You cannot separate them because under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,

00:03:52.520 governments can, in fact, violate our rights and freedoms.

00:03:56.520 However, the onus is on government to justify it.

00:04:00.560 So the Charter Section 7 right to life, liberty, security of the person very clearly includes a right to bodily autonomy

00:04:09.840 that's been upheld repeatedly by the Supreme Court of Canada and others.

00:04:15.560 What you get injected into your body is a personal, private decision,

00:04:21.560 and it is a charter right to not be injected with a substance.

00:04:27.000 And not only does that mean that the government cannot physically force you by taking four guys

00:04:34.460 and holding you down on the floor and injecting you, not only a forced vaccination like that,

00:04:40.360 but even a mandatory vaccination where there's very clear, very direct pressure like job losses,

00:04:47.080 the government, it's a violation of the Charter right to bodily autonomy.

00:04:50.760 So, you know, the government will have the onus in court of proving that this pandemic really warrants

00:05:00.440 this kind of a response.

00:05:01.940 And I know that's been the government's propaganda machine, which is the mainstream media,

00:05:06.300 the government-funded media has been saying for the last 18 months that, you know,

00:05:11.340 this is on par with bubonic plague or the Spanish flu of 1918.

00:05:15.000 But the truth, the reality based on government data and statistics is that this virus

00:05:22.820 and even the variants of this virus do not warrant this kind of a draconian violation

00:05:28.140 of Charter rights and freedoms.

00:05:30.840 Thank you, John.

00:05:32.220 I want to turn to you on this, Anthony.

00:05:33.760 We're talking about the federal government's mandate here.

00:05:36.140 Other municipalities are doing it, notably Toronto.

00:05:39.640 Crown corporations that weren't immediately under the federal government's vaccine mandate

00:05:44.000 have been encouraged to follow suit.

00:05:46.400 I think I saw CBC is planning something along these lines.

00:05:50.340 There's a cultural thrust behind this that I almost think is more concerning than the legal

00:05:55.480 and political action here in that a lot of people seem to welcome this.

00:05:59.600 Remember, Justin Trudeau was campaigning on this and won an election, however narrow a mandate it was.

00:06:05.100 He won, really wedging conservatives on this, of making them out to be the crazy ones

00:06:09.580 for thinking that your employment shouldn't be contingent on whether you're vaccinated.

00:06:14.420 There's absolutely a cultural component to this, Andrew, and a sense of positioning

00:06:18.720 and political positioning and going with the right narrative or the right trends.

00:06:23.340 And it's really alarming.

00:06:24.260 And one of the things that I've been lamenting for quite some time now is that Canada,

00:06:28.260 and I would say Ontario in particular, is in something of an information silo

00:06:32.560 in terms of how we typically think of ourselves as very cosmopolitan people.

00:06:36.140 People in Toronto are just always patting themselves in the back for having that sort of attitude

00:06:41.980 towards life and the world and news gathering.

00:06:44.520 And yet right now, we are incredibly ignorant of what's going on in other jurisdictions

00:06:47.980 and all across the world.

00:06:50.080 How are vaccine passports being rolled out in other jurisdictions?

00:06:53.260 Well, whatever you think of vaccine passports in general, do you support them?

00:06:56.660 Do you oppose them?

00:06:57.780 So many other countries, which in the past, we would look to them for best practices,

00:07:01.700 or in the case of the Northern European countries, we're told you must be more like those social

00:07:05.400 democratic nations.

00:07:06.740 We find that in France, for instance, their vaccine passport, well, what do you got to 0.97

00:07:11.140 do to get a green light on it?

00:07:12.780 Well, prove that you have had two doses of this vaccine.

00:07:15.200 Okay, that's what we have here.

00:07:16.260 Or prove that you've had natural immunity, that you have had COVID somewhat recently,

00:07:21.000 it's either 90 days or six months, somewhere in that time window, or show that you've taken

00:07:25.180 a negative test recently, whether it's in the past seven days or past three days,

00:07:28.500 whatever it is.

00:07:29.280 So there you go.

00:07:30.540 It's much more broad-based, and it's not just about we have to get this 100% or what

00:07:35.740 have you vaccination rate, but it seems more geared towards moderating things and making

00:07:41.040 things work as a society.

00:07:42.860 So many countries are doing this, and yet Ontario in particular, but other provinces,

00:07:48.580 really going with perhaps the most severe best practices approach you can find based

00:07:54.140 on pretty much anywhere in the world.

00:07:55.500 Yeah, I think that's an important point, and one I'd want to put to you, Aaron.

00:08:00.520 I mean, do you find that throughout the pandemic, either with this mandate or even other policies,

00:08:04.380 that the Canadian government has been trying to look and learn from the experiences elsewhere?

00:08:10.760 I recall in one case, I think it was the hotel quarantine case, the government said,

00:08:15.420 oh, no, no, no, we could have done things as harshly as Australia did, but we didn't.

00:08:19.440 But generally speaking, I don't know if there is much of a consideration of these best practices,

00:08:25.000 as I think Anthony termed them.

00:08:26.820 Yeah, not at all.

00:08:27.760 And I go even further and say that even within provinces, you don't see them looking at each

00:08:32.000 other.

