COVID-19
Police clear out border blockade as Ottawa seeks deal with convoy to start rolling
Protesters decrying COVID-19 restrictions and the federal government itself were moved from the mouth of a crucial trade route with the United States on Sunday, while confusion reigned over whether a group stationed in Ottawa would reduce their footprint in the capital’s core.
Officers in Windsor, Ont., arrested some two dozen protesters and moved others from the busy Ambassador Bridge spanning the Detroit River, towing five vehicles on Sunday at the site where protesters brought traffic to a halt for nearly a week and barring others from arriving on scene.
Windsor Police Chief Pamela Mizuno said officers are working to reopen roadways, but did not provide a timeline as to when that would occur. The reopening would allow the resumption of hundreds of millions of dollars in daily cross-border trade between Canada and the United States.
But despite the show of force as a line of officers marched on demonstrators who had clogged traffic on the key trade corridor, protesters opposed to COVID-19 restrictions and the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continued to wave Canadian flags and holler the word “freedom,” with one shouting into a megaphone, “This is a peaceful protest.”
Wearing a Canadian flag around her shoulders, Windsor resident Karen Parrinello said she’s been coming out to demonstrate since Thursday evening and plans to be there for the long haul.
“As long as it takes, I’ll keep coming back. I can’t stay here all day, but I’ll come back here a couple hours a time every day until it’s better, until all the mandates are gone and we have our freedoms back,” she said.
Police in Windsor had negotiated with protesters over the weekend to get them to leave, warning of arrests if they kept bridge traffic at a standstill.
Police said between 25 and 30 people were arrested, many of whom are now facing mischief charges. Mizuno said roughly a dozen vehicles were also seized or towed over the weekend.
“There are steps we need to take in order to open the roadways so that we don’t encounter the same issues,” she said at an afternoon news conference. “Please note we are moving as fast as we can, however, we need to make sure this is a safe and sustainable solution.”
While Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens expressed his thanks to police, he issued a similar statement to residents of his border city who “respected the process needed to find a resolution.”
“Canada is a nation that believes in the right to freedom of speech and expression, but we are also bound by the rule of law,” Dilkens said in a statement.
Hours later, his counterpart in Ottawa, Mayor Jim Watson, released letters he said were between himself and organizers of the so-called Freedom Convoy about a deal to move some of the 400 vehicles encamped downtown to Parliament Hill and away from residential neighbourhoods.
The correspondence between the two sides suggested convoy organizers agreed to start moving trucks to Wellington Street, which runs in front of Parliament Hill, as well as a host of parliamentary buildings including the Prime Minister’s Office. Those moves, according to the letter, will get underway Monday.
If moves happen before the noon deadline Watson set in his letter, Ottawa’s mayor agreed to meet with the protesters who, on Sunday, turned intersections once busy with traffic into dance floors with loudspeakers and draped themselves in the Canadian flag as they wandered downtown streets amid idling vehicles and semis.
In a note to city councillors, Watson’s office said any movement of trucks wouldn’t be “a long-term solution to the occupation,” but a step to reduce the impact on those who live in the area.
On Sunday night, convoy board president Tamara Lich tweeted that plans to relocate trucks would go ahead on Monday, posting the note hours after denying any deal and vowing to stay downtown until federal vaccine mandates are eliminated.
Residents who have become frustrated with a lack of movement on the situation joined with a local city councillor and provincial politician to block a convoy on its way to join up with demonstrators downtown.
Sean Burgess said the spontaneous counter-protest, organized late Saturday evening, should be a clear signal to federal, provincial and local leaders about ending what even Watson has described as an illegal occupation of the capital’s core.
“Ottawa is not the dull city all of Canada thinks, but it’s certainly not a city of people who get out in the street and become activists, particularly spontaneously,” Burgess said by the line of counter-protesters.
“So when you see people in a neighborhood like Old Ottawa South, who would rather complain, and litigate, so to speak, rather than take direct action on the streets, standing in front of trucks saying to the cops, ‘fine, arrest me,’ then you know that something has gone really too far.”
In a statement, Ontario Premier Doug Ford called anew on protesters in Ottawa to leave, while praising the Windsor police, Ontario Provincial Police and RCMP officers who worked to reopen the Ambassador Bridge.
