Western Standard - Canada just gave away its public health sovereignty

00:00:00.000 good evening western standard viewers and welcome to hannaford a weekly politics show

00:00:21.360 it is thursday october the second just two weeks ago with no fanfare or parliamentary debate

00:00:29.500 Canada quietly ceded operational control of public health in this country

00:00:34.120 in the event of another medical emergency to the World Health Organization.

00:00:40.980 So it's now the World Health Organization that will tell us when we have an emergency,

00:00:47.200 what we should do about it, and demand speedy answers back when we've done it,

00:00:52.440 on the double, according to the regulations.

00:00:55.220 If that sounds like handing over Canadian sovereignty and control, I think it is. 0.69

00:01:02.660 But I'm known for overreacting. With me today is Alison Piovich, a constitutional lawyer whose 0.56

00:01:10.900 work is funded by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms. Welcome to the show,

00:01:16.500 Ms. Piovich. Hi, Nigel. Thank you very much. It's great to have you here.

00:01:20.100 Look, let's then talk. Am I overacting, do you think?

00:01:26.740 No, I mean, when we went through COVID, that was a big shock for most of the world,

00:01:32.580 and certainly for many Canadians, for what happened. And a lot of what occurred in this

00:01:39.140 country through governmental action was really looking to the WHO and what they were telling

00:01:47.780 countries to do and the international health regulations have been in place since 2005

00:01:55.300 but now they've brought forth some amendments which make it even more

00:02:02.660 difficult for you know provinces to take a different approach.

00:02:06.260 Well let's talk about some of the things that we experienced during COVID that we can trace

00:02:12.500 directly back to these regulations and then maybe you can take us to where they've actually made

00:02:18.100 them more onerous. Sure well during COVID the chief public health officers of the provinces

00:02:26.260 through different public health acts which gave them power to do so made public health orders

00:02:31.700 which did a variety of things as you know imposing lockdowns on society you know you can't go to your

00:02:38.340 your parents' house for dinner, you can't have people over, you can't stand outside and protest

00:02:43.700 with more than five people, you can't go to church at all in a province like Manitoba.

00:02:48.740 So this all started with the World Health Organization?

00:02:51.700 Well, the World Health Organization was telling countries what to do,

00:02:58.340 telling leaders of countries what to do, but it's actually in these international health

00:03:02.500 regulations from 2005, they actually, at Article 18, I've got it in front of me, they recommend

00:03:09.140 to countries to require proof of vaccination during a public health emergency, place suspected

00:03:18.980 persons, people suspected of being sick under public health observation, implement quarantine

00:03:24.260 or other health measures for people.

00:03:26.580 So these hotels, you fly back from somewhere

00:03:30.200 and you end up going at your own expense to a hotel.

00:03:33.960 A quarantine hotel.

00:03:34.940 That was a horrifying experience.

00:03:37.260 That came from the World Health Organization?

00:03:39.960 Yeah, they've got it right here at Article 18

00:03:42.060 and this was drafted originally in 2005.

00:03:45.880 Okay, now you've got me really scared.

00:03:47.620 I'm obviously not overreacting.

00:03:49.640 If that's what it was like in 2005,

00:03:51.780 What have they done now that's going to really upset us?

00:03:55.800 Right.

00:03:56.120 So they've made some amendments last year and Canada has agreed to them.

00:04:02.560 And they've added a lot of wording in here, which requires countries who've signed on to move even more rapidly than before.

00:04:12.100 So you thought that things were happening quickly when COVID started in 2020 and all of a sudden, you know, kids can't go to school.

00:04:18.600 Businesses are shut down.

00:04:20.020 Churches are shut down.

00:04:21.040 That happened very quickly, and it was very shocking to all of us.

00:04:26.020 But the World Health Organization wants countries to move even more rapidly and just shut everything down immediately.

00:04:34.260 And, of course, when you do that, there's little time to react and say, well, wait a minute.

00:04:41.400 What is the science telling us so far?

00:04:44.580 Let's talk to a variety of sources and try to ascertain whether these measures are necessary.

