00:00:00.000all right hello everyone welcome to our Civitas Canada digital salon this evening titled
00:00:11.280universities in the time of covid and vaccine mandates this event is being produced in
00:00:16.560partnership with true north my name is Lindsay Shepard I am a fellow with true north as well as
00:00:21.920the administrator of Civitas Canada and I will serve as the moderator this evening tonight we
00:00:27.600have four top-notch panelists who will be discussing the legal and ethical implications of vaccine
00:00:34.240mandates on campus as well as how these new mandates are affecting the campus experience
00:00:39.680for students and faculty our four panelists have each kindly prepared an opening presentation for us
00:00:46.480of about 10 minutes in length and then I will have one or two questions for the panel at which point
00:00:52.640we will then cut the recording and move into our private moderated Q&A session which will be for
00:00:57.920Civitas Canada members only so if you are watching this right now on social media you know on youtube
00:01:03.600or facebook check out CivitasCanada.ca for more information on how to become a member of Civitas
00:01:09.920so that you can receive exclusive access to events like this one as well as Q&A sessions like the one
00:01:14.880we're going to have tonight allow me to now introduce the speakers in the order they will be presenting
00:01:22.640Dr. Julie Panessi is a professor of ethics at Huron University College which is affiliated with
00:01:27.840Western University a video of her speaking out against mandated vaccinations went viral recently
00:01:34.080where she explained how she had been placed on a leave from her university because she does not
00:01:38.400want to submit to the mandate so I'm sure we'll get an update on that case tonight
00:01:44.080Alison Pajovic is a lawyer at the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms who is representing two
00:01:49.760students at Seneca College who are facing roadblocks to their education because they do not wish to
00:01:55.280receive the COVID vaccination and showing a negative test is not an option at their college
00:02:02.160Benjamin Gabay is a graduate student in music composition at the University of Toronto who is
00:02:07.760acting as the voice for students at the U of T who are concerned with the ethical implications of COVID
00:02:12.800vaccine mandates on campus and he has been advocating to his university administration on this subject
00:02:19.760and last but not least we have Dr. Stephen Pelek who holds a PhD in biochemistry and is a professor in
00:02:26.080the department of medicine at the University of British Columbia he has been voicing his concerns
00:02:30.880about mandated vaccinations to the UBC administration and I'm sure we will be hearing more about that this
00:02:37.120evening so let's get into our discussion tonight starting off with Dr. Panessi thanks Lindsay very much can
00:02:46.240you hear me okay yes okay well hi everybody and welcome I thought I would start off with two stories
00:02:53.760the first is my own experience with the university mandates as Lindsay said I recorded a video the first
00:03:00.160week of September relaying my concerns about the mandate and in which I reported my dismissal and that
00:03:06.480went viral and it was reported by all mainstream media in Canada and that by itself I think is an unusual fact
00:03:14.480because in making a personal medical choice I only did what the last 40 years of medical ethics has
00:03:21.760been established to support and what legislation in Canada including in Ontario's Health Care Consent Act
00:03:28.240has been meant to protect on August 16th I wrote to my dean expressing my concerns with the campus-wide mandate
00:03:37.600I got no response with the start of term quickly approaching on September 7th I wrote again to state
00:03:44.880that I would not comply with the mandate and on September 16th I was terminated with cause so that's my story
00:03:54.160the second story is a story of five Ontario university students Camilla Lebel Ferrell 19, Jacob Downey 18,
00:04:04.160Rachel Ann Smith fourth year student all three of these were from Queens Francis Perrin 25 from Ottawa and
00:04:13.440Farisa Navab a third year student from Guelph these are all previously healthy university students some
00:04:20.960were athletes all passed away suddenly after a medical emergency or shortly after exercising we don't know if
00:04:30.960these students deaths are linked to the vaccine mandates and we don't know if time will show that
00:04:36.880they are or not what we do know is that deciding whether to mandate the COVID vaccines for university
00:04:44.320students should depend on a very careful risk analysis and that's an analysis that I think we haven't seen
00:04:51.440you will hear from my colleagues tonight about some of the concerns about the necessity efficacy and safety
00:05:00.480of these vaccines and why they don't seem to be well balanced against the statistically small risk that
00:05:07.360COVID poses to young people and whenever we're dealing with public health a really careful balancing needs
00:05:14.560to be done between individual rights on the one hand and the collective good on the other hand and
00:05:22.480I don't want to pretend that that balancing is easy or that our public health officials or university
00:05:28.320administrators have had an easy one and a half years but that certainly doesn't absolve them of the
00:05:35.840moral weight of their responsibility and one really important ethical consideration in public health
00:05:43.920that I think has been largely ignored in our public discourse is that of disproportionate harms it's
00:05:50.000probably the fundamental ethical principle in public health and it's the idea that a treatment should not
00:05:56.480pose harms that are equal to or greater than what it is supposed to treat there was a recent journal article
00:06:05.840in journal toxicology reports and it says there's a conservative estimate that there are five times the
00:06:15.360number of deaths attributable to COVID vaccination than to COVID itself in the 65 plus demographic and the
00:06:25.120risk of death from COVID decreases drastically as age increases right so it's important to be clear I think
00:06:34.240that university mandates are by definition coercive immunization programs right they impose a serious
00:06:43.360consequence on students who in the absence of the threat of the loss of their education would not
00:06:51.040voluntarily make this choice so if the student would voluntarily agree to vaccination then of course the
00:06:56.720mandate wouldn't be necessary right and the irony here I think and and the great harm is that
00:07:03.680universities are supposed to be a safe zone a safe haven of autonomy and free thought and we might
00:07:11.760say the fulcrum of critical thinking in society a safe arena where more so than anywhere else questions and
