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Canada to introduce vaccine passports for crossing provincial borders

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | August 14, 2021

Canada’s Minister for Transport Omar Alghabra announced the introduction of vaccine passports for transport across provincial borders via plane, trains, and large water vessels.

The move underscores the growing adaptation of digital vaccine passports across the globe, particularly in developed countries.

“Vaccine requirements in the transportation sector will help protect the safety of employees, their families, passengers, their communities and all Canadians. And more broadly, it will hasten Canada’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic,” Alghabra said during a press conference on Thursday.

For those who cannot get the jabs, the minister said they will still be able to travel by showing proof of recent negative tests.

Alghabra said that the government was looking into practical ways to implement the vaccine passes “as quickly as possible.”

Alghabra’s announcement coincided with an announcement from the Privy Council that the government would be mandating vaccination for federal employees. The employees will be required to show proof of having received both doses of the COVID-19 vaccines.

August 14, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Canada: Fast-moving proposal creates filtering, blocking and reporting rules – and speech police to enforce them

BY CORYNNE MCSHERRY AND KATITZA RODRIGUEZ | EFF | AUGUST 10, 2021

Policymakers around the world are contemplating a wide variety of proposals to address “harmful” online expression. Many of these proposals are dangerously misguided and will inevitably result in the censorship of all kinds of lawful and valuable expression. And one of the most dangerous proposals may be adopted in Canada. How bad is it? As Stanford’s Daphne Keller observes, “It’s like a list of the worst ideas around the world.” She’s right.

These ideas include:

  • broad “harmful content” categories that explicitly include speech that is legal but potentially upsetting or hurtful
  • a hair-trigger 24-hour takedown requirement (far too short for reasonable consideration of context and nuance)
  • an effective filtering requirement (the proposal says service providers must take reasonable measures which “may include” filters, but, in practice, compliance will require them)
  • penalties of up to 3 percent of the providers’ gross revenues or up to 10 million dollars, whichever is higher
  • mandatory reporting of potentially harmful content (and the users who post it) to law enforcement and national security agencies
  • website blocking (platforms deemed to have violated some of the proposal’s requirements too often might be blocked completely by Canadian ISPs)
  • onerous data-retention obligations

All of this is terrible, but perhaps the most terrifying aspect of the proposal is that it would create a new internet speech czar with broad powers to ensure compliance, and continuously redefine what compliance means.

These powers include the right to enter and inspect any place (other than a home):

“in which they believe on reasonable grounds there is any document, information or any other thing, including computer algorithms and software, relevant to the purpose of verifying compliance and preventing non-compliance  . . . and examine the document, information or thing or remove it for examination or reproduction”; to hold hearing in response to public complaints, and, “do any act or thing . . . necessary to ensure compliance.”

But don’t worry—ISPs can avoid having their doors kicked in by coordinating with the speech police, who will give them “advice” on their content moderation practices. Follow that advice and you may be safe. Ignore it and be prepared to forfeit your computers and millions of dollars.

The potential harms here are vast, and they’ll only grow because so much of the regulation is left open. For example, platforms will likely be forced to rely on automated filters to assess and discover “harmful” content on their platforms, and users caught up in these sweeps could end up on file with the local cops—or with Canada’s national security agencies, thanks to the proposed reporting obligations.

Private communications are nominally excluded, but that is cold comfort—the Canadian government may decide, as contemplated by other countries, that encrypted chat groups of various sizes are not ‘private.’ If so, end-to-end encryption will be under further threat, with platforms pressured to undermine the security and integrity of their services in order to fulfill their filtering obligations. And regulators will likely demand that Apple expand its controversial new image assessment tool to address the broad “harmful content” categories covered by the proposal. … Full article

August 13, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Open Letter to the Unvaccinated

Ontario Civil Liberties Association | August 2, 2021

You are not alone! As of 28 July 2021, 29% of Canadians have not received a COVID-19 vaccine, and an additional 14% have received one shot. In the US and in the European Union, less than half the population is fully vaccinated, and even in Israel, the “world’s lab” according to Pfizer, one third of people remain completely unvaccinated. Politicians and the media have taken a uniform view, scapegoating the unvaccinated for the troubles that have ensued after eighteen months of fearmongering and lockdowns. It’s time to set the record straight.

It is entirely reasonable and legitimate to say ‘no’ to insufficiently tested vaccines for which there is no reliable science. You have a right to assert guardianship of your body and to refuse medical treatments if you see fit. You are right to say ‘no’ to a violation of your dignity, your integrity and your bodily autonomy. It is your body, and you have the right to choose. You are right to fight for your children against their mass vaccination in school.