00:08:32.280 I mean, sometimes you look at schools in Ontario as another example.

00:08:35.860 You had other provinces which kept schools open during the entire first couple of waves,

00:08:40.160 and there was no severe problem in schools.

00:08:43.000 And yet in Ontario, Doug Ford and others talked as if they left schools open, it would be

00:08:46.780 akin to murder.

00:08:47.540 So I think, to be fair, this is a problem that afflicts Canadian policy on a whole range

00:08:52.240 of issues and not just the pandemic.

00:08:53.860 It's as if we're the only country in the world and we're not supposed to look anywhere else

00:08:58.060 for any lessons, things like things like health care.

00:09:00.400 And if we do look anywhere, it's only to the United States and only for bad examples,

00:09:04.700 right?

00:09:04.940 Which is why when you get into things like debate about health care in this country,

00:09:08.140 the only answer a lot of defenders of the status quo have is, well, at least we're not

00:09:11.960 America.

00:09:12.360 Well, there are 200 other countries in the world, including some of these countries that

00:09:18.000 like Anthony points out that we're often supposed to be mimicking in other policy areas.

00:09:21.600 A lot of them have two-tier health care systems which get better bang for their buck and better

00:09:26.620 outcomes in Canada.

00:09:27.340 But we're not allowed to talk about those.

00:09:28.740 We're only supposed to talk about the American system.

00:09:30.620 So, look, I think it's a big problem.

00:09:33.480 And I think I would just say the other thing that's been missing in most sort of COVID debates,

00:09:38.700 if you can even call them debates, because they're mostly just sort of declarations by

00:09:41.780 governments that we have to take the most extreme position, is a sense of proportionality.

00:09:46.380 You know, I certainly don't take the view that COVID is a hoax.

00:09:48.960 I believe it is high risk to a certain group of people, and I think it needs to be taken

00:09:52.380 seriously.

00:09:52.840 But there is no real weighing of the cost-benefit of a lot of these policies.

00:09:57.540 I think the benefit is overplayed, and the costs are downplayed, and there is a lot more

00:10:02.740 cost in a lot of ways of these policies than politicians are comfortable discussing.

00:10:08.520 No, I think you're bang on there.

00:10:10.620 And I will say, I'm not a lawyer.

00:10:12.320 You're a lawyer, Aaron, John.

00:10:13.480 You're a lawyer as well.

00:10:14.700 What I do understand, and correct me if I'm wrong here, John, is that if the government

00:10:18.240 is going to infringe on your constitutional rights, they're going to invoke Section 1

00:10:23.240 and apply what they say are reasonable limits, the infringement has to be as narrow and targeted

00:10:28.640 as possible.

00:10:29.580 And that's, first off, do I have it right?

00:10:31.580 And secondly, that's not what's happening here.

00:10:35.940 I agree entirely with Aaron.

00:10:38.540 I mean, COVID is real, and it is a serious threat to a certain demographic, particularly,

00:10:44.280 for example, if you are 85 years old, you're in a nursing home, you've got cancer, heart

00:10:49.640 disease, emphysema, you have serious comorbidities, COVID will shorten your life.

00:10:55.160 And so it's real, but whenever a government violates charter rights and freedoms, proportionality

00:11:04.560 is part of it, and you have to weigh the benefits against the costs and the harms of your policies.

00:11:12.740 There was a report coming out of Simon Fraser University within the past six months, I think

00:11:18.380 it's a Dr. Allen, but I might not have the name right, but he said that the lockdown measures

00:11:24.820 have cost at least three times as many lives as what has been saved, minimal, and possibly

00:11:32.720 10 times, 20 times.

00:11:34.780 So that's the kind of scientific research that governments seem to be ignoring, and the

00:11:39.980 past 18 months has just been this badgering propaganda that lockdowns are the only solution,

00:11:48.080 lockdowns are saving lives, and now vaccines are the only solution, and so detached from

00:11:54.720 science, and even from that spirit of humility where you would say, well, you know, what is

00:12:00.780 the truth?

00:12:01.240 What is the data?

00:12:01.900 Let's look at the data.

00:12:02.680 Let's have a cost-benefit analysis.

00:12:05.200 There's not a single province in Canada that, to my knowledge, has actually conducted an

00:12:10.460 open-ended cost-benefit analysis of lockdown measures.

00:12:15.100 Well, there's been some wordplay here, too.

00:12:18.020 I note, going back to Justin Trudeau's announcement on this and some of the rhetoric he used in the

00:12:23.280 campaign, that sure, you have a choice to not get vaccinated, but you don't have a choice

00:12:28.140 to get on the plane if you're not unvaccinated, or to get on a train, or to go to an office.

00:12:32.760 And when you're threatening people's employment, when you're taking away their mobility rights

00:12:36.640 in effect within Canada, this isn't really a choice.

00:12:41.080 No, it reminds me of a scene in The Godfather where they're talking about, you know, well,

00:12:46.820 my father made him an offer he couldn't refuse, you know, and I said, well, what was that?

00:12:52.740 And he said, well, you know, my father said, I'm going to count to 10, and when I get to

00:12:58.760 number 10, either your signature or your brains are going to be on that contract.

00:13:03.600 Well, technically, there was a choice there, but it's not fair to call it a choice.

