As debates wage in Canadian provinces about vaccine passports, Canada’s largest gym chain says it will not require its staff or members to be vaccinated.
The London, Ont.-based fitness centre was trending on Twitter Wednesday as people shared a response the company provided to a query.
“At this time, we are not planning to require Associates or Members to be vaccinated to enter our locations,” the company said. “For privacy reasons, GoodLife will not disclose information regarding any individual Associate’s vaccination status.”
GoodLife’s Ontario locations will be reopening Friday as the province enters stage 3 of its reopening plan. Locations in other provinces have reopened when local regulations have permitted.
GoodLife said in a follow-up statement it will “continue to follow all requirements and guidelines set out for fitness facilities by government, public health, and other legal authorities.”
Replies to GoodLife’s tweet were overwhelmingly negative, with numerous users claiming they intend to cancel their GoodLife memberships.
The company was lauded by some Twitter users for intending to protect member and staff medical privacy.
While COVID-19 vaccines are strongly encouraged by federal and provincial health officials, no government has made them mandatory. It is not yet clear whether mandatory vaccine policies by private businesses and institutions would even be legal, one civil liberties lawyer says.
Businesses can make decisions about what customers they want to serve, and in general this is a good thing. But turning away customers is still subject to Human Rights legislation,” Canadian Constitution Foundation litigation director Christine Van Geyn told True North. “That legislation prohibits discrimination on protected grounds, like disability, and I think there is a pretty compelling case that it would be discriminatory to turn away a person who cannot be vaccinated for something like a medical reason.”
Van Geyn said this sort of exemption can be difficult to enforce in practice, however.
“You can see the issue with masks, where medical exemptions are granted in the government mandate, but in practice many stores simply turn away unmasked customers,” she said. This happens even if the customer has a valid claim for a medical exemption from masking.
Discover Fitness, a gym in Timmins, Ont., said it would require anyone entering its facility, including staff and customers, to be vaccinated against COVID-19 unless exempt based on medical or human rights grounds.
Ontario’s Seneca College also instituted a mandatory vaccination policy for any students wishing to take in-person classes in the fall term.
Canada added just 345 COVID-19 cases and 12 deaths nationwide on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said it is up to provincial governments to decide if they want to issue vaccine passports for things like interprovincial travel and accessing services. The governments of Manitoba and Quebec have already committed to vaccine passports, while Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has said in no uncertain terms Alberta will not issue or accept vaccine passports.
True North’s Andrew Lawton says vaccine passports are a violation of individual choice and of privacy rights, and that provinces should govern accordingly.
Most of the people who died from COVID-19 in Canada were over the age of 85 and had dementia, Alzheimer’s, chronic heart disease and other pre-existing “cardiovascular and respiratory conditions,” according to a shocking new report from the federal government.
Nine in ten deaths had a secondary cause listed on the death certificate.
The Statistics Canada report, released July 6, found that 94% of all Canadians who died of COVID-19 in 2020 were seniors older than 65. Of those, more than half were over 85 years of age, and the majority were residents of long-term care homes.
This led the report to conclude that those who died from COVID-19 “may have been at a high risk of dying over this period regardless of the pandemic.”
COVID-19 was not the only cause of death.
“Of the 15,300 people who died of COVID-19 between March and December 2020, nearly 9 in 10 had at least one other health condition or complication or another cause listed on the death certificate. Dementia or Alzheimer’s was listed on the death certificate of 36% of COVID-19 death certificates and was particularly common among those age 65 or older.”
The report, entitled Briefing on the Impact of COVID-19 on Seniors, was prepared by researchers at Statistics Canada and was presented to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources and Skill Development. It was first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter.
The report looked at both COVID-19 deaths and as well as excess deaths that occurred in 2020.
Excess deaths are described as the increase in the number of overall deaths in Canada relative to data from past years.