You are right to question whether free and informed consent is at all possible under present circumstances. Long-term effects are unknown. Transgenerational effects are unknown. Vaccine-induced deregulation of natural immunity is unknown. Potential harm is unknown as the adverse event reporting is delayed, incomplete and inconsistent between jurisdictions.

You are being targeted by mainstream media, government social engineering campaigns, unjust rules and policies, collaborating employers, and the social-media mob. You are being told that you are now the problem and that the world cannot get back to normal unless you get vaccinated. You are being viciously scapegoated by propaganda and pressured by others around you. Remember; there is nothing wrong with you.

You are inaccurately accused of being a factory for new SARS-CoV-2 variants, when in fact, according to leading scientists, your natural immune system generates immunity to multiple components of the virus. This will promote your protection against a vast range of viral variants and abrogates further spread to anyone else.

You are justified in demanding independent peer-reviewed studies, not funded by multinational pharmaceutical companies. All the peer-reviewed studies of short-term safety and short-term efficacy have been funded, organized, coordinated, and supported by these for-profit corporations; and none of the study data have been made public or available to researchers who don’t work for these companies.

You are right to question the preliminary vaccine trial results. The claimed high values of relative efficacy rely on small numbers of tenuously determined “infections.”  The studies were also not blind, where people giving the injections admittedly knew or could deduce whether they were injecting the experimental vaccine or the placebo. This is not acceptable scientific methodology for vaccine trials.

You are correct in your calls for a diversity of scientific opinions. Like in nature, we need a polyculture of information and its interpretations. And we don’t have that right now. Choosing not to take the vaccine is holding space for reason, transparency and accountability to emerge. You are right to ask, ‘What comes next when we give away authority over our own bodies?’

Do not be intimidated. You are showing resilience, integrity and grit. You are coming together in your communities, making plans to help one another and standing for scientific accountability and free speech, which are required for society to thrive. We are among many who stand with you.

Angela Durante, PhD
Denis Rancourt, PhD
Claus Rinner, PhD
Laurent Leduc, PhD
Donald Welsh, PhD
John Zwaagstra, PhD
Jan Vrbik, PhD
Valentina Capurri, PhD

August 9, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

On Quebec and its “Vaccine Passport”

By Maximilian Forte | Zero Anthropology | August 5, 2021

Since the Government of Quebec under Premier François Legault decided to jump the gun today and announced the coming of “vaccine” certification on September 1st, possibly in response to the opposition’s demand for always harsher measures, I decided to post these extracts from my larger work earlier than planned. As always, the imitation of Americans is instant in Canada—this comes in the same week that New York City imposed its own “vaccine” certification system. In fact the Liberal Party in opposition added a cruel and perverse twist to the naming of the vaccine passport, calling it a “Freedom Passport”. Without the passport, no freedom, hence the indefinite suspension of the constitutional rights of a select group of Canadians, discriminated against on the basis of their health status. This must also mean that workers in “non-essential services” (does that include political parties?) will be mandated to get injected, or else be fired. A “vaccine passport” is thus also mandatory “vaccination” at the same time. Bruised by many months of lockdowns, private businesses are required to not only collaborate with the state, and agree to reduce their revenue by refusing customers, they also agree to be effectively deputized as the state’s auxiliary police service. Where under Canadian law it is stated that citizens are required to involuntarily divulge their private health information to strangers, it is not known, nor did Legault at any point cite any legal support (let alone scientific support) for this measure. We need to further analyze this obvious slide into full-fledged dictatorship, which uses a “pandemic” as a convenient cover and as a gold mine for imposing always more authoritarian measures.

Health Discrimination in Quebec

The Government of Quebec began planning to penalize the “vaccine hesitant,” by removing from them the freedom to access “non-essential services,” as defined by the government (Manitoba is also following). This is clearly a case of shaming and stigmatizing, and the invention of a threat from those who are officially libelled as a dangerous Other. Having invented a vaccine passport (in the works for several months), for which at first the government claimed there was no use, now the government reveals its intended use: to segregate the public and pressure people to allow themselves to be injected, preemptively blaming them for any rise in “cases” given spreading variants (to which the vaccinated are also clearly vulnerable, and which they can spread). The passports, using QR codes, were easily hacked in a trial, thus the system would further breach person’s private data. The federal government of Canada has not gone so far—since vaccine passports are discriminatory, divisive, and force people to reveal their personal health data—but is reportedly considering mandatory vaccination for all federal employees. Quebec Premier Legault, citing the flimsiest of evidence of increased infections (blamed on the unvaccinated, without any evidence) announced on August 5, 2021, that “vaccine passports” would indeed go into effect on September 1st. The “science” behind this, needless to say, is more akin to magic.

