Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre accused the government of using foreign aid to fund terrorists and dictators in a speech to caucus Sunday.
Plus, Montreal’s Concordia University is seeking to “decolonize and Indigenize” every aspect of its academic curriculums and pedagogy.
And Kelowna hopes that a temporary “tiny home village” will help provide housing to the city’s growing homeless population.
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Shortages of over 1,800 medications are driving Canadians into the United States to seek over 1800 medications are on the drug shortage list in Canada, causing some Canadians to have to travel across the US border to access their essential drugs.
Angelle Ritchie, 50, is a musician living in Oshawa, Ont. She’s been living with Crohn’s Ileitis, a form of inflammatory bowel disease, since she was 18 and has had several bowel resections resulting in short bowel syndrome.
Ritchie’s condition makes her dependent on drugs like Cholestyramine, or Questran, a drug that reduces bile acid and is used to treat high cholesterol, and Lomotil, which is often used as an antidiarrheal, to function in day-to-day life.
“Without my medications, I end up in the hospital. They have to admit me, and I’m pretty much down for the count until I get those meds,” she said.
Due to a shortage of powdered Questran, Ritchie had to travel to Niagara Falls, N.Y. to access the bile acid sequestrant critical to maintaining her health.
According to Ritchie, the first time most people experience a drug shortage is when they go to the pharmacy and are told there are none available.
“What (the pharmacists) usually do is recommend that you start calling. And that’s what I was doing on my lunch breaks when the first shortage started. I would take a list, go down the list, call, and check to see if they had any,” she said.
Once a place confirms they have the drug available to patients who aren’t regular customers of that pharmacy, the prescription has to be faxed from one pharmacy to the other. Then patients have to pick it up physically with ID in hand.
“If you have mobility issues or you don’t have someone to drive you around and now you’re having to go to seven different pharmacies. Picking up four or five (doses) here or ten there or whatever they have available, it can start to get not only expensive but very time-consuming,” Ritchie said.
The first time she experienced a drug shortage was when she was living in London, Ont. in 2002. The drug that was in short supply was Lomotil, a drug she still uses today.
Lomotil is rarely used for Crohn’s disease, but she’s an “extreme case.” She found out about the shortage when preparing to travel north for her father’s funeral.
“I basically called every pharmacy from London to North Bay and picked up ten pills here and 15 there and five here and 40 there,” she said. Which soon became a regular routine.
That was before there was a website that showed what drugs were in short supply. It’s become a routine for Ritchie to check the site every week or two to see if the drugs she needs have been listed since it first emerged in 2018.
She said Lomotil is the drug she’s had the most trouble with getting over the last 20 years. But last month, both Lomotil and Questran were on the shortage list, forcing her to cross the border into the US.
“What happens is there are gaps in the supply chain. And essentially, it was up to me to start calling, and I literally called almost 20 pharmacies a day. I’ve driven up to three or 400 kilometres away,” Ritchie said.
It’s more than a hassle for Ritchie to get the drugs she needs to make her condition livable. She had to take time off work to make phone calls to locate the drugs and arrange doctor appointments in the US to get American prescriptions.
“It worked out to a one-month supply costing me 140 American dollars ($188.48 Canadian) plus the cost of the actual visit, which was close to $200 Canadian.”
She described the experience overall as both stressful and a huge relief because she’s been dealing with drug shortages “for a really, really long time.”
When she had to go to the US, she was about to refill her prescription and only had about a week’s supply left.
When the main drug is unavailable, alternatives quickly “fly off the shelves.” In Ritchie’s experience, however, many drug stores, pharmacies, and warehouses will hold on to those alternatives for their own patients.
No alternatives to the drug were available for Ritchie either. Generic drugs are often made from the same ingredients as the brand-name medication, so they’re subject to the same supply shortages.
Support groups like the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation, allow patients to coordinate and share information with each other. Ritchie said that the drug shortages are affecting others who have a similar condition as her.
“I feel for the people who don’t have the resources or the assistance, the support or the knowledge to be able to look elsewhere,” She said. “I’m not sure if it’s partly because of the pandemic, but this was happening long before that, and it seems to be getting worse.“
Ritchie says she knows of people who specifically plan their vacations to foreign countries to buy their medications.
When Ritchie went to the United States, she spoke with a nurse practitioner in New York
“[The nurse] said the uptick in Canadians crossing the border for medications has at least doubled in the last couple of years.”
Ritchie said the nurse told her chemo patients were travelling internationally as well to get essential medications. “I can’t even imagine how difficult that would be when you’re already dealing with a chronic illness or, in this case, cancer.”