00:07:20.560questioning are valid and valued and questioners are protected where even the most unorthodox idea is not easily
00:07:31.200dismissed and it's the ultimate laboratory in which students can experiment with what they think and
00:07:38.480who they are and who they'll become as many have said it is or was the greatest time of their lives
00:07:47.440the feelings among today's university students though I think are well captured by a comment that I
00:07:54.480recently heard from a student who said the world is growing darker all around you and basically no one
00:08:02.640under 40 thinks that anything good will ever happen again that certainly wasn't my experience as an
00:08:09.120undergraduate student right and I think across campuses in Canada right now we're seeing professors
00:08:15.840name calling and shaming each other we're seeing students embarrassed to reveal their vaccination status
00:08:22.240they're terrified that what will happen if they do and many who many are saying they got vaccinated not
00:08:30.080because they thought it was the best choice for themselves but because they don't want to stand out
00:08:35.040they don't want the hassle they don't want to risk their education or they just want all of this to go
00:08:39.920away they just want life to go back to normal and universities across Canada we're seeing this stratified
00:08:48.400student cohort the vaccinated and the unvaccinated the compliant and the resistant and the discrimination
00:08:56.400that comes from any stratified class system we are I think losing our conscience our social consciousness
00:09:06.480our civility our respect for one another and ultimately our humanity and I was thinking earlier today you
00:09:14.400know what would it take to recapture these things and though and there's a bit of a false sense of
00:09:21.440security among people who fall into the vaccinated group because they think well I complied therefore
00:09:26.560I have all the rights I have all the freedoms I'm safe I'm okay right though it's currently only
00:09:33.520the unvaccinated I suppose who feel as though they're losing a grip on their rights we should remember
00:09:40.640the words of John F Kennedy who said the rights of all men are diminished when the rights of one man
00:09:47.840are threatened one thing I think is very clear is that compliance is not a virtue you can't comply your
00:09:56.960way into freedom and any right or freedom or benefit or luxury you get from compliance isn't real or stable
00:10:06.480and it's fleeting instead of compliance I think we need vocal united non-compliance holding our beliefs
00:10:16.640in the shadows will guarantee that we're about to enter a world that is unimaginably worse than the one
00:10:23.360we inhabit currently and we have to hold those beliefs up and say this is how my actions are going to
00:10:30.080change on the basis of them this is what I'm willing to risk this is who I'm willing to stand up with
00:10:37.760we already know what one small voice can do you know the voices of Anne Frank or Rosa Parks or Greta
00:10:45.280Thunberg or Malala Yousafzai another thing we know and this was an article published about 2011 in Science
00:10:52.720Daily is that once an idea is adopted by 10 percent of the population that is the psychological tipping
00:11:00.720point when ideas opinions or beliefs will be rapidly adopted by the rest so a vocal I emphasize italicized
00:11:09.920vocal a vocal noisy 10 percent is all it takes to turn the tide to shift the balance of you know this
00:11:19.840this oppression that so many are facing and so our freedom is perhaps not quite as far out of reach
00:11:27.600as we might think thank you thank you so much all right uh shall we go with Alison next
00:11:40.480hi there everyone thank you and thank you Dr Panessi I couldn't agree with you more
00:11:46.080um just want to introduce myself again I'm legal counsel for the justice center for constitutional
00:11:51.760freedoms in Canada we are a non-profit organization that defends Canadians constitutional rights and
00:11:58.240freedoms and since the covid pandemic began Canadians constitutional rights have been eroded almost
00:12:05.040overnight to the point where the simple act of gathering with friends at homes and parks could
00:12:10.000subject people to fines schools were shut down and universities and colleges were forced online
00:12:17.120young people in Canada have been robbed of the very best and most exciting experiences in their lives
00:12:24.000I know that when I was in law school that was the most exciting time in my life going to sit in my in
00:12:30.320class and debate issues with professors and other students around me having that competitive experience you know
00:12:38.480going out after school to socialize spending weekends with my new friends that's all an experience that
00:12:46.960is one of the best times in a young person's life and these young people who don't want to declare their
00:12:52.880vaccination status today or don't want to get vaccinated they're being robbed of that experience
00:12:58.000and I find that horrifying instead of going back to normal which is what Canadians were promised
00:13:04.080once the covid vaccines became available and enough of the population were inoculated or recovered from natural
00:13:10.800infection our governments and employers began to end the careers of people who don't want to take the vaccine
00:13:18.720as I've said universities and colleges have banned unvaccinated students from campus
00:13:24.560they are destroying their career prospects and slashing their dreams
00:13:29.200in undergraduate I minored in English I took a course called classics of dystopian fiction
00:13:37.760we studied George Orwell's 1984 and Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and others I had never even heard
00:13:45.600of a lot of these books before I was very young and we all discussed at great length once we read those books
00:13:53.200how horrifying those societies were that were depicted in those novels and we expressed immense relief that
00:14:00.640our lives in Canada were nothing like that I could never have imagined that those novels would be coming
00:14:07.120to life around us today it has never been more important to stand up for our rights in this country
00:14:13.600and to fight for the freedom to follow our conscience our religion to fight for the right to decide what goes
00:14:20.640into our body without being coerced to fight for our privacy especially within respect of health
00:14:27.120information and to fight for our right to be treated equally and not discriminated against based on our
00:14:32.960medical history once we lose those freedoms they will never come back and Canada will be unrecognizable
00:14:40.880at the Justice Centre we decided that as an organization
00:14:44.640that amongst the hundreds of requests requests we've received each week
