From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

‘Our legal campaigns are a critical, precedent-setting fight to ensure the preservation of all workers’ employment and Charter rights in British Columbia and Canada for generations to come,’ celebrated the British Columbia Public Servants Employees for Freedom.

A court has ruled that a class action lawsuit launched against the provincial government of British Columbia on behalf of “all unionized” public servant workers in the province who faced persecution resulting from COVID mandates can proceed.  

The court case will be heard in April of 2025, noted the British Columbia Public Servants Employees for Freedom (BCPSEF), a non-profit organization that assists public service workers in the province.  

“Since October 2021, BCPS Employees for Freedom (BCPSEF) has led a campaign in defense of medical privacy and bodily autonomy on behalf of all public servants and our fellow British Columbians. This has involved raising awareness about the provincial government’s harmful proof of COVID-19 vaccination policy and undertaking a series of legal actions,” said the group in a press release.  

“Our legal campaigns are a critical, precedent-setting fight to ensure the preservation of all workers’ employment and Charter rights in British Columbia and Canada for generations to come.”  

The class action was initially brought forth by Plaintiff Jason Baldwin’s, with the BCPSEF explaining that now the “Baldwin class action has been merged together with a separate class action claim by unionized B.C. healthcare workers that is being supported by @UHCWBC.”  

“Certification of both claims will be argued at 5 days of hearings scheduled in B.C. Supreme Court in Victoria beginning on April 7, 2025,” said the group.  

Both class actions made the arguments that workers who refused the COVID shots and were discriminated against had their rights violated “under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms for imposing new terms and conditions of employment on existing and freely negotiated employment agreements absent collective bargaining, consideration, or consent.” 

“The actions also claim breach of employees’ common law and statutory privacy rights, as well as misfeasance in public office by B.C.’s Provincial Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry,” said the group.  

The class action was initially filed in October of 2023. According to the BCPS, some 38,000 public servants were directly impacted by the B.C. provincial government’s “coercive and unjustifiable proof of COVID-19 vaccination mandate” which it noted caused “untold suffering and harm.” 

Some 314 employees related to public service in the class action were fired for refusing to take the COVID shots, with another 175 placed on leave.  

The NDP (New Democratic Party) government of British Columbia, which was just re-elected, had in place a COVID jab mandate for healthcare workers years after most provinces dropped theirs. It was not until July of this year that its chief health officer Bonnie Henry formally announced an end to the COVID jab mandate policy for those working in health care. 

Many healthcare workers were fired or placed on leave for refusing to get the COVID shots.  

Despite removing the mandates, the provincial government announced that it was creating “a vaccine registry,” forcing all healthcare workers to disclose vaccination status to their employer. 

The class action by British Columbian public servants is just the latest in a string of lawsuits against provincial governments for enacting draconian COVID mandates which resulted in thousands of businesses going under as well as many people fired for not getting the shots.  

As reported by LifeSiteNews, a recent class-action lawsuit on behalf of dozens of Canadian business owners in Alberta who faced massive losses or permanent closures due to COVID mandates has been given permission to proceed by a judge. 

From the Brownstone Institute

By  Rebekah Barnett

There is nothing like aggressively wresting human and civil rights away from a population to forcibly impose rules that fly in the face of available evidence, whilst censoring those who try to point this out, and refusing to reveal information on which your rules are based, to bottom out trust in the population at large.

In a report handed down Tuesday, Australia’s federal Covid Inquiry found that extreme public health restrictions, coupled with a lack of transparency about the evidence informing these decisions, has led to a major slide in public trust.

Apparently we need experts and a federal inquiry to tell us the bleeding obvious.

This, by the way, is not a Covid inquiry “like a royal commission,” as was promised by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese prior to his election, but is the toothless ‘royal commission lite’ alternative put forward by Albanese after he got into power.

From the Australian,

“The long-awaited report into Australia’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic has lashed state premiers for fuelling distrust and confusion, and for adopting draconian border closures that lacked consistency and compassion…

“In the report, the panel argued the need for transparency in future pandemic responses after “economic, social and mental health and human rights impacts were not always understood or considered” in 2020.”

That’s putting it lightly.

Economic, social and mental health, and human rights impacts weren’t considered at all.

