Just two weeks ago, with no fanfare or parliamentary debate, Canada quietly ceded operational control of public health in this country to the World Health Organization (WHO). So it s now the WHO that will tell us when we have an emergency, what we should do about it, and demand speedy answers back when we ve done it, on the double. If that sounds like handing over Canadian sovereignty and control, I think it is. But I m known for overreacting. With me today is Alison Piovich, a constitutional lawyer whose work is funded by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.
00:05:17.460Well, no, but I mean, Canada has agreed and these regulations are binding.
00:05:25.620And so Canada has a dualist system. So they have to sign on to these international agreements and
00:05:30.820then implement them through domestic legislation. So it would be through the Public Health Acts
00:05:36.820that these are you know once they're ratified in parliament they would they would show up through
00:05:40.580the the quarantine act and the public health acts and so it's really it's the it's the federal
00:05:46.820government um you know taking that taking the lead with this but what else they've done here
00:05:52.820is they've actually have language in these amendments that requires countries to respond
00:05:59.220um and to coordinate responses nationally and you know for a country like canada and united states
00:06:05.540You know, we've got, you know, multiple different areas, we've got provinces, the US has states. And so what they want is they want provinces just to, you know, hand over authority to the federal government to take care of everything, take care of their response, tell us what to do. And that really, and this is a, this is a federalist society, there's a separation of powers here.
00:06:29.760And so different provinces, you know, I'm going to suggest Alberta might be one of them in a future pandemic might want to have a different response.
00:06:38.760We saw uniform responses last time with COVID. But like, look at Florida, Florida, Governor DeSantis took a very different approach.
00:06:47.760So did Kristi Noem. She's the governor of South Dakota.
00:06:51.760and when you look at the outcomes of Florida versus say California Florida fared better in
00:06:59.300terms of the total COVID deaths and I know that because it was evidence in our in one of the
00:07:05.500cases that I that I argued and my experts talked about Florida and use it as an example of a place
00:07:10.740that actually locked down early but lifted the lockdowns realized the harm they were causing to
00:07:15.600the population and actually fared very well.
00:07:19.200Well, let me just take you back to Canada for a moment.
00:07:24.900During COVID, Bonnie Henry, the public health officer in BC, mandated that churches should
00:07:32.880be closed and the restaurants should stay open.
00:07:36.600And as soon as you got into Alberta, it was the other way around that the churches stayed
00:07:42.420open and the restaurants were closed for periods of time.
00:07:45.600Now, it was the same virus, and whatever the science was, I guess it was the same science.
00:07:52.480Now, some people might say, good, at last they're getting their act together, it's going
00:08:03.420I would suggest it's not a good thing to leave all that immense power to the federal
00:08:10.560government to control, dictate what happens all across the
00:08:16.320country. We've seen what this government has done during
00:08:19.920COVID, exercised its power, for example, over travelers, trying
00:08:26.140to go visit their family in Europe and, you know, South
00:08:30.720America, internationally, you need to get on a plane, you can't
00:08:33.360take a boat. And people weren't, people weren't allowed to get on
00:08:38.940a like a cruise ship. People weren't allowed to get on an airplane to see their loved ones unless
00:08:44.700they received the COVID vaccine, which during that time was still in the testing phase. And now we
00:08:52.140know that there are significant adverse effects from the vaccine. Absolutely. Their science is
00:08:59.260there. The United States is taking a very careful, critical look and as it should at the horrendous
00:09:06.780side effects that some people have experienced from this vaccine you know heart problems
00:09:11.180myocarditis strokes blood clots so these are it's really is there a benthamite argument that yes
00:09:19.020some people got hurt as a result of the vaccine but overall it it saved a lot of lives can you
00:09:25.020argue that uh you know we've we've had experts during cases where we argued that the unless
00:09:32.940you're talking about people who are immunocompromised or the elderly, when you look at the risks of COVID
00:09:38.460to the population, for younger people who are not senior citizens, not immunocompromised,
00:09:46.380middle-aged younger people with no pre-existing conditions, they typically fared pretty well
00:09:54.220with covid and the vaccines uh had a very um uh had a risk profile for myocarditis for young males
00:10:05.900meaning adolescent males young males up to age 30 were negatively affected by the vaccine in their
00:10:14.060heart and i do have experts that uh you know relied on peer-reviewed research to show that
00:10:20.300the vaccine's negative effects on the heart is worse, was worse than the risk to them from COVID.
