Alberta MLA and former Agriculture Minister Devin Dreeshen is concerned that what’s happening to Dutch farmers is being done to Canadian farmers by PM Justin Trudeau.
“What’s happening to Dutch farmers, Trudeau is doing here to Canadians,” Dreeshen told The Counter Signal.
“There’s no magic to grow more food with less fertilizer. Trudeau keeps making things more expensive for people that grow our food, but then he acts shocked when people can’t afford to buy groceries. It’s him.”
To this point, recent data from Farm Credit Canada shows that nitrogen fertilizer prices have increased by 148% between the 2020-21 and 2022-23 fiscal years, rising from $550 per tonne to $1,365 per tonne.
This is partly due to the war in Ukraine and sanctions imposed on Russia, but also the Canadian government’s damaging policies.
In December 2020, the Trudeau government unveiled their new climate plan, with a focus on reducing nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizer by 30% below 2020 levels by 2030.
“Fertilizers play a major role in the agriculture sector’s success and have contributed to record harvests in the last decade. They have helped drive increases in Canadian crop yields, grain sales, and exports,” a news release from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada reads.
“However, nitrous oxide emissions, particularly those associated with synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use have also grown significantly. That is why the Government of Canada has set the national fertilizer emissions reduction target, which is part of the commitment to reduce total GHG emissions in Canada by 40-45% by 2030…”
This is a tacit admission that any attempt to lower admissions by reducing nitrogen fertilizer will consequently lower crop yields over the next decade.
And indeed, according to a report from Fertilizer Canada:
“Total Emission Reduction puts a cap on the total emissions allowable from fertilizer at 30% below 2020 levels. As the yield of Canadian crops is directly linked to proper fertilizer application this creates a ceiling on Canadian agricultural productivity well below 2020 levels.”
“… It is estimated that a 30% absolute emission reduction for an a farmer with 1000 acres of canola and 1000 acres of wheat, stands to have their profit reduced by approximately $38,000 – $40,500/ annually. In 2020, Western Canadian farmers planted approximately 20.8 million acres of canola. Using these values, cumulatively farm revenues from canola could be reduced by $396M – $441M on an annual basis. Wheat famers could experience a reduction of $400M.”
Moreover, Fertilizer Canada doesn’t believe that forcibly decreasing fertilizer use will even lower greenhouse gases but could lead to carbon leakage in other jurisdictions.
Nonetheless, Trudeau’s government is moving forward, with farmer’s groups speaking to Farmers Forum now wondering if he’s intentionally trying to cause a food shortage — which Trudeau previously told Canadians to prepare for.
The Ukrainian government is pressuring Canada not to return a gas turbine to Russia that could boost the supply of Russian fuel to Germany, Reuters and a Ukrainian news site have reported. Kiev argues the precedent would erode anti-Russia sanctions.
Previously, Russian gas monopoly Gazprom reduced the flow through the Nord Stream pipeline to 40% of capacity, claiming that Germany failed to return a Siemens gas turbine from maintenance in Canada. The crucial piece of equipment had become stuck due to Ottawa’s sanctions against Russia.
According to sources in the Ukrainian government cited on Thursday and on Friday by Reuters and the Ukrainian news website Evropeyskaya Pravda, Kiev was informed that Canada had decided to return the turbine. Officials in Ukraine argued that it was a bad move.
“If, God forbid, this decision is approved, we will undoubtedly appeal to our European colleagues that their approach must be reassessed,” a source in Ukraine’s Energy Ministry was quoted as saying by Reuters. “Because, if countries do not follow decisions they have agreed about sanctions, how can we talk about solidarity?”
Both outlets said Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko had lobbied Canada not to return the turbine, claiming that Russia could ramp up gas supplies to Germany. The Ukrainian newspaper said the minister had sent a two-page letter to his Canadian counterpart, Jonathan Wilkinson, on June 22, in which he explained that more Russian gas could be pumped through Ukraine.
Kiev is concerned that by bowing down to what it considers Russian energy blackmail, Canada would set a bad precedent for the Western sanctions regime.
Germany activated the second phase of its gas emergency plan after Russia reduced supplies through Nord Stream. Berlin reportedly asked Ottawa to return the turbine before 10 days of scheduled maintenance starts on the pipeline next week.
A Canadian university professor suspended for comments he made during a December 2021 conference about COVID-19 vaccines in an interview this week with The Defender called for “openness, critical thinking and to stop believing what we are being told is the truth.”
“We need to be allowed to question again,” said Patrick Provost, Ph.D., an infectious and immune diseases researcher who learned June 13 that Laval University in Quebec City was suspending him for eight weeks without pay.
Laval University also suspended Nicolas Derome, Ph.D., a professor in the university’s biology department, for concerns he raised in November 2021 about Quebec’s campaign to vaccinate 5— to 11-year-olds.
In his interview with The Defender, Provost also discussed an article he wrote questioning COVID-19 policies, published June 22 on the Québecor media platform, then retracted a day later.
For the article, Provost used Quebec’s publicly available data to raise questions about the province’s management of the pandemic. The province of Quebec is home to about 8.5 million people, the second-most populous province in Canada.
“I was so happy when I found out my article was going to be published,” Provost told The Defender, “I really thought it would be a game-changer in the public debate about COVID-19 [in Quebec]. That finally, based on official public data, we could start to discuss the situation.”
However, by the next day, June 23, Québecor had removed Provost’s article from all of its websites.
Sébastien Ménard, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Journal de Québec, one of Québecor’s publications, tweeted (in French):
“Although we encourage debating ideas, we have decided to remove this letter [by Dr. Provost] from our websites. After verification, some of the elements it contained were inaccurate or could mislead the public, which we cannot support.”
Commenting on the retraction, Provost said:
“I’m really worried about the direction we are heading, about our democracy. Why hide the truth? These numbers are real, this was just my analysis of them. Maybe it’s a disturbing truth.”
Libre Média prefaced the article with a note that it was publishing Provost’s article in full, “in accordance with its mission to protect freedom of the press.”
Criticism of COVID vaccines for young children led to suspension
Two days after Québecor removed his article, Provost went public with the news that Laval notified him on June 13 that the university was suspending him, effective June 14.
Provost filed a grievance through his union, the Union of Laval University Professors.
According to Provost, he sent an email to all his colleagues at Laval University last December, in which he urged them to engage in debates on COVID-19 vaccination and public health measures, because he felt public debate had been lacking.
In the email, he gave the example of a lecture he had given at a conference on Dec. 7, 2021, in which he criticized Quebec’s campaign to vaccinate 5- to 11-year-old children against COVID-19.
The conference was organized by Réinfo Covid Québec, a Quebec collective of caregivers, doctors and citizens “gathered around an idea: the need for a fair and proportionate health policy in Quebec and elsewhere in the world.”
“As a result of this, a professor from the faculty of medicine filed a complaint against me in January, outraged that I was raising questions,” Provost told The Defender. “In particular, that I said the risks of adverse effects [of Pfizer’s mRNA shot] outweighed the benefits for children.”
Provost said his suspension didn’t factor into Québecor’s decision this week to censor his article, as he had not made the news of his suspension public before the article was removed.
COVID mortality rate ‘greatly overestimated’ data show
In his article, Provost noted that the vaccine mandates for travel within Canada and for federal public servants had been suspended two days before, on June 20.