The developments in Ontario came as protests continued around the country in support of the convoys that set up camp in Ottawa.
Police contended with demonstrations at other border crossings, including in British Columbia where four people were arrested near the border crossing in Surrey. That crossing remained open as of Sunday, the Canada Border Services Agency said.
The ongoing protests spurred Trudeau to meet with senior officials and cabinet members. He said in a late night tweet that his “incident response group” covered further actions the federal government can take.
“We’ll keep working urgently on this – to protect jobs, public safety, our neighbourhoods, and our economy,” the tweet said.
Trudeau was also to invite premiers to a meeting Monday about the protests, according to a government source, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 13, 2022.
– With files from Justin Tang and Marie Woolf in Ottawa, and Brieanna Charlebois in Vancouver.
Noushin Ziafati and Jordan Press, The Canadian Press
From LifeSiteNews
Associate Judge Catherine Coughlan rejected a lawsuit from more than 300 past and current members of the Canadian military who lost their jobs or were put on leave for not taking the experimental, dangerous COVID shots.
A Canadian federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit filed on behalf of some 330 past and current members of the nation’s military who lost their jobs or were placed on leave for refusing the experimental COVID shots, because she alleged that their lawsuit lacked “evidence” that the jabs were harmful.
The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) members had sought some $1.3 million in damages from the government for having their charter rights violated due to the military’s 2021 COVID mandates, according to their lawsuit.
In a November 13 ruling, Edmonton-based Associate Judge Catherine Coughlan ruled in favor of the Trudeau government, and thus military’s COVID jab mandate, to strike down the case. Coughlan remarked that the plaintiffs’ case lacked “material facts” along with “evidence” and was filled with “vexatious language.”
READ: Canadian father files $35 million lawsuit against Pfizer over son’s jab-related death
“The only indications of bad faith are found when the pleadings baldly assert that, among other claims, Canada failed to carry out safety and efficacy testing for the vaccines, and that the Directives were premature and ‘promoted the fraudulent use of the biologics’,” she wrote, overlooking reports of thousands of injuries due to the shots in Canada alone.
As a result of the lawsuit being tossed, all plaintiffs are now on the hook to pay some $5,040 out of pocket in legal costs.
As reported by LifeSiteNews in June, documents obtained by LifeSiteNews show that the number of jab injuries in the CAF rose over 800 percent in 2021, with the most being credited to Moderna’s experimental COVID shot.
The CAF members’ lawsuit was filed in June of 2023 and overall sought some $1 million in damages, along with an extra $350,000 in general damages. The lawsuit also had a condition that there be a declaration made that mandating the COVID shots for military members was a violation of their charter rights.
READ: Israeli boy featured in COVID vaccine campaign dies of heart attack at age 8
LifeSiteNews reported in July that a member of Canada’s military who was injured after taking the experimental mRNA COVID jabs has been denied compensation from the nation’s Veterans Affairs department.
Under the CAF’s mandate, hundreds of military members were fired, or one could say, purged for not getting the COVID shots. This is in addition to the thousands of public servants fired for not agreeing to take the COVID shots.
The CAF eventually ended its COVID mandate in October 2022, which was months after the federal mandate was lifted, but members are still “strongly encouraged” to take the experimental shot.
The federal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that its federal COVID shot workplace mandate would be dropped in June 2022, as would the mandate requiring domestic travelers have the shot to board planes and trains.
In November of 2023, a CAF member who spoke to LifeSiteNews under the condition of anonymity observed that the military considers members who refuse the COVID jab “a piece of garbage.”
READ: COVID shots have 200-times higher risk of brain clots than other jabs: new report
In March, LifeSiteNews reported on large personnel losses causing the CAF to consider dropping its remaining requirements altogether.
Although Canada has a Vaccine Injury Support Program (VISP) program, active members of the CAF, as well as veterans, are not eligible for the civilian program. According to Christensen, this leaves many COVID jab-injured CAF members and veterans with no recourse other than Veterans Affairs Canada.
COVID shot mandates, which came from provincial governments with the support of Trudeau’s federal government, split Canadian society. The mRNA shots themselves have been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects, such as heart diseases, stroke, and death, including in children.
The shots also have connections to cell lines derived from aborted babies. As a result, many Catholics and other Christians refused to take them.
