As several businesses set out policies requiring staff and customers to be vaccinated, an Ontario boxing club is going the other way.
Fearless Boxing Club in South Etobicoke is barring the vaccinated from joining.
“For the safety of our members, the Fearless Boxing Club will no longer be accepting those who received the experimental Covid vaccine,” gym co-founder Mohammed Abedeen said in an Instagram story, which he later shared to Facebook.
“Our current members including doctors, nurses, teachers, parents and many youth feel safer waiting until more research is done on the side effects being discovered right now.”
Abdeen added the hashtag #JustSayNo to his post, which asked people who have received the COVID-19 vaccine to “please keep your distance from organic people for at least 28 days.”
There are no risks to associating with people who have received a COVID-19 vaccine.
In recent weeks, the debate about mandatory vaccines and vaccine passports has ramped up. While many provinces have rejected the idea of mandating vaccines or issuing passports, some Canadian businesses have taken matters into their own hands.
Discover Fitness in Timmins, in northern Ontario, said last week the gym would only allow vaccinated people to work out there.
A Toronto lawyer set up a website to promote businesses with vaccine requirements for staff or customers, but shut down the project less than a week later due to backlash against the businesses.
London, Ont.-based national chain GoodLife Fitness said it does not intend to discriminate based on vaccination status.
The Fearless Boxing Club opened during Ontario’s lengthy lockdown, which has kept gyms closed for most of the last 16 months, and remained open despite public health restrictions.
Schools are safe to operate without strict COVID-19 protocols, according to the Ontario Science Table and researchers from SickKids Hospital.
In its report, the Science Table calls for a return of most activities in schools this fall and dropping mask mandates, social distancing and cohorting.
Here is the Ontario Science Table graph on how masks should be optional in schools when the virus is deemed low risk. They elsewhere state that they believe September will be such a time. pic.twitter.com/JzwzF1aCSK
The report also does not recommend vaccinating children as a precondition to return to school.
“In-person learning is essential for the learning and overall well-being of children and youth,” the report reads. “Therefore, barring catastrophic circumstances, schools should remain open for in-person learning.”
While the report recommends many protocols to be dropped, one of the key measures the Science Table recommends to keep in place is active screening for COVID-19 symptoms and the need to stay at home.
“Asymptomatic screen testing (i.e., asymptomatic testing in the absence of documented exposure), is not routinely recommended, especially in the low to moderate COVID-19 risk scenarios,” the report says.
The report from Ontario’s Science Table is a relief for many parents and students in Ontario. Schools across the province have been shuttered due to endless government lockdowns.
In the past 15 months, Ontario public school students have only been in school for approximately 5 months. The closure of schools has had a negative effect on students, according to a number of leading children’s health and pediatrics organizations.
In June, the Children’s Health Coalition released an open letter condemning Ontario’s decision to keep schools closed.
“We are witnessing a crisis in children’s mental health with a dramatic increase in the utilization of acute mental health services. Schools play an essential role in the recovery process. In-person school provides students with routine and structure, accountability, socialization and recognition of abuse and neglect,” claimed an open letter by the group.
It’s becoming increasingly fashionable to say that Canada has committed genocide – we hear it from Liberals, the NDP, First Nations, Supreme Court justices, professors and activists.
But is it true?
True North founder Candice Malcolm examines the genesis of the word and compares it with Canada’s record, both past and present. She explains why it’s incredibly reckless and disingenuous to say that Canada is a genocidal country.
Two virtual meetings attended by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland wound up costing taxpayers more than $5,000 in audio-visual expenses.
Documents released in response to an access to information request for information pertaining to Freeland’s remote appearance on a January panel at the World Economic Forum’s Davos Agenda included a $5,099.13 invoice for “minister’s media events” on Jan. 26.
The breakdown of the invoice from Toronto AV firm Bespoke Audio Visual is redacted, but it shows the total billable amount, as well as the date and venue, which is the finance minister’s regional office in downtown Toronto.
Freeland’s public itinerary, as well as a version circulated internally in the Access to Information documents, shows only two events that day – the World Economic Forum panel and a virtual roundtable for the Atlantic Chamber of Commerce.
The World Economic Forum panel, which was on Stakeholder Capitalism, was conducted by Zoom. A Jan. 21 email from someone in Freeland’s office said she would be “using a laptop, nothing fancy, but will have a webcam/microphone for better quality.”
The email also said Freeland would likely have “no support staff with her. In other words, simple is best!”
Freeland attended Question Period virtually on Jan. 26 in between the two meetings, though it appears she did so through a simple computer set-up with a headset.
While the dollar value might not rank high as far as government expenses are concerned, it seems like an unnecessary cost, Canadian Taxpayers Federation federal director Franco Terrazzano told True North.
“Why are a few Zoom meetings costing us more than $5,000?” Terrazzano asked. “I don’t know too many Canadians that spend thousands of dollars for a couple of Zoom meetings. Freeland is our finance minister so she knows how broke the feds are. We need to see better leadership from her on saving money.”