However, mandates could be reimposed, so Provost invited readers to consider a true portrait of the impact of COVID-19 in Quebec, based on the province’s own publicly available data.
As of June 19, when Provost accessed the cumulative data online, there were 15,462 deaths related to COVID-19 (Chart 2.1) out of a total of 1,077,256 confirmed cases of COVID-19 (Chart 1.1), for a calculated mortality rate of 1.44%.
Provost wrote:
“This mortality rate is greatly overestimated, mainly (i) by including, in the numerator, deaths with, and not because of, COVID-19, which were apparently as numerous, and (ii) by excluding, in the denominator, cases of asymptomatic or unreported infections, which were several times higher than the reported symptomatic infections.”
Provost then turned to official figures from the Institut de la statistique du Québec and the Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ), and made these five observations based on the data:
There was no excess all-cause mortality since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, except for people age 70 and over during the first wave (April to June 2020) and in January 2022, shortly after the lockdowns and curfews were imposed, which was also when the third vaccine doses were offered.
More than 90% of people age 70 or older who died with or from COVID-19 had two or more pre-existing medical conditions (Table 2.2).
69.2% of the people who died were over the age of 80 (Figure 2.3), thus the average age of people who died with or from COVID-19 was beyond their life expectancy at birth.
The number of deaths (Table 2.1) compared to the number of cases (Table 1.1) is 0.07% in people with no pre-existing conditions, 6 times higher in people with one pre-existing medical condition (0.4%), and 98 times higher in people with two or more pre-existing conditions (6 .9%), according to data last updated on May 2.
Between 0 and 5 people under the age of 40 (with less than one pre-existing medical condition) have died in Quebec since the start of the pandemic (Table 2.2).
According to Provost, early on in the pandemic, the analysis of official government data showed two of the main risk factors for complications and death from COVID-19: “advanced age and the number of pre-existing medical conditions, in particular, obesity.”
“The threat of COVID-19 was very real,” wrote Provost, “but was it of the magnitude that we have been told?”
According to the public data available on the sites of INSPQ and of Quebec Data Partnership, from April 1, 2020, to March 31, 2021, there were 20,616 hospitalizations due to COVID-19 out of a total of 986,607 hospitalizations — so approximately 2.1% of hospitalizations were a result of COVID-19 infections.
At the worst point in the crisis, COVID-19 hospitalizations peaked at 5.9% of the total.
Given the above data, Provost asked if the public health measures taken were justified. He raised a series of questions, including:
Did the data support imposing such severe and comprehensive health measures, rather than targeted ones that would protect those most at risk?
Did the data justify not considering the collateral effects of restrictive health measures?
Did the data justify preventing physicians from making individualized risk versus benefit assessments of a medical intervention (COVID-19 vaccination) with their patients?
Provost also asked if the data justified overriding the right of individuals to consent, in a free and informed manner, to an injection that is still experimental.
He questioned mass vaccination of the entire population for a disease that particularly affects the very old and sick, and of imposing vaccination on young people and workers.
Quebec used vaccine passports, and Provost asked if the data justified restricting the right to access public places and hindering the freedom of movement by train or plane of people who were not “adequately” vaccinated, “even though the shots do not prevent infection or transmission.”
With respect to governance, Provost said the government assumed power by self-proclaiming and perpetuating a state of health emergency and certain measures beyond the emergency period.
He noted that professionals and academics were muzzled if they were critical of health measures, through pressure from their professional organizations or their institutions, under penalty of losing their jobs.
He also pointed out that the polarized and polarizing media coverage sowed fear, anxiety and division, and that citizens were encouraged to discriminate against people who were not vaccinated against COVID-19.
As part of the remedy to what he viewed to be heavy-handed public health measures, Provost stressed the “importance of depoliticizing decisions that infringe on individual rights and freedoms by establishing, for example, by a Council of Scholars that is independent from the government, so that these decisions are based on science and are made more quickly.”
Provost closed his article by calling for a review of the management of the pandemic:
“An assessment of the management of this crisis, which has revealed the limits, even the flaws, of our system and our democratic life, is essential.
“We owe it to too many seniors whom we have failed to protect, as well as to those whose rights and freedoms have been violated for too long.”
Dozens of messages of support
Provost told the Defender that in the hours before his article was pulled, one idea was to have another professor write a rebuttal to his article.
But instead, Quebecor’s news sites simply deleted the article.
On Monday, Joel Monzée wrote an article in Libre Média about the censorship of Provost’s article and its implications for science. “Science is only science because it questions itself,” Monzée wrote.
Monzée said that with respect to the COVID-19 pandemic, “It is blithely claimed that there is a scientific consensus. However, this only exists because certain academic personalities seem to have enough influence over their colleagues to curb any questioning of the consensus, at least in public.”
Monzée asked, if there were inaccuracies in Provost’s article, then why not address them with a counter-analysis?
Provost is the supervisor of four Ph.D. students whose work has been affected by his suspension.
“Because of my suspension, I cannot go on the campus, enter the Research center or talk to them,” Provost said. “They are essentially left alone. They are collateral damage.”
Provost said that though the situation was difficult, in the past few days he had received dozens of messages of support, and also observed that a growing number of citizens “have a thirst for truth and openness.”
Provost told The Defender, “I would like to raise awareness about how our society is evolving, it’s not in a good direction. It is getting to the point where private interests will be directing our country, we will just be servants.”
I gave the following testimony to the legislature of New Brunswick, Canada, in August 2019 to explain why they were suddenly being asked to impose vaccine mandates. It is chock full of useful information about this subject that few people know. Enjoy.
… I am a veteran of the vaccine war in the US, and today I feel compelled to speak about what I saw in that war. Legislators were forced to change their votes to revoke vaccine exemptions and rescind the historic right to consent to medical procedures. The vaccine war is a dirty war, in which platitudes about protecting the most vulnerable are invoked by the same pharmaceutical companies that paid $2.7 billion in criminal penalties in the US between 2012 and 2015. The vaccine industry generates enormous profits (estimated 10-40%), benefits from a government-guaranteed market, and receives almost total liability protection. No other industry can rival these benefits. And this industry’s rapacious desire to grow and guarantee its Canadian market is the reason we are here today.
Let me add context to this discussion by noting that in 2014, the NY Times said it cost $2200 to fully vaccinate one child. At that price, it cost $163 billion dollars to fully vaccinate every US child.
May I apologize at the outset for using mostly US data? I provide Canadian and New Brunswick information when available.
On the other hand, the industry does not want to shoulder the considerable expense of developing, testing and licensing new vaccines–over 100 of which are in development–without a government guarantee that they will be purchased.
Vaccines are being developed for everything from acne to cancers.
Vaccine mandates guarantee a vaccine market, now and in the future. Mandates put in place today will enforce the uptake of vaccines on the currently required list, plus other vaccines yet to be added.
Industry Challenges
In 2019, the vaccine industry faces threatening legal challenges:
Facing these challenges, in 2019 the vaccine industry seized its opportunity from a prolonged US measles outbreak. A flawless PR campaign conducted for the industry helped ram through legislation for enforced vaccine mandates in the US, and now the industry is repeating the strategy in Canada.
Is New Brunswick, Canada prepared for a significant reduction in the number of children who attend public school?
