Western Standard - May 31, 2026


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


Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

138.79564

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 .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
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.