00:13:08.780 If you've got a gun to your head, you know, you can no longer support your family because

00:13:12.480 you're going to lose your job.

00:13:14.120 That's not a choice in any meaningful sense of the word when you're threatening job losses

00:13:19.880 or, you know, threatening that you cannot get on an airplane, you cannot leave the country

00:13:26.280 effectively.

00:13:27.740 Those are not choices.

00:13:29.780 So this is an important point.

00:13:31.680 And this is something I saw a couple of people bring up online.

00:13:34.440 And I want to go to you on this first, Aaron.

00:13:37.600 Right now, the Canada-US border is closed.

00:13:40.060 Now, no Canadian has a right to enter another country. 0.98

00:13:43.520 That is something that we accept that other countries can set out their own policies on.

00:13:48.740 But you do have a right as a Canadian to leave the country, assuming there's somewhere else 0.91

00:13:53.160 to go.

00:13:53.700 The land border with Canada and the US is indefinitely closed.

00:13:57.540 It's up for renewal, I think, on October 21st.

00:14:00.220 As of this point, the only way you can, and there's no land border anywhere else.

00:14:03.520 So the only way you can go outside the country, apart by, you know, swimming across the Atlantic

00:14:07.840 or Pacific, I guess, is to take a plane or take some commercial vessel, both of which are

00:14:13.500 going to now have this vaccine mandate.

00:14:15.360 So is there a constitutional argument that could be applied here that Canadians are being 0.93

00:14:21.320 denied the right to leave their country because they can't get on a plane and there's

00:14:24.980 no land border to cross?

00:14:26.340 I think that the fact is, absolutely, given the rules in place now, your mobility rights

00:14:32.080 have effectively been abolished in this country.

00:14:35.140 And I think that, you know, there's a very, very high bar for the government.

00:14:38.940 As John says, the government has the right.

00:14:40.940 Our rights are not absolute.

00:14:41.860 They have the right to curtail our rights, but the onus is on them to explain why they

00:14:46.560 are doing it and that they are doing it in a way that is minimizing the impact.

00:14:50.720 And they have not even engaged in that analysis.

00:14:52.460 And that, to me, you know, just speaking broadly about that issue, that's the most fascinating

00:14:56.140 thing to me is, you know, I think many people would be, they could be convinced on things

00:15:01.080 like vaccine mandates or passports, but the government needs to make the case about the

00:15:04.800 specifics.

00:15:05.080 And they're not.

00:15:05.660 They're just sort of asserting that this is what we're going to do.

00:15:07.960 And if you question it, then you don't care about people dying.

00:15:11.460 And I think that's extremely disconcerting that, you know, even legitimate concerns raised,

00:15:18.340 for example, people who might want to get vaccinated but can't, if you're going to treat those people

00:15:23.160 identically to people who might not want to, I just, I don't think that that's, I don't

00:15:27.240 think that's justified at all.

00:15:28.460 And I really, it's just really disappointing that there are so many, and we know this from

00:15:33.360 public opinion surveys, that a lot of people seem to be in favour of vaccine passports and

00:15:38.100 mandates.

00:15:38.840 And the justification seems to simply be that because it makes me feel safer and that the

00:15:43.000 ends justify the means.

00:15:44.100 They're not concerned about the details and the evidence.

00:15:47.060 They're just, if it makes me feel safer, I'm not really too concerned about other people's

00:15:50.060 rights violating, being violated.

00:15:51.500 And that's really troubling to me.

00:15:53.240 Have you been witnessing this as well, Anthony, when you look around and hear what people are saying

00:15:57.520 here, that there seems to be this idea that we have a right to feel safe, not to be safe,

00:16:02.780 but a right to feel safe, and that all of these measures, if they make us feel safer,

00:16:06.920 are therefore justified?

00:16:08.960 I'll never forget an email I got from a reader a few months ago where I guess I complained

00:16:14.060 about a rights violation and someone wrote in and said, oh, give me a break.

00:16:17.240 Name a single right that has been violated.

00:16:19.560 This is all being done because we are in a pandemic, because people are dying.

00:16:23.260 This is, all these actions are necessary.

00:16:25.420 And we go, well, hold on a second.

00:16:26.800 Step back.

00:16:28.320 Maybe you believe everything that has been done is necessary.

00:16:30.820 Maybe you're one of those COVID zero people who wants even more done.

00:16:33.740 But there are rights violations going on.

00:16:35.640 In fact, pretty much most rights are being violated right now.

00:16:38.200 You're just saying you are okay with that.

00:16:40.920 And I think that's the sort of discussion.

00:16:44.140 That's the question people need to ponder over themselves.

00:16:46.480 Yes, many rights are being violated right now.

00:16:48.840 And to the point of Aaron and John, maybe, you know, those can be overruled and various

00:16:53.820 sections can talk over each other and make it work and so forth.

00:16:57.060 But it is happening.

00:16:58.500 And you kind of deny it's happening.

00:17:00.160 And that's where I think it was Aaron brought in the proportionality issue.

00:17:03.820 That's where we really need to sit down and talk about the fact, okay, is it really such

00:17:08.060 that people need to lose their jobs or people need to be, you know, tackled by police if

00:17:11.700 they don't wear their mask in this one circumstance or not?