The Department of Finance did not respond to a request for comment.
The federal government has not purchased a single firearm under its promised gun buyback program, but has still managed to rack up more than $2 million in salaries and administrative costs.
This revelation comes from documents obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) showing the government has spent $2,017,334 to facilitate a buyback plan that has not bought anything.
CTF’s report confirms the costs have been incurred by the Firearms Buyback Secretariat, an office the Liberal government established to “provide advice and direction for the design, implementation, and management of the federal gun buyback.” There are eleven bureaucrats staffing the office, which was set up after Trudeau implemented an order-in-council on May 1, 2020 banning more than 1,500 variants of lawfully owned firearms.
The Liberals initially said a buyback plan to compensate gun owners for the prohibition would cost $200 million, though a Parliamentary Budget Office report earlier this year pegged the true cost at up to $756 million, not counting the administrative costs of running the actual program.
The Firearms Buyback Secretariat is expected to spend $4 million per year, which all goes to administration and operations.
The CTF has derided the program as a “boondoggle.”
“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s gun buyback has all the makings of a taxpayer boondoggle,” said Franco Terrazzano, the CTF’s federal director. “This is going to cost a lot of money, but police officers are making it clear that it won’t make Canadians safer.”
These ballooning costs are no surprise to those who followed the Liberal government’s failed long gun registry in the 1990s, which was supposed to cost $2 million and ended up costing $2 billion.
True North is looking at the effects of Trudeau’s order-in-council on lawful gun owners and the firearms industry in a new documentary series, Assaulted: Justin Trudeau’s War on Gun Owners, hosted and produced by Andrew Lawton.
Vancouver city councillor Jean Swanson joined two drug advocacy groups last week to hand out free packets of meth, heroin and cocaine outside the Vancouver Police Department’s Downtown Eastside detachment. Swanson participated in the drug distribution event in order to advocate for a “safe supply” of illegal drugs and bring attention to the statistic that 6 British Columbians die a day from overdosing.
According to one of the advocacy groups Swanson partnered with, the Drug User Liberation Front (DULF), the drugs were obtained on the dark web using cryptocurrency, and were then tested by DULF to ensure they weren’t contaminated with other substances, such as fentanyl.
According to DULF organizer Eris Nyx, the drugs handed out on July 14th cost about $3,000.
Nyx told True North that the group buys drugs with donations from “middle-class, well-to-do people” who want to save lives. “We are not sourcing money from organized crime,” said Nyx. “We are trying to do this as above-board as possible.”
Nyx stated that no one at DULF is profiting off of their advocacy, and the 50 volunteers at DULF are unpaid.
Ralph Kaisers, President of the Vancouver Police Union and the BC Police Association, expressed his disapproval of Jean Swanson on Twitter, writing “Wow! I sure hope this wasn’t actually the case. @JeanSwanson_ please confirm this never happened.” Vancouver city councillor Melissa De Genova was similarly baffled, writing on Twitter “Isn’t this called drug trafficking?”
“We only handed out drugs to existing drug users within Vancouver,” said Nyx. “We are not just handing these out to the public willy-nilly.”
DULF volunteers only distributed drugs to their partner drug user organizations such as the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, the Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society, and the Coalition of Peers Dismantling the Drug War Society. The representatives of these groups then distributed the drugs to their members, and DULF maintains a database of known drug users from within these organizations.
“We do keep data,” said Nyx. “To date, no one has overdosed on the drugs we’ve given out.”
DULF claims that with this system, no minors are able to get their hands on the substances.
“We are absolutely not distributing drugs to minors, 100%,” Nyx said. “We’re not idiots, we really do care about people’s lives.”
One of DULF’s policy objectives is to see drugs like heroin and cocaine regulated in the same way alcohol is. “We are people thinking about this from a market standpoint.”
As for their partnership with Jean Swanson, Nyx said “Jean’s always been an ally of our community, historically… We understand that having a city councillor handing out drugs is going to bring publicity to the issues… we knew this would bring us into the news.”
Swanson did not respond to True North’s request for comment.
BC has a history of avant-garde drug policy. In 1989, the City of Vancouver funded the first needle exchange program, and in 2003 the continent’s first supervised injection site opened. The city is also home to the Crosstown Clinic, the first clinic in North America to offer injections of heroin and hydromorphone – a heroin substitute – to chronic users who have tried to quit but are unable to.
Recently, the federal government announced they would be providing nearly $3.5 million to fund vending machines that dispense hydromorphone pills to approved users.
The opioid overdose crisis was declared a public health emergency in BC in 2016, and 2020 was the province’s worst year on record for illicit drug deaths.
The communist Chinese regime is responsible for a massive cyberattack that compromised thousands of computers around the world earlier this year, according to the Canadian government and its international allies.
In March, it was revealed that hackers exploited Microsoft Exchange emails. The federal government estimates 400,000 servers were compromised.
The Canadian government believes the objective of the attack was to steal intellectual property and personal information.