00:10:27.420And of course, you know, experts on the other side will say, well, COVID also presented a risk
00:10:33.900to the heart of myocarditis. So you might as well get the vaccine anyways,
00:10:38.700to protect you from COVID. But I mean, that's a ridiculous argument. And I know there are studies
00:10:43.420since I argued those cases at court that are that have definitively found that the risk to
00:10:49.580your heart from covid um is far less than the risk of the vaccines to your heart well let's
00:10:56.780come back to the uh keeping the regulations harmonized uh you are you i think we're in
00:11:03.500manitoba at the time and uh i believe the winnipeg jets had a very different experience
00:11:13.260of covet than anybody else they sure did and so did actors and actresses so these
00:11:17.980These, you know, industries that were making a lot of money for Manitoba, such as NHL and the movie industry, they were allowed to continue.
00:11:28.760Winnipeg Jets were allowed to practice inside with their coaches, teammates, you know, whoever needed to be there at the Winnipeg True North Centre, still live there.
00:11:38.900They were allowed to continue. They were allowed to play against opposing teams.
00:11:43.200And as you know, if you watch hockey, I'm sure you've seen a hockey game or two, these guys get roughed with each other, they get their faces smashed up against each other. And that was just fine. That was safe. And it was fine. But it is also safe to act in a scene in a movie in Manitoba inside where you are doing, you know, intimate things with another actor as part of the scene, or, you know, getting into fistfights and rolling around brawling as part of a violent movie, that was okay.
00:12:13.200but it was not okay to go to church you couldn't have two people sitting in a church in a grand
00:12:18.480cathedral in winnipeg because that was that activity was too dangerous and i recall uh during
00:12:24.960when i was arguing uh the gateway bible uh versus manitoba case where we um we also my clients uh
00:12:33.600churches sued the former chief medical health officer dr brent rusen while we were arguing that
00:12:40.240case, we had to do it on video. So we were all sitting at home. My team, we were sitting at home
00:12:47.680on our screens. The judge was sitting in the courtroom. There were no people in the courtroom
00:12:53.520other than a few journalists, as I understand. We weren't allowed to go to court to be the case.
00:12:58.020But the team of government lawyers who I used to work with, wonderful people, they were sitting in
00:13:05.300a boardroom together. There were four of them in a boardroom I could see on the camera, I used to
00:13:10.260sit in that boardroom because I used to work there. And they were allowed to sit there, the four of
00:13:14.820them in a boardroom, probably not much bigger than this room. But you couldn't have two people in a
00:13:20.700giant church, cathedral, mosque in Winnipeg. And so when you see things like that happen, it shakes
00:13:30.680the confidence of the public in the seriousness of this virus. And therefore, when the public is
00:13:37.300asked not to come over, not to get together at Christmastime, remember the creamier Brian
00:13:42.420Felster got on camera and he was tearful, telling Manitobans, he couldn't believe he had to do it,
00:13:48.100but he had to tell Manitobans, you can't visit your loved ones over Christmas, you can't have
00:13:52.400Christmas dinner together. While these movie sets were going on, while the Winnipeg Jets were playing
00:13:57.260together while you couldn't go to church at christmas time as a citizen you couldn't go to
00:14:03.180church could you go to the jets game no you couldn't go to the jets game either no no it was
00:14:08.680but the teams could get together and the teams could get together in the change room gee and
00:14:13.780families didn't form their own hockey teams to get through that's yeah that's how do you think that
00:14:19.000officials square these kind of inconsistencies in their own minds because i mean i don't want to
00:14:23.100start from the premise that everybody is inherently dishonest and a charlatan so they must have had
00:14:27.580some sense yes this is doesn't really make sense well yeah no in in fairness uh the excuse given
00:14:34.060by dr rosen uh in his sworn evidence yes was that um people who go to church engage in dangerous
00:14:42.880activities after church such as hugging um sharing utensils if they have lunch together in the
00:14:49.760basement of a church. And in his experience, many people at
00:14:56.060church embrace each other, ignoring the fact that, you
00:15:00.180know, that could be one of the, when you come to church, there
00:15:03.180could be a request from the minister, from the priest, from
00:15:06.860the pastor to say, if you don't mind, we're so wonderful, you
00:15:11.220know, thank you for coming, you know, despite the fact that
00:15:14.420there's this virus going around, but wouldn't mind not not