00:17:15.060 Or should the person get a fine like one would, you know, when you don't pay your parking and

00:17:19.720 it lapses and so forth?

00:17:20.700 Let's talk about that proportionality.

00:17:22.560 Yeah, and I want to ask you as well, Anthony, because my theory, and I'm open to being

00:17:27.860 challenged on this, but my theory was that Justin Trudeau is trying to make as broad a

00:17:32.880 vaccine mandate as possible, because it's the closest that can, that the government can

00:17:38.320 really get to mandatory vaccination for the general population.

00:17:41.480 So you do one that applies to as many people as possible, air travelers, train travelers,

00:17:46.360 public servants, people that work from home for the public service, the janitors that go

00:17:51.020 into government buildings on contract, because that's sort of the closest they can get to

00:17:56.120 a mandate under the legal means available.

00:17:58.740 But I also realize that that sounds moderately conspiratorial, but plausible at the same time.

00:18:04.940 No, I don't think it's conspiratorial at all, because we have a de facto mandatory vaccine

00:18:09.920 in that if you wish to participate in society in the way one would have pre-pandemic, you cannot

00:18:15.320 anymore unless you're not vaccinated.

00:18:17.360 So a mandatory vaccine to live your life.

00:18:20.000 Of course, you can navigate the situation and, and, you know, let's be honest.

00:18:24.480 I mean, this is clearly there were science fiction novels written about, you know, people

00:18:28.560 who, who, who go rogue and, you know, live under the radar of society to avoid these odd

00:18:33.440 rules and so forth.

00:18:34.380 And they make it work, but they're, you know, part of this different code of folks living

00:18:37.600 underground.

00:18:38.100 And we can all laugh at those books that were written, but it is a similar situation.

00:18:41.860 I mean, you know, I, you know, you, we've all heard the stories of people who, for instance,

00:18:46.540 were running the, the illegal barber shops back when things were shut down, visiting people's

00:18:50.360 homes when they weren't supposed to.

00:18:51.500 That was a thing that happened right now.

00:18:53.300 There were places clandestinely messaging each other saying, okay, I'm a restaurant.

00:18:57.280 I know I got to do the vaccine passport thing.

00:18:59.440 I guess if you present it to me, I'll accept it, but I'm not bothering people about it.

00:19:03.080 And there's one or two places in the media that are making a big show of it.

00:19:06.200 And some of them have lost their liquor licenses for it, but there are many more that are doing

00:19:09.860 it.

00:19:10.860 They're talking off the grid with each other and their communities.

00:19:13.200 And it's a whisper campaign and so forth.

00:19:15.340 I mean, it's really quite something to see this happen.

00:19:18.060 Ontario printer, Doug Ford was adamantly against vaccine passports before he was in support

00:19:22.760 of it.

00:19:23.020 I find it funny that to say now, oh, I don't support these passports is, I don't know,

00:19:27.040 quasi conspiratorial, even though the very people implementing them were fervently against

00:19:31.100 them before.

00:19:32.060 And Doug Ford was quite a prophet when he said this would create a split society because, well,

00:19:36.660 he has created a split society by forcing people into these choices, navigating this

00:19:42.440 landscape.

00:19:43.740 Yeah.

00:19:44.280 And I'll go to you as the token Albertan on the panel here, John, because Jason Kenney,

00:19:48.920 very similar thing was, was the last holdout.

00:19:51.580 I mean, I guess Saskatchewan and Alberta were the last holdouts on opposing vaccine passports.

00:19:56.300 And then Jason Kenney, a couple of weeks ago, puts this in, but again, doesn't call it

00:20:00.240 a vaccine passport.

00:20:01.200 And when we talk about the wordplay here, he says it's a restrictions exemption program.

00:20:06.280 So if you're a business, you don't need to have a vaccine passport.

00:20:09.720 You could also close, but if you, if you're open, this is what you have to do to get out

00:20:13.880 of it.

00:20:14.120 And I think your point about the offer you can't refuse is a valid one here where it's

00:20:18.480 the illusion of having a choice.

00:20:21.440 Yeah.

00:20:22.380 When I, I think Andrew made a very important point that there's a difference between saying

00:20:29.160 that no rights have been violated versus you're okay with the rights violations.

00:20:34.940 Those are, those are two very different positions.

00:20:38.580 I really think it's not, it's almost beyond debate that in fact, the government measures

00:20:45.160 do restrict our charter freedoms to move to travel, entering and leaving a country freely

00:20:49.800 is one of the hallmarks of our liberal democracies of a free and democratic society.

00:20:55.820 You can enter and leave and enter and leave.

00:20:58.180 And sure, you know, having to carry like a normal passport, not a vaccine passport.

00:21:02.540 It's a minor restriction, but governments can regulate these rights.

00:21:06.340 This is not just regulating a right.

00:21:09.320 This is taking away the right to enter and leave Canada freely and all kinds of civil liberties

00:21:14.300 to associate freely with your business.

00:21:17.600 When you patronize a business, I could go on and on.

00:21:21.880 These are rights violations.

00:21:22.920 We can have a debate on whether they're justified or not.