00:04:51.940 And they just want to steamroll over the process of getting different opinions,

00:04:57.300 getting people together. And you can do that fairly quickly, but when they say as rapid as

00:05:03.940 possible, they're going to act immediately and they expect countries like Canada to act immediately.

00:05:09.780 Well, do they have any power to enforce that?

00:05:13.300 Well, it's Canada.

00:05:15.540 They don't have an army.

00:05:17.460 Well, no, but I mean, Canada has agreed and these regulations are binding.

00:05:25.620 And so Canada has a dualist system. So they have to sign on to these international agreements and

00:05:30.820 then implement them through domestic legislation. So it would be through the Public Health Acts

00:05:36.820 that these are you know once they're ratified in parliament they would they would show up through

00:05:40.580 the the quarantine act and the public health acts and so it's really it's the it's the federal

00:05:46.820 government um you know taking that taking the lead with this but what else they've done here

00:05:52.820 is they've actually have language in these amendments that requires countries to respond

00:05:59.220 um and to coordinate responses nationally and you know for a country like canada and united states

00:06:05.540 You 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.

00:06:29.760 And 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.

00:06:38.760 We saw uniform responses last time with COVID. But like, look at Florida, Florida, Governor DeSantis took a very different approach.

00:06:47.760 So did Kristi Noem. She's the governor of South Dakota. 1.00

00:06:51.760 and when you look at the outcomes of Florida versus say California Florida fared better in

00:06:59.300 terms of the total COVID deaths and I know that because it was evidence in our in one of the

00:07:05.500 cases that I that I argued and my experts talked about Florida and use it as an example of a place

00:07:10.740 that actually locked down early but lifted the lockdowns realized the harm they were causing to

00:07:15.600 the population and actually fared very well.

00:07:19.200 Well, let me just take you back to Canada for a moment.

00:07:24.900 During COVID, Bonnie Henry, the public health officer in BC, mandated that churches should

00:07:32.880 be closed and the restaurants should stay open.

00:07:36.600 And as soon as you got into Alberta, it was the other way around that the churches stayed

00:07:42.420 open and the restaurants were closed for periods of time.

00:07:45.600 Now, it was the same virus, and whatever the science was, I guess it was the same science.

00:07:52.480 Now, some people might say, good, at last they're getting their act together, it's going

00:07:57.420 to be the same all over.

00:08:00.040 Maybe that's a good thing.

00:08:02.420 And you say?

00:08:03.420 I would suggest it's not a good thing to leave all that immense power to the federal

00:08:10.560 government to control, dictate what happens all across the

00:08:16.320 country. We've seen what this government has done during

00:08:19.920 COVID, exercised its power, for example, over travelers, trying

00:08:26.140 to go visit their family in Europe and, you know, South

00:08:30.720 America, internationally, you need to get on a plane, you can't

00:08:33.360 take a boat. And people weren't, people weren't allowed to get on

00:08:38.940 a like a cruise ship. People weren't allowed to get on an airplane to see their loved ones unless

00:08:44.700 they received the COVID vaccine, which during that time was still in the testing phase. And now we

00:08:52.140 know that there are significant adverse effects from the vaccine. Absolutely. Their science is

00:08:59.260 there. The United States is taking a very careful, critical look and as it should at the horrendous

00:09:06.780 side effects that some people have experienced from this vaccine you know heart problems

00:09:11.180 myocarditis strokes blood clots so these are it's really is there a benthamite argument that yes

00:09:19.020 some people got hurt as a result of the vaccine but overall it it saved a lot of lives can you

00:09:25.020 argue that uh you know we've we've had experts during cases where we argued that the unless

00:09:32.940 you're talking about people who are immunocompromised or the elderly, when you look at the risks of COVID

00:09:38.460 to the population, for younger people who are not senior citizens, not immunocompromised,

00:09:46.380 middle-aged younger people with no pre-existing conditions, they typically fared pretty well

00:09:54.220 with covid and the vaccines uh had a very um uh had a risk profile for myocarditis for young males

00:10:05.900 meaning adolescent males young males up to age 30 were negatively affected by the vaccine in their

00:10:14.060 heart and i do have experts that uh you know relied on peer-reviewed research to show that

00:10:20.300 the vaccine's negative effects on the heart is worse, was worse than the risk to them from COVID.

