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COVID-19

Tech entrepreneurs allege corruption, misuse of taxpayer funds in development of Canadian travel app

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

One of the experts who testified before the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates recently exposed shady subcontracting deals that were not transparent during ArriveCan’s development

Two tech entrepreneurs recently testified before a government committee that during the development of the federal government’s much-maligned ArriveCAN travel app they saw firsthand how federal managers engaged in “extortion,” corruption, and “ghost contracting,” all at the expense of the taxpayer.

During a Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates (OGGO) meeting on October 26, Amir Morv, the co-founder of software company Botler AI, told Canadian MPs on the committee that “acts of misconduct rarely happen in isolation.”

“It is almost always symptomatic of a larger existence and tolerance of misconduct,” he said.

“Individuals engaged in such conduct are also prime targets of exploitation and extortion,” he said.

Botler, which is a Quebec-based company, was a subcontractor for the Canada Border Service Agency (CBSA) and recently exposed shady subcontracting deals that were not transparent during ArriveCan’s development.

According to a Globe and Mail report, the CBSA gave three companies involved in making the app more than $17 million.

Currently, the OGGO is investigating how various companies such as Dalian, Coaradix, and GC Strategies received millions of taxpayer money to develop the contentious ArriveCAN app.

ArriveCAN was introduced in April 2020 by the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and made mandatory in November 2020. The app was used by the federal government to track COVID jab status.

When the app was mandated, all travelers entering Canada had to use it to submit their travel and contact information as well as any COVID vaccination details before crossing the border or boarding a flight.

The program was once described by a Canadian border agent as “tyranny.” It cost taxpayers a whopping $54 million, which MPs pointed out was a suspiciously high expense.

LifeSiteNews reported earlier this month that the federal government was exposed for hiding a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) investigation into the ArriveCan app from auditors.

Companies ‘openly’ engaged in various criminal activities

Morv and Botler co-founder Ritika Dutt testified to the committee about private conversations they had with a managing partner of GC Strategies Kristian Firth, a company with only two employees.

CSBA Director General Cameron MacDonald had urged the two to work directly with GC Strategies. However, the two quickly discovered that all of their work was being run through another company, called Dalian, but they were not told this.

Morv told MPs that the contractors are “openly engaged in various criminal activities” and that they openly “commit fraud on the government by promising influence and requesting material benefit” in return.

In essence, Morv exposed how private companies were being used to funnel taxpayer money into their coffers without public oversight.

Morv also claimed that Firth had regularly boasted that he and his friends, who were senior government officials with contracting authority, said they had “dirt” on each other, which was used as a sort of guaranteed mutual silence tactic regarding the corruption.

Notably, Morv stated that the contractors would not have acted in the way they did if they did not have “backing from factions within the government.”

He then said that part of the federal government had “mobilized to bury Botler’s reports and protect this corruption” after it had sent two reports to the CBSA.

As for Dutt, she told MPs that in December 2022 her emails were hacked and “every record of an email that Kristian Firth sent me was mysteriously deleted.”

She said that this came at the same time CBSA president Erin O’Gorman had said she was going to consider whether to send the reports to the RCMP.

Dutt said that they “watched and waited patiently for someone to do the right thing,” to “act on our reports.”

“But instead, we were heartbroken as they lied. They lied to us. They lied to you at OGGO, they lied to Parliament, and they lied to Canadian taxpayers,” she added.

So-called ‘ghost contracting’ exposed

Morv was asked by Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) MP Stephanie Kusie to describe what so-called “ghost contracting” was when it concerned the development of the ArriveCAN app.

According to Morv, ghost contracting could have been how GC Strategies, a company with only two employees, ended up with $11.2 to help develop the travel app.

In essence, “ghost contracting” is a middleman added to the mix but does not have any sort of legal trace back to the government. The companies do no work, but they make a “significant amount of commission,” Morv said.

Morv said that he is not sure Dalion or Coradix, who received a combined $4.3 million to help develop the app, fit the “ghost contracting” definition; they had hired ghost contractors to do the actual work.

CPC MP Garnett Genuis said that the whole evolving ArriveCAN scandal showed a “horrific system of government corruption” that went beyond the travel app.

He told Morv, “You’re describing a system in which government contracts go to preferred contractors, they claim to subcontract to others, who they claim do the work and they provide reports on this.”

He added, “But those subcontractors might not be doing the work. They might not know they’re being named. They might not even exist in some cases. And then this system allows those initial contractors to overbill taxpayers. Is what’s going on here?”

Morv said, “In this case, the system encouraged the contractors to actually do this. That is correct.”

When the Trudeau government introduced the ArriveCAN app, they made sure of quick compliance by saying at the time, “If you don’t submit your travel information and proof of vaccination using ArriveCAN, you could be fined $5,000.”

Top constitutional lawyers have said ArriveCAN violates an individual’s constitutional rights and that people’s civil liberties on paper have been rendered “meaningless effectively in the real world” because of COVID.

Eventually, in the fall of 2021, the Trudeau government banned the vaccine free from traveling by air, rail, or sea both domestically and internationally.

