COVID-19
“If you tell the truth consistently, trust is automatic” – Former CBC Reporter blasts media coverage during pandemic and Freedom Convoy
Article submitted by Adele Paul
Former CBC reporter testifies at National Citizen’s Inquiry in Toronto
At the National Citizens Inquiry in Toronto, former CBC reporter Rodney Palmer delivered testimony critical of Canada’s public broadcaster during the COVID-19 crisis. Palmer testified to a series of events that he called engaging in ‘propaganda’ and censorship rather than good faith ‘newsgathering’ at CBC.
The events included an April 4th, 2020, piece from Adrienne Arsenault entitled “How to talk to your family about COVID-19 misinformation” which offered suggestions on how to talk to family members who might falsely suggest the SARS-CoV-2 virus came from a lab. Palmer asserts that there was insufficient evidence at that time to make any definitive claims about the virus’ origin.
Other events of concern to Palmer were the steps taken by the CBC to promote ‘trust’ in journalism since 2021 which include joining international conglomerates including the Trusted News Initiative and the Trust Project, among others, which sought to control the spread of ‘misinformation’. This, according to Palmer, was an attempt to address a March 2021 survey which concluded that half of Canadians polled said they felt journalists intentionally try to mislead them. Palmer was critical of this approach stating, “If you tell the truth consistently, trust is automatic.”
In addition, Palmer testified that CBC actively engaged regularly in censorship. One such event happened in 2021. CBC Marketplace reported over 800 pieces of content to social media giants demanding that they be censored, many of which were subsequently taken down.
Another red flag for Palmer was the public broadcaster’s reporting on early treatment of COVID-19. In fall of 2021, CBC issued a series of stories which reported that ivermectin, a widely administered anti-parasitic drug cited by many medical professionals as a treatment for the disease, was primarily for use in livestock and warned that it could potentially kill or make humans seriously ill. Their reports, he said, failed to include that ivermectin was a nobel-prize winning and widely-used medication for humans and cited in extensive scientific literature as having a therapeutic benefit for COVID-19.
Palmer concluded with some of his own work covering the Freedom Convoy in which he interviewed a number of truck drivers, many of them people of colour, who denounced the notion that the movement was led by racists or white supremacists, a narrative espoused by Canadian politicians including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and bolstered repeatedly by the CBC.
When asked what might be done to improve the prospects for Canadian media, Palmer was reserved. He said they might be forgiven for the exceptions they took early on in the emergency when they acted as a mouthpiece for Public Health when little was known about the virus, but finished by saying “the emergency is over, but the exception still exists.”
The National Citizens Inquiry, a citizen-led initiative aimed at giving voice to citizens regarding Canada’s response to COVID-19, kicked off its second round of testimonies in Toronto Thursday morning. The inquiry launched in Truro on March 16 and will facilitate 8 hearings across the country throughout the spring collecting testimonies from ordinary Canadians and expert witnesses.
From the National Citizens Inquiry Facebook page
COVID-19
New report warns Ottawa’s ‘nudge’ unit erodes democracy and public trust
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms has released a new report titled Manufacturing consent: Government behavioural engineering of Canadians, authored by veteran journalist and researcher Nigel Hannaford. The report warns that the federal government has embedded behavioural science tactics in its operations in order to shape Canadians’ beliefs, emotions, and behaviours—without transparency, debate, or consent.
The report details how the Impact and Innovation Unit (IIU) in Ottawa is increasingly using sophisticated behavioural psychology, such as “nudge theory,” and other message-testing tools to influence the behaviour of Canadians.
Modelled after the United Kingdom’s Behavioural Insights Team, the IIU was originally presented as an innocuous “innovation hub.” In practice, the report argues, it has become a mechanism for engineering public opinion to support government priorities.
With the arrival of Covid, the report explains, the IIU’s role expanded dramatically. Internal government documents reveal how the IIU worked alongside the Public Health Agency of Canada to test and design a national communications strategy aimed at increasing compliance with federal vaccination and other public health directives.
Among these strategies, the government tested fictitious news reports on thousands of Canadians to see how different emotional triggers would help reduce public anxiety about emerging reports of adverse events following immunization. These tactics were designed to help achieve at least 70 percent vaccination uptake, the target officials associated with reaching “herd immunity.”
IIU techniques included emotional framing—using fear, reassurance, or urgency to influence compliance with policies such as lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine requirements. The government also used message manipulation by emphasizing or omitting details to shape how Canadians interpreted adverse events after taking the Covid vaccine to make them appear less serious.
The report further explains that the government adopted its core vaccine message—“safe and effective”—before conclusive clinical or real-world data even existed. The government then continued promoting that message despite early reports of adverse reactions to the injections.
Government reliance on behavioural science tactics—tools designed to steer people’s emotions and decisions without open discussion—ultimately substituted genuine public debate with subtle behavioural conditioning, making these practices undemocratic. Instead of understanding the science first, the government focused primarily on persuading Canadians to accept its narrative. In response to these findings, the Justice Centre is calling for immediate safeguards to protect Canadians from covert psychological manipulation by their own government.
The report urges:
- Parliamentary oversight of all behavioural science uses within federal departments, ensuring elected representatives retain oversight of national policy.