00:10:27.420 And of course, you know, experts on the other side will say, well, COVID also presented a risk

00:10:33.900 to the heart of myocarditis. So you might as well get the vaccine anyways,

00:10:38.700 to protect you from COVID. But I mean, that's a ridiculous argument. And I know there are studies 0.97

00:10:43.420 since I argued those cases at court that are that have definitively found that the risk to

00:10:49.580 your heart from covid um is far less than the risk of the vaccines to your heart well let's

00:10:56.780 come back to the uh keeping the regulations harmonized uh you are you i think we're in

00:11:03.500 manitoba at the time and uh i believe the winnipeg jets had a very different experience

00:11:13.260 of covet than anybody else they sure did and so did actors and actresses so these

00:11:17.980 These, you know, industries that were making a lot of money for Manitoba, such as NHL and the movie industry, they were allowed to continue.

00:11:28.760 Winnipeg 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.

00:11:38.900 They were allowed to continue. They were allowed to play against opposing teams.

00:11:43.200 And 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.

00:12:13.200 but it was not okay to go to church you couldn't have two people sitting in a church in a grand

00:12:18.480 cathedral in winnipeg because that was that activity was too dangerous and i recall uh during

00:12:24.960 when i was arguing uh the gateway bible uh versus manitoba case where we um we also my clients uh

00:12:33.600 churches sued the former chief medical health officer dr brent rusen while we were arguing that

00:12:40.240 case, we had to do it on video. So we were all sitting at home. My team, we were sitting at home

00:12:47.680 on our screens. The judge was sitting in the courtroom. There were no people in the courtroom

00:12:53.520 other than a few journalists, as I understand. We weren't allowed to go to court to be the case.

00:12:58.020 But the team of government lawyers who I used to work with, wonderful people, they were sitting in

00:13:05.300 a boardroom together. There were four of them in a boardroom I could see on the camera, I used to

00:13:10.260 sit in that boardroom because I used to work there. And they were allowed to sit there, the four of

00:13:14.820 them in a boardroom, probably not much bigger than this room. But you couldn't have two people in a

00:13:20.700 giant church, cathedral, mosque in Winnipeg. And so when you see things like that happen, it shakes

00:13:30.680 the confidence of the public in the seriousness of this virus. And therefore, when the public is

00:13:37.300 asked not to come over, not to get together at Christmastime, remember the creamier Brian

00:13:42.420 Felster got on camera and he was tearful, telling Manitobans, he couldn't believe he had to do it,

00:13:48.100 but he had to tell Manitobans, you can't visit your loved ones over Christmas, you can't have

00:13:52.400 Christmas dinner together. While these movie sets were going on, while the Winnipeg Jets were playing

00:13:57.260 together while you couldn't go to church at christmas time as a citizen you couldn't go to

00:14:03.180 church could you go to the jets game no you couldn't go to the jets game either no no it was

00:14:08.680 but the teams could get together and the teams could get together in the change room gee and

00:14:13.780 families didn't form their own hockey teams to get through that's yeah that's how do you think that

00:14:19.000 officials square these kind of inconsistencies in their own minds because i mean i don't want to

00:14:23.100 start from the premise that everybody is inherently dishonest and a charlatan so they must have had

00:14:27.580 some sense yes this is doesn't really make sense well yeah no in in fairness uh the excuse given

00:14:34.060 by dr rosen uh in his sworn evidence yes was that um people who go to church engage in dangerous

00:14:42.880 activities after church such as hugging um sharing utensils if they have lunch together in the

00:14:49.760 basement of a church. And in his experience, many people at

00:14:56.060 church embrace each other, ignoring the fact that, you

00:15:00.180 know, that could be one of the, when you come to church, there

00:15:03.180 could be a request from the minister, from the priest, from

00:15:06.860 the pastor to say, if you don't mind, we're so wonderful, you

00:15:11.220 know, thank you for coming, you know, despite the fact that

00:15:14.420 there's this virus going around, but wouldn't mind not not

00:15:19.220 embracing in the church. Outside is different, and we're not going to have lunch in the basement