Members of Ritchie’s group worry that Florida’s recently announced plan to ship drugs from Canada into their state will only exacerbate the drug shortages.
A recent study from the Montreal Economic Institute is questioning whether or not it’s fair to tax Canadians more because they are forced to work two jobs just to make ends meet.
The MEI is a non-profit research think tank that offers independent advice on public policy, aiming to create debate around reforms on established principles of market economics.
In a study published earlier this month, the institute addressed the issue of Canadians’ spending power being reduced by 16% since 2020, due to high inflation and weak wage gains.
In addition to lower spending power, the high cost of rent and mortgages has skyrocketed in recent years, due to the Bank of Canada’s interest rates, which are currently at a 22-year high.
Despite the multitude of issues presently facing the average Canadian, the system is still structured so that the more income a person earns, the higher his or her tax rate will be.
“It is simply indecent to ask someone who has to work two jobs to make ends meet to pay taxes of 20 per cent or more on their second salary,” said Jason Dean, associate researcher at the institute and co-author of the study. “By restarting the tax meter at zero for a second job, the taxman would help provide some breathing room for workers who are less well-off.”
University student Jessica Brown, 23, was shocked last year when she received her tax return after working 60 hours per week at two jobs when not attending school.
Brown, who lives in Whitney Pier, Cape Breton Island, worked at a homeless shelter and for a catering company.
“I didn’t realize I’d be taxed more, the more I worked, so it was a bit of a learning curve,” Brown told Saltwire in an interview. “I remember calling my parents and saying, ‘I never thought this would happen when I got a second job.’ I was expecting the opposite. I was working so much, I thought I’d get much further ahead, but I guess I was naïve.”
Brown is just one of many Canadians who are struggling to keep their head above water as Canada’s cost of living crisis drags on
According to data from Statistics Canada, in 2023 a little over 658,000 full-time employees were working two jobs at once and that number continues to rise.
“These are people at the low end of the income ladder,” said Renaud Brossard, another co-author of the study. “Take a New Brunswicker who earns $35,000 a year in their regular job. The moment they start their second job, they’ll be taxed at 24 per cent on that extra income.”
The MEI study distinguished between those who work a lot of overtime or contract work and those who are regularly employed at two separate jobs. This is because people who work overtime often earn time and a half or double pay and contract workers are often eligible for tax deductions as long as they are self-employed.
But that isn’t the case for Canadians who are moonlighting.
The study “recommends that for low-and middle-income Canadians both the federal and provincial governments restart their tax calculations at zero for any second job.”
This would lead to most workers saving a few thousand dollars with their annual tax return.
“For a fraction of our governments’ coming subsidies to battery factories, they could help hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens who are earning low incomes,” Dean said. “This relief measure would have a real impact on the lives of those who have the most difficulty making ends meet,” said Dean.
Dean noted that if Ottawa was to give people with a secondary income a tax break, it would lose around $981 million a year which may seem like a lot, but when one considers that the federal government took in nearly $500 billion in revenues in 2023, that figure doesn’t seem so high after all.
A study by the Canadian Paediatric Society is recommending parents allow their children to engage in “outdoor risky play” as a tool for healthy development, an issue that has become increasingly more important in the aftermath of years lost as a result of pandemic lockdowns.
“Risky play helps facilitate children’s exposure to fear-provoking situations, providing them with opportunities to experiment with uncertainty, associated physiological arousal, and coping strategies, which can significantly reduce children’s risk for elevated anxiety,” reads the study.
The group defines risky play as “thrilling and exciting forms of free play that involve uncertainty of outcome and a possibility of physical injury.”
“Based on evidence gathered over the last 15 years, primarily in children 1 to 13 years of age, risky play is often further categorized into various play types,” reads the study.
Risky play is said to be important for children physically and mentally, as well as having a positive impact on their early social-emotional development.
Physical studies assessed that a child’s independent mobility (their ability to travel and play in their neighbourhood without adult supervision) is directly linked to helping their cognitive and physical skills to ensure practice of lifelong physical activity-related behaviours.
It also reduces the likelihood of future sports-related injuries.
“Outdoor play provides children with opportunities to develop risk-assessment and fundamental movement skills,” reads the study.
Risky play contributes to the modulation of the immune system, according to a study released in 2020. Adding natural elements like plants, trees and shrubs to a daycare yard for climbing and digging can aid skin bacterial diversity and gut microbiota in children.