From the Brownstone Institute
The House report on HHS Covid propaganda is devastating. The Biden administration spent almost $1 billion to push falsehoods about Covid vaccines, boosters, and masks on the American people. If a pharma company had run the campaign, it would have been fined out of existence.
HHS engaged a PR firm, the Fors Marsh Group (FMG), for the propaganda campaign. The main goal was to increase Covid vax uptake. The strategy: 1. Exaggerate Covid mortality risk 2. Downplay the fact that there was no good evidence that the Covid vax stops transmission.
The propaganda campaign extended beyond vax uptake and included exaggerating mask efficacy and pushing for social distancing and school closures.
Ultimately, since the messaging did not match reality, the campaign collapsed public trust in public health.
The PR firm (FMG) drew most of its faulty science from the CDC’s “guidance,” which ignored the FDA’s findings on the vaccine’s limitations, as well as scientific findings from other countries that contradicted CDC groupthink.
The report details the CDC’s mask flip-flopping through the years. It’s especially infuriating to recall the CDC’s weird, anti-scientific, anti-human focus on masking toddlers with cloth masks into 2022.
President Biden’s Covid advisor Ashish K. Jha waited until Dec. 2022 (right after leaving government service) to tell the country that “[t]here is no study in the world that shows that masks work that well.” What took him so long?
In 2021, former CDC director, Rochelle Walensky rewrote CDC guidance on social distancing at the behest of the national teachers’ union, guaranteeing that schools would remain closed to in-person learning for many months.
During this period, the PR firm FMG put out ads telling parents that schools would close unless kids masked up, stayed away from friends, and got Covid-vaccinated.
In March 2021, even as the CDC told the American people that the vaxxed did not need to mask, the PR firm ran ads saying that masks were still needed, even for the vaxxed. “It’s not time to ease up” we were told, in the absence of evidence any of that did any good.
In 2021, to support the Biden/Harris administration’s push for vax mandates, the PR firm pushed the false idea that the vax stopped Covid transmission. When people started getting “breakthrough” infections, public trust in public health collapsed.
Later, when the FDA approved the vax for 12 to 15-year-old kids, the PR firm told parents that schools could open in fall 2021 only if they got their kids vaccinated. These ads never mentioned side effects like myocarditis due to the vax.
HHS has scrubbed the propaganda ads from this era from its web pages. It’s easy to see why. They are embarrassing. They tell kids, in effect, that they should treat other kids like biohazards unless they are vaccinated.
When the Delta variant arrived, the PR firm doubled down on fear-mongering, masking, and social distancing.
In September 2021, CDC director Walensky overruled the agency’s external experts to recommend the booster to all adults rather than just the elderly. The director’s action was “highly unusual” and went beyond the FDA’s approval of the booster for only the elderly.
The PR campaign and the CDC persistently overestimated the mortality risk of Covid infection in kids to scare parents into vaccinating their children with the Covid vax.
In Aug. 2021, the military imposed its Covid vax mandate, leading to 8,300 servicemen being discharged. Since 2023, the DOD has been trying to get the discharged servicemen to reenlist. What harm has been done to American national security by the vax mandate?
The Biden/Harris administration imposed the OSHA, CMS, and military vax mandates, even though the CDC knew that the Delta variant evaded vaccine immunity. The PR campaign studiously avoided informing Americans about waning vaccine efficacy in the face of variants.
The propaganda campaign hired celebrities and influencers to “persuade” children to get the Covid vax.
I think if a celebrity is paid to advertise a faulty product, that celebrity should be partially liable if the product harms some people.
In the absence of evidence, the propaganda campaign ran ads telling parents that the vaccine would prevent their kids from getting Long Covid.
With the collapse in public trust in the CDC, parents have begun to question all CDC advice. Predictably, the HHS propaganda campaign has led to a decline in the uptake of routine childhood vaccines.
The report makes several recommendations, including formally defining the CDC’s core mission to focus on disease prevention, forcing HHS propaganda to abide by the FDA’s product labeling rules, and revamping the process of evaluating vaccine safety.
Probably the most important recommendation: HHS should never again adopt a policy of silencing dissenting scientists in an attempt to create an illusion of consensus in favor of CDC groupthink.
You can find a copy of the full House report here. The HHS must take its findings seriously if there is any hope for public health to regain public.
Author
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