These deaths are the result of both the disease itself as well as the second and third order impacts of the lockdowns, including things like cancelled surgeries, undiagnosed diseases and diseases of despair such as suicide, drug overdoses, alcohol poisoning and so on.
While 94% of COVID-19 deaths were seniors, only 70% of all excess deaths were among those over 65. That means that 30% of excess deaths were among working-aged adults 64 years and younger versus 6% of only COVID-19 deaths.
This report focuses primarily on seniors, so no analysis or further details were provided to explain this large discrepancy. The report does, however, suggest that the lockdown and resulting difficulties for working-aged Canadians were significantly worse than the disease itself.
For instance, the report shows that seniors 65 and older were the least likely age category to report having difficulties with their financial situation, with fewer than 15% saying the pandemic had a moderate or major impact.
Compare this to upwards of 30% for Canadians aged 35 to 44, and nearly 30% for those aged 25-34.
Similarly, older Canadians were the most likely to report being in very good or excellent mental health, with nearly 70% reporting positive mental health. Compare this with the category of Canadians aged 18 to 34 years old, where more than 50% reported negative mental health.
A recent report from the Sick Kids hospital found that a staggering 70% of teenagers reported symptoms of depression as a result of the pandemic and lockdowns.
While many provinces are starting to reopen, Canadians have been victims to some of the strictest public health orders in the world, rivaling communist countries like China and Cuba.
The True North Provincial Freedom Score found that Nova Scotia, Manitoba and Ontario were the most locked-down provinces in the country when taking into account business closures, school openings, in-person dining and nearly a dozen other variables.
The Ford government has quietly deleted a section of Ontario’s grade 9 math curriculum, which taught students a “decolonial” and “anti-racist” approach to mathematics.
While the government originally defended the new curriculum, Education Minister Stephen Lecce instructed officials to remove the section on “anti-racism,” according to the Toronto Sun.
The original document caught the attention of Ontarians due to its new approach to mathematics, which the government argued was needed to combat the field’s inherent white supremacy.
“Mathematics has been used to normalize racism and marginalization of non-Eurocentric mathematical knowledges, and a decolonial, anti-racist approach to mathematics education makes visible its historical roots and social constructions,” the original document read.
“The Ontario Grade 9 mathematics curriculum emphasizes the need to recognize and challenge systems of power and privilege, both inside and outside the classroom, in order to eliminate systemic barriers and to serve students belonging to groups that have been historically disadvantaged and underserved in mathematics education.”
Changes to Ontario’s math curriculum were announced last year by Education Minister Stephen Lecce.
The government previously said the new curriculum will bring early math streaming to an end, a practice that the government claimed created barriers for racialized and marginalized groups.
While news of the revised curriculum is welcomed by many Ontario parents and students, Ontario’s NDP criticized the government for its decision.
“The Grade 9 math program was changed specifically because Ontario had to finally recognize that the existing system treats Black, Indigenous and racialized students inequitably,” NDP Education critic Marit Stiles and Anti-Racism critic Laura Mae Lindo said in a joint statement.
“It’s pretty clear we need more of an equity and anti-racism lens in schools, not less.”
Former Canadian foreign affairs minister John Baird pledged his support to dissidents standing up against the Iranian regime.
Baird spoke Monday at the Free Iran Global Summit, an annual event hosted by the National Council of Resistance (NCRI), an Iranian opposition group seeking a free and secular Iran.
Baird served in former prime minister Stephen Harper’s cabinet when Canada severed diplomatic ties with Iran in 2012, a step Baird called one of his “proudest moments” of public service.
“One of the proudest moments that I had in public life over 20 years in government was the day when Canada made a big decision ten years ago,” he said. “We said that we wanted nothing to do with the terrorist-supporting, human rights-violating regime in Tehran. We formally broke off diplomatic relations with the regime and we kicked the mullahs’ henchmen out of Canada. That was real Canadian leadership”
Baird said he looked forward to NCRI president Maryam Rajavi’s elected government replacing the Iranian regime to “kick the mullahs from power in Tehran.”