Introducing loose elements, such as tires, logs, barrels, also provides a more hospitable environment for rough-and-tumble play at playgrounds, which is of great benefit to children’s social development and conflict resolution skills.
One study found that while children playing in these types of environments were more likely to push and shove one another, there were less signs of bullying and children were better able to build up their resilience, particularly boys.
“Following a 3-month school-based intervention providing risky play opportunities, teachers reported lower conflict sensitivity and higher self-esteem and concentration among children in Grade 4,” reads the study.
“Also, the ability to communicate, cooperate, and compromise with others improves in situations where children can test and push their own limits.”
The time for children to engage in risky play is more pertinent than ever, following the negative effects inflicted upon them during the pandemic lockdowns.
According to a study by the Fraser Institute, children will face long term negative consequences due to prolonged school closures ordered by governments during the first three years of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The study entitled, The Forgotten Demographic: Assessing the Possible Benefits and Serious Cost of COVID-19 School Closures on Canadian Children found that provincial governments could have avoided these effects if they had listened to the evidence that was available to them at the time when those decisions were first being made.
“There was information available to policymakers early on showing school closures would do more harm than good,” said Paige MacPherson, co-author of the study.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre accused the government of using foreign aid to fund terrorists and dictators in a speech to caucus Sunday.
Poilievre also highlighted his party’s priorities as Parliament returns Monday after the winter break.
Shots at UNRWA, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
Poilievre attacked Trudeau for having funded the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), calling the agency a “terrorist organization.” This comes amid allegations that some of its members took part in Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Canada has since announced a pause on UNRWA funding.
“Trudeau’s been funding foreign terrorists and dictators, calling it ‘aid,’” said Poilievre. “He gave money to UNRWA. We warned what would happen if you gave money to UNRWA.”
“Justin Trudeau funded the same organization whose members helped carry out the genocidal Oct. 7 attack,” he added. “Justin Trudeau should be ashamed of himself for the way that he has spent our money to fund this terrorist organization.”
Poilievre pledged to make the Liberals’ recent pause in UNRWA funding permanent if he is elected, and said he will also defund the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
“We should be building pipelines and roads in Canada, not in Asia.”
Conservative priorities as House returns:
Poilievre said “axing” the carbon tax, “fixing” the budget, building homes and stopping crime will be his party’s four priorities in the upcoming legislative session.
The focus on crime comes as Canada’s murder rates hit a 30-year high, with small towns and big cities hit by increased lawlessness.
“The big cities that voted for Justin Trudeau are suffering the most because of his disastrous and costly policies,” said the Conservative leader.
“Violent crime is up 40%. The number of overdose deaths is up 200%. Forty-thousand Canadians have lost their lives to overdoses after eight years of Justin Trudeau’s policy of decriminalizing crack and heroin and giving out tax subsidized opioids that have heroin level potency.”
Poilievre added that crime is an issue which voters bring up often at his rallies, recounting a man in North Bay who told him his one request is to be able to bring his kids to a restaurant without having to face the possibility of being stabbed in the face.
“That was his request. In small northern Ontario towns people used to leave their doors unlocked before Justin Trudeau brought in catch and release.”
He went on to slam the NDP, which represents parts of Northern Ontario. He accused them of “betraying” their constituents and “selling out” to Trudeau by supporting “catch and release” policies.
“There’s been the NDP, betraying Northern Ontario and Vancouver Island and the British Columbia Interior. Selling out their people, selling out the working class, to support his policies of catch and release, of banning hunting rifles, of quadrupling the carbon tax and doubling housing costs.”
“That is the misery that they have helped bring about.”
Poilievre also took aim at the car thefts, amid Canada becoming a new hot spot for them.
The federal government announced last week that a National Summit on Combating Auto Theft will take place in February, bringing together “leaders from key jurisdictions and sectors to ensure a coordinated response to this issue.”
Poilievre criticized the proposal as a make-work project that will do nothing but cost money.
“There’s going to be another meeting, thank God. Politicians and bureaucrats and lobbyists will all come together. They’ll send you the bill for their hotel rooms,” he said.
“My friends, we don’t need another summit, we need a common sense plan to end the theft and stop the crime and that is what Conservatives will do.”
Poilievre also reiterated his party’s plan to address crime.
“We will end Justin Trudeau’s catch and release system, which has unleashed crime and chaos in our communities. We’re gonna stop the crime by stopping the criminals. Very simple. The root cause of crime is criminals. Put the criminals in jail, you have less crime,” he said.