2. You have been assured that “Vaccines are safe and effective.”
It has a reassuring ring, but conveys nothing. In fact, each vaccine is very different from every other. Generally, we know something (but not enough) about the benefit, but only a little about the harms of different vaccines. According to the Institute of Medicine, “The process of anticipating, detecting, and quantifying the risks of rare adverse events following immunization presents an enormous challenge.” Like drugs, each is appropriately used when the benefit outweighs the risk. Because vaccines are given to healthy people to prevent disease, they should be even safer than drugs.
The initial effectiveness of the different childhood vaccines ranges from about 40% to 93%. Immunity then wanes over time.
Here is a big problem at the heart of vaccine safety assessment: adverse event information is cloaked in secrecy, withheld from physicians and the public by public health agencies. Undesirable results are massaged or falsified until they appear acceptable. Because this is hard to believe, I will give you 3 important examples of CDC’s data manipulation.
1. Thomas Verstraeten was a young physician on a CDC fellowship who in 1999 studied the statistical relationship between cumulative amounts of thimerosal (mercury) infants received from vaccines and neurological illnesses. His results–including that children exposed to the highest levels of mercury from vaccines after birth had 7 times the level of autism as children not exposed–were so disturbing that CDC convened a private meeting of vaccine experts to discuss and manage them. No reporters or members of the public were permitted, but a copy of the meeting transcript was leaked. (I have provided you with an unpublished abstract obtained by FOIA showing some of Verstraeten’s data before it was massaged to remove the effect of mercury. His published 2003 paper says, “No consistent significant associations were found between thimerosal (mercury) containing vaccines and neurodevelopmental outcomes.” I also gave you a letter from physician Congressman Bill Weldon to Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the CDC about this data manipulation. The issue is unresolved. Merck was later found to have misled the public about when it removed thimerosal from infant vaccines.
Despite strong evidence of scientific misconduct in these 3 CDC cases, the papers published in top medical journals with these manipulated data have never been retracted from the medical literature. Instead, they provide foundational support for the safety of the MMR vaccine and for the safety of mercury in vaccines. The fraudulent papers pollute the medical literature, making it impossible to discern the true adverse effects of vaccines.
It is very difficult to link an adverse reaction to a vaccination unless it occurs soon afterward. In general, late adverse reactions are only identified as caused by vaccines if they occur many times more often than expected.
The National Academy of Sciences was chartered by Congress in 1863 to provide expert advice to government. Congress requested the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine to conduct a series of vaccine safety studies to inform vaccine policy.
“While few health problems are clearly associated with vaccines and some putative associations can be rejected based on evidence, in the majority of cases evidence was inadequate to accept or to reject a causal relationship… Confidence in vaccine safety requires more than surveillance and reporting in real time. In light of the paucity of strong conclusions about possible vaccine side effects, continued and selective investment in epidemiologic and other investigations into the risks of immunization will be necessary… About the best one can do is to estimate, based on the evidence, the probability that the frequency of an adverse event is less than a specified, low level. This may be enough for the physician who weighs the public health and personal health benefit against a very low risk, but not enough to satisfy a wary parent.
Continued, candid, and open communication is also an essential ingredient to a successful vaccine safety regime. This means more than the experts explaining the benefits and risks to parents and families. It means listening carefully to the anxieties and doubts, staying true to the strength of evidence without exaggeration or misrepresentation, and reporting fully and fairly on scientifically sound investigations into possible adverse events.“
1300 cases of narcolepsy were caused by the 2009 swine flu Pandemrix vaccine. This particular side effect was able to be linked to the vaccine because millions of people were vaccinated simultaneously, the narcolepsy that developed was severe and required intense medical attention, the rate of narcolepsy was 10-16 times higher than expected, and vaccine oversight had been increased to evaluate new pandemic vaccines. Canadians received a virtually identical vaccine (Arepanrix) but it was manufactured in a different facility, and by chance alone the Canadian version did not cause narcolepsy.
3. Is New Brunswick undergoing a crisis of vaccine-preventable disease?
The answer is no. And if there was a crisis, Bill 39 would not wait to go into effect until 2021.
UPDATE: On August 15, 2019 CDC changed most of its Vaccine Information Statements (which must be provided to parents before vaccines are given, according to the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act) eliminating many of the warnings associated with each vaccine. The MMR Vaccine Information Statement no longer says, “Some People Should Not Get this Vaccine.” The purpose for the changes appears to be to restrict the indications for medical exemptions, and create a federal standard to be applied by states that pass legislation like California’s.
Although it is not usually acknowledged, vaccination is not a one-size-fits-all procedure. According to the Mayo Clinic, “Human antibody response to measles vaccine is highly variable in the population.”Females have more adverse reactions than males. Gender and race influence the response. As does heredity.
Families that have experienced a serious vaccine reaction are right to be concerned about additional vaccinations and the safety of sibling vaccination, for their family is probably at higher than average risk of a reaction. What goes unreported is that many unvaccinated children are themselves a vulnerable group, and should not be vaccinated. However, there are no existing standards for doctors to use to determine the risk of vaccination to most children. So medical exemptions have been improvised, and are generally hard to come by.
4. Herd Immunity is undermined by high rates of vaccine failures
The Quebec measles epidemic I mentioned demonstrates that even a vaccination rate over 95% didn’t prevent a large measles outbreak. Herd immunity rates are based on statistical modelling, and are only projections. The reason that 50% of measles cases occurred in vaccinated children is primary or secondary vaccine failure. Primary vaccine failure means the vaccine never produced immunity, while secondary failure means the immunity was lost over time.
For most vaccines, primary and secondary failures go unnoticed, because children are not being exposed to most of these infections. The infections children do get exposed to are pertussis and influenza, and then vaccine failure is obvious–because most cases of pertussis and many of influenza occur in fully vaccinated children.
5. Do unvaccinated children put immunocompromised children at risk?
The fact is that immunocompromised children are not dying from vaccine preventable diseases, and few are getting them, with the exceptions of influenza, pertussis and varicella–because vaccines for these 3 infections provide limited immunity.
Fewer than one American dies yearly from measles, mumps, rubella, polio, or diphtheria. On average, one Canadian dies from whooping cough (pertussis). Ten Canadian children die from influenza. One American child dies yearly from varicella (chickenpox).
You are looking at 11 child deaths per year in Canada. Would vaccinating every child fully against whooping cough, varicella and influenza prevent these deaths? Remember, most whooping cough and varicella patients are fully vaccinated. And while the immunity generated in young children from flu shots varies yearly, it is usually less than 50%.
Herd immunity cannot be achieved for whooping cough or influenza because neither vaccine is adequate. Pertussis vaccine immunity wanes so quickly that little protection is left after 3-4 years. Transmission to others can occur before you realize you have influenza or pertussis. Even if 100% of Canadians were vaccinated, these diseases would continue to circulate within the vaccinated and the unvaccinated population.
Varicella cannot be eradicated both because the vaccine is not optimal (85% efficacy), waning occurs, and because the virus stays in your body permanently after vaccination or infection. Most immunocompromised children who develop varicella infections do so from virus already resident in their bodies. The claim that vaccine exemptions put immunocompromised children at risk was invented by PR firms, with no evidence behind it. In fact, immunocompromised children are at more risk from the shedding of live viruses in vaccines by other children who were recently vaccinated.