“Canada is confident that (China’s) Ministry of State Security is responsible for the widespread compromising of the exchange servers,” said Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau, Public Safety Minister Bill Blair and Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan in a statement.
“This activity put several thousand Canadian entities at risk — a risk that persists in some cases even when patches from Microsoft have been applied.”
Canada was joined by the US, Britain, the European Union and NATO in accusing China of being behind the attacks.
A senior US official described the attack as part of a “pattern of irresponsible behaviour in cyberspace.” Meanwhile, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre believes the Chinese hackers were targeting maritime industries and naval defence contractors in the US, Europe and the Finnish parliament.
China’s belligerent cyberattack comes in light of a new report by the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), which warns that Canadians are likely to encounter efforts by foreign actors, including China, to influence or interfere with their vote in the next federal election.
According to the CSE report, Canada is a potential target because of its active role on the world stage and that foreign actors have the tools, capacity and understanding of Canada’s political landscape to take action in the future “should they have the strategic intent.”
Another church has been targeted and destroyed by arsonists in Canada.
The St. George Coptic Orthodox church was engulfed in flames on Monday morning. Firefighters in Surrey, BC arrived at the scene at around 3:30am and were able to stop the spread of the fire to other buildings. However, the church could not be saved.
The RCMP is treating the blaze as suspicious and is currently investigating the incident.
Surveillance video showed a female suspect lighting items on fire at the door of the church on Monday morning.
Surveillance video provided to @CTVVancouver by one of the church members shows a woman lighting the front door of the church on fire last week. Fire officials say it’s too early to confirm whether today’s fire is indeed arson. https://t.co/SDRi2hvKqYpic.twitter.com/vNRNUeQITE
“Our church was more than a building. It brought together a diverse congregation of Coptic, Eritrean, Iraqi, and Lebanese Orthodox believers,” the church said in a statement. “It was a place we built community, where we shared meals, where we married our youth, christened our babies and welcomed newcomers to the faith.”
Since the announcement last month of the apparent discovery of graves found near a residential school in Kamloops, BC, 48 Christian churches have been vandalized, torched or desecrated.
Although Indigenous leaders are denouncing these violent crimes, churches continue to be targeted by vandals.
While many Canadians have condemned these heinous crimes, a number of activists, academics and public figures have excused the recent church burnings and acts of vandalism.
When asked about condemning the ongoing church fires, Prime Minister Trudeau told reporters on July 2 that the anger of those committing arson was “fully understandable” due to Canada’s “shameful history.”
“I understand the anger that’s out there against the federal government, against institutions like the Catholic Church. It is real and it’s fully understandable, given the shameful history that we are all becoming more and more aware of and engaging ourselves to do better as Canadians,” said Trudeau.
As many provincial governments rule out implementing vaccine passports, a number of businesses are taking matters into their own hands, setting out vaccine requirements for staff and customers. Some are even calling for more government mandates. True North’s Andrew Lawton says businesses should legally have the right to do what they want, just as consumers have the right to go elsewhere – no one should be cheering for a society stratified based on vaccination status as the pro-lockdown crowd is.
The Canadian Press echoed Communist Cuba’s talking points in an article publicizing a small pro-communist protest in Montreal.
The article was republished by CTV News, Montreal Gazette and other legacy media outlets.
Since the anti-government protests in Cuba began – the largest since the communist regime took power in 1959 – the Cuban regime has consistently blamed the US embargos for its economic woes. However, the Cuban protesters are blaming the regime’s poor handling of the pandemic, the lack of basic goods and abuse of civil liberties on the island nation.
In the article, the Canadian Press highlights a small pro-communist demonstration outside the U.S. consulate in Montreal, but fails to acknowledge much larger pro-freedom protests taking place across Canada.
On Facebook, the event in question had only 30 people attending.
“Several people gathered Saturday afternoon in front of the U.S. consulate in Montreal to demand the lifting of the U.S. embargo against Cuba, where historic anti-government protests occurred last week,” stated the article.
The pro-communist protest was hosted by the Table de concertation de solidarité Québec-Cuba (TCSQ-C), a small organization that promotes solidarity with the Cuban communist regime.
The Canadian Press repeatedly asked the TCSQ-C for comment, but didn’t bother to fact check the TCSQ-C’s claims or request comment from pro-freedom voices.
“[TCSQ-C secretary Sean] O’Donoghue thinks the goal of the embargo, introduced in 1962, has always been to impoverish the country so ‘people become enraged and overthrow the government,’” the Montreal Gazette wrote.
“O’Donoghue hopes the Canadian government will maintain its relationship with the Caribbean country and it puts pressure on the U.S. to put an end to the sanctions.”
In Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and other major cities in Canada, hundreds participated in protests in support of the anti-government Cuban protesters. A number of Canadians of Cuban descent have voiced their concerns about the ongoing human rights abuses in Cuba and the dangers of communism.
As the anti-government protests in Cuba continue, the Cuban regime has cracked down on hundreds of its citizens – many have been arrested, are reported missing and the internet has been shut down.