That’s why the Queensland Supreme Court ruled that Covid vaccine mandates enforced by the Police Commissioner were unlawful. Justice Glenn Martin held that the Police Commissioner “did not consider the human rights ramifications” before issuing the Covid workplace vaccination directive within the Queensland Police Service (QPS).

When asked about potential human rights abuses caused by his government’s heavy-handed Covid response, former Victorian Premier Dan Andrews retorted, “Seriously? One more comment about human rights – honestly.”

In one egregious case, the Ombudsman determined that the Andrews Government had “breached human rights” by confining over 3,000 Melburnians to nine tower blocks, under police guard, for up to two weeks.

Back to the Australian,

“[The report] lashed “control measures” instituted by state and federal authorities without sufficient explanation.

“This fed the perception that the government did not trust the public to understand or interpret the information correctly and contributed to the decrease in trust,” the summary reads.

“It was the mandating of public health restrictions, especially vaccination, that had the biggest negative impact on trust. The combination of mandatory measures and the perception people had that they were unable to criticize or question government decisions and policies has contributed to non‑mandated vaccination rates falling to dangerously low levels.”

This is absolutely the case. The hashtag I used the most on social media during Australia’s Covid response was, ‘make it make sense.’

There is nothing like aggressively wresting human and civil rights away from a population to forcibly impose rules that fly in the face of available evidence, whilst censoring those who try to point this out, and refusing to reveal information on which your rules are based, to bottom out trust in the population at large.

The biggest failure by far was the silver bullet vaccines that authorities mandated in order to prevent infection and transmission, when they were not tested for such endpoints, and observational data showed they waned in effectiveness after a month or two at best.

Safety surveillance databases exploded with adverse event reporting rates never seen before, yet authorities still insist these are definitely the best, most safe and effective products ever deployed on the population.

It’s small wonder then that fewer than 4% of Australians under the age of 65 have bothered to get a booster in the past six months.

But the nonsensical Covid response wasn’t just limited to the failure of the vaccines to deliver as promised. A few other rules that made no sense:

You need to be protected by a mask standing up, but if sitting at a table you are safe.

Mandatory vaccines are voluntary.

Rapid antigen tests are illegal – wait, now they’re mandatory.

Footballers can cross the border safely but children wishing to visit a dying parent cannot.

And so on, and so on, and so on.

To this day, federal, state, and territory governments have blocked all attempts to access the health advice on which their extremist policies were based.

In an address on Tuesday, Health Minister Mark Butler admitted that “heavy-handed” policies implemented during the pandemic eroded trust, and that “many of the measures taken during Covid-19 are unlikely to be accepted by the population again.”

But don’t think for one second that means they won’t try it again.

Just as the Queensland Government took its Supreme Court loss as a signal that it needs to add a ‘considering human rights’ box-ticking exercise next time it breaches human rights to bring in a mandate, the federal Covid Inquiry report recommends ways to do the whole shebang next time, but better.

That includes more spending, fast-tracking the new Australian Centre for Disease Control (CDC, which the government  has invested $251.7 million to establish), and better global coordination, particularly with the World Health Organization’s One Health policy.

The report recommends transparent, evidence-based decision-making next time around, but in light of my recent interactions with the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), forgive me for considering this a pipe dream under the political status quo.

Butler said that the report was not about laying blame for individual decisions, but was rather about learning lessons. In other words, there will be no accountability.

Instead, Covid premiers and leaders have been awarded medals and cushy jobs. Most recently, Andrews was appointed to the lucrative role of chairman of Orygen, a youth mental health not-for-profit, to collective outrage.

A good thing that has come out of the report is that government overreach on vaccination mandates has been squarely blamed for a drop in vaccination rates in Australia more generally (not just for Covid vaccines).

“The erosion of trust is not only constraining our ability to respond to a pandemic when it next occurs, but it’s already, we know, bled into the performance of our vaccination programs, including our childhood vaccination programs,” said Butler.

“Since the beginning of Covid…we’ve seen a reduction of seven or eight percentage points in participation in the whooping cough vaccination program for under fives and measles vaccination program for under fives, which means we are well below herd immunity levels for those two really important diseases.”

Nice to see a politician finally admit the role of government in driving this trend, which is too often blamed on the boogeyman of ‘misinformation.’

Read the COVID-19 Response Inquiry Report.

Read the COVID-19 Response Inquiry Report Summary.

For further commentary, check out Alison Bevege’s response to the report on her Substack, Letters from Australia. 

Republished from the author’s Substack