Harper spoke at the conference Friday, taking aim at the recent “selection” of Ebrahim Raisi as Iran’s president.
“Ebrahim Raisi is a criminal, guilty of crimes against humanity. He is a living symbol of the folly of trying to appease (Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s) regime,” Harper said.
Baird echoed these concerns in his remarks, calling Raisi’s installation “clear evidence that (the regime) is deeply afraid of the uprisings going on across Iran.”
Raisi is a hard-liner responsible for overseeing mass detentions and executions of political prisoners in Iran.
Baird shared a stern message with Raisi in his remarks.
“You’re not a legitimate leader,” Baird said.”You are not a legitimately elected president. The Iranian people will hold you to account for your actions and the world will hold you accountable for the blood on your hands.”
Other Canadian speakers included former treasury board president Tony Clement, Liberal member of parliament Judy Sgro, and Conservative defense critic James Bezan.
A fourth First Nations band claims they have found unmarked graves, this time on a small island off the coast of Vancouver Island. Unlike the first three bands, who claimed to have found unmarked graves using ground-penetrating radar technology, the Penelakut Tribe did not say if they used technology to uncover their findings. In fact, they have not responded to media requests trying to understand how these unmarked graves were discovered.
In other words, this is simply a claim with no evidence. But that doesn’t matter to the legacy media. Multiple media outlets, including the CBC, Global News, CTV and others picked up the story and ran with it anyway.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did not have an unkind word to say about the Cuban government’s suppression of protesters.
Trudeau was asked Tuesday if he would condemn communist regime’s horrendous human rights abuses or if he agrees with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel that the US is to blame for the crisis.
As thousands of Cubans take part in the largest anti-government protest in decades, the Cuban regime is cracking down on protesters.
Hundreds have been arrested and the internet has been cut off, but Justin Trudeau refuses to condemn the regime. #cdnpolipic.twitter.com/7hmzd3Uqcu
“Canada has always stood in friendship with the Cuban people. We have always called for greater freedoms and more defence of human rights in Cuba,” Trudeau said, stopping short of condemning the Cuban government.
“We will continue to be there to support Cubans in their desire for greater peace, greater stability and greater voice for how things are going.”
Reports from Cuba indicate that more than 100 people have been arrested or are reported missing after the communist government cracked down on the largest protests in decades. Journalists are also being arrested, including ABC’s Camila Acosta.
CNN witnessed multiple people being arrested and thrown in the back of vans during protests in Havana. The Cuban government also imposed an internet blackout, preventing Cubans from sharing images and videos of the protest.
Due to the communist government’s poor handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Cuban people are facing the worst economic crisis since the fall of the Soviet Union. As a result, there is a shortage of basic goods and electricity in the island nation.
During a televised government meeting, Díaz-Canel blamed the US for the country’s economic woes and also said the protesters are criminals.
This isn’t the first time Trudeau has warmed up to the communist regime in Cuba.
When former Cuban President Fidel Castro died in 2016, Trudeau released a glowing statement in memory of the communist leader.
“Fidel Castro was a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century. A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation,” Trudeau said.
Following the World Health Organization’s (WHO) caution about mixing COVID-19 vaccines, many Ontarians are frustrated and angered with the mixed messages from the WHO and Canadian government.
CP24 reports that some Ontarians immediately left vaccine clinics upon learning they were about to receive a vaccine than they did for their first doses.
“It’s bad enough that we have to get vaccines to begin with and then to take a gamble on something we’re not sure about yet, we decided not to do it,” one man told a CP24 reporter.
“I am very frustrated. We waited long enough to get this second appointment and when you book the appointment, you don’t know which [vaccine] you’re going to get.”
On Monday, the WHO’s chief scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan called the mixing of vaccines “a little bit of a dangerous trend” that could lead to a “chaotic situation” in countries where citizens decide to take “a second, or a third, or a fourth dose.”