6. Sufficient population immunity appears to exist
While vaccination rates reported in New Brunswick are low, non-medical exemption rates are also low: 2%. The likeliest explanation for lack of epidemics despite low recorded vaccination rates is inadequate recordkeeping.
In Maine, with similar demographics, vaccination rates for each of the required vaccines is about 95%. Exemption rates vary by vaccine. Only 1% of US children receive no vaccines. Up to 25% receive some, but not every available vaccine.
7. Should we be concerned about vaccine quality and origin?
Vaccines are biologics. According to the FDA, “Most biologics are complex mixtures that are not easily identified or characterized.” Translation: vaccines contain unknown substances, unknown even to the FDA and Public Health Agency of Canada. This makes them challenging to regulate. The FDA relies on vaccine manufacturers to provide accurate data about each step in the manufacturing process. When a problem occurs during manufacturing, the FDA expects to be told and expects the manufacturer to recall affected lots of vaccine when necessary. I have provided you information on 5 vaccine recalls or other issues in Canada since 2012.
The FDA usually redacts information about the locations where vaccine ingredients are manufactured. I am under the impression that at present, US vaccine products are made in Europe and North America.
Large multinational pharmaceutical companies, such as Sanofi, which has vaccine manufacturing facilities in both India and China, are manufacturing vaccines in underdeveloped nations. China and India each have over 20 vaccine manufacturers. It is probably only a matter of time before vaccines manufactured in countries known for inadequate government monitoring of pharmaceuticals are being used in Canada and the US.
“In July, China experienced its “worst public health crisis in years” as stated by South China Morning Post. Chinese vaccine maker Changsheng Biotechnology was found to have fabricated production and inspection records and to have arbitrarily changed process parameters and equipment during its production of freeze-dried human rabies vaccines. Furthermore, substandard diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus (DPT) vaccines produced by Changsheng Biotechnology were administered to 215,184 Chinese children; and 400,520 substandard DPT vaccines produced by Wuhan Institute of Biological Products were sold in Hebei and Chongqing. On July 25, China’s drug regulator launched an investigation into all vaccine producers across the country. Fifteen people from Changsheng Biotechnology, including the chairman, have been detained by Chinese authorities. This latest vaccine scandal follows on from a series of fake and substandard food and drugs issues in China. As a result, many parents have lost faith in the vaccine system.”
8. Influenza, and the Fluad vaccine
Influenza is a disease that affects from 3-20% of the population yearly. There were 6515 reported influenza deaths in the US in 2017, during the decade’s worst outbreak. CDC uses mathematical models to estimate influenza deaths, and the estimates include deaths from other heart and lung conditions, in people who had influenza. These estimates usually range from 30-50,000 deaths yearly, related to influenza. Ninety percent of influenza deaths occur in those over age 65. While most people over 65 receive annual flu vaccines in the US, this age group is less likely to develop immunity from the vaccine, compared to younger people. Overall, flu vaccine effectiveness averages about 40%, according to the CDC.
Each year, influenza vaccines are newly made to contain the dominant strains predicted for that season. Because of the need to make different products each year, and make them rapidly available for each flu season, they are not tested to the same extent as other vaccines. Clinical trials to test for safety are not required for yearly changes to flu vaccines. Effectiveness trials are impossible to do prior to mass use. Yearly flu vaccines are “grandfathered in,” although they are checked for manufacturing defects.
Possible reasons this occurred include the revolving door between vaccine manufacturers and regulators, the abbreviated safety testing of flu vaccines, and the liability protection given to manufacturers by governments. The episode provides a warning that regulators’ first priority may not always be the public’s welfare.
The response of elders to flu vaccines is particularly poor. Two strategies are being tried to enhance vaccine immunity in this age group. The first involves using higher concentrations of antigens in the vaccines. The second involves using novel adjuvants, which are substances that provide increased stimulation to the immune system. Potentially this can improve immunity, but it might increase inflammation and autoimmune illnesses.
The Fluad vaccine is the only influenza vaccine in Canada and the US to contain a novel, immune-boosting adjuvant. The adjuvant is called MF59 C1. Originally produced by an Italian company, the adjuvant-containing flu vaccine was licensed for elders only, in Italy, in 1997. It was not licensed in the US until 2015, for elders only, presumably because they were less likely to experience complications from the vaccine’s additional immune stimulation. I have been unable to find unbiased literature on the MF59 adjuvant or the Fluad vaccine, as all the research has been sponsored by its manufacturers (Sclavo, then Chiron, then Novartis, and now Sequirus).
Fluad was licensed for elders in Canada in 2011. The government of Ontario’s fact sheet on the vaccine makes clear that by 2016 it was still not known whether the excess immune stimulation it provides actually improved protection against the flu:
“How well does the Fluad® vaccine protect against influenza? Influenza vaccines may decrease hospitalizations and deaths among elderly individuals. According to the product monograph, Fluad® produces a higher immune response in elderly individuals when compared to other influenza vaccines without an adjuvant. The higher immune response may indicate that Fluad® works better than unadjuvanted vaccines, although this is not known for certain.”
Nor is it known how safe the adjuvanted vaccine is. It causes about 15% more local reactions than nonadjuvanted flu vaccines, but we don’t know if it causes more serious, or later onset, adverse reactions.
“Severe reactions are rare, but several of the reviewed studies were too small to detect clinically significant but rare adverse events. In particular, the safety information is limited for ATIV (adjuvanted trivalent influenza vaccines) in children with immunodeficiencies and other chronic illnesses… There are insufficient data to assess whether ATIV (adjuvanted flu vaccine) is more effective than UTIV (unadjuvanted flu vaccine) or LAIV (live attenuated flu vaccine) in practice or to make an informed risk-benefit analysis.”
The reviewers also noted that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) failed to license the vaccine for European children in 2012. The EMA report found a number of problems with the single pivotal clinical trial of Fluad in children. Furthermore, the EMA report states, “The current application, although related to a product developed more than 15 years ago and authorized for use in the elderly, includes only one study addressing clinical vaccine efficacy.” The report concludes, “The overall benefit-risk balance of Fluad Paediatric is negative.”
Despite a) the lack of evidence of benefit, b) limited and c) unreliable safety information, d) rejection in Europe, and e) no evidence of any other country using it for children, f) let alone use in infants–in 2015 the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) licensed Fluad pediatric for use in infants and babies aged 6 months to 2 years.
It seems that Canada’s youngest children have been selected to serve as the unwitting guinea pigs in a massive immune stimulation experiment of this novel-adjuvanted vaccine.
What was the PHAC thinking? Will Canadian children serve as experimental subjects, without their parents’ knowledge, for additional vaccines selected for them by their public health agency?
Public health officials use the mass media, medical professionals and the levers of government to encourage, exhort and cajole vaccinations. Their conduct with the Fluad pediatric vaccine has shown they must not be given the power to compel.
