Juno News - When the “experts” turn out to be partisan activists

00:00:00.040 We need to trust the science, but what happens when the doctors who are promoted as the voice

00:00:05.680 of reason turn out to be nothing more than partisan activists? I'm Candace Malcolm and

00:00:10.320 this is The Candace Malcolm Show. Hi everyone, thank you for tuning into the program today. Now

00:00:19.920 in the last episode of the show, which came out earlier this week, I played a clip of an Alberta

00:00:24.520 doctor who quite frankly is a little bit deranged. This is Dr. Joe Vipond and he has become one

00:00:31.480 of the loudest voices in Alberta. He's become one of the doctors most frequently tapped to

00:00:37.000 come on television and talk about what's going on. He's supposed to be a person who helps us

00:00:41.560 make sense of the world and explains the science and everything is happening from a medical perspective.

00:00:48.520 Well, last week he was on CTV and he was losing his mind about the changing categorization

00:00:54.200 of COVID. It went from being a pandemic to an endemic, which means that we have to learn to

00:00:58.920 live with the virus. It makes sense during a time where we're promoting vaccines. The more people

00:01:03.800 who get vaccinated, the more people whose life can go back to normal. And that was sort of the point

00:01:08.840 of the health experts and the leadership in Alberta. This doctor really didn't like it. And so

00:01:14.520 he basically had a temper tantrum on live television. Here is what that looked like.

00:01:19.400 It's insane. It's this incredible experiment to see how many people we can get sick, have long-term

00:01:28.760 disability and possibly die. Like who does this to their own public? Who does this? Like what,

00:01:35.560 what the hell? Who does this to their own public? He shrieked while accusing Alberta's premier and top 0.75

00:01:42.040 doctor Dr. Dina Henshaw of intentionally trying to kill people. That's what he was saying in that clip.

00:01:48.680 And he was rather oddly, I think, dressed up in his operating room scrubs, even though he was clearly

00:01:55.320 sitting in his own living room. Well, that is a stunt. It's there to remind you that he is a wise

00:02:01.560 and educated and powerful doctor who really knows what he's talking about. Well, his strange behavior

00:02:07.880 didn't end when he left the studio of CTV. He then went and helped organize a pro lockdown rally,

00:02:15.640 a series of rallies in Edmonton and Calgary. You know, those rallies that only attracted a few dozen

00:02:21.880 pro big government protesters, even though it had wall to wall coverage and cheerleading by the legacy

00:02:28.440 media. So this is what he said on social media about those rallies. Your risk by taking to the streets

00:02:33.960 and toppling this government is less than that of letting them enact this insane policy. We need to take to the streets

00:02:41.960 a general strike and a call for an election. Wow. This guy really believes his own hyperbolic rhetoric.

00:02:48.920 He wants you to take to the streets and topple a government here in Canada. Here in Canada. Well,

00:02:54.040 let me let me tell you how. This is Canada. This is not some hellhole dictatorship.

00:02:58.920 Mobs on the streets do not get to determine who is in power. Mobs on the streets do not get to take 0.80

00:03:05.400 down governments in Canada. Seriously, if he is so worried about the Delta variant, which is what

00:03:10.600 he's saying on television, why is he calling for people to aggregate on the streets? And why is he

00:03:15.480 calling for a general strike? Presumably that means of his fellow doctors and nurses and hospital

00:03:21.000 employees, which would put people in need at further risk. He would put sick patients at further risk

00:03:27.080 for a political stunt. It doesn't seem very logical to me. Now at one rally, once again, Dr. Vipond

00:03:35.000 showed up wearing his hospital scrubs because of course he did. The media's wall to wall coverage of the

00:03:40.920 dozens of protesters continued. Here is a global news report about day two of these riveting pro

00:03:48.360 lockdown protests. This time, Dr. Vipond demanded, get this, that the Liberal government intervene in

00:03:55.800 Alberta to change this policy that he doesn't like. I call on the Attorney General of Canada to reach out

00:04:02.920 to our Premier and say that you are not allowed to violate the charter rights of 4.5 million Albertans.