There has also been resistance to vaccine passports internationally, not just on the streets of Europe in massive weekly protests that the media refuse to cover, but also from the WHO. In the UK a parliamentary committee concluded that the scientific case for certification has not been made, that passports are discriminatory on prohibited grounds for discrimination, that there are valid concerns for privacy and data protection, and that such passports have “the potential to cause great damage socially and economically”. However, as noted by the Security and Policing Subgroup that advises the UK government, “Once the majority of the population is vaccinated, the exclusion of individuals who refuse vaccination may have public support” (SPI-B, “Lifting Restrictions: Security and Policing Implications,” February 10, 2021, p. 7)—thus one ostensible aim of mass vaccination is precisely to facilitate discrimination against the resistant. One report from France painted a complete picture of devastation wrought by the introduction of this certification regime, where citizens now have to qualify to enjoy inalienable human rights.

Vaccine certification is coercive, placing people under duress and violating free and informed consent; it is also entirely redundant and unnecessary if public health is really the issue. To be clear: vaccine certification is not a health or medical issue, it is political. Anything concerning inclusion/exclusion, controlling population mobility, borders, and passports, is by definition part of the political domain of the state. Highlighting the politics of vaccine passports, even the acute partisanship of the politics involved, witness Democrats in the US who applaud the entry of unvaccinated migrants from Central America, and yet simultaneously call for the exclusion of unvaccinated Americans from universities, schools, workplaces, and entertainment venues.

What is usually overlooked is that such a system of vaccine certification means the removal of basic rights for everyone in Quebec who is required to furnish proof of official approval to enter whichever establishment (a minor change in the app can change the range of access immediately): the right to participate in civic life is thus abrogated, rendering citizenship provisional and tentative. At a very minimum, this expands the already vastly expansive range of regulations that exist at all levels of government in Quebec, a multiplication of powers of oversight and surveillance that render personal autonomy fictitious. When people comply with this, they agree that all aspects of their everyday behaviour are now subject to licensing.

Testing the Logic of the Passport

Examine the logic of the Quebec government’s decision. For this purpose I will use a semi-fictionalized example based on elements of my own routine, and for this purpose the reader will need to assume that the person in question has not been vaccinated. Let’s begin: schools are declared essential services, so there will be no vaccine discrimination when accessing them. Professor X teaches at a university in Montreal, but does not live in the city. To get to that university, Professor X spends 1.5 hours on a heavily packed train. In the train station itself in Montreal, there is a sandwich and coffee bar, in the middle of masses of people swirling around it—there is no feasible way of barring entry, since it has no walls and no door. After the train station, Professor X switches to a crowded Metro system. He arrives at his campus’ Metro stop, and shuffles in a massive throng of people to go up escalators. Then he squeezes into a packed elevator. He arrives at a packed classroom with no windows and poor ventilation. Class lasts three hours. That is just part of the work for that day. After all is done, on his way out of Montreal, he decides to stop at a restaurant near the campus, to have a bite alone—and it is there where he is barred entry.

(Not only that: within the very same building where Professor X teaches and has his office, there are two cafes and a pub—one of the cafes has only two walls—presumably, he will be denied access to services within the same building and among the same people to which he delivers his service.)

Everywhere else, he has been inside of crowds, for many hours, but suddenly when it comes to having a burger off campus, no, that is just too much. Why? Because the “vaccinated,” benefiting from a “vaccine” that keeps them “safe,” still need to be protected from the unvaccinated. Never has such a low bar of immunity been set for a “vaccine”. The vaccinated ought to be wondering exactly what was squirted into their veins that fails to make them immune to the unvaccinated. As for the unvaccinated, they will be protected from dangerous restaurants, but somehow they will also be safe among thousands of people in buildings that are like stacks of cruise ships. The vaccinated will be protected both inside the restaurant, and inside the train station, yet Professor X cannot have a burger in the restaurant, but he can have a sandwich in the train station. The virus understands these nuanced differences and respects the government’s finicky little dividing lines.

What is to be done to people working in “non-essential services,” who are themselves unvaccinated? Are they to be laid off? How is access regulated to establishments that offer a mix of both “essential” and “non-essential”? Will guards with QR code scanners be posted in each aisle? Meanwhile, all “non-essential services” will presumably need to dedicate personnel to stand guard at entrances and scan the QR code of each single person seeking entry to the establishment. There will be lines of people—people lining up like compliant little toddlers, shifting from foot to foot, and repeating this for each store they visit. The security theatre we found in airports all these years, will now be everywhere: every “non-essential” store will have to become a security clearance point, like in an airport.