February of 2022 was a particularly dark month, both in Quebec and in Canada generally. In Quebec, we had the expansion of the use of “vaccine passports” to large, well-ventilated box stores; a curfew had been imposed in January (and was lifted after nearly three weeks); the demonization of the so-called “unvaccinated” reached a fever pitch, first in regime media, then in government pronouncements—a new tax on the “unvaccinated” was promised, and it was promised to be “significant”. Apparently the solution to the problem of Omicron defeating the non-vaccines, was to blame those who spared themselves the useless and potentially harmful injections. By the end of the month, the Canadian federal government invoked the Emergencies Act to crush a popular, peaceful protest—the Freedom Convoy. Bank accounts of hundreds of protesters and donors were frozen; protest leaders were arrested and jailed on trumped up charges, while other protesters were trampled by horses or arrested at gunpoint by policemen outfitted in a manner almost identical to soldiers; and protesters’ private property was seized and/or vandalized by the police. What the dictatorial Justin Trudeau called a “fringe minority” with “unacceptable views,” was accurate only as a description of his own regime, according to multiple surveys (like this one, that one, the other one, and now this). Everyone in Quebec was subjected to a new round of restrictions: the closure of businesses and churches; schools going back online. As mandated by the federal side of the regime, the “unvaccinated” were not allowed to leave the country, and they were banned from travelling by air or rail within Canada—the only country in the world to do that. An Iron Curtain was slammed down on Canada, and parts of that curtain remain intact. And then we all got Covid thanks to Omicron—for everyone I knew at the university, students and myself included, whether injected or not, the sickness was a total non-event and certainly far less severe than the common cold or a seasonal flu, even for those with multiple comorbidities. Some students were forced to quarantine at home with sick family members, and still did not get sick. All of this upheaval was meant to shield us from catching this?
In this dark, miserable month of authoritarian aggression against Canadians’ human rights and civil liberties, universities remained absolutely silent, because they were absolutely complicit. It is to this point that the following is directed.
On February 2nd, 2022, Reinfo Covid Quebec (a very large organization of health professionals, scientists, professors and citizens, numbering more than 10,000 members), organized and hosted a press conference titled, “The Collateral Damage of Government Measures” (“Dommages collatéraux des mesures gouvernementales”). The entirety of the professors’ panel in which I participated can now only be seen on Rumble (and Part 1 can be seen here). The event was mostly in French.
Before I continue, let me thank everyone in Reinfo Covid Quebec for their amazing organizational skills, their dedication, their professionalism, their courage, their high spirits, and their warmth. I thank them also for creating a momentary liberated zone for us: in contravention of government regulations, we met without masks, sitting shoulder to shoulder, laughing and chatting in large groups, for an extended time—no anti-social distancing, no useless breathing obstructions, no fear. In the darkness of February, they offered a warm and welcoming light.
My presentation (the video below), was in English. What follows beneath the video is the longer version of the remarks I had prepared, which appears only in print.
When a Canadian university tells a professor in the natural sciences that, “this university does not recognize natural immunity,” then we have arrived at the lowest intellectual point in the history of our universities. Natural immunity is a basic biological fact. For it to be struck from recognition gives you just one indication of the assault on science and on academic knowledge committed in the name of a “public health emergency” that was used to justify irrational, capricious, arbitrary, harmful, and discriminatory impositions.
Self-censorship has prevailed in Canadian universities, encouraged by castigating the few who express doubts, and by university administrations that present unsubstantiated monologues that advocate for restrictions and for dubious pharmaceutical products. We are further hampered in Canada by an inadequate number of public intellectuals, while we instead have a surplus of public relations intellectuals with close ties to pharmaceutical companies and to corporate media.
This is a country which has now purged a wide range of scholars in the natural and social sciences, and the humanities, because they expressed dissenting views and stood by the ethics governing their disciplines. Academic freedom is now, de facto, cancelled. Tenure is also, de facto, nullified. Faced with the first real test to their integrity and their ethics, the vast majority of Canadian scholars failed to stand up and speak out.
Rather than serve as a source of diverse perspectives and challenging questions, universities instead fell in line with encouraging mass panic. This conformity has not only damaged public discourse, by taking leave of our duties as the critical conscience of society, it has damaged universities themselves, and I think the damage is now irreparable. University presidents have repeatedly produced unquestioning endorsements of the so-called “vaccines,” masking, and social distancing. Universities have internalized the “vaccine passport” system. Professors have been enlisted to police their students by enforcing mask mandates. Faculty unions have loudly advocated for tougher restrictions, such as mandatory inoculation. This is an extremely dangerous precedent, where one’s place in a university can be cancelled at any time based on one’s health status. Just as dangerous is the Canadian university being conscripted by the state-corporate alliance.
What will remain as a simply inexcusable and unforgivable reality of this period, is that open scientific debate was blocked during what was called a “pandemic”. Asked to rise up to meet history, Canadian academics mostly preferred to stand down. Consequently, the university itself has fallen as victim of this emergency, with limited prospects for recovery.
The Rise of the Church of Covid
As an anthropologist, I have asked myself: what is happening here? And why is it happening? I think of religion and ritual, the making of community, and the art of secrecy.
The intense pressure to conform is, it seems, an attempt to cement a community of believers. Strict rules of belonging are imposed, and those who disagree are excluded. This community has invented new rituals to mark it as a community with borders, and to elevate certain knowledge beyond the realm of questioning. Rituals include ones such as “masking,” which as dubious as it is in preventing transmission and infection, is much more useful as a political symbol that is masked as a moral virtue. Masking also diminishes personal identity, which is one of the unstated intentions, while (anti-)social distancing means that this paradoxical community (united by separation) is one that coheres but not within itself—instead it coheres through adhesion to an abstract “common good” (which is neither common, nor good).
This community has invented its own rite of passage: a form of baptism, of purification in the name of salvation, with “the vaccine” worshipped as the saviour.
The high priests of this community—the administrators, the approved scientists—have made their knowledge special and magical by raising it above questioning. This is the role of censorship and even secrecy, in creating subjects and propositions that are taboo. Those who are not anointed and do not follow in the path of the saviour, are the damned.
The alleged common good—said to be imperilled by a dangerous, unclean “Other” who has not been ritually purified through “vaccination”—is a common good that expects tribute to be paid, and without reciprocity to members of the community whose rights have now become conditional privileges. In reality, it is not so much an objective community, as it is a method of extracting tribute, service, and submission—not so much a community as it is an exploitation scheme.
It is surprisingly self-reflective of Pfizer to call its new (not distributed) injectable, Comirnaty, in a play on the words for “community” and “mRNA,” for this is a community of devotion and service to mRNA technology. It is an imagined, even imaginary, community that flows from the point of the needle; in reality, actual living communities have been divided if not destroyed with the ritual mandates and restrictions that were ushered in to march the masses into the “vaccine” centres. Whether due to fear or mandates that left no choice, citizens were pressed into service for Pfizer and Moderna—and then they were patronizingly told that “we are all in this together” and condescendingly thanked for “stepping up and doing their duty”. Meanwhile, the massive flow of profits went in only one direction—for example, in the direction of building a massive new 417-foot-long mega-yacht for Jeff Bezos, for when he is not journeying into outer space.
Writing as a political economist, Professor Fabio Vighi provided a complementary explanation:
“Virus, Vaccine and Covid Pass are the Holy Trinity of social engineering. ‘Virus passports’ are meant to train the multitudes in the use of electronic wallets controlling access to public services and personal livelihood. The dispossessed and redundant masses, together with the non-compliant, are the first in line to be disciplined by digitalised poverty management systems directly overseen by monopoly capital. The plan is to tokenise human behaviour and place it on blockchain ledgers run by algorithms. And the spreading of global fear is the perfect ideological stick to herd us toward this outcome”.
