Western Standard - May 31, 2026


SPECIAL REPORT： Disciplinary tribunal for vaccine-sceptic Ottawa cop nears its end

Mentioned
Comfortable Helen Bruce Detective Helen Groose Bathsheba Vandenberg Robert Krejcik Chris Renwick Jason Unrau Helen Groose
CORY MORGAN SHOW： Impossible indigenous consultation requirements will tear Canada to shreds MARTY UP NORTH： A referendum on a referendum： Danielle Smith’s political tightrope

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

138.8

Word count

1,323

Sentence count

31

Harmful content

Misogyny

5

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of the Western Standard Reporting at the Disciplinary tribunal for Constable Helen Gruse, a police officer with the Ottawa Police Service, who, back in March of last year, was found guilty of the charge of discreditable conduct, which means that she was guilty of having engaged in behaviour that would likely undermine the reputation of the police service, in other words bring the OPS into disrepute.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 The message that the prosecution is sending to police across this country, it's not just the Ottawa police,
00:00:08.540 is that police officers are not to investigate sensitive matters involving potential criminal accountability of government officials.
00:00:19.820 The message that is being sent to Canadians is that government are above the rule of law.
00:00:30.000 Robert Krejcik here in Ottawa, Ontario for the Western Standard reporting at the disciplinary
00:00:38.360 tribunal for Comfortable Helen Bruce, a police officer with the auto police service who back
00:00:43.520 in March of last year in 2025 was found guilty of the charge of discreditable conduct, which
00:00:49.720 means that she was found guilty of having engaged in behavior that would likely undermine the
00:00:54.680 reputation of the auto police service in other words bring the OPS into disrepute now what was 0.96
00:01:00.720 it that Helen Bruce did that brought about this charge she used to work for the sexual assault
00:01:06.140 and child abuse unit here at the OPS and the SACA unit oversees among other things infant deaths
00:01:13.460 that need to be investigated to determine whether or not there was foul play or negligence on the
00:01:17.400 part of the parent or guardian in 2020 there was an increase in infant deaths brought to the
00:01:23.860 attention of the OPS relative to previous years. And this happened to coincide with the rollout
00:01:29.560 of the so-called COVID-19 vaccines. Helen Bruce was inquiring about whether or not there was some
00:01:35.360 sort of linkage between the so-called COVID-19 vaccines, including the vaccination status of
00:01:40.680 mothers and these infant deaths. So I'm here with Jason Unruh. He's with True North. He's been
00:01:47.160 reporting on this disciplinary tribunal since back on day one, I think. He's got a deep sense of
00:01:53.000 history with respect to the events that have unfolded and he's definitely been here for the
00:01:57.180 past three days i want to ask him basically what he thinks about the major takeaways of the previous
00:02:02.340 three days what jumped out at you what do you think the audience should know about what's
00:02:06.000 occurred across this penalty phase of this disciplinary tribunal following the determination
00:02:10.900 of helen gruce as being guilty of discreditable conduct it's like groundhog day the movie
00:02:19.140 uh this disposition phase the last three days that we've been witness to has been a rehashing
00:02:27.520 of the prosecution of helen gruce or what i like to refer to as the persecution of
00:02:35.840 detective helen gruce uh for the i guess the crime or in this case the discreditable conduct
00:02:45.220 for looking into possible link between the COVID vaccines
00:02:54.600 and infant deaths in the region.
00:02:59.060 And, you know, it's like a paperwork.
00:03:05.500 First, it was a paperwork crime. 1.00
00:03:06.980 She didn't take notes or her notes were insufficient.
00:03:11.100 but you know evidence given during the tribunal were contrary to that you know she did take notes
00:03:17.940 um every time she logged into the rms it was uh noted by the system itself so that was a
00:03:26.480 element of note taking as well which was testified to by staff sergeant daniluk
00:03:34.100 just so the audience knows the rms is the records management system it's like this
00:03:39.700 police database that cops use for all sorts of queries and information. Right. And so during
00:03:46.620 the prosecution's arguments for in favor of a two-year demotion in rank and a commensurate pay 0.61
00:03:59.200 cut, which the defense estimates could cost Helen Groose in the neighborhood of $50,000 on top of
00:04:07.160 $400,000 in legal fees she's already paid out of her own pocket by taking a line 0.98
00:04:14.720 of credit against her home because the police union refused to cover any of her 0.94
