True North

Days after reversing a decision that allowed grocery stores to ban unvaccinated Canadians, New Brunswick health minister Dorothy Shephard is saying some of the mail she received over the policy “crossed the line.”

In an interview with the Times & Transcript, Shephard describes receiving a “huge onslaught” of the material, including hundreds of emails.

“I think I have a thick skin,” Shephard says. “It doesn’t change the fact that some of these emails have crossed the line.”

The Department of Health confirmed that particularly threatening examples have been sent to the Department of Justice and Public Safety for assessment. The RCMP would not confirm whether it was investigating.

One of the emails accuses Shephard of “literally causing people to starve to death this winter,” while another advises her to “sleep with one eye open.”

“People like you always get what’s coming to you,” another states. The writer goes on to wish Shephard “a slow and painful death.”

Shephard did not mention the number of emails she had received in total, nor the proportion of the pushback she deemed legitimate. True North reached out to Shephard’s office but received no response.

Lawyer Andre Memauri with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms told True North that the minister shouldn’t be surprised with the reaction, given what the policy had authorized.

“Authorizing the potential denial of access to food is a reprehensible misuse of governmental authority,” Memauri says. “The Justice Centre publicly denounced the Government’s Order of December 4, 2021 because it is unconstitutional and should it have remained in place, it would have necessitated legal proceedings,” Memauri said.

“While the Justice Centre never condones threats or acts of violence against any person, it ought to be no surprise to the Honourable Minister that authorizing the denial of grocery shopping to tens of thousands of people might elicit a strong emotional response from the community.”

People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier also has some strong words for Shephard’s complaints. Having originally called banning unvaccinated Canadians from grocery stores a “red line,” he takes issue with any personal distress the minister claims over the pushback.  

“It’s too bad the minister needed a huge public backlash to realize the stupidity of her decision and to reverse it,” Bernier says. “Anyone with a brain and with a minimum of compassion would not have adopted such an abhorrent policy in the first place.”

“As for the hate content of any letter she received, I am not responsible for what individual Canadians write when they react to a policy debate and contact a minister. That’s her problem. Instead of complaining about letters, she might want to reflect on the anguish she caused among New Brunswickers and all Canadians when she escalated the level of discrimination and segregation that millions of them have had to endure because of authoritarian government policies during this pandemic.”

Focusing on extreme or illegal fringe elements has long been a way for politicians and mainstream media to delegitimize protests against lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

Earlier this month in Victoria B.C., officials and legacy media reporters condemned an anti-vaccine-mandate protest for including politicians being hanged in effigy even though organizers said they hadn’t invited the ones who staged the hangings.

“We tried to remove them, but they were not willing to move,” organizer Joseph Robert told Global News. “…It had nothing to do with the essence and what the organization had in this event.”

Despite being reversed due to backlash, the New Brunswick policy on vaccine passports for grocery stores was deemed fake news by several online outlets and fact-checkers.