In his new book (Where Are We Now? The Epidemic as Politics. London: ERIS., 2021) the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben outlined some more parallels between Covid pandemicism and religious thought and practice. He argues that, “the transformation we are witnessing today operates through the introduction of a sanitation terror and a religion of health. What, in the tradition of bourgeois democracy, used to be the right to health became, seemingly without anyone noticing, a juridical-religious obligation that must be fulfilled at any cost” (p. 10). Reflecting further on the meanings of this highly leveraged if not outright invented crisis, Agamben points out how “science” has acquired the properties of religion:
“It is as if the religious need that the Church is no longer able to satisfy is groping for a new habitat—finding it in what has already become, in effect, the religion of our time: science. Like any other religion, this faith can produce fear and superstition, or it can be at least used to disseminate them. Never before have we witnessed such a spectacle of divergent and contradictory opinions and prescriptions, typical of religions in times of crisis. These opinions range from the minoritarian heretical position (one that is nonetheless represented by distinguished scientists) that denies the seriousness of the phenomenon, to the orthodox dominant discourse that affirms this same seriousness and yet differs within itself, often radically, on the strategies for facing it. And, as always happens in these cases, some experts (or so-called experts) manage to gain the approval of the monarch, who, as in the times of the religious disputes that divided Christianity, sides with one current or the other according to his own interests, before subsequently imposing his measures” (p. 20).
“The analogy with religion must be read to the letter,” Agamben asserts, adding: “Theologians declared that they could not clearly define God, but in his name they dictated rules of behaviour and burned heretics without hesitation; virologists admit that they do not know exactly what a virus is, but in its name they insist on deciding how human beings should live” (p. 33).
Prof. Douglas Farrow, a colleague at McGill University where he teaches theology and ethics, had much more to say on these issues in his article, “Enrolled in the Religion of Fear”.
In this New Church of the Eternal Pandemic, where states of emergency act as the crowning religious festivals on the annual calendar, universities train students in the methods of reproducing the authorized, orthodox theology. Dissidents, in some noteworthy cases, are publicly flogged to send a lesson to others, while boosting the morale of acolytes.
Update: Punishing Resistance to, and Critique of, the Non-Vaccines
Many dozens of professors across Canada have been suspended without pay, or terminated outright for refusing to disclose their private and personal medical status, in addition to those who have been suspended and/or terminated because they openly rejected the new non-vaccines.
Before continuing, a note of clarification may still be necessary for some. Why non-vaccines? First, because the CDC changed its definition of “vaccines” in August of 2021, to accommodate the new products being developed for the market, which did not meet the previous CDC definition of “vaccine”. Second, because these are called gene therapies in the pharmaceutical industry itself; by the FDA they are formallyreferred to as investigational new drugs; in the legal arena, they are classed as prototypes by Pfizer itself. Note also that “emergency use” investigational new drugs are defined by the FDA itself as “experimental”. We can thus call these products experimental gene therapies to be brief, all complaints notwithstanding.
Personally, I know several dozen of these suspended and fired academics, through my membership in Canadian Academics for Covid Ethics. That is where we have met, corresponded, and co-authored some Op-Eds. Separate from CA4CE, I have received correspondence from at least three dozen more professors across Canada, some of which later joined the CA4CE. I will have much more to say about professors’ non-compliance, and the results, in future follow-ups on this site.
For now, I want to direct your attention to the very latest instance of the New Church of Covid (an ex-university), punishing two professors for publicly criticizing the experimental gene therapies used against Covid, one of whom was injured by taking these products. I am speaking here of Professors Patrick Provost and Nicolas Derome at Laval University. Professor Provost, whom I know, was the more prominent of the two in the media, having authored a recent article critical of Quebec’s disproportionate response, using the Quebec Health Institute’s own data to show just how overblown have been the impacts of Covid. Indeed, a separate study which was not the subject of controversy, provided evidence of the fact that Quebec had 4,033 excess deaths between March 2020 and October 2021, but reported 11,470 Covid-19 fatalities—almost three times as much: “It’s the biggest gap recorded in Canada during the pandemic”. In reporting on the same study, it was admitted that, “Quebec doctors included COVID-19 as a cause of death in medical reports more liberally than doctors in other provinces did”. The alleged impacts of Covid were then used by the government to cause real psychological, physiological, economic, and social harms with lockdowns and various other restrictions and mandates. For having challenged the dominant narrative, Patrick’s article was not only removed from the Web by its publisher, he was suspended for eight weeks without pay by Laval University.
Fortunately—and this has been rare in Canada—the Laval University faculty union has vigorously taken up the cause of both professors. This is plainly a fight about academic freedom. The Quebec Federation of University Professors has also endorsed their fight. Amazingly, in a sharp departure from its complicit silence, if not support for quashing the academic freedom of dissenters, the Canadian Association of University Teachers finally felt compelled to speak out in support of those targeted by Laval.
What makes the matter even more interesting is that the very same Quebec government whose pandemicist narrative has reigned throughout the past two (plus) years, recently passed an Academic Freedom Law (Bill 32). Many individual faculty and their unions in Quebec protested this law when it was first introduced, and seemed to be running interference for politically “woke” university administrations. Even the FQPPU criticized how the law was drafted and promoted. Along with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, I instead supported Bill 32, and I did so in a lengthy email on the subject that I sent the Minister. The same Minister of Higher Education who shepherded the law, Danielle McCann, has been forced to come out and condemn Laval University. Minister McCann then cited the situation at Laval as evidence that Bill 32 was necessary, and on this point she is correct.
We thus have a situation where a law—originally intended to shield professors who used “the N-word” in an academic context and for academic purposes, thus designed to hobble the importation/imitation of US culture wars into Quebec—is instead put to its first test with academic free speech against a narrative pushed by the government itself. Professors Provost and Derome have a straightforward case for grievance, and one which would likely win in the courts if it came to that. Laval University has in the meantime disgraced itself, in prime time, and it has broken the law.
For my part, I was hoping that the message in my video above would not be validated so much further, so close to home, in such short order.
“I would like to raise awareness about how our society is evolving, it’s not in a good direction. It is getting to the point where private interests will be directing our country, we will just be servants”—Dr. Patrick Provost
I tear a strip off these cold cretins by going over their internal emails. You’ll see their faces and can decide for yourselves if they have a shred of humanity left. If you would like to send a gift of financial support, click here: https://amazingpolly.net/contact-support.php
**Thank You and God bless each of you for being here!** I also talk about hero Dr. Charles Hoffe, whose story is a must-hear. References below:
The Trudeau government just announced they would be extending the ban on unvaccinated foreigners until September 30 (the start of flu season).
“Today, the Government of Canada announced it is extending current border measures for travellers entering Canada. Requirements for travellers arriving to Canada are expected to remain in effect until at least September 30, 2022,” a Public Health Agency of Canada news release reads.
It should be noted that while unvaccinated Canadians can (at least in the short term) board a plane to travel abroad, the ban on the unvaccinated remains on both sides of the Canada-US border, an apparent unspoken agreement by both countries to not budge on the unvaccinated travel ban until the other does.
Moreover, the latest announcement states that unvaccinated Canadians will still be forced to quarantine for 14 days upon their return to Canada.