00:15:19.220embracing in the church. Outside is different, and we're not going to have lunch in the basement
00:15:24.120today or something like that. But the act of getting together and worshiping together communally
00:15:29.700in person is so critical for the right to worship, which is protected under the charter,
00:15:35.920and it was just thrown away. Did anybody ever compare the outcomes in Manitoba and Alberta as
00:15:41.680a result of people who did go to church and didn't go to church? I'm sure somebody has. I don't have
00:15:46.780that. I don't have that statistic. Well, there's more things buried in this wretched document that
00:15:51.820you have there. And there's one thing that really concerns us here at the Western Standard, and it
00:15:59.020has to do with the suppression of information. The World Health Organization seems to have a
00:16:09.700fixation about disinformation and they want to take measures. What is it that we have now agreed
00:16:19.520to in this revised version of the international health regulations that we've done a really bad
00:16:28.660thing? Right. And before I answer that, when I hear the phrase misinformation and disinformation,
00:16:35.420I can see and hear very clearly Prime Minister Trudeau on the TV very slowly enunciating the words that is misinformation and disinformation regarding the public's questions about the vaccines or the lockdowns or anything else that went against what he was telling us we had to do.
00:17:01.340And so, you know, perhaps that came from the language of the WHO behind closed doors.
00:17:23.420And what they have got here as part of the amendments is each state party shall develop, strengthen and maintain the core capacities for risk communication, including addressing misinformation and disinformation.
00:17:41.120So in plain language, what are they actually, what is the government of Canada signed up for with that?
00:17:46.280Well, I think what it's intended to mean is when the, you know, chief public health officer of Canada and or the provinces gets on the camera and tells the public, you know, as we saw in COVID almost every day, an update on case counts.
00:18:04.420And, you know, we've got all these cases.
00:22:49.920Health Secretary Kennedy put out a statement explaining why they weren't going to go along with these new arrangements and what they would do instead.
00:23:36.440So equity is different than equality. So equality is what we fight for under the Charter of Rights, under Section 15. Everyone should be treated equally. You know, one group shouldn't be treated differently than another group based on your skin color, based on the fact that you're disabled, based on the fact that, you know, your heritage or something like that.
00:23:58.020But equity is putting one group ahead of another for, could be a variety of reasons. Perhaps the government says, well, this group has been disadvantaged, therefore they need, you know, special, they need to get paid more.
00:24:15.020You see that in some some government jobs. If you're a member of a disadvantaged group, you can have employment equity. But in terms of equity in supplying people with lifesaving treatments, medicine, for example, he was concerned.
00:24:34.320what does that mean? The document doesn't explain what it means. It's very general. So he didn't
00:24:40.020want to, what I take from his statement is he didn't want to sign up for potential discrimination
00:24:47.860not knowing what that means. Does that mean that the people who are immunocompromised will get the
00:24:53.280first round of medicines? Okay, you can understand why that might be okay. But does that mean that a
00:24:59.200certain racial group, a certain religious group, a certain, you know, a minority group will be
00:25:05.000singled out and offered the first round of medicine. Well, it probably does. So yeah,
00:25:09.600that's concerning. So that's, I think that was one of his main concerns. I think he was also
00:25:14.120concerned with the speed at which the World Health Organization wants countries to respond
00:25:20.620instead of slowing it down a little bit. I mean, you can only slow it down so much when you're
00:25:25.840faced with an incoming virus. But when they want things to go so fast, as I said before, there's
00:25:31.480really little room for any dissenting opinion and gathering the science and sitting down and
00:25:37.900discussing and also debating as part of what we do. Therein is the problem. That's how this
00:25:44.800doesn't fit our democratic way. I could go on for a long time, but we only have 20 minutes. So
00:25:53.480i think we've even roared past that but i do want to thank you for coming into the john galt studio
00:25:59.560here at the western standard talking to us about these things i know that this this story is not
00:26:05.880over because pandemics and epidemics keep coming around we're going to have to deal with this
00:26:13.400at the next time around right absolutely okay you thank you as payovich for coming
00:26:19.400For the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.