00:14:51.040since this summer to assist desperate people we had to fight a post-secondary education
00:14:58.320institutions vaccine mandate we chose to launch an action against Seneca College which was I believe
00:15:05.840the first post-secondary education institution to announce a vaccine mandate in an interview with what I believe
00:15:14.000was the Toronto Star the president of the unit of the college bragged about closing the doors on the
00:15:20.400unvaccinated and that doing so was not about charter rights but about public health well the Justice
00:15:28.640Centre we beg to differ with that we are preparing legal action to challenge Seneca's vaccine mandate on the
00:15:35.360basis that it violates our clients charter protected rights of conscience bodily autonomy privacy and the
00:15:42.400right not to be discriminated against our clients they're named Crystal Love and Marianna Costa are two
00:15:49.840hard-working young women with children who were in the middle of their programs one in a veterinary
00:15:56.000technician program and the other in a fashion arts program they received emails from Seneca College
00:16:01.680over the summer advising them that they would not be permitted to continue with their programs
00:16:06.800if they didn't receive the vaccinations our clients are open about the fact that they do not wish to
00:16:12.160take these vaccinations for a variety of reasons number one the vaccines are experimental they will be
00:16:18.160in clinical trials until at least 2023 therefore there is no long-term safety data number two they come
00:16:26.160with Health Canada warnings on their labels for myocarditis pericarditis which are heart inflammation
00:16:33.360conditions Bell's palsy which is a paralysis of the face and blood clotting issues number three these
00:16:40.560young women are healthy and in the age group that has a 99.95 percent chance of recovery if they get
00:16:47.520COVID number four the reported injuries in the U.S. from the COVID-19 vaccinations are greater in number than
00:16:56.320the injuries reported in the last 10 years for all of the other vaccines combined
00:17:01.840so these students want to wait until the clinical safety trials are finished before considering
00:17:10.720taking these vaccines and until then they would rather choose the risk of getting COVID-19 knowing
00:17:17.200how likely they are to recover from it they choose that low risk versus an unknown long-term risk from
00:17:24.880taking the vaccines so how do we intend to legally attack this mandate well we're going to
00:17:31.760bring a charter challenge and the charter of rights and freedoms as part of Canada's constitution
00:17:38.640bringing a charter challenge involves two parts in the first part the onus is on our students our
00:17:45.840clients to prove that their rights have been infringed and as I've said we'll argue that their charter
00:17:53.600rights of conscience privacy bottle bodily autonomy and equality rights have been infringed through their own
00:18:00.320sworn evidence which we will file with the court then Seneca College will have to show with strong and
00:18:08.560compelling evidence that the infringement of our clients charter rights is justified this is a legal
00:18:16.160test from section one of the charter specifically Seneca must show with compelling evidence that their
00:18:24.640objective for imposing the mandates is pressing and substantial they'll have to show that the vaccine mandate is
00:18:32.080rationally connected to that pressing and substantial objective they'll have to show that there's not another way to ensure campus safety other than a vaccine mandate
00:18:43.520and they'll have to ensure that the benefits of the vaccines far outweigh the deleterious effects of the mandates
00:18:53.680our answer to whether they're going to be able to justify these mandates under section one of the charter is a resounding
00:19:01.200no the mandates from our perspective and from our experts research is that they are not justifiable in science
00:19:11.440we are preparing and having experts prepare expert opinions on this from scientists and doctors
00:19:18.160the latest peer-reviewed research and real world data from Israel the US and the UK shows that the vaccines do
00:19:26.080not prevent you from getting COVID do not prevent you from spreading COVID to others do not prevent you
00:19:31.760from having a serious outcome from COVID and young adults have an infinitesimally small chance of dying
00:19:38.720from COVID the risks of taking the vaccine are greater for young adults than the risks of dying from COVID
00:19:45.040there are viable alternative treatments and natural immunity is superior to vaccine immunity those are the
00:19:52.720facts which we will present with scientific evidence for the court's review and consideration this case
00:20:00.160will come down to a battle over the science which in our view is clear the vaccine mandates for college
00:20:07.680students are unnecessary egregious potentially harmful and do not meet the strict legal test to justify
00:20:15.440infringements of these students charter protected rights never has a fight been so important the
00:20:22.240charter exists to protect Canadians from overreaching and unlawful government action we need the courts
00:20:29.360in Canada to uphold the charter to reinforce its power and legal authority and to affirm that it still
00:20:36.160protects people we must win these legal battles the charter must protect Canadians from these unlawful
00:20:42.560mandates we look forward to this case and are confident that it will have far-reaching implications
00:20:48.400for other post-secondary institutions we must win this case for our children's futures and the future of
00:20:55.920our beautiful country thank you very much thank you allison this is definitely going to be the case to
00:21:03.200watch um benjamin please go ahead uh yeah hi i'm benjamin gabay i'm a graduate student at the university
00:21:11.680of toronto pursuing a master's in music composition uh like many of my colleagues i took a leave of absence
00:21:17.280this year rather than bend to the institution's coveted policies and also i'm the author of an open
00:21:22.720letter sent to uft in august in response to the introduction of its coveted vaccine mandates which
00:21:27.760can be read at students for covetethics.org that's students for covetethics.org and i also helped
00:21:35.200organize several social media groups for like-minded students across ontario so i'd say that the most
00:21:41.120obvious evidence that these mandates are a political charade is how suddenly they were catapulted onto
00:21:46.720students less than a month before the start of the academic year between the beginning of july when
00:21:51.680almost no school was talking about mandates and the president of western university even told the