This policy resulted in thousands losing their jobs or being placed on leave for non-compliance.

Trudeau “suspended” the COVID travel vaccine mandates on June 20, 2022. Last October, the Canadian federal government ended all remaining COVID mandates regarding travel, including masking on planes and trains, COVID testing, and allowing vaccine-free Canadians to no longer be subject to mandatory quarantine.

More than 700 vaccine-free Canadians negatively affected by federal COVID jab dictates have banded together to file a multimillion-dollar class-action lawsuit against Trudeau’s federal government.

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2025 Federal Election

Conservatives promise to ban firing of Canadian federal workers based on COVID jab status

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

The Conservative platform also vows that the party will oppose mandatory digital ID systems and a central bank digital currency if elected.

Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party’s 2025 election platform includes a promise to “ban” the firing of any federal worker based “solely” on whether or not they chose to get the COVID shots.

On page 23 of the “Canada First – For A Change” plan, which was released on Tuesday, the promise to protect un-jabbed federal workers is mentioned under “Protect Personal Autonomy, Privacy, and Data Security.”

It promises that a Conservative government will “Ban the dismissal of federal workers based solely on COVID vaccine status.”

The Conservative Party also promises to “Oppose any move toward mandatory digital ID systems” as well as “Prohibit the Bank of Canada from developing or implementing a central bank digital currency.”

In October 2021, the Liberal government of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced unprecedented COVID-19 jab mandates for all federal workers and those in the transportation sector. The government also announced that the unjabbed would no longer be able to travel by air, boat, or train, both domestically and internationally.

This policy resulted in thousands losing their jobs or being placed on leave for non-compliance. It also trapped “unvaccinated” Canadians in the country.

COVID jab mandates, which also came from provincial governments with the support of the federal government, split Canadian society. The shots have been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects, such as death, including in children.

Many recent rulings have gone in favor of those who chose not to get the shots and were fired as a result, such as an arbitrator ruling that one of the nation’s leading hospitals in Ontario must compensate 82 healthcare workers terminated after refusing to get the jabs.

Beyond health concerns, many Canadians, especially Catholics, opposed the injections on moral grounds because of their link to fetal cell lines derived from the tissue of aborted babies.

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COVID-19

RFK Jr. Launches Long-Awaited Offensive Against COVID-19 mRNA Shots

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Nicolas Hulscher, MPH's avatar Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

As millions of Americans anxiously await action from the new HHS leadership against the COVID-19 mRNA injectionsinjected into over 9 million children this year—Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has finally gone publicly on the offensive:

Let’s go over each key point made by RFK Jr.:

The recommendation for children was always dubious. It was dubious because kids had almost no risk for COVID-19. Certain kids that had very profound morbidities may have a slight risk. Most kids don’t.

In the largest review to date on myocarditis following SARS-CoV-2 infection vs. COVID-19 vaccination, Mead et al found that vaccine-induced myocarditis is not only significantly more common but also more severe—particularly in children and young males. Our findings make clear that the risks of the shots overwhelmingly outweigh any theoretical benefit:

The OpenSAFELY study included more than 1 million adolescents and children and found that myocarditis was documented ONLY in COVID-19 vaccinated groups and NOT after COVID-19 infection. There were NO COVID-19-related deaths in any group. A&E attendance and unplanned hospitalization were higher after first vaccination compared to unvaccinated groups:

So why are we giving this to tens of millions of kids when the vaccine itself does have profound risk? We’ve seen huge associations of myocarditis and pericarditis with strokes, with other injuries, with neurological injuries.

The two largest COVID-19 vaccine safety studies ever conducted, involving 99 million (Faksova et al) and 85 million people (Raheleh et al), confirm RFK Jr.’s concerns, documenting significantly increased risks of serious adverse events following vaccination, including:

  1. Myocarditis (+510% after second dose)
  2. Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis (+278% after first dose)
  3. Cerebral Venous Sinus Thrombosis (+223% after first dose)
  4. Guillain-Barré Syndrome (+149% after first dose)
  5. Heart Attack (+286% after second dose)
  6. Stroke (+240% after first dose)
  7. Coronary Artery Disease (+244% after second dose)
  8. Cardiac Arrhythmia (+199% after first dose)

And this was clear even in the clinical data that came out of Pfizer. There were actually more deaths. There were about 23% more deaths in the vaccine group than the placebo group. We need to ask questions and we need to consult with parents.

Actually, according to the Pfizer’s clinical trial data, there were 43% more deaths in the vaccine group compared to the placebo group when post-unblinding deaths are included:

We need to give people informed consent, and we shouldn’t be making recommendations that are not good for the population.

Public acknowledgment of the grave harms of COVID-19 vaccines signals that real action is right around the corner. However, we must hope that action is taken for ALL age groups, as no one is spared from their life-reducing effects:

Alessandria et al (n=290,727, age > 10 years): People vaccinated with 2 doses lost 37% of life expectancy compared to the unvaccinated population during follow-up.

Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation

www.mcculloughfnd.org

Please consider following both the McCullough Foundation and my personal account on X (formerly Twitter) for further content.

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