00:21:25.520 But what we have now in Alberta and everywhere is, I would call it medical apartheid.

00:21:32.260 And we have first class citizens and second class citizens.

00:21:35.700 And your first class citizen, if you've been vaccinated, the requisite number of times,

00:21:43.200 and don't think for a minute, it's going to stop at two.

00:21:46.180 In Israel, they've now mandated your vaccine passport is not valid until you've had your third shot.

00:21:51.980 So two years from now, Canadians, your vaccine passport will not be valid unless you've had the seventh shot 0.81

00:21:59.540 to deal with the second wave of the fifth variant, whatever.

00:22:03.780 Government will be mandating injections once every six months.

00:22:07.780 And if you choose not to get that seventh injection, your passport will not be valid

00:22:15.040 and you will be a second class citizen.

00:22:17.180 And so it is in many ways similar to the racial apartheid that was enforced in South Africa

00:22:25.940 where you had to have the correct papers.

00:22:28.440 You know, if you were not a white and you wanted to work in a white zone, 0.51

00:22:32.240 you needed your legal official papers to be allowed to be there.

00:22:36.000 Otherwise, it was a whites only zone. 0.64

00:22:37.680 And now we have zones all over the place where only vaccinated people are allowed to go.

00:22:43.120 One of the big concerns that I have, and I'm sure you'd agree with this, Aaron,

00:22:48.780 is that government does not do temporary.

00:22:51.920 Government does not set up temporary infrastructure very well at all.

00:22:55.800 When we were hearing even about the federal vaccine passport for international travel,

00:23:00.300 the government was saying, yeah, we'll come out with one in December of 2021

00:23:03.880 that will last about a year until we get a permanent one in place.

00:23:07.420 I'm like, well, hang on.

00:23:08.040 We're already talking about permanent documentation for the vaccine passport system

00:23:12.240 starting in, you know, the end of 2022.

00:23:14.980 Is there a concern that you have that a lot of this infrastructure will outlive COVID,

00:23:20.140 will outlive this particular pandemic?

00:23:23.040 Yeah, I think so.

00:23:23.680 I worry about the wrong lessons being learned about some of these things.

00:23:27.440 And look, I don't want to, I'm not a conspiracy theorist.

00:23:30.000 I don't think a lot of governments plan to make these things permanent,

00:23:34.240 but they end up becoming permanent because the yardsticks move

00:23:37.120 and because governments realize they can get away with it over time.

00:23:39.760 You've seen governments, I mean, Anthony had mentioned flip-flopping by Doug Ford,

00:23:44.700 Jason Kennedy flip-flopping, even Justin Trudeau, let's not forget,

00:23:46.920 as recently as the spring said that it would be wrong, you know,

00:23:49.960 to have these, to impose these sort of de facto requirements of vaccination.

00:23:54.700 So they changed their mind and I think they'll change their mind in terms of temporary things.

00:23:58.260 If they think that they can get away with it, odds are they're going to try it again.

00:24:02.000 Yeah, and one interesting point here, and I know this goes outside of this week's announcement

00:24:06.800 and looks at the bigger picture here, but the poor communications from the government at this,

00:24:11.700 at many levels, has been noteworthy from actually masks make things worse

00:24:15.940 to masks are mandatory, border closures are racist, border closures are necessary,

00:24:20.000 we don't want a vaccine passport, we want one, it's up to the provinces, 0.99

00:24:23.800 okay, the federal government's going to act.

00:24:25.280 And it becomes very difficult to have any buy-in from the population when,

00:24:30.300 to John's point about the, about third doses, fourth doses,

00:24:34.020 that's a concern I'm hearing from people that were on the fence.

00:24:36.900 They're saying, you know, I just, what's the point if in, you know, three months,

00:24:39.680 I'm not going to be, I'm going to go, I'm going to be de-vaccinated basically.

00:24:42.680 And I do think that there's not a lot of,

00:24:45.980 not a lot of public buy-in right now to what the government's selling.

00:24:50.220 Yeah, I totally agree.

00:24:51.700 And like, it's not, I think it's easy to understand

00:24:54.340 why people would be skeptical of government

00:24:57.700 just based on the record during COVID alone.

00:25:00.420 Nevermind if you're, you know, and I think something that's often not said

00:25:03.240 is that when we talk about people who are vaccine hesitant, for example,

00:25:07.280 it's not this sort of stereotypical guy who lives in the woods,

00:25:11.080 who, you know, with a gun.

00:25:12.300 There are a lot of people, for example, in immigrant communities

00:25:14.520 who come from countries where they don't trust government for good reason.

00:25:19.140 And, you know, to sort of accuse these people of being conspiracy theorists

00:25:22.540 because they're rightly suspicious of authority

00:25:25.180 and just not taking everything for granted,

00:25:27.460 I don't think that that's unreasonable.

00:25:29.460 I mean, look, I'm a vaccinated person.

00:25:32.040 I would like to encourage other people to get vaccinated.

00:25:34.500 And I think governments are within their ambit to be encouraging

00:25:38.260 and to try and, you know, educate people in a way.

00:25:42.760 But I do not support coercion.

00:25:44.240 And I do not think the governments can say,

00:25:45.940 oh, well, our carrots didn't work,

00:25:47.420 so we're going to get the stick out now.