00:21:56.720student that he didn't think they could legally instate them to the beginning of september when
00:22:01.200virtually every school in ontario had the same mandates nothing changed in the science if anything
00:22:06.640we had more evidence indicating that the vaccines were significantly less effective and much more harmful
00:22:12.240than previously indicated so we wrote our first letter to uft on august 6 about a week after the
00:22:18.480university came out with a very unscientific unreferenced press release announcing that they were
00:22:23.920mandating the coveted vaccine for high-risk activities uh a week later august 11th no response
00:22:30.960but the issue sorry the school issued another press release uh this time saying that they would require
00:22:36.080everyone to show proof of vaccination just to set foot on campus it was only after we sent the follow-up
00:22:41.600letter on august 19 and declared that we were going public with our letter that we received a response
00:22:47.600from vice provost sandy welsh that response rather than addressing any of our concerns or any of our
00:22:53.680more than 50 scientific references expert opinions or data sets contained just a single paragraph stating
00:23:00.640that the university takes a different view to the issues we raised now i'm not a scientist i'm not even a
00:23:07.760student of science i lean on the commentary of experts like dr byron bridal dr michael palmer dr peter
00:23:14.400mcculloch dr robert malone so i can evaluate the science and form my own arguments like i do when i
00:23:20.480write an academic paper but if i wrote a paper where my thesis rested solely on a view that i or anyone
00:23:28.560else has taken without providing some academic references to explain how i came to that view or why
00:23:34.240it's valid i wouldn't even get a passing mark then there are the exemptions the institutions always
00:23:40.480make a point of saying well of course we're going to allow exemptions for those who can't be vaccinated
00:23:45.280for grounds protected under the human rights code so what does that look like well there are two types
00:23:50.400of exemptions there's the the religion-based exemption religion or creed based and there's the medical
00:23:55.760exemption and in my network of over 250 ontario students i have not yet come across a single student who
00:24:02.640was granted an exemption that they applied for some tell me they they know someone who knows someone
00:24:08.000who got one got an exemption somewhere but that's just how unwilling these institutions are to grant
00:24:13.840exemptions at uft they seem to be just handing out pre-written rejections i i saw four religion-based
00:24:19.760exemptions denied with exactly the same response letter despite the students who submitting them
00:24:25.440who submitted them being from completely different faiths i also know someone who was denied a medical
00:24:30.880exemption despite having three letters signed by medical professionals saying that she was it was
00:24:35.600unsafe for her to receive a coveted vaccine so my main point with all of this is twofold the first part
00:24:42.240being that none of this is justifiable nor have these institutions even made an effort to justify it
00:24:47.680in my letter i piled on peer-reviewed science and public health data from around the world to stress that
00:24:53.280a whether or not you had one or two or three or none of these shots in your arm you can still get and
00:24:59.760transmit covet and b the statistical risk of covet covet related death to the student population
00:25:07.280is comparable to the lifetime risk of death from a car accident even less so if you're going to ruin
00:25:12.720hundreds of students lives uh you'd better have some really compelling scientific evidence not just a
00:25:18.240view that doing so is the only option for sparing society from disaster and of course they don't have
00:25:24.640that on the contrary just a couple of weeks ago there was a study or a letter published in the
00:25:29.920european journal of epidemiology so i'll try to show here but uh it states i quote um in the 68 countries
00:25:39.200that they analyzed there appears to be no discernible relationship between percentage of population fully
00:25:45.040vaccinated and new covet 19 cases the second aspect is that universities seem to treat students who don't
00:25:53.040want to take the jab or disclose their medical information like they're a bunch of petulant
00:25:57.360toddlers refusing to put on a jacket to go out in the cold or something they made it clear they
00:26:02.960don't believe any student has a a good reason for refusing the covet jab not even a doctor's note so
00:26:09.440they don't see anything wrong with blackmailing students into compliance that's a very patronizing
00:26:14.400dangerous perspective that these institutions have taken because in reality students have a lot of good
00:26:18.880reasons not to go along with this uh this is the study that the julie finesse mentioned it's called
00:26:24.880why are we vaccinating children against covet 19 it's by uh ronald kostoff and the title is a little
00:26:31.680misleading because as dr finesse mentioned it it discusses the cost benefit analysis for all age groups
00:26:38.240and it finds an atrociously high cost for anyone except the oldest frailest sickest portion of the
00:26:43.680population um so if anyone wonders why there are thousands of intelligent students who would
00:26:48.560rather sacrifice their education than take a covet jab it's all it's all in the study it discusses
00:26:53.520the myriad issues with the vaccine clinical trials the issues they fail to address all the likely and
00:26:59.360unknown long-term risks of the shot especially to healthy young people and how all the short-term
00:27:04.080adverse outcomes we're seeing are not only vastly underreported but also directly validate all those
00:27:09.040long-term concerns even the ontario government uh shortly followed by sweden and denmark recently
00:27:14.720revoked its use of the moderna vaccine for young adults because it was suddenly
00:27:18.160apparent to them that the the damage outweighed the benefit particularly with the increased rate
00:27:23.520of myocarditis but remember just a few months ago when any connection between heart inflammation and
00:27:29.440the covet vaccines was being fact checked as a spurious affiliation and then the cdc admitted well
00:27:36.160it's there but it's four in a million and then a study came out in jama cardiology in august to say
00:27:41.680well it's more like one in a hundred thousand now the ontario government admits that it's more like one
00:27:46.480in five thousand from moderna but thankfully it's still only one in twenty eight thousand for pfizer
00:27:53.440mind you astrazeneca was suspended in canada for an adverse event rate of one in fifty five thousand
