May 11, 2022 - "Sudbury’s Ontario Libertarian Party candidate is espousing the virtues of individual rights and freedoms as his key motivators to seek public office.
"Their loss during the last couple of years, said Adrien Berthier, has driven [him] 'to stand up for the rights of Sudburians.'
"'For those that feel that the big three political parties have either remained silent or complicit in the loss of individual rights, voting Libertarian can send a powerful message to the politicians at Queen's Park,' he said in an email to Sudbury.com.
" 'I would like to make it impossible to bring back vaccine passports, and would like to explore out of the box thinking on fixing our broken health-care system.'
"New solutions to the rising cost of living is important, he wrote, adding that removing impediments and interference with small businesses will also be key. 'I would like to bring in landlord rights to protect people’s private investments and encourage projects to restore the forest and lakes surrounding the city,' he said.
"If elected, Berthier pledges to donate 25 per cent of his MPP salary to the Sudbury Food Bank, and challenges other candidates to do the same."
May 19, 2022 "The three biggest federal public sector unions are challenging the Liberals’ vaccine mandate for bureaucrats in court, arguing suspending unvaccinated workers without pay instead of letting them return to work[ing] from home is 'punitive' and 'unjustified.'
“'We continue to support vaccination. But given … the loosening of the COVID restrictions and the shifting landscape, we’re of the opinion that employer’s policy right now is unreasonable. These members can work from home,' Jennifer Carr, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), said in an interview. 'Effectively, we think it is punitive and an abuse of management authority'....
"PIPSC and the Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE), which represent nearly 60,000 and 21,000 public servants respectively, have filed policy grievances against the federal government’s vaccine mandate for bureaucrats. Their challenges are in addition to the first grievances filed in late March by the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), the biggest federal government union.
"At issue: the Trudeau government’s federal COVID-19 vaccine policy put in place on Oct. 6, 2021, which forced all bureaucrats to either get vaccinated with two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine or be suspended without pay (except those who obtained exemptions to the policy). The unions say that working from home has become readily available for so many public servants that it’s time to let the unvaccinated employees who can work outside the office effectively do so.
""As of March 29, 1,828 employees were on unpaid leave due to the vaccination policy, according to numbers shared by Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) with unions in April.
"'As the pandemic has evolved and the science has developed, we believe continuing to put unvaccinated employees on leave without pay is a harsh administrative measure that can be considered disciplinary and without just cause,' PSAC said when it announced its grievances. They’re also frustrated that the government has yet to complete a review of the policy once since it was implemented, despite its own requirements.
"A copy of TBS’ vaccine policy online says the government’s chief human resources officer is responsible for reviewing both the need of the policy and its contents 'at a minimum every 6 months” and reporting those results to the minister. Since the policy kicked in on Oct. 6, 2021, that means the first review was due by April 6. But union heads say that date came and went without a peep from TBS, and the latest update meeting between them and government officials on Tuesday didn’t provide any new insight into when the review will be made public.... TBS spokesperson Alain Belle-Isle said in a statement that the review is currently underway “in line with the requirement” and the results will be presented 'in due course.' 'There is no obligation to update the policy every 6 months,” he said....
"But now, the unions are asking the federal labour relations tribunal via their policy grievances to force the government to allow unvaccinated employees currently suspended without pay to be accommodated by allowing them to work from home. They’re also asking that the government be compelled to reimburse all the bureaucrats still affected by the vaccine mandate for lost wages since April 6 (the date they say the policy needed to be reviewed)."
May 20, 2022 - "Nina Jankowicz, who was tapped to lead the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Disinformation Governance Board, insists that national security is at risk because of 'childish behavior' now that the panel has been put on hold. During an interview on CBS News on Thursday, Jankowicz said, 'I would say that the Disinformation Governance Board was the victim of disinformation.'
"'Disinformation is false information spread with malign intent. And clearly, there was a malign intent on some actors in the media and in politics who just really stood up to the formation of this board because it would be confronting disinformation,' she continued. 'They completely mischaracterized its mission. And frankly, this childish behavior is endangering our national security now. This board was set up to counter real disinformation that makes Americans less safe.... So those who stand in opposition to the board — which as the secretary said was just an internal coordinating mechanism something to make sure we were efficient and using best practices — are standing in the way of our national security,' she insisted." Read more: https://ijr.com/jankowicz-childish-behavior-disinformation-board-put-ice/
May 18,2022 The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has placed a 'pause' on the newly-minted Disinformation Governance Board; its first executive director, Nina Jankowicz, has resigned.... It's unclear whether plans for the board will be un-paused in the future; Jankowicz had initially decided to resign, reconsidered when she was told the pause might be temporary, and then ultimately left anyway....