00:25:48.700 I think that's a very dangerous road to go down.

00:25:51.320 Yeah, and let me go to you on this, Anthony,

00:25:53.280 because I know that when provinces have announced these passports,

00:25:56.360 they've seen in the immediate days following uptake and vaccination.

00:26:00.640 And there's a part of me that looks at that and says that almost reinforces that it works.

00:26:06.300 It almost legitimizes that method

00:26:08.680 because there are some people that are on the fence that do not fit in,

00:26:12.600 as Aaron said, to that, you know, anti-vax box.

00:26:15.040 They're just people that haven't gotten around to it.

00:26:17.200 They haven't seen the need to.

00:26:18.760 And when those people get vaccinated because of a vaccine passport,

00:26:22.720 the government tends to claim victory.

00:26:25.800 Yeah, no, it's quite funny.

00:26:27.560 I mean, if you force people to do something, they will probably do it.

00:26:32.660 That doesn't suggest that you were right to force them in the first place.

00:26:37.180 And I know we've been discussing the degree to which the vaccine mandates are and are not,

00:26:41.040 you know, pretty much mandatory vaccination widespread,

00:26:44.800 but that's the attitude a lot of people feel themselves placed in.

00:26:48.400 I mean, coercion is the phrase.

00:26:50.460 It is interesting when we talk about the public conversation,

00:26:52.960 and I'll slightly disagree with you and Aaron,

00:26:55.600 and that I have found the buy-in to be remarkably high in terms of how the goalposts shift.

00:27:01.880 I mean, the basic premise that if you're going to be pulled,

00:27:04.600 do you support vaccine passports or just, you know, people hanging out at the cafe or the park,

00:27:09.160 running into each other, talking about it, saying,

00:27:11.480 I don't support these vaccine passports. 1.00

00:27:13.260 That's really seen as a radical thing to say in Ontario,

00:27:16.580 even though the chief medical officer said exactly the same thing just two months ago,

00:27:21.980 even though the premier said exactly the same just two months ago,

00:27:25.280 many top officials, many top doctors on television saying the same thing.

00:27:29.240 I happen to think they were right, and I do not support Ontario's vaccine passport system.

00:27:33.900 And it's interesting that that was the mainstream view.

00:27:36.340 I mean, we talked about how culture changes over, you know, oh, 10 years.

00:27:39.320 Remember 10 years ago, you couldn't say this.

00:27:41.060 Now it's 10 weeks, it's 10 days even, how quickly attitudes change.

00:27:46.820 So I would have thought public buy-in for many of these measures would,

00:27:51.260 there'd be a drop-off percentage.

00:27:53.120 So the more and more severe the rules go, the more and more things get by,

00:27:56.480 the more and more we have nuanced and contextualized information to help us learn

00:28:00.180 exactly who is high risk of COVID and what we can do to assist those persons and so forth.

00:28:04.560 Sadly, I'm not so sure that that conversion rate has happened as high as I thought.

00:28:09.820 And public buy-in does seem to me to remain alarmingly high.

00:28:14.360 Now, that's actually fair.

00:28:16.060 And I'd be interested in seeing some polling on this, you know, do you trust the government?

00:28:19.780 Very simple question, but I feel it might actually pain me to see how high that number is.

00:28:23.920 I don't know if you want to take this, John, or you, Aaron, I'll throw it out to you both,

00:28:27.780 but what recourse is available to federal workers?

00:28:31.020 Can they file a constitutional challenge or do they have to hope the union takes it up

00:28:35.860 and go through some arbitration process if they want to challenge this policy?

00:28:42.520 You can take charter violations, you can take to court in the abstract,

00:28:47.180 or you can wait and get a real client.

00:28:53.340 So, you know, as soon as these laws come into force, you know,

00:28:57.780 any person or organization could already take them to court.

00:29:01.180 If you want a more persuasive fact scenario and a better chance of success,

00:29:05.460 it would be somebody that has lost their job and has been fired for not getting injected

00:29:12.460 with the mRNA substance that, you know, by the way,

00:29:17.560 has not been subjected to any long-term testing in humans.

00:29:20.740 So, you know, it's not, there are valid reasons for not getting it.

00:29:26.580 So, yeah, federal workers would have to, if they want to challenge it in court,

00:29:31.040 they would need to get fired first.

00:29:33.300 If they quit, you don't really have a legal claim,

00:29:37.240 or certainly not as strong of a legal claim as a situation where the employer says,

00:29:42.220 you are fired and I'm terminating your employment because you are not vaccinated. 1.00

00:29:47.900 That gives you a stronger legal foundation to take it to court.

00:29:53.040 The aspect of this that I wonder is if their whole intention is to put the fear into people

00:29:58.940 and then not actually act on it for that reason.

00:30:01.040 To avoid having to defend against a real challenge.

00:30:04.420 Of course, if news travels that it's a fairly toothless mandate,

00:30:08.380 then that may happen anyway against them.

00:30:10.420 But one interesting point of this,

00:30:12.780 Justin Trudeau was talking about how these are the strongest,

00:30:15.160 most stringent measures in the world.

00:30:16.960 And I never want to be accused of urging the government to do more.