00:27:59.520so what about next month when the number goes up to one in two thousand or one in two hundred
00:28:05.120are our schools still going to demand every student take a job in order to attend class
00:28:09.840so in conclusion these mandates were parachuted into our institutions without scientific justification
00:28:16.000less than a month before the start of classes and the mandates remain in place even though we now
00:28:20.400have data clearly demonstrating that there is no correlation between vaccine mandates and reduced
00:28:25.520disease of the population level and those students who had the audacity to do some research and go
00:28:31.520directly to the science something that these institutions taught us to do and made an informed
00:28:36.000decision not to get the jab based on the advice of world-class experts in immunology and toxicology
00:28:41.840those students are being treated like troublemakers and are having their lives ruined and their futures
00:28:45.840upended just within my immediate circle at uft two students can no longer pursue their choose their
00:28:51.360chosen career path because they're not allowed to participate in the necessary academic placements
00:28:56.720one student had to drop her schooling entirely because she had already taken a leave of absence the
00:29:00.640previous year and wasn't allowed another one a student who moved to toronto from bc just before his
00:29:06.000exemption request was rejected and now can't even set foot on campus
00:29:09.680and an international student whose entire living situation is now in jeopardy
00:29:13.520because it hinges on university funding and rather than address the concerns that students have
00:29:18.960or make any effort to rebut the evidence we presented to them the institutions either ignore
00:29:23.440those students completely or brush them off with copy pasted rhetoric more than half of uft's 150 word
00:29:30.400paragraph that they issued in response to our eight page letter appeared four days later verbatim in a
00:29:37.280letter sent to uft from the council of ontario medical health officers four days later without
00:29:42.960a single scientific reference in either case does that sound like a carefully thought out public
00:29:48.400health decision that weighed all the costs and benefits or like something that was dropped into
00:29:52.960the inbox of the president from some nameless higher up so they wouldn't fall behind on the political
00:29:57.840trend that's why this is such a dangerous path to be on like alberta pathologist dr roger
00:30:04.560hodkinson often says this is politics playing medicine and politics unfortunately don't budge no
00:30:10.640matter how much science you throw at them even when those politics pretend to be scientific
00:30:15.680bad politics only fall apart when people stand up for something or expose a lie or point to truth
00:30:21.440that's why we have to be the the wall that stops this boulder from rolling any further because it won't
00:30:27.440stop on its own thank you thank you benjamin i think we really needed a student perspective on this so
00:30:35.280i'm glad that you you're here to do that um now dr pelek please go ahead well how do you follow those
00:30:44.480previous statements um and say something actually that adds to it i mean my journey on this has been
00:30:53.280really as a faculty member at the university of british columbia that also runs a biotech company
00:30:59.040connexus bioinformatics and about 17 months ago when the sequences of the sars covg genome first became
00:31:07.600known because we had this technology in our company that we could actually start to track whether or not
00:31:14.080a person was developing antibodies against this virus we thought it would be very interesting to to put
00:31:20.160that technology to use and to see if we can see just how far and wide this virus has actually been
00:31:26.640spreading through our society and from that information um it became very apparent really in
00:31:35.040the early spring of 2020 that in fact in the british columbia area at least in the vancouver area and this
00:31:41.600has been published in peer review journal jci insights that have been participating in this project
00:31:48.320that out of about 276 healthy individuals adults about 60 percent of them health care workers
00:31:56.960that in fact they uh had antibodies that could recognize the sars cov2 virus now whether it's from
00:32:03.840previous exposure to other cold coronaviruses we couldn't answer that at that time we now have a pretty
00:32:10.400good sense that it is from sars cov2 and it's interesting that when we come back to the present day
00:32:16.480in a matter of probably a week or so a number of health care workers here in british columbia are
00:32:22.960going to basically be suspended on basically unpaid leave of absence that in a month that they don't
00:32:31.040succumb to actually being vaccinated they will be fired at a time when we are now in another wave of the
00:32:38.720covid 19 pandemic in terms of cases um so it really comes down to the question as has been expounded
00:32:48.240earlier that you know what is your your rights as an individual with respect to whether or not you
00:32:55.120should can or have to be vaccinated in order to carry out just your normal normal activities what you
00:33:01.440you've you've trained for to be able to you know go university and get that education or afterwards to
00:33:08.800practice that job that that but you've sacrificed years and years of um of commitment and endeavor
00:33:17.120what's happening is that in my opinion the the threat of the virus is is nowhere near matched by the
00:33:27.120response to the response to this virus in terms of the over activity and the excuse to deny human rights
00:33:35.840um which you know on the eve almost well just after 75 years ago we had the nuremberg trials
00:33:42.960where nazi scientists physicians basically tested subjects without their consent
00:33:49.760uh with i'm sure in their own mind thinking this was better for humanity that we would learn these
00:33:56.000things that we could protect other people in the future but nonetheless it led to the creation of
00:34:02.320the nuremberg code of ethics and from that came helsinki uh rules and even within canada we had our
00:34:12.800rights of human freedoms charter of rights which was really laws that were already in existence in the
00:34:19.680the 1960s but the concern was that if you had a change in government they could change these laws
00:34:26.560and that these should be enshrined in the basic um constitution of our country and so this is where
00:34:33.440in fact the um okay charter rights and freedoms was created and the last person that was involved in
00:34:41.840the creation of that um brian peckford he recently spoke it uh on this subject and was appalled at
00:34:49.040basically what they had tried to craft to prevent these very things that are happening right now