"This news comes from an exclusive report by The Washington Post's Taylor Lorenz, whose scoop is buried underneath layers of pro-government verbiage. For WaPo, the story is not that DHS shuttered the Disinformation Governance Board — the real story is that right-wing 'coordinated online attacks' achieved this outcome after subjecting Jankowicz to an 'unrelenting barrage of harassment'....
Jankowicz's experience is a prime example of how the right-wing Internet apparatus operates, where far-right influencers attempt to identify a target, present a narrative and then repeat mischaracterizations across social media and websites with the aim of discrediting and attacking anyone who seeks to challenge them.... Experts say that right-wing disinformation and smear campaigns regularly follow the same playbook and that it's crucial that the public and leaders of institutions, especially in the government, the media and educational bodies, understand more fully how these cycles operate....
"Yet there is good reason to be skeptical of both the Disinformation Governance Board and Jankowicz's fitness to run it. Informal efforts to police disinformation on social media are beset with serious challenges, as moderators and fact-checkers routinely make odious mistakes: Just today, Facebook dubiously censored a recipe for homemade baby formula. The social media site's fact-checkers have previously flagged Reason articles as spreading false information, only to later admit the articles in question were accurate. John Stossel, host of Stossel TV and a contributor to Reason, is currently suing Facebook for characterizing his videos as misleading, even though fact-checkers eventually conceded he was right.
"Government disinformation cops are no better; time and time again, public health officials circulated false information about COVID-19, and suppressed perfectly legitimate discussion of the theory that the virus originated from a lab leak. And when The New York Post reported on the salacious contents of Hunter Biden's laptop just weeks before the election, the story was widely dismissed by so-called disinformation experts and government security experts on grounds that they presumed it to be Russian malfeasance. "Hunter Biden Story Is Russian Disinfo, Dozens of Former Intel Officials Say," reported Politico back in October 2020.
"Jankowicz repeatedly made public statements indicating that she held this view, too.She shared national security officials' 'high confidence' that the Hunter Biden story was part of a Russian influence campaign. She described the idea that the laptop had been left behind at a repair shop as 'a fairy tale.' This was a critical test of whether disinformation experts could check their innate tendency to ascribe everything unfavorable to the Democratic Party as Russian nefariousness, and they utterly failed. Jankowicz failed as well."
Premiers of New South Wales and Victoria, Australia, lock down. Cartoon by Mark Knight, Kidsnews.
May 17, 2022 - "Over the weekend, the New York Times carried a story headlined 'How Australia Saved Thousands of Lives While Covid Killed a Million Americans,' written by Damien Cave. Cave claimed that Australia’s comparatively low COVID death count is down, in the main, to 'a lifesaving trait that Australians displayed from the top of government to the hospital floor, and that Americans have shown they lack: trust, in science and institutions, but especially in one another.' As a dual American-Australian citizen and resident of Sydney throughout the COVID policy fiasco, and equally as one of Australia’s most outspoken anti-lockdown economists since March 2020, seeing this coverage made my stomach turn.
"No, Australia’s 'trust in institutions' has not served it well during this period. What has happened is that we have seen how corrupt and/or incompetent the people in charge of our institutions really are, and – to our horror – how our misplaced trust in those institutions has led to an abject failure of our systems of democratic oversight and accountability. The same 'trust in science' that saw Australia ride to the top of the global class for HPV vaccination several years ago (my children were in that cohort) has been manipulated and hijacked in this period to produce broad-based support for the most damaging health and economic policy decisions I’ve seen since emigrating here in 2003 from the US.
"Cave’s article goes on to praise Health Minister Greg Hunt and Prime Minister Scott Morrison.... He claims that Australia’s better results on COVID and on the economy relative to the US, according to current measures, are because our cultural tradition of 'mateship' made us into docile compliers during COVID times, thinking all the while that we were looking out for one another.... I wholly reject this laudatory portrayal.... Hunt and Morrison, far from being heroes, have betrayed the trust of the Australian people. Our tendency towards 'mateship' and our pro-social nature caused us to obey rules they and others in positions of power sold to us as 'for the greater good' that in fact delivered horrific losses to our country that will cripple us for a generation. Few in Australia publicly questioned these policies in 2020 and 2021, in part because when they did, speaking from personal experience, they were vilified in the public square of social media as granny-killing Trumpkinaut death cult warriors and pieces of human excrement....