Swaminathan also said that while there has been data on the efficacy of a first dose of AstraZeneca followed by a second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, there are limited data on the interchangeability of other vaccines.
In Canada, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) has advised Canadians that mixing vaccines is both safe and effective.
Following the WHO’s caution, Canadian officials immediately defended the approach of mixing vaccines.
“In terms of the dose regimens and the recommendations, those are decisions that are at the end of the day made by the provinces and territories who are responsible constitutionally for the administration of health care in their individual jurisdictions,” said Procurement Minister Anita Anand said on Monday.
“For our part, the federal government will continue to follow the science… as well as the guidance that’s coming out from other bodies.”
Toronto-area Seneca College is the first postsecondary institution in Canada to announce that all students and staff coming to campus in September 2021 must have the COVID-19 vaccine.
“Seneca will be making vaccinations a condition for students and employees to come on campus for the fall term, starting Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2021,” college president David Agnew said in a statement.
A handful of Ontario universities such as Ryerson, Ontario Tech, and Western are requiring students living in residence to have the first dose of the vaccine, but not the campus community at-large.
Manitoba’s universities, on the other hand, have all said they will not implement a mandatory vaccine policy.
“We can’t demand anybody to get the vaccine. That’s not within our power or the province’s power,” Brandon University president David Docherty told CBC News.
As for Seneca College, Seneca Student Federation president Ritik Sharma contends that students are in favour of the policy.
“They are very much liking this policy,” Sharma told the National Post.
The college has not yet provided any details about how the mandatory vaccination policy will be enforced, whether exemptions will be accepted, or if lawyers were consulted during the policymaking process.
Although Ontario premier Doug Ford has rejected the idea of vaccine passports – as Alberta premier Jason Kenney has – organizations such as the Toronto Region Board of Trade are pushing for a vaccine passport system.
In Canada, the COVID-19 vaccine does not have full approval, only emergency use authorization.
Seneca College did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Is your college or university requiring you to take the COVID-19 vaccine? Talk to reporter Lindsay Shepherd about it: [email protected]
“At your peril,” said Mount Royal University professor Frances Widdowson as she launched a Saturday panel discussion titled “Residential Schools and Unmarked Graves: Is open inquiry possible?”
Because the journalist and activist class is pushing a narrative about “mass graves” and leading the public to believe that Aboriginal children were the victims of genocide at residential schools between 1883 and 1996, anyone who questions this narrative is labelled a “genocide apologist” and compared to a Holocaust denier.
This makes it more difficult to have an open, critical discussion about residential schools – but the panel event hosted by the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy allowed that dissenting conversation to go forward.
In the early years of the residential school system – around the 1890s – approximately one-third of children died before their fifth birthday, retired Manitoba provincial court judge Brian Giesbrecht pointed out.
“Death in that time – the death of a child – was not an unusual thing,” he noted.
Child mortality at residential schools was not due to mass murder and genocidal intent, he contends, but rather the sad reality that children were susceptible to infectious diseases that were rampant across society during this time.
Tuberculosis was named as the cause of death in 48.7% of reported residential school fatalities, with influenza, pneumonia, and other diseases also present in the schools.
Rates of disease were also higher among indigenous populations: residential schools were introduced in the first 50 years of Confederation, a time when indigenous people were increasingly coming into contact with newly arrived immigrants. Alas, they were exposed to illnesses from which they did not yet have resistance to.
University of Manitoba professor emeritus Rod Clifton pointed out that the journalists and academics acting shocked at the “discovery” of the unmarked graves must not be aware of – or may have conveniently forgotten – Volume 4 of the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) report, which is an entire volume about unmarked graves at residential schools.
Indeed, a skim through this report contains passages such as an account of the 1918 influenza pandemic at the school in Fort St. James, BC, where all of the staff members and all but two of the students came down with the flu. In total, 78 people died from that outbreak.
The principal, Father Joseph Allard, wrote in his diary at the time: “… I could not go to the graveyard with all of them. In fact, several bodies were piled up in an empty cabin because there was no grave ready. A large common grave was dug for them.”