If the Quebec government’s aim was to increase exasperation, add to confusion, multiply divisions among people, expand bureaucracy, violate the right to privacy, securitize daily life, openly signal politicians’ lust for total power, effectively suspend civil rights and nullify the defining rights of citizenship, and to maximize distrust of the authorities, then this strategy is refined beyond measure. Success is assured, unquestionably.

Medical Apartheid

It’s an “exotic” word, so of course “educated” Canadians working in the media will struggle with it. Some in the Canadian media take umbrage at anyone calling such a pass-based system of discrimination, “apartheid”. They think that “apartheid” is a holy word, that is racially exclusive property belonging to a specific people. To call one act of discrimination by the same word used for another act of discrimination, somehow “cheapens” and “diminishes” that other discrimination. In other words, there is “good discrimination” which is to be applauded (“vaccine passports”) and then “bad discrimination” (which only became bad in Canada when it was politically convenient). Yet, what is the essence of apartheid? Two of the three definitions listed by The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language state: “A policy or practice of separating or segregating groups” and “The condition of being separated from others; segregation”. Separation, segregation, discrimination—linking “vaccine passports” with apartheid is all the more warranted when we recognize the fact that targeted Others are forced to contain their movements within what is allowed by a pass. In both cases, the pass is associated with a certain biological property, whether it is skin colour or one’s health status.

Canada, at an official level, likes to celebrate itself as place where diversity and inclusivity reign, and where we face the injustices of the colonial past. This is very convenient, as a distraction. It is a stance that distracts from the new injustices being perpetrated in the immediate present, right under everyone’s nose.

Medical apartheid is precisely the kind of regime we would expect in a Health Security State as discussed extensively by Giorgio Agamben. Writing specifically about “vaccine passports” (or the Green Pass in the case of Italy) in a recent article which, translated from Italian, is titled “Second-Class Citizens,” he explains:

As happens every time a despotic emergency regime is established and constitutional guarantees are suspended, the result is, as happened with the Jews under fascism, the discrimination of a category of humans, who automatically become second-class citizens. This is the aim of the creation of the so-called green pass. That it is a discrimination based on personal beliefs and not an objective scientific certainty is proved by the fact that in the scientific field the debate is still ongoing on the safety and efficacy of vaccines, which, according to the opinion of doctors and scientists who there is no reason to ignore, they were produced quickly and without adequate testing.

Despite this, those who stick to their free and well-founded belief and refuse to be vaccinated will be excluded from social life. That the vaccine is thus transformed into a sort of political-religious symbol aimed at creating discrimination among citizens is evident in the irresponsible declaration of a politician, who, referring to those who do not get vaccinated, he said, without realizing that he was using a fascist jargon: “we will purge them with the green pass”. The “green card” constitutes those who do not have it in bearers of a virtual yellow star.

This is a fact whose political gravity cannot be overstated. What does a country become in which a discriminated class is created? How can one accept living with second-class citizens? The need to discriminate is as old as society and certainly forms of discrimination were also present in our so-called democratic societies; but that these factual discriminations are sanctioned by law is a barbarism that we cannot accept.

(Thanks to Robin Monotti for the translated text.) For more, see Agamben’s “Bare Life and the Vaccine”.

Such a certification regime—let us be absolutely clear about this—is authoritarian for everyone. It is not authoritarian just for the “unvaccinated” alone. Everyone who abides by such a system, agrees to furnish documentary proof to gain access to what was previously free and open to them. They thus agree to concede access, on grounds arbitrarily decided by the state. What was previously taken for granted, is now the focus of heightened securitization. This is effectively the abolition of the very concept of everyday life, for everyone.

To end on a personal note, this is an exceptionally depressing time in which I find myself. From the start, I suspected that our summer here of lessened restrictions was just a brief interim period, the carrot dangled in front of the mule before the stick struck our hindquarters again. Never have I personally witnessed such a dark curtain of fascism pulled across a society, and with such insignificant protest, and to the cheers of fake opposition parties and even faker media. Nobody will see this, thanks to ever widening censorship. I knew this was just the beginning of much worse to come, and this newest measure is itself an open door to a permanent “pandemic” of authoritarianism, fear, and the abolition of anything that can meaningfully be called society. It has come to pass, things have finally fallen apart.

August 5, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

My own country of Canada expelled me because my Covid immunity was acquired naturally and not from a vaccine

Public Health Agency of Canada staff stand at their positions at Vancouver International Airport © Reuters
By Rachel Marsden | RT | August 3, 2021

I went home to visit my mother. Canada tried to force me into a Covid detention facility threatening fines and police action as they don’t recognize my natural immunity. I had no choice but to immediately fly back to Europe.