00:15:24.120 today or something like that. But the act of getting together and worshiping together communally

00:15:29.700 in person is so critical for the right to worship, which is protected under the charter,

00:15:35.920 and it was just thrown away. Did anybody ever compare the outcomes in Manitoba and Alberta as

00:15:41.680 a result of people who did go to church and didn't go to church? I'm sure somebody has. I don't have

00:15:46.780 that. I don't have that statistic. Well, there's more things buried in this wretched document that

00:15:51.820 you have there. And there's one thing that really concerns us here at the Western Standard, and it

00:15:59.020 has to do with the suppression of information. The World Health Organization seems to have a

00:16:09.700 fixation about disinformation and they want to take measures. What is it that we have now agreed

00:16:19.520 to in this revised version of the international health regulations that we've done a really bad

00:16:28.660 thing? Right. And before I answer that, when I hear the phrase misinformation and disinformation,

00:16:35.420 I 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.

00:17:01.340 And so, you know, perhaps that came from the language of the WHO behind closed doors.

00:17:09.540 I don't know.

00:17:10.760 But the fact that they've used the exact same phrase here is interesting.

00:17:14.900 So this is a section called Core Capacities Requirements for Prevention, Surveillance, Preparedness and Response.

00:17:21.820 It's in Annex No. 1.

00:17:23.420 And 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.

00:17:41.120 So in plain language, what are they actually, what is the government of Canada signed up for with that?

00:17:46.280 Well, 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.

00:18:04.420 And, you know, we've got all these cases.

00:18:06.420 We have to do X, Y, and Z.

00:18:07.940 I'm really sorry.

00:18:08.800 We have to.

00:18:09.720 You can't see your loved ones this weekend.

00:18:12.120 You can't go to restaurants.

00:18:15.620 you need to get the vaccine before we do x y and z and but because the risk of this virus is is so

00:18:23.080 high when you're communicating the risks of these activities and that's why we have to to shut them

00:18:27.980 down when you're communicating the risks of the unvaccinated as an example uh you don't want to

00:18:33.240 sit next to somebody on an airplane who's unvaccinated we're going to make sure that you 0.99

00:18:36.640 don't have to do that because they're dangerous right that's kind of the the theme right that's

00:18:43.520 the theme of what we heard from the Prime Minister and so if you challenge that statement you're

00:18:52.100 hearing disinformation. So addressing misinformation and disinformation to me sounds like censorship

00:18:56.760 and is that going to come in the form of you know censoring people online and if people are

00:19:06.280 standing in a street corner holding a sign up that says you know lockdowns are harmful or whatever

00:19:11.460 Are you going to be, you know, given a ticket and told you that you can't, you can't protest

00:19:16.560 there?

00:19:18.560 You know, silencing voices is something that we saw during COVID, but it struck me recently

00:19:24.620 I saw a clip on social media of, I believe it was the CEO of YouTube.

00:19:32.520 And she seemed quite gleeful in saying that during COVID, and I believe, if I recollect

00:19:42.780 correctly, that she said it was due to the request by the Biden administration at the

00:19:48.120 time, that she censored and scrubbed, removed, thousands of dissenting voices during COVID,

00:19:57.520 videos of people.

00:19:58.520 I'm going to assume that that means scientists, doctors, because I would see scientists and

00:20:04.260 doctors. And there were many who had expressed questions, serious questions and doubts with

00:20:11.820 what was happening. And they had a message they wanted to get to the average person to

00:20:18.040 step back and say, wait a minute, do we really need to do these things? And there were freedom

00:20:24.700 freedom types who would like to do videos and talk about, you know, how they were made to feel

00:20:31.860 during COVID. And, you know, when you're told to put a mask on and go to the grocery store,

00:20:38.520 follow the arrows on the floor, you're not talking to the person next to you. You're not engaging in

00:20:43.300 conversation. When you're not allowed to visit your family, you're not communicating. And when

00:20:48.400 you shut down communication, when you shut down dissenting voices, people are left isolated.