Clifton noted that “burying people in cemeteries with headstones is a very recent addition to the indigenous cultures of Canada.”
“If you go to the Anglican cemetery on the Siksika reserve… between 80 and 90% of the graves are unmarked.”
Giesbrecht spoke about how historically, it was the wealthier classes that were buried with headstones in graveyards. These markers were actively maintained by a company or community members. Poorer people did not have this – rather, they would be buried with a simple cross, and unless their burial site was maintained, it would deteriorate.
In addition, gravesites adjacent to residential schools likely included not only the bodies of students, but also teachers, members of the Catholic church, other local community members, and, in at least one case in Brandon, Manitoba, the bodies of nearby mental hospital patients.
“I won’t say that these graves have been ‘discovered…’ because most of them were not lost, and they were just forgotten, at best,” said Clifton. “Only with proper forensic analysis by well-qualified professionals will we get at the truth.”
“The sensational comments by journalists, academics and some indigenous people are not helping get to the truth.”
So why does the media and activist class keep pushing the “mass grave” narrative, even though chiefs from the Tk’emlups and Cowessess nations said themselves that the burial sites are not mass graves?
According to Widdowson, in order for a genocide to have happened, you need mass graves.
“That’s kind of the smoking gun for genocide,” explained Widdowson. “That’s why the ‘mass grave’ was being emphasized… there’s all this innuendo going on about that.”
Residential school attendees have legitimate grievances, and the government was far too stingy with the way it ran the schools, the panel agreed – but what is the motivation behind the charges of genocide?
“Genocide – charges of genocide – is the most significant crime that a state can perpetrate, and so it provides much more rationalization for dispersal of funds,” said Widdowson.
“If we were just to say, as it was the case, it was neglect… it’s not got the same kind of punch – leverage – that you have with ‘genocide.’”
“The more serious the accusations, the more emotional the tenor, the more easily you’re going to be able to get transfers being provided,” she contends.
The panel connected the hyperbolic media narrative to increasing calls for more compensation by what is often disparagingly referred to as “the Indian Lobby” – a group of activists, lawyers, academics and bureaucrats who benefit from more grievances and more financial demands for Canada’s First Nations.
“You have an elite that’s at the top… Residential schools – at least $100 million dollars went to lawyers. Huge amounts of money are going to lawyers,” Widdowson explained.
“There’s no end to the expenses,” Clifton said.
Clifton explained that with treaties, responsibilities went both ways, in a reciprocal relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous people. But with the TRC Calls to Action, every single call to action only goes one way, where non-indigenous people will be paying indigenous people. “And there’s no limit to it.”
Upwards of $3.2 billion dollars has already been paid to residential school attendees.
Giesbrecht noted that it was a “fundamental error” to pay out nearly all people who attended a residential school without proving damages in court.
“What I find myself personally disturbed about is the slander – I think that’s the proper word – [of] nuns… ” said Giesbrecht. “In some cases, an order of nuns would dedicate their lives towards teaching these indigenous children… And now to be called these names and watch their churches burn…”
“It’s really something we as a nation should be ashamed of.”
Another point of discussion was the ground-penetrating radar that the Tk’emlups and Cowessess nations claimed located 215 and 751 corpses, respectively.
“The radar isn’t going to tell you who’s down there nor is it going to tell you from what did they die,” said University of Lethbridge professor Paul Viminitz, the event moderator.
However, there are a number of legal and ethical issues with exhuming 3,200 graves. (3,200 is the number of residential school deaths identified by the TRC).
“I doubt that we’re going to see bodies dug up,” said Giesbrecht.
Without forensic analyses, the full truth about residential schools and unmarked graves may never be known.
Residential schools are being seen as the root of all evil, Giesbrecht said, even though they actually have very little to do with current issues facing Aboriginal people.
“This is really a terrible moment for the country,” he said.