At the time of writing, I’m at an altitude of exactly 11,277m, 5,230km away from Vancouver, Canada, and 3,159km from my stopover in Munich, Germany, en route back to Paris, France. Where I really should be is relaxing on the backyard patio or in the jacuzzi at my home near Vancouver with a cold drink on a hot summer day. Instead, I’m on a Lufthansa flight heading back to Paris – just a few hours after arriving across the ocean on a 10-hour flight – because my own country’s officials kicked me out. All because I committed the apparent violation of trying to re-enter my own country with proof of naturally acquired Covid-19 antibodies made by my own immune system post-recovery rather than those generated by the manmade Covid-19 vaccine about which much is still to be learned.

Daily life for a Covid-19 survivor with natural immunity from the disease is not for the faint of heart. As someone with a high level of laboratory tested antibodies whose levels have yet to drop even after several months post-illness, my doctor has advised against vaccination. Much is obviously still to be learned about the Covid jabs, still in stage 3 of clinical trials and considered experimental by health authorities – particularly with reports abounding of breakthrough cases of vaccinated people catching and spreading Covid.

To protect and preserve my acquired immunity by opting out of vaccination that risks interfering with it or causing a risk to my health, France now requires me to succumb to nasal swab antigen tests every 48 hours if I wish to continue accessing everyday venues like public transit, gyms, restaurants, some shopping malls, and bars. But it’s a price that I’m willing to pay for my health.

And now I’m paying another price for choosing to protect my own health. I’ve found myself threatened with internment by the Canadian government – something that not even terror suspects or illegal immigrants are subjected to without at least a hearing.

When I attempted to return home from Paris to Vancouver to visit my elderly mother for the first time in a year, I was treated worse than a criminal. I arrived at the airport with a negative PCR test, two positive Covid antibody tests from March and July proving that I still had significant Covid antibodies post-recovery, and a ‘covid immunity certificate’ written and signed by my French doctor to confirm this fact.

The Canadian border officer refused to accept the antibody laboratory test results as proof that I had recovered and was immune from Covid. He wanted a PCR test less than three months ago, after which everyone is expected to take the vaccine. (I didn’t even know that I had Covid until I took a serology antibody test weeks later.) Nor did the officer show any consideration for the negative PCR test taken hours at departure, or for the various other antigen tests – all negative – taken every 48 hours for the prior 10 days. Instead, he ordered me to sign up for a 3-day stay at a government internment facility (to then be followed by a mandatory and monitored 14-day home isolation).

I was then referred to a federal health officer who asked if I had signed up and paid (up to $2,000) for the 3-day government internment. I said no. She said that I had no choice except with respect to which government-contracted facility I’d like to be detained in at my own expense. I asked, “What if I just walk out?” She gestured to the RCMP officer behind her and said that leaving would result in a fine of nearly $6,000. I asked, “Then what if I just stay here in the airport and book a flight back to Paris and cancel my entire visit back home to Canada?” She replied that it would be fine. So, I booked a flight back on my phone at a cost of just over $1,500 – still cheaper than the government internment. She took down my return flight number, wrote me up a federal ‘health order’ that I had to sign, acknowledging that I was to leave Canada on that flight or face criminal penalties up to and including imprisonment. She helpfully added that I could still be fined for my ignorance, but they’d graciously let me off with a warning this time. What a benevolent budding authoritarian regime.

Let’s be clear: The Canadian government, by behaving in this manner, is routinely criminalizing those with Covid antibodies that are not derived from a manufactured experimental vaccine.

Just a few hours later, I am now on that flight back to Paris. My mother broke down in tears waiting for me on the other side of the arrivals hall as her daughter was expelled from her own country – something that Canada doesn’t even do with terror suspects without some kind of due process.

The next step for myself and others subjected to this discrimination should be a court challenge to the federal government’s actions. Government-ordered internment facilities for immune Covid survivors under threat of incarceration have no place in any democracy.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of an independently produced French-language program that airs on Sputnik France. Her website can be found at rachelmarsden.com

August 3, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

A Conversation with Dr. Byram Bridle

Supervisor Jim Desmond | April 13, 2021

We sat down with Dr. Byram Bridle, an associate Professor of Viral Immunology, Department of Pathobiology at the University of Guelph.  Here’s the article that we discussed: https://theconversation.com/a-year-of…

July 22, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Canada’s Heritage Minister says free speech online ‘undermines democracy’

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim the Net | July 17, 2021

Offensive remarks on social media are legal, but Canada’s Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault says they “undermine democracy.”
The government is promoting the internet censorship bill C-36, which seeks to obligate social media platforms to mass censor.