“It will be jail, not bail. Jail, not bail for repeat violent offenders.”
Poilievre also discussed ending “safe supply” drug policies, housing affordability, lowering taxes and government spending, inflation and recognizing foreign credentials in his speech – while repeating his promise to scrap the ArriveCAN app.
The Conservative leader also took aim at Trudeau’s lavish Caribbean vacation as well as at “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” ideology that places race above merit.
“You’re all just back from your $9000 a night stay with friends like most Canadians, right? That’s what our Prime Minister said. Can you imagine that? He said, ‘like most Canadians, I stayed with friends.’ An $89,000 vacation for free from friends,” Poilievre said.
“Wow, jeez, I think I have the wrong friends.”
Poilievre also defended the meritocracy, lobbing a shot at race-based hiring.
“Home is a place that judges people based on their work and their merit, not their race or their connections to government,” he said.
“Home is a place where government is servant, and not master. Where the people are in charge, and the leaders have the humility to do the job for them. Home is a place where the government minds its own business, and does its basic job well, while allowing free people to fulfill their full potential.”
On Tuesday, the Federal Court declared Justin Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act unconstitutional, calling the decision beyond its scope and unreasonable. Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms lawyer James Manson joined True North’s Andrew Lawton to discuss the next steps in this legal saga, and the implications of the Federal Court’s ruling.
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What is the difference between Pierre Poilievre and Justin Trudeau when it comes to Canada’s Indian Residential Schools?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing, because both are guilty of a “grave error.”
Even in his condemnation of the burning of Christian churches, this newest Conservative leader was shown to be a Justin Trudeau ventriloquist puppet when it came to Indigenous issues at a Jan. 22 press conference in Vancouver.
Ninety-six Christian churches in Canada have been vandalized, burned down, or desecrated since the announcement of the apparent discovery of graves found near a residential school in Kamloops, B.C. on May 27, 2021.
In response to a True North reporter’s question about unmarked graves and these church burnings following Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc (Kamloops Indian Band) “confirming the remains of 215 children who were students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School,” Poilievre said little which had not already been said by Trudeau.
“There is no justification for burning down a church. Period. Regardless of the other information or justifications that people claim to use, there is never a justification to burn down a church,” replied Poilievre.
While the one word “period” slightly differentiates him from Trudeau, the rest of his reply does not. Indeed, a “grave error” from a political perspective.
Three weeks after the first churches were destroyed in the summer of 2021, Trudeau said that the burning and destruction of churches is “unacceptable and wrong,” but quickly qualified this condemnation by claimed this was “understandable.”
“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,” Trudeau said.
“That is simply not right, it is a shame,” Trudeau said of burning churches when asked if these acts were hate crimes, thereby implicitly denying they were hate crimes.
In retrospect, nearly four years later, shame on Trudeau for being so ill informed about his own country’s history and hate crime laws.
Poilievre did not term these church burnings hate crimes either – another grave error.
As for the lack of evidence supporting the Kamloops claim, and presumably the many others that followed – not a single body has been found in an unmarked or unknown grave anywhere in Canada – Poilievre’s reply was:
“We should provide the resources to allow for full investigation into the potential remains at residential schools, Canadians deserve to know the truth. And conservatives will always stand in favour of historical accuracy.”
He qualified these assertions by saying, “None of this changes the fact that the residential schools were an appalling abuse of power by the state and by the church at the time.”
If Poilievre did a little reading, he would find that beginning in the 1870s, both the federal government and Prairie tribes wanted to include schooling provisions in treaties. Indigenous leaders hoped Euro-Canadian schooling would help their youngsters to learn the skills of the newcomer society to help them make a successful transition to a world dominated by Europeans.
With the passage of the British North America Act in 1867, and the implementation of the Indian Act (1876), the government was required, when asked by Indigenous leaders, to provide aboriginal youth with an education and to assimilate them into Canadian society.
The federal government supported schooling to make Indigenous people economically self-sufficient and to decrease their dependence on public funds. To do so, the government worked with Christian Churches to encourage religious conversion and Indigenous economic self-sufficiency. This led to the development of an educational policy after 1880 that relied heavily on boarding schools when reserve-based Indian Day Schools were not practical for reasons of small size and remote location.
Despite their underfunding, high dropout rates, alien rules, and sometimes harsh systems of discipline, thousands of children benefited from their attendance, as the historical record clearly shows.
Stating that the Indian residential schools represented “an appalling abuse of power by the state and by the church at the time” simply does not accurately reflect their origin or operation.