"How damaging, exactly, has the Australian COVID policy suite been?... I have been working in my spare time on a CBA of Australia’s lockdown policies, and just released it last week. The Executive Summary is freely downloadable here. My analysis, extending the draft CBA supporting my testimony to the Victorian state parliament in August 2020 and compiled with the excellent assistance of ex-Victorian Treasury economist Sanjeev Sabhlok, estimates that the Australian COVID lockdowns have directly cost more than 30 times what they possibly could have delivered in benefits. This tally can be made in the currency of dollars, or in the currency of human well-being – the quantity that matters most at the end of the day, or at least that should matter most....
"Australia’s history is bejewelled with a glittering chain of luck. In COVID times, this luck was on display again as the 'lucky country' found itself with auspicious geography and demography. Politicians from both major parties, the Liberals and Labor, exploited this luck to sail to success at all levels of government for two years on the false narrative that the lockdowns they implemented prevented so many deaths from COVID.... My analysis shows to the contrary that even under assumptions highly generous towards lockdowns, the maximum number of COVID deaths postponed by Australia’s lockdowns and border closures is about 10,000. This compares to a quantity of human damage directly due to lockdowns that is over thirty times greater than the human savings represented by those 10,000 lives.
"Unlike the costs of COVID, the costs of lockdowns are spread far more widely across age categories, with massive losses in areas like mental well-being, physical well-being, future government expenditure, and future earnings due to decisions such as stay-at-home orders and school closures – not to mention the effects of extended lockdowns on less-measurable drivers of social flourishing like the development of anti-social habits, productivity losses, and lower levels of trust in institutions like our healthcare system that were complicit in COVID policy mismanagement.
"Many of those spared death in 2020 or 2021 from COVID are succumbing now in 2022 as our borders re-open, meaning that enduring the horror of lockdowns “saved” only a couple of years of life for a large fraction of Australia’s eventual COVID victims. Australia is now experiencing far more COVID deaths and infections ... while COVID restrictions have largely been eased on the back of triumphant politicians’ claims that the COVID injections have been the game-changer that we all needed to escape lockdowns and start to live normally again.
"As we head into a federal election on May 21st, the major parties’ candidates really don’t want to talk about COVID. I wonder why?"
May 17, 2022 - "The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) has announced a legal win for three British Columbia pastors ticketed for defying lockdown orders during the pandemic. A total of 24 tickets – adding up to $55,200 – against Pastors John Koopman of the Chilliwack Free Reformed Church, James Butler of the Free Grace Baptist Church and Timothy Champ of the Valley Heights Community Church, have been dropped by the B.C. Crown. The pastors were fined following their non-compliance with provincial government restrictions imposed on Nov. 2020, which banned in-person religious services....
"Koopman received 23 tickets totalling $52,900, while Butler received 25 tickets totalling $57,500, and Champ received 18 tickets totalling $41,400. The recent victory amounted to seven tickets dropped against Koopman, 11 against Butler and six against Champ, for a total of 24. The JCCF said there remains over 20 outstanding tickets issued against pastors and churches in B.C.’s Fraser Valley. 'The Justice Centre will vigorously defend pastors and churches against these charges in future appearances in Provincial Court,' said the legal charity, adding that over four dozen tickets against B.C. churches they represent have now been dropped.
"'All levels of government, including politicians, health officials and law enforcement, have the duty to respect the constitutional rights and freedoms of Canadians. In response to Covid, there has been a serious failure of government officials and authorities in BC to respect the Charter freedoms of BC residents,” said JCCF lawyer Marty Moore. Moore added that 'BC discriminated against houses of worship, prohibiting them from meeting for worship regardless of the safety measures they implemented.' While the B.C. government never shut down retail businesses during the first lockdown in the spring of 2020, it did impose restrictions on places of worship that were stricter than other provinces.