In a briefing, reviewed by Blacklock’s Reporter, the Heritage Ministry argued for censorship of offensive Twitter messages because he says they prevent “a truly democratic debate.”

“This content steals and damages lives,” the briefing read. “It intimidates and obscures valuable voices, preventing a truly democratic debate.”

In late June, the cabinet introduced Bill C-36, which threatens social media users with house arrests and fines of up to $50,000 for sharing content that promotes “detestation or vilification.”

“Our objective is to ensure more accountability and transparency from online platforms while respecting the Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms,” said the June 16 briefing note.

“The mandate of the Department of Canadian Heritage includes the promotion of a greater understanding of human rights.”
Under Canada’s Criminal Code, so-called “hate speech” (open to interpretation) is a crime. What Bill C-36 does is make hate speech illegal even when there is no evidence of a crime.

“Social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter are increasingly central to participation in democratic, cultural and public life,” said the briefing note.

“However, social media platforms can also be used to threaten, intimidate, bully and harass people or used to promote racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, misogynist and homophobic views that target communities, put people’s safety at risk and undermine Canada’s social cohesion or democracy.”

July 17, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

The Persecution of Canadian Physicians by Organized Medicine During the COVID-19 Pandemic

https://www.bitchute.com/video/Yd5AuSxmyAln/

July 6, 2021

In this group interview facilitated by Sam Dubé, M.D., Ph.D., four physicians from across Canada – emergency physician Dr. Chris Milburn, rural family physician Dr. Charles Hoffe, general surgeon Dr. Francis Christian, and pathologist Dr. Roger Hodkinson – tell their stories of persecution at the hands of their governing bodies. Their only crime: practicing evidence-based medicine by questioning the safety of their patients and the public during the pandemic.

A legal representative for their cases, John Carpay, Esq., provides insights and legal commentary, invoking the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These physicians, and others like them, are the living embodiment of the medical mantras of “do no harm” and “informed consent”.

July 14, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Media finally covering immense crimes against indigenous peoples in Canada known of for decades. Why now?

By Eva Bartlett | RT | July 4, 2021

The reprehensible issue of what many deem “mass murder” of indigenous children in Canada’s Catholic school system has been in global headlines in recent weeks. But this should have been in the headlines decades ago.

The nearly 1,000 bodies of indigenous children in mass graves were recently found by ground-penetrating radar, said the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous First Nations (FSIN) and the Cowessess First Nation.

A reported 150,000 indigenous children were abducted and imprisoned in the Catholic schools, where they were tortured with the intent of erasing their culture and language, as were also sexually abused, had needles driven through their tongues for speaking their own language, were sterilized, among many other horrific practices.

After these findings made the news, people were rightly outraged. Catholic churches in British Columbia and Alberta have since been vandalized and set afire, including churches currently used by indigenous communities as meeting places, acts met with disgust by many indigenous, saying vandalism isn’t justice.

The vandalism continued on Canada Day, with another 10 churches in Calgary targeted.

The premier of Alberta, Jason Kenney, denounced the vandalization of an African Evangelical Church, noting that the congregation is “made up entirely of new Canadians, many of whom came here as refugees fleeing countries where Churches are often vandalized & burned down.”

While some have justified the vandalization of the churches as a push for justice, others questioned whether vandalized or burned mosques or synagogues would also receive the same approval.

After Prime Minister Trudeau spoke of “reconciliation” and how “our relationship with indigenous peoples” has evolved, people rightly called out the government of Canada for empty talk, noting indigenous communities around the country frequently lack clean drinking water. Then, there’s the issue that aside from an official apology, the government hasn’t charged or tried anyone for these crimes.

A report first published in March 2016 by the International Tribunal for the Disappeared of Canada (ITDC) has since apparently been heavily censored and removed from Google search results.

It addressed the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” carried out by the government and churches, calling it “a rapid in-house response by church and state designed to present their own self-serving narrative of their Indian residential schools crimes,” noting it “was created by the same institutions of church and state that were responsible for the residential school crimes being investigated.”

The synopsis notes that the crimes were “legally authorized, sanctioned and protected by every level of government, church and police in Canada,” and “amounted to deliberate genocide.”

It refers to horrifying facts that the average Canadian likely doesn’t know, including that “Native children began dying in droves the very first year the residential schools opened in 1889, at an average death rate of nearly 50%.” This, it emphasized, continued for the next five decades, “despite constant complaints and reports by doctors who inspected the schools.”

