Health care workers in British Columbia have been fired for not taking the controversial COVID vaccine or not revealing their vaccination status, and the province continues to fire people to this day, in April 2022. Why is this still going on?
00:00:00.120Thousands of government workers in British Columbia have been fired by the province for not taking the COVID vaccine or not revealing their status, and the province continues to fire people to this day, now, in April 2022.
00:00:12.920Why is this still going on? I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:00:27.140Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast.
00:00:29.560So over the weekend, it was revealed that thousands of public health care workers in British Columbia had been laid off after previously being put on unpaid leave for not following the vax mandate rules being enforced by the province.
00:00:42.120Well, last Friday, a group of fired employees tried to issue an emergency injunction in order to keep their job, but a judge threw their case away.
00:00:49.860And so more people are continuing to be fired over these really mundane, punitive vaccine policies in British Columbia.
00:00:59.360It seems like they're lagging behind the rest of the province, the rest of the country in eliminating these kinds of restrictions.
00:01:04.920And joining me today to talk about this is True North reporter and editor, Harley Sims.
00:01:10.060Harley is based out of British Columbia.
00:01:12.460He's a senior editor, investigative reporter with True North.
00:01:15.300He holds a PhD in English from the University of Toronto.
00:01:18.180He currently lives in the Fraser Canyon of British Columbia, and he's been doing lots and lots of reporting, exclusive reporting for us at True North.
00:01:26.780Harley, thank you so much for joining us.
00:01:31.280So the news that I got out of BC was that you guys were finally getting rid of your vaccine passport.
00:01:36.560Your vaccine card will no longer be in use, which is sort of some good news.
00:01:40.020We could definitely talk a little bit about that.
00:01:41.600But I want to talk about this court case and this injunction that was thrown away by a judge.
00:01:46.720So can you walk us through what exactly happened?
00:01:48.660So towards the end of the summer, the beginning of the fall, BC Public Service had signaled that it was going to be requiring 30,000 employees to be vaccinated in order to keep their jobs.
00:02:03.720Now, this was just kind of, it was mentioned, it was said, this is coming.
00:02:09.100And Bonnie Henry has put out, I believe, 14 different health orders that have been affecting different sectors, contractors, healthcare workers, public servants.
00:02:22.800But in this case, the policy was announced and it was not actually defined until a month later, policy 25, it was called.
00:02:33.500Public servants were expected to get two shots before November 22nd.
00:02:42.360But what is interesting is on November 19th, which was a Friday, the Horgan government passed an order in council that made that law that if public servants did not get those vaccinations, they could be fired with cause.
00:02:56.960And fired with cause is the worst way you can be fired.
00:02:59.960Assaults, thefts, you are denied benefits, you are denied EI, you're just thrown out the window type thing.
00:03:08.960And so, you know, anybody that's worked in politics knows that when you pass legislation on a Friday, it's called taking out the trash.
00:03:15.840You do it because the media is asleep, no one's paying attention.
00:03:19.460So the following Monday, non-compliant public servants, we were put on unpaid leave, forced onto unpaid leave.
00:03:28.980There are several organizations, but one, the BCPS, Employees for Freedom, represent 500 civil servants, both unionized and non-unionized, vaccinated and non-vaccinated.
00:03:41.520But they were involved in this constitutional challenge to the vaccine mandate that's supposed to be coming in May.
00:03:51.480Now, in the meantime, four of the petitioners, I think there are nine now, but there were four original petitioners, had filed for an injunction to keep from being fired before that hearing.
00:04:08.260So the question was, well, why not just drag it out a little longer?
00:04:13.620But after incurring the decision for a week, Justin Frost at the BC Supreme Court in Victoria decided on Friday that no, an injunction would not be issued, that these employees will continue to be terminated.
00:04:28.000And these are all precedent-setting cases, basically.
00:04:30.400Every other lawsuit is looking at them and saying, OK, well, how does the decision bear on ours?
00:04:36.780And so the decision at this point is, no, the courts will not stop anybody from being fired in British Columbia over these vaccine mandates.
00:04:47.000So going ahead, anybody that's been put on unpaid leave can be fired.
00:04:52.680And it's just a question of seeing where the constitutional challenge goes in May.
00:04:59.140I know we have a little bit of an internal debate at True North, jokingly, about which province has the most severe, strictest COVID restrictions.