"Provincial politicians across Canada imposed restrictions on places of worship which some have said encroached on religious freedom – however many of those restrictions were capacity limits ... and not full closures as was the case in B.C. True North spoke to two northern B.C. pastors in December – Simon Lievaart of Bethel Reformed Church in Smithers and Andrew Simpson of the Heritage Free Presbyterian Church in Prince George – who defied public health orders including vaccine passports.... Other pastors across Canada also defied public health restrictions, including Pastor James Coates of Gracelife Church and Pastor Artur Pawlowski of the Cave of Adullam congregation in Alberta. In Ontario, Pastors Henry Hildebrandt of the Church of God in Aylmer, Aaron Rock of the Harvest Bible Church in Windsor and Jacob Reaume of the Trinity Bible Chapel in Waterloo opted not to comply with restrictions imposed by the Ford government.
"Throughout the pandemic, the JCCF has been representing people who were charged with breaking government Covid rules. The organization also represented the Freedom Convoy earlier this year."
May 12, 2022 - "North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered a nationwide lockdown Thursday to try to contain a highly transmissible variant of coronavirus that causes COVID-19, which was confirmed in the country this week for the first time. The official Korean Central News Agency [KCNA] said genetic sequencing analysis of samples collected from a group of people on Sunday in Pyongyang had identified the BA.2 strain, also known as the 'stealth omicron' for its relative difficulty of detection. At least one person confirmed to have COVID-19 has died, KCNA said Friday.... North Korea has maintained a strict border closure since February 2020 and instituted its own quarantine measures amid the pandemic, which have now officially been breached....
"Kim was seen wearing a mask for the first time at Thursday's early morning politburo meeting, which he took off only when addressing his masked aides. He ordered a 'thorough lockdown' in all cities and counties, KCNA said. He directed businesses and construction projects to continue to operate but in isolation to 'perfectly block' the spread of the virus.
"'They only have one option: simply lock down their country and try to prevent the spread of the omicron virus,' Park Won-gon, professor of North Korea studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, told VOA. 'Because North Korea doesn’t have simple medicines, much less a medical system comparable to other countries, even if they had the vaccines, they would not be able to stop omicron.' Park doesn’t think North Korea will be looking to solicit vaccines from outside parties; what it really wants is a simple cure, which the world has yet to develop more than two years into the pandemic.
"North Korea will institute draconian measures to those of its biggest ally, China, if not even more severe, Park predicted. Based on several studies conducted on the contingency of North Korea, Park said, there was a single scenario that would incite a people’s uprising, and possibly the regime’s collapse: a pandemic paired with extreme economic difficulty. 'That is why, for more than two years, North Korea has been very sensitive and serious about this pandemic, even at the deep economic cost of closing its border with China.'" Read more: https://www.voanews.com/a/north-korea-s-kim-orders-lockdown-as-first-covid-19-outbreak-is-confirmed/6569002.html
May 14, 2022 - "North Korea on Saturday reported 21 new deaths and 174,440 more people with fever symptoms as the country scrambles to slow the spread of COVID-19 across its unvaccinated population. The new deaths and cases, which were from Friday, increased total numbers to 27 deaths and 524,440 illnesses amid a rapid spread of fever since late April.... North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during a meeting on anti-virus strategies on Saturday described the outbreak as a historically 'great upheaval' and called ... for officials to take lessons from the successful pandemic responses of other nations and picked an example in China, the North's major ally. China, however, has been facing pressure to change its so-called 'zero-COVID' strategy that has brought major cities to a standstill as it struggles to slow the fast-moving omicron variant....
"Lacking vaccines, antiviral pills, intensive care units and other major health tools to fight the virus, North Korea's pandemic response will be mostly about isolating people with symptoms at designated shelters, experts say. North Korea doesn't have technological and other resources to impose extreme lockdowns like China, which has shut down entire cities and confined residents to their homes, nor could it afford to do so at the risk of unleashing further shock on a fragile economy, said Hong Min, an analyst at Seoul's Korea Institute for National Unification....
"North Korea has a higher tolerance for civilian suffering than most other nations and some experts say the country could be willing to accept a certain level of fatalities to gain immunity through infection, rather than receiving vaccines and other outside help." Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/north-korea-covid-19-outbreak-fever-deaths-1.6453303
May 18, 2022 - "North Korea on Thursday reported 262,270 more cases of people with suspected symptoms of COVID-19 as its pandemic caseload neared two million — a week after the country acknowledged the outbreak and scrambled to slow infections in its unvaccinated population. The country is also trying to prevent its fragile economy from deteriorating, but the outbreak could be worse than officially reported since the country lacks virus tests and other health-care resources and may be underreporting deaths....