- Public disclosure of all behavioural research conducted with taxpayer funds, creating transparency of government influence on Canadians’ beliefs and decisions.
- Independent ethical review of any behavioural interventions affecting public opinion or individual autonomy, ensuring accountability and informed consent.
Report author Mr. Hannaford said, “No democratic government should run psychological operations on its own citizens without oversight. If behavioural science is being used to influence public attitudes, then elected representatives—not unelected strategists—must set the boundaries.”
COVID-19
Major new studies link COVID shots to kidney disease, respiratory problems
From LifeSiteNews
Receiving four or more COVID shots was associated with 559% higher likelihood of cold in children, a new study found, and another one linked the shots to higher risk of renal dysfunction.
Two major new studies have been published sounding the alarm about the COVID-19 shots potentially carrying risks of not only respiratory diseases but even kidney injury.
The Washington Stand first drew attention to the studies, published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases (IJID) and International Journal of Medical Science (IJMS), respectively.
The first examined insurance claims and vaccination records for the entire population of South Korea, filtering out cases of infection prior to the start of the outbreak for a pool of more than 39 million people. It reported that the COVID shots correlated with mixed impacts on other respiratory conditions. A “temporary decline followed by a resurgence of URI [upper respiratory infections] and common cold was observed during and after the COVID-19 pandemic,” it concluded. “In the Post-pandemic period (January 2023–September 2024), the risk of URI and common cold increased with higher COVID-19 vaccine doses,” it noted.
Children in particular, who are known to face the lowest risk from COVID itself, had dramatically higher odds of adverse events the more shots they took. Receiving four or more was associated with 559% higher likelihood of cold, 91% higher likelihood of pneumonia, 83% higher likelihood of URI, and 35% higher likelihood of tuberculosis.
The second study examined records of 2.9 million American adults, half of whom received at least one COVID shot and half of whom did not.
“COVID-19 vaccination was associated with a higher risk of subsequent renal dysfunction, including AKI [acute kidney injury] and dialysis treatment,” it found, citing 15,809 cases versus 11,081. “The cumulative incidence of renal dysfunction was significantly higher in vaccinated than in unvaccinated patients […] At the one-year follow-up, the number of deaths among vaccinated individuals was 7,693, while the number of deaths among unvaccinated individuals was 7,364.” Notably, the study did not find a difference in the “type of COVID-19 vaccine administered.”
The researchers note that this is not simply a matter of correlation, but that a causal mechanism for such results has already been indicated.
“Prior studies have indicated that COVID-19 vaccines can damage several tissues,” they explain.
“The main pathophysiological mechanism of COVID-19 vaccine-related complications involve vascular disruption. COVID-19 vaccination can induce inflammation through interleukins and the nod-like receptor family pyrin domain-containing 3, an inflammatory biomarker. In another study, thrombosis episodes were observed in patients who received different COVID-19 vaccines. Additionally, mRNA COVID-19 vaccines have been associated with the development of myocarditis and related complications […] The development of renal dysfunction can be affected by several biochemical factors [26]. In turn, AKI can increase systemic inflammation and impair the vasculature and red blood cell aggregation. Given that the mechanism underlying COVID-19 vaccine-related complications corresponds to the pathophysiology of kidney disease, we hypothesized that COVID-19 vaccination may cause renal dysfunction, which was supported by the results of this study.”
Launched in the final year of President Donald Trump’s first term in response to COVID-19, Operation Warp Speed (OWS) had the COVID shots ready for use in a fraction of the time any previous vaccine had ever been developed and tested. As LifeSiteNews has extensively covered, a body of evidence steadily accumulated over the following years that they failed to prevent transmission and, more importantly, carried severe risks of their own. COVID was a sticking point for many in Trump’s base, yet he doggedly refused to disavow OWS.
Since leaving office, Trump repeatedly promoted the shots as “one of the greatest achievements of mankind.” The negative reception to such comments got him to drop the subject for a while, but in July 2022, he complained that “we did so much in terms of therapeutics and a word that I’m not allowed to mention. But I’m still proud of that word, because we did that in nine months, and it was supposed to take five years to 12 years. Nobody else could have done it. But I’m not mentioning it in front of my people.”
So far, Trump’s second administration has rolled back several recommendations for the shots but not yet pulled them from the market, despite hiring several vocal critics of the COVID establishment and putting the Department of Health & Human Services under the leadership of America’s most prominent anti-vaccine activist, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Most recently, the administration has settled on leaving the current vaccines optional but not supporting work to develop successors.
In early August, Kennedy announced the government would be “winding down” almost $500 million worth of mRNA vaccine projects and rejecting future exploration of the technology in favor of more conventional vaccines. Last week, HHS revoked emergency use authorizations (EUA) for the COVID shots, which were used to justify the long-since-rescinded mandates and sidestep other procedural hurdles, and in its place issued “marketing authorization” for those who meet a minimum risk threshold for the following mRNA vaccines: Moderna (6+ months), Pfizer (5+), and Novavax (12+).
“These vaccines are available for all patients who choose them after consulting with their doctors,” Kennedy said, making good on his pledge to “end COVID vaccine mandates, keep vaccines available to people who want them, especially the vulnerable, demand placebo-controlled trials from companies,” and “end the emergency.”
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