At least three Canadian pastors have been imprisoned and numerous churches locked out of their buildings for not abiding by various government COVID restrictions. Lawyer Lisa Bildy of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, which has represented a number of parties in these sorts of cases, joined The Andrew Lawton Show to discuss the legal fights underway to uphold religious freedom.
Watch the full episode of The Andrew Lawton Show.
A dozen pediatric organizations including SickKids are urging the Ontario government to make reopening schools a priority, citing a “crisis in children’s mental health” as a result of COVID-19 pandemic closures.
“The impact of school closures and the resulting social isolation on the health and well-being of children and youth has become impossible to ignore. Getting Ontario’s students back into the classroom, with appropriate safety measures in place, for the remainder of this school year and for summer learning must be a priority now,” claimed the letter.
“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.”
Other signatories to the open letter include the Canadian Pediatric Society, the Pediatricians Alliance of Ontario, Ottawa Community Pediatrician Network, Children First Canada, McMaster Children’s Hospital, the Coalition for Kids and several other similar groups.
According to the letter, the signatories have three requests: for schools to reopen “immediately”, for summer school learning to take place in-person and for schools to resume regular scheduling in September.
“With the decrease in COVID-19 hospitalizations in Ontario by over 50%, and with more than 50% of adults at least partially vaccinated, the decision to re-open schools at this time will have minimal, if any, impact on the health care system,” reads the open letter.
Recently, the Ontario government announced that it would continue forcing kids to learn virtually until a “consensus” is reached with teachers unions and public health advisors.
“On the one hand, we have some doctors saying they want to open the schools. On the other hand, we have the teachers’ unions saying we can’t do that right now,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said earlier this week.
“We need public health doctors, teachers and labour partners to agree on the best path forward … And we simply don’t have that right now.”
This is not the first time that children’s health specialists have raised the alarm about the growing mental health crisis faced by the province’s youth.
In April, the Ottawa Community Pediatricians Network warned that the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns were causing more and more children to report serious mental health issues.
As Justin Trudeau’s Liberals steamroll ahead with internet regulation bill C-10, Justice Minister David Lametti gave an impassioned defence of all the ways government can ignore constitutional freedoms in legislation. True North’s Andrew Lawton warns C-10 will not only infringe on free speech rights, but also expand the power of the permanent bureaucracy. Also, Canadian businesses continue to suffer at the hands of government-imposed shutdowns. Plus, Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms lawyer Lisa Bildy joins the show to discuss church lockouts and the legal fight to protect religious freedom.
The group Toronto Drag Queen Storytime will be hosting live virtual events at every public library in Ontario’s Durham Region between May and July 2021.
According to the group’s Facebook page, the event “brings Drag Queens in full costume and makeup together with local children and families to share in an hour of storytelling, dress-up, and fun” with the intention of promoting “literacy and freedom of expression.”
The first event is scheduled for May 26th at Ajax Library between 1-2 p.m. ET. Other events are planned at Scugog Library, Oshawa Library, Whitby Library, Clarington Library, Pickering Library, Brock Library and Uxbridge Library.
Toronto drag performers Lucy Flawless and Lucinda Miu will be featured at the events which are being hosted in association with Youth Pride Durham, the Durham Children’s Aid Society and the public libraries in question.
In 2019, the Canadian news outlet LifeSiteNews and the pro-life group Personhood Alliance launched a petition calling for the American Library Association to end drag queen storytimes at its branches. The petition received over 100,000 signatures at the time.
As first reported by True North, the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) will also be hosting its own all-ages “drag storytime” as part of it’s 16th Annual Rainbow Youth Forum. The forum will also include an event on “decolonizing gender.”
“The 16th Annual Rainbow Youth Forum (RYF) will include Decolonizing Gender, Drag Storytime, Workshops for Students and Staff, Chill Zone and a Rainbow Spring Fling Dance! This interactive virtual event will allow participants to ask questions and share their thoughts,” reads the event description.