00:04:13.160 What a joke. This guy is so out of touch, it's laughable. Well, he went on to call for the

00:04:18.760 resignation of Dr. Hinshaw, the Chief Medical Officer of Alberta. And as I pointed out in my show

00:04:25.240 earlier this week, when you or I criticize the public health officials, when we criticize the top doctors,

00:04:30.680 we are undermining public trust. We're undermining the integrity of our democracy. But those rules

00:04:36.200 only apply to you and I. It doesn't apply to them. The leftist lockdown authoritarians have given

00:04:42.600 themselves permission to sow doubt, to undermine public health recommendations, and to criticize the

00:04:48.760 top doctors and health experts to their heart's content. Must be nice. Now interestingly, some people

00:04:54.760 on social media began to connect the dots and ask questions about this doctor. I'll read you one

00:05:00.840 amusing thread from the weekend. So this is Hayden Place. Hayden works for the Conservative government

00:05:06.760 in Alberta. He said this,

00:05:08.760 Dr. Hinshaw specializes in public health. Dr. Vapont is an Emerge doc. It's unfortunate that

00:05:15.000 Alberta's media has made the latter a prominent voice on COVID-19. So good point, but I'll put in the

00:05:21.000 caveat this guy is a partisan conservative. So we're supposed to take that with a grain of salt,

00:05:25.560 right? Okay. Well, look at this reply. It's from another doctor in Alberta. This is Dr.

00:05:30.760 Mackis. And he says this,

00:05:32.920 NDP and NDP media loved Dr. Hinshaw until they found out she would not be politically useful to

00:05:40.360 the NDP. Then they turned on her. Dr. Vapont is one of a dozen NDP activist doctors, trademark.

00:05:47.560 He has no public health or infectious disease expertise, but he is an expert in NDP propaganda.

00:05:55.080 Okay. Well, it gets even more interesting because Dr. Vapont himself jumped in on Twitter to reply.

00:06:00.760 And he said this reference for me being an NDP activist donor, please. Thanks for that. Otherwise,

00:06:07.000 this might be considered slander. If not true, those are fighting words. And just in case he wasn't clear,

00:06:12.840 he went on to say this, he replied again, and this is what he said. I am an independent practitioner

00:06:18.600 with no ties to the NDP. If you have evidence to the contrary, feel free to produce it. So he is

00:06:25.000 adamantly assuring us that he is not connected to the NDP, that he is not an NDP donor, and that he has

00:06:31.000 no ties to the party. What he's saying is that he's not a partisan doctor. He's just a concerned

00:06:36.840 citizen and an independent activist. Got it? Okay. Well, just wait one second. Our researchers here

00:06:43.320 at True North decided to do a little bit of digging. And lo and behold, we found evidence to the contrary.

00:06:49.640 And so as per Dr. Vapont's request, we have felt free to release it. Here is data from Alberta's

00:06:56.760 political contributions database. And you can go through and you can see someone named Joe Vapont from

00:07:03.000 Calgary donating thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to the

00:07:08.360 provincial NDP, going back all the way from 2014 to as recently as the 2019 campaign. So Joe Vapont is a

00:07:19.480 NDP donor. As you can clearly see, he donated multiple times, lots and lots of money to True North

00:07:25.880 Scout, nearly $20,000. Given the limits and the constraints on campaign contributions and financial

00:07:32.520 donations, I imagine he's actually one of the largest individual donors to the NDP party in

00:07:38.440 Alberta. But surely it can't be the same guy, right? The media would have had to disclose that

00:07:43.640 when they were interviewing him and promoting him. And this trusted and honest doctor who was

00:07:48.680 adamantly denying any ties to the NDP, he wouldn't have done that, right? Well, get this,

00:07:54.680 True North reached out to Dr. Vapont to find out if it was him who was donating to the NDP. And if it

00:08:00.760 wasn't him, who was it that was using his name to give the NDP all this cash? Well, this is the message

00:08:07.960 that Dr. Vapont sent to us. He said this, quote, I have no ties with the NDP other than past donations.

00:08:17.880 As a strong supporter of climate action, I felt it was my duty as a citizen to support a party that

00:08:24.440 acknowledges and acts on climate crisis. Okay, interesting, isn't it? This very educated and

00:08:31.000 very outspoken doctor who is held up as an ideal in the legacy media. In the same sentence, he says

00:08:37.560 that he has no ties to a political party, while also admitting that he has been writing them a series of

00:08:43.960 four-figure checks to the amount of nearly $20,000 over the past five or six years. It's the same

00:08:50.600 sentence. He says, I have no ties to the NDP other than past donations. Can you imagine making that

00:08:56.840 statement and thinking that it makes sense? But it's a-okay, folks, because he says that he donated

00:09:02.600 because of the climate crisis, not because of the COVID crisis. So it's totally different and it's