The deaths were caused by “a continual denial of regular food, clothing and proper sanitation to children interned in the schools, amidst a regime of routine and systemic rapes, beatings, tortures and killings: conditions that continued unabated for over a century, from 1889 to 1996.”

Why now?

While I fully stand with the push for justice for the manifold crimes committed against the indigenous peoples in what is now Canada, I do wonder, why is this making headlines now? It’s not like these are new revelations.

Ostensibly the reason these mass graves are in the news now is due to their recent discovery. But, others point out that indigenous have for decades said there were mass graves, but were met with silence.

Indeed, an article first published in May 2008 – and according to the author, rejected by Canadian media – spoke of a 1996 lawsuit launched by residential school survivors on the issue of the death and torture at residential schools. It noted that “residential school children were being buried ‘four or five to a grave’, and that the death rate in these schools stayed constant at fifty percent for over forty years.”

It rightly asked: “Why is the disappearance of tens of thousands of native children in these schools not the subject of a major criminal investigation?”

That was 13 years ago, the lawsuit over two decades ago.

This is just one of, I’m sure, countless examples over the years, decades even, of calls to investigate the missing children and the criminal practices of the schools they were forced into.

So, while it would seem a good thing that the media is highlighting the issue of the barbaric ‘residential schools’, the fact that the media – and not just Canadian, but global media – is covering this should make us take pause. These are the same outlets that sold us WMDs in Iraq, chemical weapons in Syria, and innumerable lies to justify wars and invasions against sovereign nations.

Again, for me, the question is, why now is Canada discussing this issue? I don’t know the answer to that, but before getting swept up in toppling statues for ‘justice’, it is worth considering this and whether justice is really served by vandalization and the PM’s empty words.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).

July 4, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Over 180 unmarked graves found at former Catholic school in Canada, indigenous group says, in third such find

RT | June 30, 2021

A Canadian indigenous group has said 182 unmarked graves have been discovered in the South Interior of the province of British Columbia, the third such discovery in the past two months near former Catholic schools.

The burial site is located at the former Catholic-run St. Eugene’s Mission School, the Lower Kootenay Band announced on Wednesday.

The community of ʔaq’am – or St. Mary’s Indian Band – based near the city of Cranbrook made the gruesome find after using radar detection equipment, which apparently pointed to there being graves around a meter below the surface.

Last week, 751 unmarked graves were uncovered at a Catholic school in Saskatchewan province, another indigenous community announced.

That discovery came after the remains of 215 children, some as young as three years old, were found at another Catholic school in British Columbia in May.

St. Eugene’s, now a casino and resort, was run by the Catholic Church from 1890 until the 1970s, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a body set up to document the history of indigenous students in Canadian schools.

The Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre said the school was hit by frequent outbreaks of influenza, mumps, measles, chickenpox, and tuberculosis.

As many as 100 people from the Lower Kootenay Band had been forced to attend the institution, the group said.

“It is believed that the remains of these 182 souls are from the member Bands of the Ktunaxa Nation, neighbouring First Nations communities and the community of ʔaq’am,” the community said in a statement.

More than 150,000 indigenous children were required to attend Catholic-run state schools in Canada from the 1870s until 1997.

In 2015, a report by the commission said the government’s forced assimilation of indigenous students and the system itself could “best be described as ‘cultural genocide.’”

June 30, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Canada’s government is seeking to silence Canadian journalists at home and abroad with a draconian censorship bill

By Eva Bartlett | RT | June 30, 2021

As a Canadian journalist, I could be subject to a censorship bill which, if passed in Senate, means the government in Canada can effectively shadow-ban and censor my voice into oblivion, along with other dissenting voices.

After seeing his tweet on the issue of Bill C-10, recently passed in the House of Commons, I spoke with Canadian journalist Dan Dicks about this. He explained that the bill is being presented as being about Canada bringing Big Tech companies under the regulation of the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission), to have them display more Canadian content.

“But what people are missing,” he cautioned, “is that there were clauses put into this bill, protections for certain publishers and content creators that would protect people like myself and yourself.”

Those clauses, he said, were recently removed from the bill, leading many content-creating Canadians aware of the bill to worry they will be treated the same as a broadcaster or a programmer, subject to the regulations of the CRTC.

The bottom line is that, beyond the mumbo jumbo of the government, this is the latest attack on freedom of expression, and on dissent.

“It really appears that it’s a backdoor to be able to control the free flow of information online, and to begin to silence voices that go against the status quo,” Dicks said, warning that fines for violators could follow.

“It’s not looking good for individual content creators. Anybody who has any kind of a voice or a significant audience, where they have the ability to affect the minds of the masses, to reach millions of people, they are going to be the ones who are on the chopping block moving forward.”