00:34:55.040uh are are in fact transpiring so to have such a loss of right to your body integrity um to for your
00:35:07.040your uh confidential in terms of your your medical situation to have these removed so quickly on what
00:35:15.200what strikes me as being very little basis in terms of when you really put the whole covid19 pandemic
00:35:24.400with respect to the virus and its effects on our society directly being relatively small compared
00:35:32.000to what the response has been which has been very dramatic and and draconian um it it it's just not
00:35:41.360warranted now we've already heard from the other speakers about some of the actual risks you know
00:35:48.080if you're if you're under um 18 years of age and of course university students are very close to this
00:35:55.120your chances of being hospitalized in canada is but one in a hundred thousand but we've also heard
00:36:01.280from some of those speakers as correct that now we recognize the risk of myocarditis is one in
00:36:06.960five thousand i did a calculation based on center for disease control data publications that indicate
00:36:14.480that you're about 40 times higher risk of actually being injured if you're under 24 from the vaccines
00:36:24.000than you are from actually being infected with the virus in terms of going to hospital the death rates
00:36:29.920have been very very low in young people so in terms of why are we protecting our elderly by by vaccinating
00:36:38.640the entire population well there's really been any good evidence to support that and what's been cited
00:36:45.120earlier with israel where we're in fact we're seeing that 90 percent of the people that are in hospital
00:36:51.520in israel are actually double vaccinated clearly speaks to the failure of these vaccines in terms of
00:36:59.040efficacy in a longer term and in terms of the vaccine injury as pointed out earlier like on the
00:37:05.360vera system i've actually checked this myself and done the queries and in the last 30 years of reporting
00:37:12.480in the vera system 40 percent of all of the reported injuries has been from the three vaccines
00:37:20.160available in the united states which does not include the astrazeneca vaccine which is induced
00:37:25.360is it was available in canada is due to these three vaccines now we have over 14 000 deaths recorded in
00:37:33.200the vera system and those that study this system recognize that only about two percent of actual cases
00:37:41.360are actually reported in that system so experts that use those numbers usually multiply them by 30 times
00:37:49.520so we may in fact be talking about hundreds of thousands of deaths in the united states alone
00:37:56.080that have been due to actually the vaccines and the total number of deaths in united states from the
00:38:02.720virus has been 700 000 roughly so it's an appreciable number but we're in we're in the same magnitude
00:38:09.440when we talk about vaccine injury so this is very serious now in terms of the campuses
00:38:16.240i've been very fortunate i've been at the university of british columbia i am a senator there and there's
00:38:22.720been a lot of pressure both from the student alma mater president from mandatory vaccination from the
00:38:29.280president of the faculty association from mandatory vaccination from the the president of the unions of
00:38:36.560the bc uh universities from mandatory vaccination and they're getting this information really largely from
00:38:45.280they're getting from the mainstream media which has been heavily censored um julie and i know from
00:38:52.000our experiences uh of being on the canadian covert care alliance and just trying to get out simple
00:38:59.520fact-based information as press releases they will not be carried by the canadian newswire services or
00:39:06.000any other services that we uh apply to that in fact disseminate information to radio tv
00:39:12.000newspapers so those of you are probably well aware in the social media it's heavily censored
00:39:19.600and it's censored even within organizations like cbc we have cbc reporters that want to write these
00:39:25.440stories they can't it's being suppressed at the highest level so the general public
00:39:31.440isn't actually getting the balance of information and the facts now the scientific literature
00:39:36.640isn't quite as inhibited as that it's normal for scientists to publish their work as long as it's
00:39:43.200scientifically sound in terms of the methodology and that your your conclusions are warranted based
00:39:50.320on the data that you have you can publish this work and and the peer review is simply to make sure it
00:39:55.760meets that kind of standard so the scientific literature is replant with all this information of
00:40:03.200issues related to the efficacy the safety of these vaccines what the threat is from the actual viruses the
00:40:11.440delta virus compared to alpha virus and and earlier strains and with respect to how many people are
00:40:18.960actually dying from this at this time compared to a year ago when we knew much less about the virus and
00:40:26.400anticipated that the death rates were as high as five percent or more of the entire population infected
00:40:34.000could die from this virus when we now know those numbers are less than 0.2 percent in all risk groups
00:40:42.000and certainly if you're in a younger risk group as our university students um your your your threat to
00:40:48.320your life is is it's it's it's basically zero uh the number of people that will actually die that are
00:40:56.080under 18 or 24 in this country from the virus now my own research that's involved looking over a thousand
00:41:05.920people now has indicated that about 80 percent of the people that we actually check for antibodies against
00:41:13.840the virus have natural immunity they've already got antibodies okay now this is very different from
00:41:22.240the message that's coming across from the health authorities based on studies that were done with fax
00:41:28.000with antibody tests that were very um the way they were done was problematic using dried blood spots uh in
00:41:37.120addition to that using uh basically uh just one or two markers that were very insensitive in terms of
00:41:45.280the amounts that were available with our tests we've been able to uh detect clearly people that a year and
00:41:51.840a half after they've actually had covet 19 that they still have antibodies in their circulation against the
00:42:00.400virus so contrary to what you've often heard that in the mainstream media that that natural immunity
00:42:09.600isn't as good as the vaccine the reality is that the natural immunity is actually much better it's
00:42:17.440broader against more of the proteins in the virus it has memory and lasts for years it's also the right
00:42:24.880kind of antibodies because they're targeting the um at the site of infection with the type of antibodies iga