00:09:08.040 totally fine. I wonder if he disclosed his sizable donations to CTV, CBC, and Global before going on air

00:09:15.000 and pretending to be a neutral, apolitical doctor. And further to that, I wonder if anyone at those

00:09:20.920 news stations bothered to look into this. True North is a small team. We have a small group of

00:09:27.080 investigative reporters and researchers, and yet we were able to pull up this information in a matter

00:09:32.520 of minutes quite easily. So why wouldn't the hordes of staffers in the newsrooms over at CTV, Global,

00:09:38.360 and CBC bother to do a very simple background check on this doctor before giving him all this

00:09:44.200 credibility and giving him a huge microphone to blast his alarmism, to blast his fanaticism,

00:09:50.440 and his demands for authoritarian lockdown messages on their airway? This seems like pretty basic

00:09:56.840 journalism to me. But of course, the legacy media too often doesn't do journalism. They do activism.

00:10:03.320 And this activist doctor fit right into their worldview, and so they blasted his message throughout

00:10:09.400 the pandemic. Well, Alberta is not the only province to see politics mixed in with public

00:10:14.600 health experts and doctors. Take a look at this story from my colleague Anthony Fury over at the

00:10:19.720 Toronto Sun. It says the headline, doctor running for provincial liberals will remain on Ontario Science

00:10:26.040 Table. Physician Dr. Nathan Stahl is set to be a star candidate in Toronto St. Paul riding. So much for

00:10:34.280 being nonpartisan. A prominent doctor who sits on the Ontario Science Table is expected to be acclaimed

00:10:40.680 later this month as an Ontario Liberal candidate for next year's provincial election. Dr. Nathan Stahl,

00:10:46.600 a specialist in geriatrics at Mount Sinai Hospital, is currently the sole vetted contender for the

00:10:51.560 nomination process for the riding of Toronto St. Paul's, as first reported by Queens Park Observer.

00:10:57.000 However, if Stahl does win the nomination and becomes a visible and vocal Liberal, he'll remain as a member of

00:11:03.480 the nonpartisan Ontario Science Table. I have informed Drs. Brown and Schwartz of my decision to

00:11:10.360 seek the Ontario Liberal nomination in Toronto St. Paul, still told the Sun via email. Following

00:11:15.560 that conversation, I appreciated their decision for me to continue offering my professional scientific

00:11:20.680 advice as one of 40 volunteers on the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, noting that my

00:11:26.760 contributions to the table are not political, they are strictly scientific. So you get that? This guy has

00:11:33.240 given himself permission to remain on this apolitical scientific panel while also getting involved in

00:11:40.360 partisan politics. So what exactly is the Ontario Scientific Advisory Table? Well, let me read a little

00:11:46.040 bit from their website. The Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table is a group of scientific experts and

00:11:52.200 health system leaders who evaluate and report on emerging evidence relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic to

00:11:57.880 inform Ontario's response. It goes on to say the Science Table is an independent group hosted by the

00:12:03.880 Dalla Lana School of Public Health. There is no compensation. So how are they independent if they

00:12:10.040 have a politician sitting on the panel and a politician so brazen that he says he won't even bother resigning

00:12:15.800 from the position if he is elected and chosen as a Liberal candidate? I'm sorry to say, but that is no longer a

00:12:22.520 political, it's no longer independent. Look, there's nothing wrong with doctors making political donations

00:12:28.680 or running for public office. It's actually probably a good thing to have more doctors involved. And

00:12:33.560 there's nothing wrong with partisan politics in and of itself. As I've told you before, when I was in

00:12:38.280 university and after I graduated, I dabbled in partisan politics myself. I volunteered for the Liberal

00:12:43.800 Party in British Columbia. And then a little later on, I worked for the Wild Rose Party in Alberta for

00:12:49.000 Danielle Smith. And I worked for the Conservative government in Ottawa for a little less than a year.

00:12:55.160 And this is all over a decade ago. I haven't made any political contributions, and I am not a member of

00:13:00.680 any political party. But you probably knew that about me already. I'm open and transparent about who I am

00:13:07.880 and what I believe. The problem is that too often, these doctors are not. And the media in this country

00:13:15.080 are more than happy to hold up these doctors and other political activists like them and mislead the

00:13:20.680 public about who they are, what their agenda is, and what they believe. This is just another reason

00:13:26.280 for you to turn off the legacy media and instead to promote and support independent news outlets like

00:13:32.680 true north. I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

Juno News - August 06, 2021

When the “experts” turn out to be partisan activists

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