00:30:20.040 But I do find it interesting that for something they're arguing is meant to be so serious,

00:30:25.020 they aren't actually requiring proof, Aaron.

00:30:27.220 They're requiring an attestation.

00:30:28.800 And obviously, they're saying that lying is a disciplinable offense,

00:30:33.260 to use a word that I'm not sure is real.

00:30:35.480 But they're not even going as far as they're saying they're going in some ways.

00:30:40.200 Yeah, look, you asked the question about whether they're really just trying to spook people

00:30:43.540 into doing something.

00:30:44.420 And I think that's a large part of it.

00:30:45.620 In fact, that's the sort of implicit purpose of these passports.

00:30:48.960 It seems to be that, you know, it's funny when I see people, you know, sometimes online,

00:30:53.940 they'll say things like, well, you know, I feel so much safer now going to a restaurant

00:30:56.800 knowing that there's a vaccine passport.

00:30:58.760 Well, we all know that even vaccinated people can't.

00:31:01.500 There are breakthrough cases and they can still spread it.

00:31:03.780 And you sort of see people who jump into the argument and say, well, no,

00:31:06.920 the real reason is to encourage people to get vaccinated.

00:31:09.780 So I was saying these, if you're acknowledging that the actual prohibition is not serving

00:31:15.700 a public health purpose, then all you're left with is that it's supposed to be a pressuring

00:31:19.620 device to get people to, you know, to get increased the vaccination update rate.

00:31:23.900 So I like, I just, I find that fascinating that the publicly stated reason, oh, we're making

00:31:30.000 it safe, safer in spaces.

00:31:31.480 It's not actually defended by anybody who knows anything about disease.

00:31:35.120 They say, well, the real reason is it's a nudge to people saying, well, you know, you might

00:31:39.560 like going to restaurants.

00:31:40.500 And so we're going to, we're not going to make you, you're going to take that away from

00:31:43.560 you unless you get vaccinated.

00:31:44.720 That's the real reason behind things like passports.

00:31:47.800 Well, that, that bait and switch though is very key.

00:31:50.420 And I know, Anthony, you talked about this a while ago in the context of Ontario, where

00:31:54.280 Ontario's government never really thought that lockdowns were helping people or saving lives.

00:32:01.200 It was meant to reduce mobility.

00:32:03.220 They wanted to give people fewer reasons to leave the house.

00:32:06.760 It had nothing to do with whether it was safe to go into a store, nothing to do with whether

00:32:10.920 it was safe to go into any other thing that had been shut down.

00:32:14.140 They just wanted to stop people from moving.

00:32:16.060 But when we talk about the legality of this, you can't all of a sudden start prescribing

00:32:20.860 off-label use of lockdowns, which is, I fear what, to Aaron's point, this whole thing is

00:32:25.940 as well.

00:32:27.200 Yeah.

00:32:27.720 And the problem is a lot of these things that were just brought out were brought in out

00:32:31.460 of an abundance of caution, a lot of members of the public, even, you know, very educated

00:32:35.680 people took that to mean, no, this was actually extremely risky.

00:32:39.040 So you're in a low-risk neighborhood.

00:32:41.480 You know, you're a young, healthy person.

00:32:43.760 If you go to the grocery store sort of without a mask, and if you at all get anywhere close

00:32:47.620 to someone, you're going to get this illness and you're going to very quickly be hospitalized

00:32:51.300 and you're going to die from it. 0.80

00:32:52.460 And most of that is just not true, so much so that the federal contact tracing app that

00:32:58.120 Dr. Theresa Tam, I guess, oversaw, that doesn't register contact between people unless you're

00:33:03.120 together, unless you're within six feet of each other for 15-minute duration, even if

00:33:08.580 one of those people test positive for COVID.

00:33:10.320 So if you're standing beside someone at the grocery store for 10 minutes, 10 consistent

00:33:14.360 minutes at the checkout line, and you're four feet apart, and that person later tests

00:33:17.980 positive for COVID, you will not get an alert.

00:33:20.500 Because Dr. Tam is telling you, you can't really get COVID from them in that situation.

00:33:25.800 And yet at the same time, we're currently in an environment in Ontario where you're going

00:33:29.400 into a grocery store where I know that doesn't have the vaccine passports, but probably 80%,

00:33:33.680 90% of people are vaccinated, yet you still have to wear a mask, and you're still encouraged

00:33:38.960 to sort of be fearful in that environment, even though it's been established by none other

00:33:44.320 than Dr. Tam herself, that you're not really catching COVID.

00:33:47.280 John, one of the painful realities that we've seen in the last year and a half has been that

00:33:53.980 these restrictions are only ever stacked.

00:33:56.620 They're never removed.

00:33:57.640 They're never taken away.

00:33:58.800 There's never a trade-off.

00:33:59.980 Let's look at airplanes and trains, for example.

00:34:02.080 The government hasn't said, you know what?

00:34:04.080 Everyone on every commercial plane in Canada is going to be vaccinated, so masks off.

00:34:08.820 Have a good time.

00:34:09.640 You're going to be able to fly freely.

00:34:10.960 And we've seen this in classrooms as well.

00:34:13.520 Universities in Ontario and elsewhere have mandated vaccination.