00:20:54.700 and they're left looking at the TV, listening to the messaging, not perhaps realizing that

00:21:01.080 there are other people who are also questioning what's going on. And maybe they hadn't thought

00:21:05.740 about an inconsistency or that there might be other science that is not being pursued. And,

00:21:12.480 you know, I mean, the science is not, you know, a dictator saying this is the way it is. It's

00:21:18.080 a discussion and debate. And there's always going to be new studies coming out. And when

00:21:23.880 scientists get together and debate that's how science is shaped so really now so what we're

00:21:28.040 so what we're seeing here i'm putting words into your mouth so if i'm wrong say so but what it's

00:21:37.000 looking like is that the government of canada which we know would prefer it if everybody just

00:21:43.240 accepted what they said in a variety of uh of fields as the gospel truth has now got the world

00:21:53.080 health organization on side and and wants you to think whatever they say in the name of the

00:21:59.160 world health organization cannot be challenged should not be challenged and if you do challenge

00:22:04.680 it you are a bad person is that is that sort of what's happening here yes prime minister trudeau

00:22:09.960 did say those things yes if you're vaccinated uh it was all so odd because it doesn't make 0.76

00:22:17.080 any sense an unvaccinated person is also misogynist and racist and takes up too much space

00:22:23.080 that's what he said. Um, so yeah, I mean.

00:22:27.280 Okay. So we, it is actually a fairly black, uh, outlook.

00:22:32.440 One thing that I noticed in the appendix to all this,

00:22:36.760 there were 11 countries that actually didn't buy into the improved, uh,

00:22:42.600 and some of them are fairly substantial countries. One was the United States.

00:22:46.840 What was there? I think, um,

00:22:49.920 Health 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.

00:23:01.280 What was his reasoning?

00:23:04.140 From my recollection, he was concerned about the language, which I haven't actually addressed in this discussion,

00:23:11.320 the language in the new amendments that talks about how health products, and they define health

00:23:16.840 products as medicines and vaccines and, you know, ventilators or whatever, something like that,

00:23:22.280 that you need if there's a, you know, a public health emergency, a virus going around,

00:23:27.640 that those are going to be distributed not equally, but equity, equitably.

00:23:35.480 What's equity?

00:23:36.440 So 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.

00:23:58.020 But 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.

00:24:15.020 You 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.

00:24:34.320 what does that mean? The document doesn't explain what it means. It's very general. So he didn't

00:24:40.020 want to, what I take from his statement is he didn't want to sign up for potential discrimination

00:24:47.860 not knowing what that means. Does that mean that the people who are immunocompromised will get the

00:24:53.280 first round of medicines? Okay, you can understand why that might be okay. But does that mean that a

00:24:59.200 certain racial group, a certain religious group, a certain, you know, a minority group will be

00:25:05.000 singled out and offered the first round of medicine. Well, it probably does. So yeah,

00:25:09.600 that's concerning. So that's, I think that was one of his main concerns. I think he was also

00:25:14.120 concerned with the speed at which the World Health Organization wants countries to respond

00:25:20.620 instead of slowing it down a little bit. I mean, you can only slow it down so much when you're

00:25:25.840 faced with an incoming virus. But when they want things to go so fast, as I said before, there's

00:25:31.480 really little room for any dissenting opinion and gathering the science and sitting down and

00:25:37.900 discussing and also debating as part of what we do. Therein is the problem. That's how this

00:25:44.800 doesn't fit our democratic way. I could go on for a long time, but we only have 20 minutes. So

00:25:53.480 i think we've even roared past that but i do want to thank you for coming into the john galt studio

00:25:59.560 here at the western standard talking to us about these things i know that this this story is not

00:26:05.880 over because pandemics and epidemics keep coming around we're going to have to deal with this

00:26:13.400 at the next time around right absolutely okay you thank you as payovich for coming

00:26:19.400 For the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.

Western Standard - October 03, 2025

Canada just gave away its public health sovereignty

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