00:04:23.120 legal expenses. What the prosecution is saying, they've basically thrown
00:04:28.520 everything with the kitchen sink at Detective Groose in terms of existing
00:04:35.000 case law uh to support this demotion so you know you have officers engaging in uh
00:04:43.560 in tow truck scams uh officers engaging uh in um illicit sexual activities
00:04:51.960 while on duty in the patrol car while on duty in the patrol car
00:04:57.160 um and and you know and lying about these things or failing to take proper notes you know attending a
00:05:04.600 bar fight involving two off-duty cops not taking notes for that to say well look you know these
00:05:12.600 officers were punished with such and such a disposition you know suspension
00:05:24.680 quite minor in in comparison to the two-year demotion that they're looking for for detective
00:05:32.840 Gruse. So in the penalty phase of this disciplinary tribunal, given that Helen
00:05:37.020 Gruse was already found guilty by tribunal officer Chris Renwick, the opposing sides,
00:05:41.920 in this case the prosecution and the defense, are laying out their arguments for what they
00:05:46.300 seek as an appropriate punishment. I am here with Bathsheba Vandenberg,
00:05:50.040 counsel for Constable Helen Gruse, who's been generous enough to answer some questions for us.
00:05:55.600 And the first question I've got for you, Bathsheba, is about a remark you made during
00:05:59.920 your arguments in the penalty phase of this hearing in which you warn that punitive measures
00:06:05.960 against your client could potentially lead to a chilling of police officers' willingness to
00:06:11.140 practice their discretion and to take initiative against matters that you describe might be of a
00:06:18.380 political or controversial nature. Maybe you can flesh that out for the audience. Of course. Well,
00:06:23.960 the issue here is that the prosecution is asking for a 24-month demotion from class one to class
00:06:29.640 too and that's an incredibly harsh penalty for the circumstances before the tribunal
00:06:37.240 and the tribunal found last year Detective Helen Groose guilty of discreditable conduct
00:06:42.600 based on what they have asserted in their ruling which is not what she was charged with
00:06:48.920 of conducting a criminal negligence investigation into public health officials in relation to
00:06:56.040 COVID-19 vaccinations. The ruling also has this unusual standalone paragraph where it alleges
00:07:03.400 that Detective Helen Groose had weaponized her police powers to conduct a criminal negligence
00:07:09.720 investigation. Well I need to just say again and I repeat it often because I don't want this to be
00:07:15.880 misunderstood. Detective Helen Groose was not charged with having conducted a criminal negligence
00:07:22.280 investigation and she was not conducting a criminal negligent investigation she was at
00:07:29.880 the probative stage so this is where the chilling comes into play because detective helen gruse
00:07:35.480 was acting on a hunch she was at the probative stage of an investigation she had not initiated
00:07:41.880 an investigation she had simply looked into the ottawa records management system to see if there
00:07:48.280 was a pattern that was alarming with regards to the tripling of sudden infant deaths that
00:07:55.240 had occurred in the last year in Ottawa.
00:07:58.200 She saw a pattern and she said something the same day to the chief of police.
00:08:03.140 She used her police discretion to raise an issue to the chief of police with regards
00:08:09.180 to public safety issues that falls squarely within her police duties to protect the public
00:08:16.540 and to preserve life and within two weeks she had her badge
00:08:19.820 stripped off of her and then three years later she's found
00:08:23.100 guilty of discredible conduct and then a year later that is this
00:08:27.420 week we're hearing submissions from the prosecution
00:08:30.380 that she deserves 24 months of demotion the message that the prosecution is
00:08:37.340 sending to police across this country it's not
00:08:41.100 just the Ottawa police is that police officers are not to investigate
00:08:47.540 sensitive matters involving potential criminal accountability of government
00:08:52.680 officials. The message that is being sent to Canadians is that government are
00:08:59.140 above the rule of law and that is a direct affront to our rule of law in
00:09:05.460 Canada. It essentially translates into the fact that we no longer have the rule
00:09:09.780 of law here. You have to remember that police officers are only force in Canada that are there
00:09:17.860 to enforce their rule of law, to protect us. And that protection is from anyone who is going to
00:09:25.500 endanger public safety or who's going to take away life and they need to be held accountable.