"North Korea's antivirus headquarters reported a single additional death, raising its death toll to 63, which experts have said is abnormally small compared to the suspected number of coronavirus infections. The official Korean Central News Agency reported that more than 1.98 million people have become sick with fever since late April. Most are believed to have COVID-19, though only a few Omicron variant infections have been confirmed. At least 740,160 people are in quarantine, the news agency reported.... Workers were mobilized to find people with suspected COVID-19 symptoms who were then sent to quarantine — the main method of curbing the outbreak since North Korea is short of medical supplies and intensive care units that lowered COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths in other nations." Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/north-korea-covid-outbreak-infections-1.6458803
May 14, 2022 - "Conservative Party of Canada leadership candidate Jean Charest is claiming the Freedom Convoy 'terrorized' and 'laid siege to' Ottawa, and that his rival Pierre Poilievre 'appeals to the fringe minority.' The former Quebec Liberal premier made the claims in a campaign mail-out obtained by True North. It appears to have been sent exclusively to Ottawa residents, although Charest’s campaign team would not confirm – opting instead to say that 'over 50,000 letters have been sent nationwide so far.'
"'I'm on the side of law-abiding Canad- ians,' the mail-out reads, adding that 'Pierre Poilievre is on the side of the lawbreakers and illegal blockaders who laid siege to YOUR CITY and our nation’s capital!!'
"Charest adds in the mail-out that convoy participants – whom he refers to as 'illegal blockaders' – terrorized residents, closed shops and businesses and disrupted daily commutes. 'But the worst part is these lawbreakers were cheered on by one high-profile – but recklessly irresponsible – local Member of Parliament, Pierre Poilievre, who now says he wants to be Prime Minister!'
"Charest also writes that Poilievre isn’t a serious leader and would be unable to win a general election, linking him to the far right and claiming he appeals to 'the fringe minority.' 'Pierre Poilievre is the Justin Trudeau of the far right, a celebrity who appeals to the fringe minority and is more focused on building his social media following than building an electable, mainstream Conservative Party,' writes Charest. Charest also said that he is 'holding Pierre Poilievre and his supporters accountable” for attempting to close Canada’s border and occupy Ottawa.
"True North reached out to Charest’s communications director Michelle Coates Mather, who affirmed Charest’s remarks on the convoy. 'The facts are clear. The downtown Ottawa core was occupied for weeks, critical infrastructure was blocked, businesses were forced to close, people’s ability to get to work was obstructed and all these cost taxpayers $375 million a day.” Coates Mather added, however, that Charest does not believe that those who participated in the Freedom Convoy are part of a 'fringe minority' – a phrase first used by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and then by Jean Charest while referring to some of Poilievre’s base....
"Charest, who calls himself a 'law-and-order Conservative,' said he agrees with Ontario premier Doug Ford introducing Bill 100 – a new law that gives police the power to immediately address protest disruptions at land border crossings and international airports.[and] the ability to suspend drivers’ licences and vehicle permits and to seize the license plates of vehicles.... Charest has promised to introduce a federal Critical Infrastructure Protection Act, which would make blockading, trespassing or interfering with critical infrastructure a criminal offense. He said he would also give law enforcement the ability to clear blockades without obtaining a court injunction. Additionally, Charest’s proposal would '(a)mend the Income Tax Act to remove charitable status from any group that has accepted foreign funds and has engaged in action related to the new offenses created in this Act'....
"The Charest campaign said, however, that he did not support Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act to clear the Freedom Convoy in February. Charest 'believes Trudeau’s implementation of the Emergencies Act in response to these protests was an overreach, completely unnecessary and divisive. It was a complete failure of leadership,' Coates Mather told True North. Charest campaign co-chair Tasha Kheiriddin [has] said she would have invoked the act to deal with the convoy had she been Prime Minister, in addition to calling in the military....
"This is not the first time that Charest has claimed that Pierre Poilievre supported an 'illegal blockade.' He also made this claim at the 2022 Canada Strong and Free Conservative leadership debate, which resulted in him being booed by the audience. True North has also previously reported that while Poilievre said he supported the 'law-abiding and peaceful truckers', there exists no record of him supporting border blockades.
"The Conservative Party of Canada will choose its new leader on Sept. 10. The latest poll from Abacus Data puts Pierre Poilievre in first place with 48% support among Conservatives, and Jean Charest in second with 20% support."