00:05:08.020And you tend to think it's British Columbia.
00:05:10.800So first of all, why do you think BC is worse than other provinces?
00:05:15.260And what is it about the culture and the government in BC that makes them so ardent in issuing these kind of heavy-handed edicts?
00:05:26.680That's a good question, because growing up in the north of BC, we kind of had our own world.
00:05:32.760And I didn't really, I wasn't really aware of the reputation of BC as wacky.
00:05:37.180I think BC has a reputation as being wacky politically across the country.
00:05:41.180And so it wasn't until we moved down south that you started to see, you know, why it is different scandals like that that happened.
00:05:49.560But in the case of COVID, actually, it was the other way around.
00:05:52.360I mean, I was speaking with a lawyer about this this week.
00:05:56.580I think a lot of the country was a little bit envious that we had Bonnie Henry in the beginning, because she seemed pretty laid back.
00:06:03.640She didn't lock down British Columbia.
00:06:06.060She lifted the mask mandates at one point.
00:06:11.180But as time progressed, BC came to adopt the same kind of strict measures that the rest of the country did, but also just different language that was used.
00:06:21.640I think it was around winter, like the winter COVID lockdowns for Omicron, that all of these really draconian measures started coming out.
00:06:48.460And keep in mind, they were already denied entry into theaters, restaurants, gyms, anything like that.
00:06:55.760Aside from that, the mandates continue in British Columbia, even as the other provinces are rolling them back.
00:07:04.560And not just, you know, the prairie provinces, you know, like Saskatchewan and Alberta, but Ontario, Quebec, even Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, which a lot of people may not be paying much attention to, they were pretty strict, too.
00:07:19.500Remember, New Brunswick had denied, given grocery stores the ability to deny people entry based on their VAX status and then rolled that back.
00:07:27.540But, you know, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, even, were removing their VAX mandates.
00:07:33.340Even then, British Columbia was still moving ahead with a mandate for private sector healthcare professionals, dentists, chiropractors, therapists, acupuncturists.
00:08:32.200I'm not a legal professional, but judges do have to be aware of the precedence their decision set.
00:08:38.640And so I can't help but suspect this has gotten so big to pull that brick out that causes the whole thing to fall down.
00:08:45.300Well, it's so interesting, Harley, because I would say since the Omicron wave last December, last November, is when we really started to realize, I mean, there were a lot of sort of people in scientific communities whistleblowing, saying that this vaccine isn't as effective as it's being sold as.
00:09:01.920And I think that the world sort of acted that out, and we lived that over Christmas time, when we realized that, hey, being vaccinated doesn't actually stop you from getting Omicron.
00:09:11.700People who are double, triple vaccinated, including our own prime minister, are still getting this virus.
00:09:16.980And so, you know, not only is the COVID vaccine not effective at stopping COVID, as we were told, but also, you know, this idea that we're going to demonize and disenfranchise and bully and exclude people who have made a medical choice that we don't agree with, that's not a very good way to run a society.
00:09:37.060And I think that there has been a lot of retrospective thinking and soul searching.
00:09:42.880And here on the Candace Malcolm Show, I've interviewed so many people who sort of pick up on this and discuss this issue that demonizing the unvaccinated was a huge mistake.
00:09:52.960And the division that it caused is something that we need to work on mending.
00:09:56.500And yet, you know, the story that you just told in British Columbia, it's like they haven't gotten that, they haven't reached that point, they haven't gotten that message, they don't look at the data, or they haven't seen the sort of broader picture of the sort of second and third effect causes of COVID, things like, you know, more Americans under the age of 65 died of alcohol than died of COVID.
00:10:18.900In Canada, it's very, very similar, the diseases of despair, suicide, depression, drug overdoses, you know, younger people, people under 60s, 65, they die much more from these things than they do from COVID.
00:10:35.100I just, I can't really wrap my head around why British Columbia is so out of step and why these discussions aren't being had.
00:10:41.640Do you hear people having these discussions publicly, people in media, you know, academia, public intellectuals, politicians, is this message out there in British Columbia?
00:10:52.400Or do people just listen to a different set of stories, and they're kind of burying their head in the sand when it comes to the changes that we've seen in our knowledge and in our approach to COVID?