Names like James Corbett come to mind. Although based in Japan, as a Canadian he would be subject to the bill. And with his very harsh criticisms of many issues pertaining to the Canadian government, he is a thorn they would surely be happy to remove under the pretext of this bill.

Or Dicks, who likewise creates videos often critiquing Canadian government actions.

Or researcher Cory Morningstar, authors Maximilian Forte, Mark Taliano, Yves Engler, or outspoken physicist Denis Rancourt, to name a handful of dissenting voices. Agree or not with their opinions, they have the right to voice them.

Or myself. I’ve been very critical of Canada’s Covid policies and hypocrisy, as well as Canada’s whitewashing of terrorism in Syria, support to neo-Nazis in Ukraine, and unwavering support for Israel which is systematically murdering, starving, and imprisoning Palestinian civilians–including children.

An article on the Law & Liberty website, which describes itself as focussing on “the classical liberal tradition of law and how it shapes a society of free and responsible persons,” notes the bill enables “ample discretion to filter out content made by Canadians that doesn’t carry a desirable ideological posture and [to] prioritize content that does.”

The article emphasizes that the bill violates Canadians’ right to free expression, as well as “the right to express oneself through artistic and political creations, and the right to not be unfairly suppressed by a nebulous government algorithm.”

It noted that Canadians with large followings, like Jordan Peterson, Gad Saad and Steven Crowder, “each enjoy audiences which far exceed any cable television program.”

As with my examples above, these prominent Canadian voices likewise risk shadow-banning under this bill.

But, worse, there is another bill, C-36, that also portends heavy censorship: the “Reducing Online Harms” bill. This one not only involves censorship, but hefty fines and house arrests for violators

The same  Law & Liberty article notes, “Canada is also expected to follow the template of Germany’s NetzDG law, which mandates that platforms take down posts that are determined to constitute hate speech—which requires no actual demonstrated discrimination or potential harm, and is thus mostly subjective—within 24 hours or to face hefty fines. This obviously will incentivize platforms to remove content liberally and avoid paying up.”

The Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF), rightly, contests this bill, noting, “the proposed definition of hate speech as speech that is ‘likely’ to foment detestation or vilification is vague and subjective.”

Maxime Bernier, leader of the People’s Party of Canada, is likewise extremely critical of the bills.

The CCF points out the potential complete loss of Canadians’ fundamental rights with these bills.

It should be common sense that these bills are extremely dangerous to Canadians, however cloaked in talk of levelling playing fields and of combating hate speech they may be.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).

June 30, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Canada wants to fine people up to $50,000 for “online hate speech”

Canada’s proposals would make it one of the most oppressive nations when it comes to free expression

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim the Net | June 29, 2021

The “Liberal” Canadian government plans to pass a law that criminalizes so-called online “hate speech,” with the punishment being fines ranging from $20,000 to $50,000. The law only punishes social media users, it does not punish the platforms hosting the alleged hate speech and will introduce a new definition of “hate” that is yet to be revealed.

The law criminalizes online hate speech, with first time offenders getting a fine of C$20,000 (about US$16,200) and second time offenders getting a fine of C$50,000 (about US$40,500).

According to Canada’s Attorney General David Lametti, the proposed law targets extreme forms of hatred, which “expresses detestation or vilification of a person or group on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination,” not “simple expressions of dislike or disdain.”

“Hate speech directly contradicts the values underlying freedom of expression and our Charter of Rights,” Lametti added. “It threatens the safety and well-being of its targets. It silences and intimidates, especially when the target is a vulnerable person or community. When hate speech spreads, its victims lose their freedom to participate in civil society online.”

While announcing the proposed law the government released a statement explaining its intended goals. Per the statement, the proposed law, dubbed Bill C-36, will amend the Canadian Human Rights Act to define a new discriminatory practice of communicating hate speech online and add a definition of “hatred” to section 319 of the Criminal Code based on Supreme Court of Canada decisions.

The government also announced that it would publish a “detailed technical discussion paper” in the near future to explain the proposed law in detail.

Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault said: “Online platforms are central to participation in public life and have enormous power over online speech and Canadians’ everyday lives. While they allow us as Canadians to stay in touch with loved ones, learn and debate, they can also be used to discriminate, harm and silence.”

“In consultation with Canadians, the Government of Canada is committed to taking action to put in place a robust, fair and consistent legislative and regulatory framework on the most egregious and reprehensible types of harmful content,” Guilbeault continued. “This is why we will engage Canadians in the coming weeks to ask for feedback on specific, concrete proposals that will form the basis of legislation.”

June 29, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

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