But the gravest error of all made by Poilievre, once more in concert Trudeau, was whipping the party he leads to unanimously support Leah Gazan’s notorious Oct. 26, 2022 House of Commons motion calling on the federal government to recognize Canada’s residential schools as genocidal institutions based on not one iota of evidence and not a moment of debate.
Both Tweedledee Trudeau and Tweedledum Poilievre badly need to familiarize themselves with the origin, purpose, operation, and legacy of these schools.
Hymie Rubenstein is editor of REAL Indigenous Report and a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Manitoba.
A British Columbia city says its tiny home village will be a temporary solution to the city’s growing homelessness crisis.
In collaboration with the province, Kelowna has built 60 single-room tiny homes, each spanning 60 square feet, along the 700 block of Crowley Ave. in the north end.
The pilot project will assess how effective tiny homes could be as a response to the growing homeless population in British Columbia.
According to Mayor Tom Dyas, the city will work with local residents to address concerns about the village being erected near residential homes.
“We’re now meeting with the team that has been structured here … on a quarterly basis,” he said.
“Recognizing that there are concerns in the neighbourhood, we want to do everything we can to address those concerns.”
Operated by the John Howard Society of Okanagan and Kootenay, a non-profit organization, the tiny homes will come with daily meals, skills training and assistance in securing more permanent housing.
The selection process for residents will prioritize those currently living in shelters or encampments, with the goal of reducing the number of individuals forced to sleep outdoors. The village is slated to be ready for occupancy in early February.
In addition to the current initiative, the province has disclosed plans to construct an additional 60 modular units at a second site on Highway 97 North.
The specific details of this second site will be announced once confirmed.
Kelowna faces a growing challenge of homelessness, ranking among the Interior’s areas with the highest homelessness rates.
A review by the northern Saskatchewan town of La Ronge concluded that adopting electric vehicles for municipal use didn’t make sense and posed too many risks, especially when it comes to emergency use.
The review comes as the federal government proposes to phase out the sale of new fuel vehicles by 2035.
La Ronge’s review indicates that the unpredictable nature of emergency responses could clash with the recharging needs of electric vehicles. The report concluded that, overall, EVs do not align with the demands of emergencies.
“There are several services and departments that have unpredictive emergency response functions (such as airport, fire, public works), and the reliability of responding vehicles is crucial,” wrote analysts.
For example, ongoing or repeated emergencies can require vehicles to be in use for periods that do not align with the recharging needs of electric vehicles. As such, electric vehicles do not generally meet the needs of emergencies.”
Furthermore, the town’s analysts identified a deficiency in the infrastructure necessary to support widespread electric vehicle use. The installation of charging ports and other essential infrastructure at various town sites would be needed to integrate electric vehicles into the municipal fleet.
“Charging ports and supporting infrastructure would be required at numerous Town sites to facilitate the integration of electric vehicles into the municipal fleet,” the report concluded.
“Additionally, vehicles would likely need to be stored indoors to prevent battery performance and wear issues caused by inclement weather. This necessitates a substantial investment in infrastructure, a consideration not currently accounted for in the Town’s long-term capital plan.”
Despite the advantages of electric vehicles, such as lower maintenance requirements and reduced environmental impact, the La Ronge report also cited higher up front costs and specialized training required for maintenance as negatives.
La Ronge is not alone in its scepticism towards electric vehicle fleets. Other municipalities, such as St. Albert in Alberta, have faced criticism for overpromising on the capabilities of expensive electric bus fleets. St. Albert’s electric buses have fallen short of their promised lifespan and performance, leading to a 33% reduction in their expected lifespan from the initially projected 18 years to 12 years.
The idea that the coronavirus that caused COVID-19 leaked out of a biosafety laboratory in Wuhan, China has become increasingly accepted. That’s frightening enough, but more worrisome is evidence that this lab, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was designed from the beginning to develop and tinker with dangerous viruses to make them more virulent and contagious – ostensibly in the name of medical science. And that there were links between the lab and U.S. scientists, government agencies and NGOs.
The more we learn about the origins of COVID-19, the more disturbing they become.
Early on in the pandemic, much of the scientific establishment decided the virus must have been transmitted from an animal to a human, likely at a huge open-air marketplace in Wuhan. Hard evidence of this has been scarce, however, and a number of U.S. government agencies, such as the FBI and the Department of Energy, have supported the “lab leak” theory. So too did a recent U.S. Senate report, called Muddy Waters: The Origins of COVID-19 Report, whose author, Robert Kadlec, was head of the Trump Administration’s vaccine development program Operation Warp Speed.