00:42:33.040and ige antibodies igm antibodies rather than the igg antibody class which you tend to get from the
00:42:39.200vaccine in your circulation so the protection that you're getting is actually much better and it doesn't
00:42:44.800come if you've had coven 19 and recovered it doesn't come from the risks that that come with the vaccine
00:42:53.600itself now your chances of getting really sick if you're younger with the covet 19 is actually less
00:43:03.440than if you're vaccinated 60 plus of people who are double vaccinated have the same symptoms as people
00:43:11.760who've actually had covet 19 and most people that have been infected with the virus don't actually have
00:43:20.160symptoms it's very mild now that's not saying that there isn't people who can be very seriously
00:43:25.760affected by this virus and many of the people that have been have had comorbidities or they have
00:43:32.000risk factors that can predispose them but for the vast majority of the society this has not been a problem
00:43:39.200and so why are our uh in universities in other provinces i'm in bc why they're mandating complete
00:43:48.320vaccination makes no sense to me at the university of british columbia they've tried to make a
00:43:53.920compromise and they if you're living on residence you have to be vaccinated if you're going to
00:43:59.120participate in social activities sporting then you'll have to be vaccinated there is a mandate for
00:44:06.080those that are in the health care to be vaccinated but that's not coming from the university per se that's
00:44:10.720coming from the health authorities for for health care workers now at the university of british
00:44:16.800columbia in senate we voted on this and 24 of the senators voted against mandatory vaccination
00:44:24.640and 30 of them voted for it it wasn't enough to pass the motion but certainly what this demonstrates
00:44:32.080is that we are actually very divided even within the mainstream of the university in terms of the
00:44:39.280representatives that we have in the senate on whether or not we should be doing mandatory
00:44:44.160vaccination i believe many of the people that are advocating it don't have all the information i
00:44:50.080think if they had all that information they would uh think otherwise and so we are in this situation of
00:44:56.880suppression of knowledge it's not getting out to the general public it it is available though you can
00:45:03.760go to the canadian covet care alliance and at that website that um you know julie anansi and myself are
00:45:11.680involved in and and we have over 700 members over 16 committees usually with a dozen people per committee
00:45:19.760usually people that have mds phds and other health professionals and we vet through this material that's
00:45:26.640in the literature and we post it on our website after it's very heavily vetted with peer review to
00:45:33.200make it available to everybody else so they can make informed decisions themselves on whether or not it's
00:45:37.680appropriate in their case to be vaccinated it should always be a choice and it should be a choice that's
00:45:43.840made with informed um choice and unfortunately we failed on those fronts with informed consent
00:45:52.880we were not getting the information out where the the the rules seem to change every week
00:45:59.440and it's really as pointed out earlier it's really up to us as individuals to make a moral stand
00:46:06.000on where do we fit in all this what do we believe as canadians should be the norm for us those rights
00:46:13.440that you know we have to fight for remember that there's people who died for those rights in world
00:46:19.120war one and world war ii and and other battles and you know we we should really stand up to at least the
00:46:28.240pressures that these people were far greater pressured to really stand up for us
00:46:35.520we have to stand up for each other and that's what we should do now thank you
00:46:42.720thank you so much um so before we move into our exclusive civitas only component i'm just going to ask one
00:46:50.960um teaser question for our social media audience here um so this panel i would say is all in agreement that
00:46:59.920uh vaccine mandates are bad um and but there was an august 21 august 2021 ipsos poll um that said 72 percent
00:47:13.680of canadians agree with a vaccine passport system to enter gyms restaurants and other indoor spaces
00:47:20.480that percentage of the population goes up for other situations 82 percent support proof of vaccination
00:47:27.680for air and train travel 84 percent uh support a vaccine mandate for healthcare workers so you know
00:47:36.400what what can we make of that that it seems if we trust this poll and other polls like it that the
00:47:42.480majority of our country actually is in agreement with vaccine certificates who wants to tackle that
00:47:48.480one first i could tackle that because firstly when people aren't properly informed they can't make
00:47:56.000wise decisions and that's a reflection of these polls is partly that the other is remember this
00:48:02.640in in right now we're in a honeymoon period with our vaccines they were because of shortages of
00:48:10.640availability of vaccines they really weren't disseminated in our population in any big way
00:48:16.480till after may of this year less than 15 percent of the population was double vaccinated by that point
00:48:25.200so we know that these vaccines do work for a short period and we're in that period in which
00:48:32.480they are effective and we have low rates of death in basically in our country even though we have
00:48:39.520higher case counts in this peak but my own thinking is that that that reduction in death is actually not
00:48:47.200due to the vaccines per se to a certain extent but mostly because we have natural immunity throughout
00:48:54.640our population including in the people who've been vaccinated a lot of people that that in fact got
00:49:00.320vaccinated were probably already had immunity now the problem is this in in basically let's say israel
00:49:10.880right now if you are not triple vaccinated you are not vaccinated anymore so all those people that
00:49:18.800right now think that okay i've been vaccinated i'm fine and i have a passport that allows me to do all
00:49:25.360these things well in a few months your your passport will expire and you will just be like everybody
00:49:31.920else that hasn't been vaccinated or only vaccinated once or with your with a two-fold vaccination and
00:49:39.600that's your triple vaccinated then you're no longer vaccinated and in a few months after that
00:49:47.280it'll be the fourth vaccine and every time you have an extra booster shot you increase your chances of
00:49:53.920more adverse effects and not just like double your chances with twice or triple your chances with