“The RYF encourages safe and inclusive school environments by providing an opportunity to enhance knowledge and awareness about equity and diversity issues. The RYF aims to help build knowledge and understanding of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression, as well as homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia.”
The forum is only open for registration for OCDSB students, parents and staff.
At least seven scientists working at a federal microbiology lab studying highly infectious diseases have collaborated on research into deadly pathogens with the Chinese military, a Globe and Mail investigation reveals.
The collaborators participated in six different studies alongside the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Academy of Military Medical Sciences which were published between 2016 and 2020.
All seven of the scientists were working on deadly pathogens in the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg. Among the diseases studied by the group include Ebola, Rift Valley fever and Lassa fever.
One of those researchers Feihu Yan was mentioned as a co-author to all six of the studies including two studies where he was listed as having affiliations with the PLA academy.
Two other scientists Xiangguo Qiu and Kending Cheng were dismissed from the laboratory in January on the recommendation of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), which viewed the two’s involvement at the federal lab as a national-security issue.
According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), the PLA Academy of Military Medical Sciences is a “very high risk” for being “leveraged by the People’s Liberation Army or security agencies for surveillance, human-rights abuses or military purposes.”
The Public Health Agency of Canada has since stated that there have been no “new collaborations” with China since 2019.
“In scientific collaborations, when a principal investigator leaves an organization, it is normal that collaborations centred around that research wind down. In this instance, the principal investigator was Dr. Qiu,” the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) told the Globe and Mail.
In March 2019, it was revealed that the federal lab had transported Henipah and Ebolah viruses to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. Despite this, PHAC claims that the transfer of infectious diseases to China was not the reason behind Qiu and Cheng’s dismissal.
Former CSIS assistant director of operations Andy Ellis told the Globe and Mail that the government had shown “incredible naiveté” in their handling of the situation.
“It is ill-advised. It is the top lab in Canada. It is just incredible naiveté on their part,” said Ellis.
“We won’t let a Canadian in unless we have done a deep background check, but we let [someone] in that we don’t know anything about. It doesn’t make sense.”
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and Calgary Mayor Naheed Neshi claim anti-lockdown protesters are all “far-right extremists” and associated with white nationalism.
We wanted to find out if there was any truth to these wild allegations.
True North contributor Jessica Swietoniowski joined thousands of anti-lockdown protesters in Toronto on Saturday May 15, 2021, in search of these so-called “extremists.”
Up to 238,000 Canadian businesses could go bankrupt due to lockdowns according to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB).
First reported by Blacklock’s Reporter, CFIB CEO Dan Kenny told the Senate national finance committee that 58,000 businesses have already closed permanently since the beginning of the pandemic, with around 180,000 near closure.
“One in six businesses we believe are at risk of permanent closure. That’s 180,000 businesses across Canada that will shut their doors forever before the end of this pandemic, and that would take with them 2.4 million private sector jobs,” he said.
“The economic ramifications are very real. These are going to be long-lasting.”
Kelly warned that the past year has left many small businesses on the edge of closure.
In February, the CFIB estimated that small businesses took on an additional $135.1 billion in new debt since the beginning of the pandemic, with the average debt per business now nearing $170,000.
In particular, Kelly blasted Ontario for its policy of constant lockdowns which have been disastrous for businesses. A recent survey of businesses by CFIB found that only 42% of Ontarian businesses are currently open.
“Ontario has been the jurisdiction most likely to use lockdowns, more than any jurisdiction in North America, and one of the longest set of lockdowns in the world if you can believe it,” he said.
“I have tons of members in the Toronto area that have been locked down for 350 days since the lockdowns started. Ontario also seems to be the only province that uses lockdowns as a semi-permanent policy.”
A recent survey by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce found that 51% of business owners are worried they cannot remain open if the business environment remains unchanged.
A new report reveals that deadly opioid overdoses were up 75% following the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 when compared to deaths the year prior.
The report which was published by the Ontario Drug Policy Research Network through Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital revealed that 2,050 people died of opioid overdoses between March and December 2020.
In comparison, 1,162 people died from opioid overdoses over the same time period in 2019.
“It’s alarming because these increases in overdose deaths are continuing unabated,” report co-author Tara Gomes told CP24.
According to Gomes, the COVID-19 pandemic is a contributing factor to the spike in deadly overdoses.
“The COVID 19 pandemic has really accelerated the rate at which fatal opioid overdoses are occurring across the province,” Gomes said.
“This is in part due to an increasingly unpredictable drug supply that is contaminated and highly toxic, but also the changes in access to health-care services, as well as the places where people are living, and the lack of support that people have now in the community.”
The report also noted that the deadly and highly potent synthetic opioid fentanyl has played a bigger role in the number of deaths reported as of late. As noted in the study, fentanyl played a role in 87% of all opioid deaths whereas in 2019 the deadly drug was detected in only 75% of cases.
People between the ages of 25 to 44 seem to be most affected by the increase in deadly overdoses with 1,109 deaths reported in that age group.
Ontario’s homeless population has also been heavily impacted by the drug crisis with 323 deaths reported in 2020 compared to 135 deaths recorded the year prior.
The study seems to reinforce prior reports of opioid overdoses in the province. In November, Public Health Ontario reported that in the first 15 weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, 695 people had died of opioid-related deaths.
The findings revealed a 38% increase when compared to the 15 weeks immediately before the pandemic.
Liberal MP Mark Gerretsen was in for an unpleasant surprise on Wednesday after he asked his followers on Twitter to judge whether his party was conspiring to strip Canadians of their freedom of speech or whether the Conservatives were fabricating the threat of the Liberals’ internet regulation bill, C-10.
Garretsen made the comment in response to a tweet by Conservative Party Leader Erin O’Toole which implied that the Liberals, NDP, Bloc Québécois and the Green Party were for “controlled speech” while the Conservatives supported free speech.
The tweet quickly spread on social media as Canadians chimed in to tell Garretsen that they believe the Liberal government was trying to strip the free speech rights of Canadians.
“Option 1. When the former head of the CRTC and esteemed professors in the field are saying it is an attack on free speech, I’ll believe them over politicians with an agenda,” tweeted Twitter user Tammy.
“I will side with the experts who are not on the [Liberal Party] payroll and choose option 1,” tweeted Fred Kirkey.
Others, including Conservative MP Scott Aitchison, True North founder Candice Malcolm and True North fellow Andrew Lawton also joined in to contradict Gerretsen.
Over the weekend, Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet told the CBC French-language program Tout le monde en parle that his party would support Bill C-10 and will be requesting for the Liberal government to fast track the bill before the legislative session ends this summer.
Critics of Bill C-10 have claimed that the legislation is deeply flawed and would harm Canadians’ right to freedom of expression.
A growing chorus of experts including several former Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) officials including CRTC ex-chair Konrad von Finckenstein and former CRTC commissioner Timothy Denton have condemned the bill as dangerous.
Both von Finckenstein and Denton signed a petition earlier this week comparing the bill to steps taken by “authoritarian” regimes to clamp down on freedoms.
“It appears Canada is not immune to the growing trend of government intervention to curtail freedom and seek to control parts of the internet’s infrastructure in ways reminiscent of actions taken by authoritarian governments,” wrote the petition.
“We are Canadian internet policy and technical professionals writing as concerned experts and on behalf of all those who care about the future of a free and open internet.”
Is Israel guilty of ethnic cleansing? Are the Palestinians just protecting themselves? Is Israel an apartheid state?
As the terrorist organization Hamas continues to fire thousands of rockets into Israel, many activists and so-called journalists continue to push myths about the conflict and condemn the only democratic state in the Middle East. From passing off biased positions as facts to just plain getting it wrong, the mainstream media and many on the Left are presenting a version of the news skewed against Israel.
True North’s Candice Malcolm debunks the biggest myths about the Israel/Hamas conflict.