00:34:17.680 They've not said, OK, you can take your masks off.

00:34:21.040 And that's where I get very concerned, is knowing that we're not, not that I think liberty should

00:34:27.160 be traded, but we're not even being given the courtesy of, OK, let's give a little for

00:34:33.780 what we're taking.

00:34:34.400 Well, liberty has died in the hearts of many Canadians.

00:34:40.980 That's the core problem.

00:34:44.040 And if a love for liberty dies in the human heart and if it dies in culture, it's pretty

00:34:51.320 hard to, you know, revive it using politics or even the courts.

00:34:58.140 But this is, we're in a very serious crisis where people are still scared.

00:35:04.020 There's no rational basis.

00:35:06.020 I mean, statistically, if you are under 70, you have a greater risk of dying from a car

00:35:13.620 accident than you do dying from COVID.

00:35:16.820 And I could go on and on with all these, I mean, death rates in Canada in 2020.

00:35:20.860 If COVID was truly the scary, you know, the Spanish flu of 1918 equivalent, you would have 0.99

00:35:29.080 seen a significant uptake in the death rates in Canada in 2020.

00:35:34.340 Well, death rates in Canada in 2020 were very much in line with 2019, 2018, 2017.

00:35:40.500 That's not my opinion.

00:35:41.740 That's simply what Statistics Canada will tell you when you look at the data.

00:35:45.440 But unless and until we can get rid of the unfounded fear, and again, I say unfounded

00:35:52.500 fear, there is a legitimate healthy fear of COVID, that it is real, it is a threat to

00:35:57.240 some people.

00:35:58.700 But there's no basis in reality for the entire population to be scared of this and to be

00:36:04.680 giving up rights and freedoms.

00:36:06.320 But unless and until we can counter this fear, as long as people are, as long as the majority

00:36:11.640 of people are living in a state of fear, they will continue to acquiesce to more and more

00:36:16.800 stripping away.

00:36:18.760 And there's no end to this.

00:36:20.320 I mean, once people accept a vaccine passport for COVID injections, why would they object

00:36:26.860 to government expanding the vaccine passport to other things?

00:36:30.040 Like, you know, we just want to make sure that you have not visited any hateful internet

00:36:35.220 websites.

00:36:36.100 So we just want to see your passport to make sure that in the last three months, you have

00:36:41.260 not visited any hateful websites as determined by the government.

00:36:46.060 Are people going to object to that?

00:36:50.040 I was hoping to end on a cheery note, and then John opened with liberty is dead.

00:36:54.820 Aaron, do you have any optimistic wisdom you can close this out on?

00:36:58.760 Well, look, I would just say that I hope that more and more people start to decouple fear

00:37:04.960 from acting prudently.

00:37:06.300 I think you can take COVID seriously without being scared 24-7.

00:37:09.540 And I think it's unfortunate that, you know, governments seem to have decided early on that

00:37:14.080 the only way to get people to take it seriously was to scare the crap out of them.

00:37:18.020 The problem with that is, of course, it's hard to bring them back.

00:37:21.100 And nothing the government has done since has sort of, we've abolished all perspective on

00:37:26.440 this.

00:37:26.840 And I think it's just troubling to me that there are still some people that are living like

00:37:31.000 it's March 2020 in terms of fear, even though we've learned so much since then.

00:37:35.780 And of course, the other danger with that is that, you know, if everything is equally

00:37:39.320 risky, then people start to question every measure.

00:37:41.840 And if you, I think it just undermines the government's efforts.

00:37:44.700 If every single rule is equally important, then people are going to start to say, well,

00:37:48.420 I can't follow 200 rules.

00:37:49.580 I'm going to follow none of them.

00:37:50.400 So I have hope that we will finally turn the corner on this.

00:37:54.720 But yeah, it can seem bleak some days.

00:37:58.400 Aaron Woodrick, Director of the Domestic Policy Program at McDonnell-Laurier Institute.

00:38:02.940 Thank you for coming on.

00:38:04.260 John Carpe, Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms President.

00:38:07.180 Thank you, John.

00:38:08.120 And Anthony Fury of Postmedia Toronto Sun.

00:38:11.420 And do check out his podcast, Full Comment.

00:38:13.900 Thank you.

00:38:14.460 Thanks to all three of you for coming on.

00:38:16.160 Thank you.

00:38:17.340 Thank you, Andrew.

00:38:18.700 That does it for me.

00:38:19.680 Again, if I ever want to end on a cheery note, I can't do a civil liberties topic because

00:38:23.280 I'm inclined to agree with John.

00:38:25.400 There often isn't a lot to be cheery about as far as liberties are concerned in Canada.

00:38:30.500 But that's why we're here.

00:38:31.540 If you can't smile about it, all you can do is cry.

00:38:33.680 So I try to find ways to do the former, hard as it is.

00:38:36.980 We've got to end things there.

00:38:38.020 My thanks to you all for tuning in and also to John, Aaron, and Anthony for coming on the

00:38:43.560 show.

00:38:43.820 We will talk to you all soon with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show.

00:38:47.420 So thank you, God bless, and good day.

00:38:49.600 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:38:51.440 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - October 08, 2021

Trudeau's vaccine mandate is unconcerned with civil liberties or science

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript