For all the vaccine passports and shutdowns in provinces across the country, only Quebec has gone so far as to impose a curfew on its citizens to supposedly flatten the curve. Twice. The latest curfew went into effect New Year’s Eve and subjects Quebecers to fines if they are caught outside their homes at night. Westphalian Times senior editor Marie Oakes joined The Andrew Lawton Show to talk about Quebec’s restrictions and why a number of Canadians – including her – are headed for the border and not looking back.
Quebec is looking at mandating vaccine passports in province-run alcohol and cannabis stores, according to le Journal de Montreal.
Based on information obtained by the news outlet, the decision is being looked into, and details should be announced at a press conference later this week.
Officials are discussing how vaccine passports would be enforced at the Société des Alcools du Québec (SAQ) and the Société Québécoise du Cannabis (SQDC). These discussions include whether the passports will be demanded at the entrance or the cash desk, and whether they will apply for online orders.
Quebec currently requires people to show vaccine passports to enter venues such as movie theatres, bars and restaurants.
Despite claiming vaccine passports would prevent further lockdown measures, the Quebec government ended up bringing back several such measures on Friday. These include a curfew, a ban on indoor dining in restaurants and the closure of non-essential businesses on Sundays.
Quebec premier Francois Legault justified these new measures due to high COVID-19 case counts stemming from the Omicron variant.
“We’re at the worst of the pandemic so far,” said Legault. “Cases are underevaluated due to (at-home) rapid tests, and we risk surpassing hospital capacity in the coming weeks.”
Legault says he has been consulting with public health officials about whether it is possible to expand vaccine passports into more businesses. He says he wants the SAQ and SQDC to check vaccine passports to convince more people to be vaccinated.
While customers will have to be vaccinated to buy alcohol or cannabis, Quebec will not require employees in these stores to be. In Ontario, Liquor Control Board of Ontario employees have to be vaccinated or undergo regular rapid testing.
During the first lockdown, Legault called the SAQ an essential service.
“I think some people unfortunately need to have some alcohol,” he said. “I don’t want to bring those people into the health care network.”
Legault added that while he exercises to reduce stress, he sometimes turns to a glass of wine to help.
A recently resurfaced interview with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has some Canadians disgusted with the language the Liberal leader used when describing the country’s nearly 10 million unvaccinated men, women and children.
In the Sep. 16, 2021 interview which aired on the French-language program La semaine des 4 Julie, Trudeau referred to unvaccinated Canadians as “extremists,” among other derogatory terms.
“Yes, we will get out of this pandemic by vaccination. We all know people who are a little bit hesitant. We will continue to try and convince them, but there are also people who are fiercely against vaccination,” said Trudeau.
“They are extremists who don’t believe in science, they’re often misogynists, also often racists. It’s a small group that muscles in, and we have to make a choice in terms of leaders, in terms of the country. Do we tolerate these people? Or do we say, hey, most of the Quebecois people – 80% – are vaccinated. We want to come back to things we like doing. It’s not those people who are blocking us.”
Trudeau’s remarks caught international attention, with outlets such as GB News blasting the prime minister over his divisive tone.
Scottish TV presenter and documentary filmmaker Neil Oliver appeared on the network to accuse the prime minister of demonizing unvaccinated Canadians, describing his remarks as “borderline criminal.”
“He’s trying to turn a majority of his population against that group of people,” Oliver said, “and he’s doing that by seeking to demonize them by saying that they’re not just refusing the vaccine, they also hate black people and they hate women and we know it’s all right to punish people like that. So what’s next for Justin Trudeau? Does he finally go on television and just say “right, the time has come, let’s get them?!”
“He’s setting people up as being lesser, as being other, as being despicable, as being guilty of things that are socially unacceptable: misogyny, racism,” Oliver continued. “And to put those crimes onto people who are hesitant about an experimental medical procedure, I think it’s a disgrace, I think it’s borderline criminal.”
This is not the first time where Trudeau has sought to rile up resentment against the unvaccinated for political points.
In Aug. 2021, Trudeau referred to unvaccinated Canadians as “those people” and claimed without evidence that they were putting others at risk.
“And Erin O’Toole is siding with them?” Trudeau added. “Instead of with Canadians who did their part and stepped up?”
It was only a year ago that Trudeau expressed misgivings about bringing vaccine passports to Canada, claiming he was concerned about their divisiveness and that he respected legitimate reasons for not getting vaccinated.
“There are medical reasons, there are a broad range of reasons why someone might not get vaccinated,” Trudeau said, “and I’m worried about creating knock-on, undesirable effects in our community.”
Just four days into the new year and Canadians are seeing how it’s just as locked down – and more – as the last two. Ontario has shut down restaurants, gyms and cinemas for “at least 21 days,” while Quebec has put its province in lockdown complete with a curfew subjecting anyone out at night to a stiff fine.
In this episode of The Andrew Lawton Show, True North’s Andrew Lawton says the pandemic is over when you decide it is, and the latest lockdowns prove that governments have no interest in science or civil liberties. Also, Westphalian Times senior editor Marie Oakes joins the show to discuss Quebec’s extreme restrictions, and why Canadians are heading for the border in droves.
Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and BC have all announced lockdown measures to curb the spread of Omicron. It’s been nearly two years since we were told “14 days to flatten the curve” and it doesn’t seem like we’ve learned anything. Two things are clear: First, our healthcare system is broken. It needs to be reformed and overhauled. Second, if vaccine mandates worked – and keeping unvaccinated Canadians out of schools, hospitals, restaurants, bars and gyms – then we wouldn’t need to lock them down.
On today’s episode of The Candice Malcolm Show, Candice says that this should be a wake up call: reform our healthcare system, kill the unconstitutional vaccine mandate system and end the lockdowns once and for all.
As the insipid performance of the head of Canada’s official opposition continues, Canadians are asking themselves, “where is Erin O’Toole?”
Prompted by a late-Monday-night tweet by yours truly, hundreds of Twitter users chimed in to chide the Conservative leader for his ballooning political irrelevance.
Has anybody been more irrelevant than Erin O'Toole in the last few weeks?
Others jested about how O’Toole seems to have faded into obscurity.
“An empty taxi pulled up, and (Erin O’Toole) got out,” tweeted Karl Harrison.
In response to Harrison’s tweet, user Mac Ryan expressed his frustration with O’Toole’s so-called leadership.
“If I wasn’t so angry with the lack of opposition in this country I would have laughed harder. But that was still funny lol,” tweeted Ryan.
A recent poll has shown O’Toole’s favourability crumbling among Canadians at large, but especially with his own party’s base.
According to the Angus Reid Institute, O’Toole has a 24% favourability rate among Canadians and only 59% among his own party members.
Since flip-flopping on several key promises to the Conservative base during the last federal election, O’Toole has been dogged by attempts to have him face an early leadership review.
In a conversation with True North, the group behind the push to oust O’Toole – Members Vote – said that the latest polling results were a testament to how disliked the party leader actually is.
“We believe that the recent polling results support what we already know to be true – that members are tired of Mr. O’Toole’s constant flip-flopping,” a Members Vote spokesperson told True North.
On Twitter, Canadians questioned whether there was an opposition in Parliament at all, citing a total lack of resistance from the CPC leader on recent lockdowns in Ontario and Quebec.
“When we need opposition to scrutinize & keep in check our government,…it is nowhere to be seen!!??? That’s Erin O’Toole!” observed Roger Brennan.
While parliamentarians prepare to return to the House of Commons at the end of January, it seems that 2022 is already off to a bad start for O’Toole.
Speaker of the House of Commons Anthony Rota ruled on Monday that Chinese-made masks will be banned from Parliament by the end of January, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.
MPs also voted to ban Chinese-made masks from all federal buildings across Canada. The move comes after MPs realized that their masks were being imported from the communist regime and not coming from local manufacturers.
Rota said in a memo obtained by Blacklock’s that administrators in the House of Commons are working on implementing the decision no later than Jan. 31.
“The Canadian company that won the bid provides the House of Commons with two types of non-medical mask: one type that is manufactured in Ontario, the other in China,” said Rota. “In light of the House decision, we have since notified our supplier of our requirement with respect to Canadian-made masks.”
Blacklock’s previously reported that Liberal MPs had expressed concerns about any potential boycotting of Chinese-made masks and tried to block the motion during a meeting of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates. These concerns included a possible harm of treaties and trade agreements with China.
One Liberal MP claimed there was no evidence Chinese masks were available in the House of Commons.
“No fact has been established by this committee,” said Liberal MP Irek Kusmierczyk before opposing a vote on the motion. “There has not been a single moment of any testimony by witnesses to establish this as fact.”
“It says ‘Made in China’ on the box,” replied Bloc Québécois MP Julie Vignola. “I don’t know how many witnesses we would need.”
A former CBC TV and radio producer has blown the lid off the public broadcaster’s radical leftist workplace culture after penning a scathing Substack column on why she left the outlet.
In the column titled Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Tara Henley relates how working at the CBC means signing onto a “radical political agenda.”
“To work at the CBC in the current climate is to embrace cognitive dissonance and to abandon journalistic integrity,” wrote Henley.
“It is to sign on, enthusiastically, to a radical political agenda that originated on Ivy League campuses in the United States and spread through American social media platforms that monetize outrage and stoke societal divisions. It is to pretend that the “woke” worldview is near universal — even if it is far from popular with those you know, and speak to, and interview, and read.”
Henley joined the CBC in 2013 and resigned in 2021. During her time with the public broadcaster, Henley says she became aware of certain questionable race-based employment tactics in line with woke ideology.
“To work at the CBC now is to accept the idea that race is the most significant thing about a person, and that some races are more relevant to the public conversation than others. It is, in my newsroom, to fill out racial profile forms for every guest you book; to actively book more people of some races and less of others,” said Henley.
True North reached out to CBC’s Head of Public Affairs Chuck Thompson to confirm whether guests were being racially profiled by producers. Thompson’s answer skirted the question.
“To be clear, there are no racial quotas with our news content. Simply stated, as the public broadcaster, CBC News covers the stories that need to be told in an ever changing Canada. It’s our responsibility and something we take very seriously,” Thompson told True North.
Thompson did not provide a requested sample of the form producers were required to fill out when booking guests but instead linked to a CBC blog post on diversity.
“As the blog notes, we join other reputable news organizations doing similar work, including the BBC and NPR,” said Thompson.
In her column, Henley also bashes the CBC for becoming “less adversarial to government and corporations and more hostile to ordinary people.”
To work at the CBC, she wrote, “is to consent to the idea that a growing list of subjects are off the table, that dialogue itself can be harmful. That the big issues of our time are all already settled.”
“It is to capitulate to certainty, to shut down critical thinking, to stamp out curiosity. To keep one’s mouth shut, to not ask questions, to not rock the boat.”
“This,” Henley concluded, “while the world burns.”
Many experts and commentators have noted CBC’s growing ideological uniformity and failing business practices. Renowned author and psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson recently called the outlet a “near-corpse.”
“The legacy media are in an unrecoverable death spiral, spinning ever more uncontrollably. The CBC has become a mewling, meandering, self-righteous, slogan-spewing narcissistic near-corpse,” said Peterson in a tweet.
Iron Energy Fitness Centre Gym in West Kelowna, one of several B.C. gyms publicly defying the province’s lockdown measures, has asked its members to bring their cellphones to record any efforts to shut them down.
“Bring your phones and get ready to record anything that happens,” the gym’s Facebook post read Monday. “If anyone shows up at our gym and tries to shut us down, we want it blasted all over the internet.”
Accompanying the post was a video by co-owner Brian Mark “looking for lawyers who are ready to put up a fight.”
Public health authorities ordered fitness facilities in B.C. to close on Dec. 22 with an intention to revisit the order on Jan. 18. As with gyms in Quebec and now Ontario, the closures were allegedly due to new anti-COVID measures targeting the Omicron variant.
Mark and five other owners of Iron Energy Fitness had defied the order since last week. On Dec. 31, they announced on social media that they would no longer be complying with any lockdowns.
“As owners we followed all the safety procedures laid out by the powers that be, even when they didn’t make sense, but to get our gym taken away?” read their announcement. “The one place we had to unwind during times when fear is being shoved in our face?”
The same day, the gym received a warning letter from Interior Health alleging that health authorities had “received several complaints” that the gym was continuing to operate. The letter was cc’d to the West Kelowna RCMP detachment, from whom the gym received another warning.
In a series of social media posts and videos, Mark explained that the gym’s opposition to the lockdown is based on a combination of commitment to its 1300 members with a recognition of the contradictions and hypocrisies of the public health orders.
“You can sit down and drink alcohol and eat bad food, but you cannot exercise and work on your mental health,” one of the gym’s posts announced.
In another video, Mark asked members why it was important for gyms to stay open. Members’ answers revolved around mental health and the therapeutic effects of exercise, especially amidst the repeated lockdowns, fear and uncertainty of the pandemic and government response.
“It’s the only thing we’ve got going on,” answered one man. “It’s our therapy. Everything’s so negative these days; that’s my positivity right here. It keeps me alive. Please don’t shut the gyms down. We need them.”
At least two online petitions have been launched on behalf of B.C. gyms and their members – one demanding the government show its data or allow gyms to reopen, and the other asking that gyms be allowed to operate with capacity limits like the theatres and restaurants that were allowed to keep operating. The two petitions have amassed more than 85,000 signatures.
Health minister Adrian Dix said in a press conference on Friday that gyms who ignored the order to close would be punished.
“Public health orders will be enforced and I suggest that people follow them,” he said.
Several B.C. gyms that originally tried to stay open have since closed due to fines and legal pressure.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) has repeatedly warned that any new lockdowns will prove devastating to small businesses. President Dan Kelly tweeted Sunday that “the average small firm has taken on $170K in COVID related debt. We cannot keep doing this.”
True North reached out to Iron Energy Fitness Centre but did not receive a response before publication time.
Prominent Canadian psychologist and author Dr. Jordan Peterson lambasted Quebec premier François Legault and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trampling freedoms during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Peterson said in a tweet on Sunday that Legault should be ashamed for implementing the new curfew in Quebec. He compared the situation to one in the Netherlands where police recently attacked protestors with clubs and set dogs on them.
“What you are doing is appalling and wrong,” said Peterson. “Have you seen what is happening in Amsterdam?”
Peterson went on to chastise Trudeau for demonizing unvaccinated people in a recent interview.
“And you, @JustinTrudeau, accusing your own citizens of misogyny and racism just because they object to your moralistic coercion,” said Peterson.
Trudeau made the comments in French to a Quebec television show, claiming that unvaccinated people are often bigots and asking whether Canadians – and whether even he himself – should accept their very presence.
“They don’t believe in science/progress and are very often misogynistic and racist,” Trudeau said. “This leads us, as a leader and as a country, to make a choice – do we tolerate these people?”
People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier savaged Trudeau for the remarks, calling the prime minister a “psychopathic fascist.”
Former Canadian ambassador to Israel Vivian Bercovici chimed in, saying Trudeau was adopting “the rhetoric of tyranny” by singling out unvaccinated people.
Peterson has called for people to defy the lockdown measures in Quebec and British Columbia, even going so far as to urge civil disobedience.
Quebec introduced its new curfew on Friday, which covers the hours between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. The government brought back the lockdown measure because of high COVID-19 case counts stemming from the Omicron variant.
According to the curfew, people can stay out if they are doing activities such as commuting to work, heading to a pharmacy or going to a medical appointment. Quebecers were originally prohibited from walking their dogs during curfew hours, but the government backtracked following public outrage.
In another tweet on Dec. 23, Peterson slammed the CBC and other legacy media, saying they were “in an unrecoverable death spiral.”