Additionally, the government says that the ArriveCan app — which has led to delays so bad it has become an international embarrassment — will remain in place.
As for good news, mandatory random COVID tests at airports are now paused — but only for the vaccinated. This is Transport Minister Omar Alghabra’s half-hearted attempt to keep Canada’s airports “strong, efficient, and resilient” after being disgraced by former NHL player Ryan Whitney.
“In addition, the pause of mandatory random testing will continue at all airports until mid-July for travellers who qualify as fully vaccinated… Mandatory random testing continues at land border points of entry, with no changes. Travellers who do not qualify as fully vaccinated, unless exempt, will continue to test on Day 1 and Day 8 of their 14-day quarantine,” the news release reads.
The Liberals are intent on funneling ever more of our collective resources to bolster the US Empire, spending lavishly to “modernize” Canada’s chief bi-national military accord.
On Monday Defence Minister Anita Anand announced the government would spend $4.9 billion to upgrade the North American Aerospace Defense Command. The federal government said it will devote $40 billion to NORAD over 20 years, but it may be far more than that noted David Pugliese in a story headlined: “Cost to modernize NORAD set at $40 billion, but will final tally be higher?”
The media and government framed the announcement as strengthening Canada’s defences. According to the Globe and Mail report, “the Canadian government has pledged $4.9-billion over six years to help upgrade North America’s air defences, addressing the growing threat posed by hypersonic missiles and advanced cruise missile technology developed by Russia and China.”
But it’s absurd to present NORAD as a defensive arrangement. Its lead actor has 1,000 international bases and special forces deployed in 149 countries. Rather than protect Canada and the US, NORAD supports violent missions led by other US commands. In 1965 NORAD’s mandate was expanded to include surveillance and assessment sharing for US commands stationed worldwide (United States European Command, United States Pacific Command, United States Africa Command, etc.).
The Pentagon has put satellites into space to enable first strike ballistic missile defence (BMD). While Paul Martin’s Liberals claimed to oppose BMD, they granted “full cooperation by NORAD in missile-defence work”, explained Richard Sanders in a Press for Conversion report on the subject. In 2004 Ottawa formally permitted the US BMD system to use data from NORAD’s “Integrated Tactical Warning/Attack Assessment”.
It’s called “missile defence” because it’s designed to defend US missile sites after they launch offensive operations. US-installed missile defence systems in Romania and Korea, for instance, are designed primarily to stop opponents’ missiles following a US first strike.
US space-based missile defence interceptors able to eliminate Russia’s early warning satellites without warning puts that country on edge. This ratchets up the arms race and the likelihood of nuclear war.
NORAD has also drawn Canada into US belligerence in other ways. During the July 1958 US invasion of Lebanon NORAD was placed on “increased readiness” while US troops checked secular Arab nationalism after Iraqis toppled a Western-backed king (at the same time British troops invaded Jordan to prop up the monarchy there).
In a higher profile incident, Canadian NORAD personnel were put on high alert when the US illegally blockaded Cuba in October 1962. This transpired even though Prime Minister John Diefenbaker hesitated in supporting US actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
During the 1973 Ramadan/Yom Kippur/Arab–Israeli War NORAD was placed on heightened alert. Washington wanted to deter the USSR from intervening on Egypt’s behalf.
NORAD systems offered surveillance and communications support to the 1991 war on Iraq. It monitored the region and provided information to launch US Patriot surface-to-air missiles. NORAD ballistic missile warnings were also sent to Ottawa and Canadian units in Bahrain.
NORAD also supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The same can be said for US bombing in Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, etc.
Thousands of Canadian military personnel assist NORAD’s operations. One hundred and fifty Canadians are stationed at NORAD’s central collection and coordination facility near Colorado Springs, Colorado. Hundreds more work at regional NORAD outposts across the US and Canada and many pilots are devoted to the Command.
A Royal Canadian Airforce general is the vice commander of NORAD and runs the entire command when the US commander is absent. In discussing the two countries’ most significant bilateral military accord, Ann Griffiths explains,“NORAD brings the Canadian military more deeply within the US defense establishment than any other ally. The United States quite simply, would not entrust such responsibilities to the military of any other close ally, not even Britain.”
NORAD makes Canada a junior partner to US militarism and imperialism. If Canada was truly a force for good in the world, a peacekeeper and adherent of a rules based international order, Ottawa would withdraw from NORAD, rather than spend billions more strengthening it.
The City of Ottawa has announced several restrictions for Canada Day, including a motor vehicle control zone with police checkpoints to ban protesters’ vehicles.
“Getting around downtown on Canada Day will be more complicated than usual this year,” a City of Ottawa news release reads.
Unsurprisingly, the motor vehicle control zone only applies to roads leading to or surrounding Parliament Hill — an apparent attempt by City officials to prevent another Freedom Convoy incident, even if they don’t state so outright.
As per the news release, the motor vehicle control zone will be in place from June 29 to July 4 and will affect travel within the city in several ways.
Firstly, all vehicles belonging to people taking part in any form of demonstration, event, protest, or rally are outright banned from going near Parliament Hill, while local and business traffic, pedestrians, cyclists, and public transit will be permitted to move through the control zone freely.
Moreover, those who do not comply with the protester vehicle ban will face ticketing, and “barricades, heavy equipment, or police officers and vehicles will be at various access points surrounding the control zone, to filter lawful traffic onto those streets.”
It isn’t clear how a demonstrator’s vehicle will be distinguished from someone just looking to go to a shop, other than obvious freedom signs.
Signage will also be posted in the motor vehicle control zone that prohibits street parking and stopping.
Additionally, while authorities plan to lift the control zone on July 4, they say they have no problem extending the control zone “should conditions warrant it.”
As for July 1, the City says there will be additional restrictions:
“Some roads within the control zone will be closed to all traffic from 12:01 am on July 1 until 2 am on July 2. There are also some pedestrian and bicycle restrictions.”
Before this latest announcement, the Canadian Pressreported, “An Ottawa police officer says this Canada Day will be “unprecedented and unique” with a never-before-seen security posture as the main events take place off Parliament Hill, and protests are planned throughout the day.”
“Police are aware of the demonstrations and are “planning accordingly,” said the officer.”
We now know what those plans entail.
Canada Heritage also announced that they would not allow Canadians to participate in the annual Canada Day celebration at Parliament Hill due to construction after two years of cancelling it due to COVID.
They added that the Canada Day party, which usually sees thousands flock to Ottawa, is being moved to the LeBreton Flats approximately 1.5km Westwards.
As for the planned demonstrations, there are several protests against the remaining COVID mandates planned for Canada Day, which are expected to be attended by many Freedom Convoy protesters from February.
In a world of vast injustice, one cannot expect a government’s foreign policy to be principled or consistent. But there should at least be some limit to hypocrisy.
On June 16 Justin Trudeau spoke with Rwandan president Paul Kagame about this week’s Commonwealth Summit in Kigali. Half the government’s readout about the discussion was devoted to opposing a foreign invasion. It read, “the two leaders exchanged views on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and noted that the invasion was contrary to foundational principles of the Commonwealth. Prime Minister Trudeau reiterated that the invasion was an affront to the fundamental principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, self-determination, and international law, and expressed that it is important for the Commonwealth summit to provide an opportunity for member countries to stand up for democracy and denounce Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
Recently, Rwandan-backed rebels instigated fighting that has caused over 170,000 Congolese to flee their homes since November. Reportedly, Rwanda has deployed 500 troops to assist the M23 rebels. According to the UN, M23 is planning an attack on the major eastern city of Goma in the coming days. On Friday Rwandan forces killed a Congolese soldier on the border between the two countries and Congo has closed the border.