00:49:59.680three times it's actually much more dramatic it's magnitudes more at risk that you pose for yourself
00:50:06.720right now the risk of injury is probably one in 500 serious injuries from the vaccines and that will
00:50:12.800increase and then you'll see a different change in attitude of the canadian population
00:50:17.200um i will but uh dr panessi had her hand up first so i'll i'll be after her well i was just gonna build
00:50:29.120on steve's idea and i think that he's right that there's this informational component in that if you
00:50:36.880know the canadian public uh just heard that you know the 10 or 12 minute uh talk that steve gave you know
00:50:43.680citing um you know the adverse events versus risk from covid uh that information would make a difference
00:50:51.440on the one hand but i think the other element to this informational component uh and i'm getting this
00:50:58.480this is sort of anecdotal evidence or talking with people um is that there is a an infallible trust in
00:51:06.480our mainstream media right now and i think there's all there's a kind of outsourcing of our own
00:51:14.400investigative research abilities um maybe because we're just overburdened and we have too many things
00:51:22.240to cope with ourselves and we can't take that on as well maybe that maybe it's just become so pervasive
00:51:29.520or insidious uh whatever it is um i don't see a genuine desire to engage with the kind of information
00:51:38.480that steve just gave us right and so that to me is a is a bigger uh socio-political problem that will
00:51:46.000not go away with the resolution of the covet situation um for me i i would agree with with what
00:51:59.280dr finesse just said and and uh add the point that it goes back to when covid first arrived and um the
00:52:10.240media and the governments were um providing us with so much information uh that was scary and and
00:52:20.000frightening and um you know what's happening to people in wuhan what's happening to people in china
00:52:25.760or millions of people going to die then you have those the modeling from neil ferguson in the uk which
00:52:30.800turned out to be horribly wrong but it was inflating uh the projected deaths um to you know
00:52:40.320vastly overinflated number but the damage is done when the media takes false information um and and
00:52:48.720feeds it to the public who really have no idea what's going on 24 7. i mean you know you look at
00:52:55.840your your news feed every day and it's either you know how many cases of covid it is today how many deaths
00:53:01.680from covid um where can you get your vaccination you know we need to ban the unvaccinated from x y and z
00:53:08.560and then you know throw in a sports story or a celebrity story but usually the top two stories are
00:53:13.920covid cases and vaccinations and and the public unfortunately have been um fed a daily hourly
00:53:22.400but minute by minute barrage of like constant information that's only um that only has one
00:53:31.760message and that is that uh covet is terrifying and these lockdowns are necessary uh to save to save you
00:53:42.080know older people but we have to sort of sacrifice our young people's rights for the older people
00:53:47.360and that's the only way and then that the only way out of this is the vaccinations oh and by the way
00:53:53.600the unvaccinated are dirty and they're um you know they're they're you know they deserve to be banished
00:54:01.360from certain activities and from school because they could be you know killing my grandma that kind of
00:54:06.800thing so when you have that that con that fear and and you try to introduce information to counter the
00:54:15.280fear even if it's factual even if it's data based even if it's peer-reviewed research it's so hard to
00:54:23.920change what somebody has been hearing in their head for months and and days and minute by minute it's so
00:54:29.840hard to to get those to get the public to listen when they've already made up their mind because
00:54:36.720of what they've been told by the media and and by the public health officials who you know when you
00:54:42.320when you get right down to it what information do they have you know do they come on uh the news and
00:54:50.080present the new information about the new peer-reviewed research and do they inform the public about the new
00:54:55.200studies uh you know do they inform the public about the faults with the pcr testing do they they they
00:55:01.760don't so you're only hearing the public's only hearing one side and it's just so difficult when
00:55:07.680people have that fear that's now instilled over months to to get people to open their eyes and see
00:55:14.960that there is another set of information that often contradicts what they've been hearing so really
00:55:21.520it's it's it's it's an uphill battle and uh that's what we're hoping to combat with with the courts
00:55:29.840is that you know the judge was not going we're not going to hear anything about conspiracy theories
00:55:36.640these judges are going to have to reckon with the facts and that statistics peer-reviewed studies
00:55:42.960no conspiracies facts and you know even if we if we are successful in our cases it's
00:55:49.280it's it's getting the public to understand how you know governments may have got this wrong and why
00:55:59.600and and and why why is the media only telling us you know that we all have to be terrified and that
00:56:05.840that the unvaccinated need to be banished so it's it's really going to be an uphill battle but
00:56:10.400the more information that we can present to people that's not conspiratorial but that is fact-based
00:56:16.080um the better chance we have of of changing the pervasive view in canada that wait a minute what
00:56:26.080we're doing here is not not necessary it's not right and it's not scientifically justified
00:56:32.880so you know i think it that the media plays a gigantic role in this and most people
00:56:42.720that i talk to were not in my close circle they have no idea that there's all these doctors and
00:56:49.360scientists giving online presentations that contradict what they're hearing every day in the media
00:56:56.560they have no idea because you know you can only find them if you go digging youtube sensors it within
00:57:02.320five minutes you know facebook removes it it's fact checking and all that so it's we're really
00:57:08.160fighting a war here of information and getting the facts to the people and that is critical
00:57:15.440well on that note i'm going to wrap up the first part of our digital salon event tonight from this
00:57:20.640point on we are doing a q a with the panelists here that is only open to civitas canada members so again
00:57:26.400if you are watching this on youtube or facebook right now check out civitas canada.ca and maybe we
00:57:32.480will see you at the next event and um thank you to our production team at true north for making this