00:11:04.560I guess I could say there's a lot of confusion, but there's a lot of anger at this point.
00:11:08.840I don't think a lot of people understand why the province is moving ahead with this, I'm sticking to it, when the data is becoming clear, you could argue it was clear a long time ago.
00:11:21.780I mean, my children are in school, I just got a form the other day that has like a, it's a liability release in case of COVID.
00:11:31.920Okay, well, why couldn't we have had that before?
00:11:34.000You know, you just, you know, if the kid gets COVID, you know, you don't sue the school type thing.
00:11:39.100But I wrote a story about a dentist about a month ago, who was subject to the private sector vaccine mandate.
00:11:46.060And it's worth watching, because he just lays it out.
00:11:51.240I think he says, you know, Bonnie Henry should, his regulatory college should tell Bonnie Henry to crawl back into the hole she came out of.
00:11:58.380Because it doesn't make sense anymore.
00:12:00.000And he says at this point, ignorance and malice are indistinguishable.
00:12:04.040Because the data is so clear, why is she sticking with it?
00:12:07.960It can't be, it doesn't matter if it's ignorance or malice.
00:12:10.100It's just, it's effectively the same thing.
00:12:12.300But as far as talking to other people, I've spoken to a lot of people, I've talked to lawyers, union officials, academics.
00:12:21.480A lot of people who are affected by this mandate, and on the wrong side of the mandate, they don't want to speak publicly about it.
00:12:28.680And it's because exactly because of the stigma you mentioned, there's still a huge amount of stigma about coming out and saying not only are you unvaccinated, but you're against the vaccine mandates.
00:12:42.680Going back to work, what's that going to be like?
00:12:45.460Speaking to the Alberta paramedic, Kate King, a couple of weeks ago, she said for healthcare workers who are unvaccinated who've gone back, it's like no one wants to talk about it.
00:12:55.980She described it like being like an abusive relationship, walking on eggshells, whereas before there was an eruption of abuse and hatred and condemnation of people that didn't want to disclose or take these vaccines.
00:13:09.760Now everyone's just kind of looking the other way, and there's no healing.
00:13:13.640So I think this, again, goes along with what we've been talking about all along, is these policies have created huge sociological problems.
00:13:23.260Now, you can't bring in something like this, just call them orders, and not expect them to create huge chasms in society between people, demonizing people.
00:13:36.040We talk a lot about the Charter of Rights, the Constitution, provinces have their own human rights codes.
00:13:43.420And I know when it came to the Freedom Convoy, a lot of people couldn't understand why the Constitution didn't kind of take shape, come down and protect them from this.
00:13:53.600And I know that a lot of lawyers, the sign of the Free North Declaration, Bruce Partey's talked about it, DJ R. Brown talked about it with Andrew Lawton.
00:14:02.960The legal system is made up of people.
00:14:05.660It's made up of lawyers and judges, and they're all people.
00:14:09.660And if they are not willing to rule a certain way or stand up for certain things or kind of lean certain ways, then none of these documents mean anything.
00:14:19.940And so I think that was why it was important with Charlene Lebeau from the Justice Center I spoke with on Monday.
00:14:26.040She said, we just need one good decision.
00:14:28.100We just need one judge to look at our evidence, our very compelling evidence, and say, no, this is done.
00:15:28.000We haven't we haven't seen that through the courts.
00:15:29.980We haven't seen that through challenges.
00:15:32.740And the example that we're talking about on the show today is a very example of that, why we need to create more robust institutions and we need to have more advocacy when it comes to the legal profession as well.
00:15:43.960So let's talk about the decision or the announcement that British Columbia had that they're finally getting rid of their vaccine mandate vaccine passport system.
00:15:54.680Do you think that this is sort of a good sign that the government is ready to move on from all of this?
00:16:00.200And what does it mean sort of in the day to day lives of British Columbians who are not vaccinated?
00:16:06.020Like, will they be able to have full access to society or are there still some things that are being held on to?
00:16:12.000Well, careful with our language, because the vaccine passport isn't being scrapped here.
00:16:34.940But just because the government is stepping away and saying, OK, we're not going to enforce this anymore, doesn't mean they're not going to encourage the continuation of these policies.
00:16:45.480And like everywhere else, mask mandate was dropped a couple of weeks ago, March 11th, I believe.