Highlighting the hypocrisy of Trudeau discussing foreign invasion with Kagame, former Congolese presidential candidate and long-time UN worker, Angèle Makombo, tweeted, “No kidding Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, you spoke with Paul Kagame about ‘Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine’? Did you also care about raising the issue of Rwanda’s aggression of Congo and its dire impacts on the Congolese people and Africa Great Lakes subregion?”
The M23 is a “Rwandan sponsored” force, reported the Globe and Mail previously. A 2012 UN report concluded that officials in Kigali organized, armed and “coordinated” M23’s military activities in the mineral rich eastern Congo. The M23 is the successor to the Rwanda-backed rebel force lead by Laurent Nkunda, who grew to prominence after Rwanda invaded.
In 1996 Rwandan forces marched 1,500 km to topple the regime in Kinshasa. Two years later they re-invaded after the Congolese government it installed expelled Rwandan troops. This led to an eight-country war between 1998 and 2003, which left millions dead. A January 2008 study by the International Rescue Committee blamed the conflict and its destabilizing impact for 5.4 million Congolese deaths over a decade. In October 2010, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released a report on the Congo spanning 1993 to 2003 that charged Rwandan troops with engaging in mass killings “that might be classified ascrimes of genocide.”
Aside from the mayhem he’s unleashed in the Congo, Kagame oversees a brutal dictatorship. Opposition media is entirely suppressed and opponents rot in jail. Top officials and other dissidents that flee have repeatedly been assassinated across east and southern Africa. A year and a half ago, the regime kidnapped its most famous opponent Paul Rusesabagina, who is the namesake for the Hollywood film Hotel Rwanda. A Belgian citizen and US Green card holder, Rusesabagina was snatched from Dubai and flown to Rwanda where he languishes in jail.
Trudeau’s dalliance with Kagame isn’t new. In 2018 Toronto-based Rwandan dissident David Himbara wrote, “the romance between the two and among their respective ministers has blossomed beyond belief.” In February 2020 the PM’s press people released a photo of him laughing with the Rwandan president. On at least five occasions since 2018 Trudeau has been photographed with Kagame during one-on-one meetings on the sidelines of different international summits. At one of those meetings the PM “affirmed the importance of strong and growing bilateral relations” between Canada and Rwanda. Ottawa provided $39 million in assistance to Rwanda last year.
While the media, opposition and government have spent much of the past week complaining/apologizing about a low-level Canadian diplomat attending an irrelevant social function put on by the Russian Embassy, the prime minister deepens Canada’s ties to Africa’s most bloodstained ruler.
For Trudeau it appears as if only invasions of European countries matter.
As Kagame renews his brutal war on the Congo, Trudeau wants us to believe his aim is to uphold international law and oppose foreign invasion.
Ottawa is exploring ways to return crucial parts for Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline, which are currently stuck in Canada due to sanctions, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday citing Canadian Minister of Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson.
“We want to respect the sanctions because the sanctions were put into place for a reason. That being said, the intent of the sanctions was never to cause significant pain to Germany, which is one of our closest friends and allies. So, we are very seized with this issue,” Wilkinson told the news outlet.
“We are talking to Germany, trying to find a pathway through which we can actually enable the flow of gas. There may be different options that we can look at,” he stated, adding that Ottawa is negotiating with Berlin on ways to return the equipment.
Russia’s energy supplier Gazprom was forced to slash natural gas flows to Germany via the Nord Stream pipeline by 60% last week, because Siemens turbines from Gazprom’s Portovaya pumping station in Vyborg were stuck in Montreal, where they were sent to undergo maintenance. The parts fall under Canada’s sanctions against Russia, and the country says it cannot return them without breaching these restrictions.
According to the German Federal Grid Agency, the reduction in gas flow affected the supply of Russian gas from Germany to other European countries, including France, Austria and the Czech Republic.
The situation prompted these and other EU countries to announce emergency measures this week aimed at reducing the use of natural gas. Some countries have claimed that the reduction of gas flows was a political decision made by Moscow to increase pressure on Europe. Gazprom says the issue is technical.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla touted the “beauty” of mRNA vaccine technology in a recent MSNBC interview, saying he fully expects the Coronavirus to require an annual dose.
“Do you think we’re going to get updated mRNA vaccines every season that will be directed to each new variation of the Coronavirus, and will we have to take those shots every year?” asked the host.
“I’m almost certain about it, and I say almost certain because, of course, regulators have the final say on all of that, but that’s the beauty of mRNA. You can adapt your vaccine just by changing the sequencing, which is a very minor change,” said Bourla.
“For this reason, I’m very confident we will be able to respond very, very fast to every new variant.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently lifted travel mandates and vaccine requirements after facing widespread pushback from the public and airlines.
When lifting the mandates, the Liberals maintained they were only temporarily suspending the restrictions citing the threat of future waves.
“The reality is, as much as people would like to pretend that we’re not, we’re still in a pandemic,” said Trudeau early in June.
“There are Canadians who die every single day because of COVID-19 in our hospitals.”
Bourla has stated in the past that anyone who spreads misinformation regarding Coronavirus vaccines or potential side effects were literally criminals responsible for millions of deaths.
“Those people are criminals,” Bourla told Atlantic Council CEO, Frederick Kempe. “They’re not bad people. They’re criminals because they have literally cost millions of lives.”
“The only thing that stands between the new way of life and the current way of life is, frankly, hesitancy to vaccinations,” he added.
Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam echoed fearmongering about a theoretical future wave earlier this month.
“The pandemic is not over,” Tam said. “We think that it is very likely that we will get some more viral activity in the future, and we can’t predict exactly how big the next wave is, but I think we need to prepare.”
Human trafficking is certainly one of the most monstrous mass criminal activities ever undertaken by other humans (although calling them “humans” is a bit of a stretch). And yet, there’s a special kind of this deeply repulsive crime that pushes it to diabolical proportions – child trafficking. Underage kids, particularly those who were abandoned, sold or have very poor/abusive family backgrounds, are by far the most vulnerable group. The depraved criminals who engage in such illicit activities specifically target unfortunate children and given there are millions of them all around the globe, particularly in war-torn areas, the “recruitment pool” is effectively endless. Unfortunately, the demand on the black market also seems to be constant and growing, making it a very lucrative and appealing prospect for criminals.
Children are usually forced into literal slavery that includes forced labor, sexual exploitation or prostitution, drug smuggling, forced begging, organ harvesting, etc. Many terrorist groups and narco-traffickers even use them as child soldiers, forcing them into dangerous firefights with rival groups or even official security forces such as the police and/or military. Although estimates vary significantly, as the exact data is incomplete at best, expectedly, the world’s most populous countries have the highest number of child trafficking victims. And yet, it seems the United States is the most profitable market for such criminal activities. Back in 2018, Tim Swarens of USA Today calculated that adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the US alone. Worse yet, this is only based on available data. … continue
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