New court documents reveal that politics was behind the Trudeau government’s decision to implement some of the most strict vaccine mandates in the world.
As first reported by the National Post’s Rupa Subramanya, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau relied on political aides and not scientists to implement travel mandates which prohibited unvaccinated Canadians from boarding a plane or train domestically and internationally.
A vast majority of the 20 senior officials in the cabinet’s secretive COVID Recovery panel, which planned the mandates, had no background in epidemiology or public health.
This is according to a lawsuit filed by business owners 58-year-old Karl Harrison and 55-year-old Shaun Rickard.
Jennifer Little, the director-general of COVID Recover, herself only had an English degree from the University of Toronto. Furthermore, during testimony, Little stated that only one person, Monique St.-Laurent was a public health professional, but LinkedIn reveals she held a post at the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) as a public sector worker and was not a trained physician herself.
Little also praised the mandate as “one of the strongest vaccination mandates for travellers in the world.”
Moreover, according to Little, the team received an order from “very senior” levels in the government to draft the travel mandate, but she would not reveal the individual’s identity.
“I’m not at liberty to disclose anything that is subject to cabinet confidence,” claimed Little.
Additionally, officials were unable to find ways to justify the draconian mandates prior to them being implemented.
One email with PHAC Dawn Lumley-Myllari reveals that officials were desperately looking for data to help rationalize mandates.
“To the extent that updated data exist or that there is clearer evidence of the users of other stakeholders of the transportation system, it would be helpful to assist Transport Canada [in] supporting its measures,” wrote panel member Aaron McCrorie.
Another email dated October 22, 2021, by McCrorie states that the panel “needs something soon” to justify the mandates. That was two days before the travel restrictions took effect.
After Rickard and Harrison filed the lawsuit, government lawyers moved in to have the case thrown out in order to avoid the information becoming public.
“The Trudeau government has claimed to follow The Science on COVID, but that science is strangely different than it is everywhere else,” said Queens University law professor Bruce Pardy.
“Instead, it’s policies are based on spite, divisiveness, and pure politics. COVID now serves as an excuse to punish the government’s ideological enemies.”