“I can honestly say there’s no evidence to support this virus came from an animal. And there’s a lot of evidence to support this came from a lab,” Kadlec recently said.
Specifically the SARS-CoV-2 virus was the result of what’s called “gain-of-function” research – genetically altering an organism to enhance its normal behaviour. In the case of a virus, making it more transmissible and/or more virulent. This questionable practice is intended to help in the study of dangerous pathogens for the development of treatments and vaccines to prevent fatal infections.
But there’s a grave risk to such activity: accidental or intentional release into the general population. New evidence, much of it from documents released under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, has demonstrated that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was involved in gain-of-function research on coronaviruses under renowned virologist Shi Zhengli.
A paper published in 2015 by Shi and University of North Carolina epidemiologist Ralph Baric revealed the duo collaborated to create a new “chimeric” virus – one combining the deadly properties of two separate viruses. A 2018 paper, the DEFUSE Proposal, described how they used gain-of-function research to create this new entity. It had all the features of the virus that become known as SARS CoV-2 – the one that caused COVID-19 and all its attendant global destruction.
As stated in this interview last year by Robert Redfield, former director of the U.S. Centres for Disease Control: “This pandemic was caused by science.”
Supporting evidence for this arresting if not shocking theory includes an email dated January 27, 2020 revealing that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), whose director, Anthony Fauci would lead much of the U.S. pandemic response, had been funding coronavirus research at Wuhan. Redfield contends that the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health had been funding such work as well, the latter through an intermediary called the EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S. NGO.
How might all this have been set in motion? In two recent books, vaccine skeptic and independent U.S. Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. details the events and developments that led to the current state of medical science and its disturbing possibilities – including the work that probably went on at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
A key event was the sinister marriage of bioweapons and medical research, as U.S. officials began to worry that deadly pathogens capable of unleashing pandemics – though prohibited by international treaty for use as weapons – nonetheless posed a national security risk. In a 1998 strategy paper for the Pentagon, the aforementioned Robert Kadlec described them as stealth weapons that could be deployed “without leaving any fingerprints.” Kennedy contends that the resulting measures to combat bioterrorism informed a whole industry and drove research efforts though various defense and, later, public health agencies.
These efforts included simulations to prepare for bioterrorist attacks and pandemics, culminating in the eerily anticipatory 2017 publication by The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security of The SPARS Pandemic 2025-2028: A Futuristic Scenario for Public Health Risk Communicators and, in October 2019, Event 201 – barely two months before COVID-19 began its global rampage.
Kennedy argues that such exercises went far beyond treating disease victims and protecting the public from a raging infection. Rather, he contends, they “war-gamed how to use police powers to detain and quarantine citizens, how to impose martial law, how to control messaging by deploying propaganda, how to employ censorship to silence dissent, and how to mandate masks, lockdowns, coercive vaccination, and construct track-and-trace surveillance among potentially reluctant populations.”
Whether or not we agree with Kennedy’s conclusion that these measures were aimed at “militarizing medicine and introducing centralized autocratic governance,” the immediate and practical effects of this expanding and highly profitable web of organizations, relationships, research and policies would become evident in 2020 as COVID-19 struck and much of the world was forced to shut down.
As important as all of this is for retrospective reasons, it has a particular forward-looking urgency as well, because several key players are now predicting another pandemic – including Shi and Robert Redfield, who is demanding that gain-of-function research be curtailed.
Unfortunately, the authorities who oversaw and arguably mishandled the last pandemic response appear intent on doubling down on what didn’t work. U.S. President Joe Biden has committed US$5 billion to develop new COVID-19 vaccines even faster. The EcoHealth Alliance has been awarded a grant for collaborative research on bat coronaviruses, and the World Health Organisation is looking to the UN to ratify measures that will allow it to make legally binding proclamations regarding pandemics, medical measures and censorship of dissidents. At its just-concluded annual meeting, the World Economic Forum included a discussion on how to best fight another, more lethal pandemic.
Perhaps most worrisomely, 18 high-level biosafety labs – like the one in Wuhan – are planned to open around the world in the next few years to join the existing network of about 50 such labs, despite warnings that more labs mean more dangerous tinkering with pathogens. Plus, expanded risks of accidents or sabotage. We can only hope the ranks of those pushing back against the biopharma-military-industrial complex will grow just as fast.
The original, full-length version of this article recently appeared in C2C Journal.
Margret Kopala is a public policy analyst who has been following the mismanagement of the pandemic.
