Justin Trudeau is good at apologizing for the actions of other people, most of whom were long since dead. His record of fessing up to his own heirs is a bit more suspect, but that's human nature. Much as Trudeau, in the upper crust of Canada s elite opinion, may claim otherwise, Canada is not a dark, genocidal state, born in sin, redeemable only by ideological conversion therapy. But there were, of course, since no state in humanity s short history is without it.
00:01:11.360They were minorities of the population that did not deserve our understanding.
00:01:15.180Only in hindsight, after the crisis had passed, did cooler heads allow Canadians to self-reflect at the injustices done to their fellow citizens.
00:01:25.480Trudeau and the premiers should undergo a similar self-reflection right now as the COVID-19 crisis fades into history.
00:01:32.960The unvaccinated weren't locked up into concentration camps, but they were locked down in their homes, locked up in mandatory quarantine hotels.
00:01:41.040Prior to the September 21 federal election, few beyond the most wild-eyed COVID cultists were demanding vaccine passports.
00:01:50.720But lagging in the polls and desperate to restore his majority government, Trudeau recognized it as a solid voter wedge issue.
00:01:57.080With the support of the NDP and bloc, and only tepid resistance from the O'Toole Tories, Trudeau introduced the most openly discriminatory government policy since the introduction of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms by his father in 1982.
00:02:12.520Canadians who made a private health care choice that did not conform with the state's desire were to be shunned, discriminated against, and overtly othered.
00:02:20.720People lost their jobs. People were prevented from flying back to Canada for weddings and funerals.
00:02:27.680People were prevented from crossing provincial borders in anything but their own automobiles and on foot.
00:02:33.920There was no Berlin Wall with armed guards shooting at fleeing citizens, but it constituted a massive curtailing of the charter-guaranteed mobility rights of Canadian citizens.
00:02:45.280Trudeau himself said, they, that is the unvaccinated, don't believe in science and progress, and they are very often misogynistic and racist.
00:02:55.200It's a very small group of people, but that doesn't shy away from the fact that they take up some space.
00:03:01.220This leads us as a leader and as a country to make a choice.
00:03:06.060It was a shockingly authoritarian and sinister statement to be coming from the leader of a civilized country.
00:03:13.940In short order, every single provincial government followed Trudeau's lead.
00:03:17.720From Quebec to Ontario to Saskatchewan, BC, and Alberta, every single premier in Canada imposed wildly discriminatory vaccine passports that made the unvaccinated second-class citizens in their own country.
00:03:30.280The unvaccinated were barred from attending weddings, funerals, restaurants, bars, concerts, and indoor gatherings of almost any kind.
00:03:40.940One Alberta government employee that I know was put on mandatory unpaid leave simply because she chose not to comply with what the government told her to do with her body.
00:03:49.380It made many of us who were voluntarily and enthusiastically vaccinated before it became mandatory feel ashamed, and ashamed we should be.
00:04:00.860I was given back my freedom to live much of my life as I pleased, while my unvaccinated friends and colleagues were forced to live like chained-up animals.
00:04:09.620I leviated my own guilt as much as I could by assisting them in finding certain government documentation that would allow them to participate in society again.
00:04:20.300So far, only Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has had to pay the political price for the actions of his government.
00:04:26.020Arguably, Aaron O'Toole also lost his job for failing to take a firm stand against Trudeau.
00:04:30.660But Trudeau himself, and every premier that has faced voters since, has been rewarded with re-election.
00:04:36.620Doug Ford was re-elected last week in Ontario, despite his grievous record of hard lockdowns, mask mandates, and discriminatory vaccines.
00:04:47.520Ontario's Conservatives, as upset as many of them were, held their collective noses or stayed at home.
00:04:53.220Ford would not be so lucky if he governed Alberta, where Conservatives and Libertarians launched a veritable insurrection to oust Kenney without electing the NDP.
00:05:02.120Provincial mandatory vaccination may be, for the most part, gone, thanks to grassroots pressure from events like the Freedom Convoy, but Trudeau refuses to remove them at the federal level.
00:05:14.820He knows there is no science backing his position.
00:05:17.880Vaccines do provide some level of protection against severe COVID-19 outcomes, but they do nothing to prevent transmission whatsoever.
00:05:26.020However, the sole thread that the vaccine passport program hung by was as a means of preventing that transmission.
00:05:36.740Trudeau will not end mandatory federal vaccination because it is a matter of politics, pride, and vindictiveness for him.
00:05:44.560For much of his voter coalition, vaccines are not just about health care, but are a marker of tribal political allegiance.
00:05:53.660His pride was severely hurt when a bunch of rednecks showed up in hot tubs and bouncy castles outside of Parliament Hill and refused to leave until he invoked martial law, enforced by mounted police and billy clubs.
00:06:05.400This episode left him deeply embarrassed on the international stage, of which he cares so much, leaving him to exact his vengeance on the rebels of the Drucker Spring.
00:06:16.360Canada's apologist-in-chief is unlikely to see the error of his actions, and even less likely to apologize for them.
00:06:22.540But even Canada's premiers, who have rolled back most of their discriminatory vaccine policies, have uniformly refused to admit wrongdoing.
00:06:32.300Like panics of the past, Canadians will likely one day look back on this era as a dark chapter in our history, when we allowed hysteria and charlatans to other a minority for their political and ideological gain.
00:06:46.100The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, and the Premiers owe the unvaccinated an apology, but we'll almost certainly have to wait until they are history themselves.