00:16:53.480And again, people screaming, can you abandon us like this, Bonnie Henry?
00:16:57.260You know, like what you're going to create another wave and all this.
00:17:00.680And it's like there's nothing preventing people from continuing to wear them if they don't want to or sorry, if they wanted to.
00:17:06.220So I think that places like government buildings, like, for example, pools, skating rinks, things like that, they will drop them as necessary.
00:17:17.840Universities, again, like other provinces, like U of T, just dropped a mandate after it was challenged.
00:17:42.040What's happening now, though, is the dropping of something that came in at the end, which was the vaccine passport.
00:17:47.040I think the only reassurances we have at this point is it'll be very difficult to bring the vaccine passport back in once it's been dropped,
00:17:54.900especially with the waning efficacy of these vaccines.
00:17:58.420You're not going to be able to bring it back in unless you're going to be able to, you know, force people to get third and fourth shots,
00:18:04.160which, you know, I wouldn't have passed them.
00:18:07.480But it's at the moment, the holdout province is kind of on the same page as everybody else right now.
00:18:12.980And we're keeping our eye on them, though.
00:18:14.980Nobody's breathing easily at this point.
00:18:17.720One of the things that I find sort of shocking because, you know, we had the terror convoy.
00:18:23.380We carried we covered it very, very closely at True North.
00:18:26.180And you yourself were one of the top reporters covering it.
00:18:30.160And from my perspective, I think so many others, we saw it as a huge victory in terms of changing the public conversation,
00:18:38.260raising issues around, you know, people wanting to get their life back, sort of the silent majority of people coming out and saying,
00:18:46.020we don't like all of these restrictions.
00:18:47.780We don't like this division in our society.
00:18:49.320And we started to see a whole bunch of the restrictions get dropped.
00:18:52.460One of the things that still is there is the original mandate that they were protesting against,
00:18:59.420which is a requirement that truckers continue to have to show a vaccine mandate or passport in order to do cross-border trips.
00:19:08.160And again, the whole issue was that, you know, we'd had this huge wave of Omicron that was indistinguishable,
00:19:14.500whether you were vaccinated or unvaccinated.
00:19:16.180We learned that the vaccine mandate system doesn't work.
00:19:18.260The vaccine doesn't protect you and doesn't stop you from getting COVID.
00:19:22.060It doesn't stop the spread of COVID, which was why we were told we needed them.
00:19:26.480And yet in January, so after the big wave, after things were starting to settle down again,
00:19:31.840and we saw an end in sight to COVID, Trudeau imposes this restrictive, punitive, mean-spirited rule.
00:25:48.720He decided to make a stand, and he just looked for media.
00:25:54.060He wanted to tell his story, and he decided that he wasn't going to hide from fear, fear of being canceled, fear of losing his pension.
00:26:03.020He said, you know, if Russell Williams, the murderer and rapist who's in jail in Ontario can keep his pension, why should he be worried about losing his over a vaccine mandate?
00:26:31.600I spoke to him in his house, and he was just inspired by the convoy, like so many people, thinking you're alone in all this, feeling demonized.
00:26:41.060He saw people coming together, and it renewed his faith in people.
00:26:46.900And what's funny about James is that he's walking across Canada.
00:27:12.680You know, of course, his job was taken from him.
00:27:15.300But he's put a manifesto on his website representing all those who have been forced to undergo medical treatment, forced out of job because of the medical treatment.
00:27:23.920And, you know, he'll march with anybody who wants to stand by his side, and he's going to be in Ottawa on June 22nd.
00:27:32.100And he wants to sit down with any politician that has the brass to meet with him, talk to a man that walked 4,200 kilometers just to have a talk.
00:27:59.600You can only imagine how much more inspiration is coming from people learning about his journey, supporting him along the way, as well as all the truckers.
00:28:07.360I mean, they inspired all of us to keep going.
00:28:10.020And I think that the more people, the more Canadians who come together around this cause, around eliminating these horrible draconian policies, you know, we can continue to have that critical mass and force governments to make changes, to your point, not just lifting these awful vaccine mandates, but eliminating them entirely and ensuring that this kind of a system can never come back.
00:28:36.540So that's what I think that's what I'm hopeful for.
00:28:37.960And I know that James is doing his small part.