Opinion
Are Penny Pinching Politicians Passe?
We all support fiscal responsibility, but only if it is done fairly. It is becoming more obvious everyday that it is not being done fairly.
Our Prime Minister is spending almost a million dollars to rub shoulders at the World Economic Forum and defends it by saying he is promoting Canada. The same goes with his many trips to other countries around the world.
There are news stories about cuts in tax deductions for low income earners, people with disabilities and parents with sick children.
The last few years, maybe decades, all politicians campaign on being fiscally responsible but that is getting to be a bit tiresome.
My taxes at all levels, keeps going up, and my services keep going down, yet my politicians seem to be living the high life. Tweets from galas, junkets, and meetings all over the country and the world but my concerns get ignored.
The cost of fixing a pot hole on my street would get more scrutiny, than a new promenade downtown, or the next big sporting event. I have trees growing in my street and my sidewalk continue to crumble after decades of neglect but we have other neighbourhoods with new streets, firehall, bus service and a high school with nary a house built.
I am not saying, do not have 77 million dollar sporting events, do not spend millions lobbying Senators in Washington for the oil companies, do not spend hundreds of millions on General Motors or Bombardier, I am not saying that. What I am asking, is why not fix my street, expand our hospital, or buy that pump for a diabetic child.
How many insulin pumps could be bought, for the price of this junket to the World Economic Forum? Just asking.
The UK’s Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has recently been exposed for its blatant refusal to release critical data that could reveal a potential link between Covid-19 shots and the nation’s alarming surge in excess deaths.
As The Telegraph reveals in a damning exposé, UKHSA officials invoked the “distress or anger” of bereaved families as their shield, arguing that any hint of correlation in the data might shatter the emotional well-being of those left behind.
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According to The Telegraph:
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) argued that releasing the data would lead to the “distress or anger” of bereaved relatives if a link were to be discovered.
Public health officials also argued that publishing the data risked damaging the well-being and mental health of the families and friends of people who died.
Last year, a cross-party group expressed alarm about “growing public and professional concerns” over the UK’s rates of excess deaths since 2020.
In a letter to UKHSA and Department for Health, the MPs and peers said that potentially critical data – which map the date of people’s Covid vaccine doses to the date of their deaths – had been released to pharmaceutical companies but not put into the public domain.
They argued that the data should be released “on the same anonymised basis that it was shared with the pharmaceutical groups, and there seems to be no credible reason why that should not be done immediately”.
UsForThem, a campaign group, requested that UKHSA release the data under freedom of information laws. But the agency refused, making a number of different arguments including that publishing the data “could lead to misinformation” that would “have an adverse impact on vaccine uptake” in the public.
UKHSA also claimed there would be a risk of individuals being identified, despite the request being made for an anonymised dataset. After a two-year battle, the Information Commissioner ruled in the UKHSA’s favour, backing its refusal to publish the data.
Gareth Eve whose wife, Lisa Shaw died from the Astra-Zeneca Covid jab, took to social media to express his opinion on the UKHSA’s refusal to disclose the data—under the guise that it will risk “damaging the well-being and mental health of families and friends of people who died.”
He wrote: “As someone who lost his amazing wife to a Covid jab. As a Dad of a little boy who lost his Mammy at the age of 6 I can assure you, my heart and my mental health is already very much broken.”
Dr Craig v the Information Commissioner & the UKHSA
UsForThem was not the only party seeking this crucial data through Freedom of Information requests. As early as 2022, diagnostic pathologist and statistician Dr Clare Craig submitted a series of FOI requests to UKHSA and ONS seeking detailed data on deaths following COVID-19 vaccination. On 4 August 2023 she made a specific request for anonymised individual-level NIMS records of adults over 20 who died after December 2020 (age at first dose, vaccination dates, and barnardised date of death). UKHSA refused disclosure. After the Information Commissioner upheld the refusal in June 2024, Dr Craig appealed to the First-tier Tribunal against both the Information Commissioner and UKHSA. The tribunal dismissed her appeal on 14 October 2025.
Dr Craig kindly gave me persmission to include the First-tier Tribunal’s 27-page decision.
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Several anomalies stand out to me:
- UKHSA repeatedly changed its legal grounds.
When Dr Clare Craig made her request in August 2023, the UKHSA originally said “no” under section 40(2) FOIA (personal data exemption). Even with barnardised death dates, the UKHSA argued that the combination of age at first dose, exact vaccination dates, and approximate death date could still allow some individuals to be re-identified. So, the UKHSA treated the requested data as third-party personal data and refused it outright.
Later, probably in preparation for the tribunal they downplayed section 40(2) and relied mainly on section 38 FOIA (Health and Safety). Section 38(1) says information is exempt if its disclosure would, or would likely to:
a] endanger the physical or mental health of any individual.
b] endanger the safety of any individual.
This exemption is not absolute but is subject to the public-interest balance test.
The UKHSA also shifted to other arguments: sections: 12 (Cost), 4 (Vexatious or repeated requests), 36 (Prejudice to effective conduct of public affairs), 41 (Actionable breach of confidence). They ultimately succeeded with the broad “health and safety” exemption (s.38) based on speculative risks of harassment or violence.
- Releasing these records (even barnardised) could lead to bereaved families being identified and harassed.
- It could fuel anti-vaccine campaigns that incite threats or violence against doctors, scientists, or public-health staff.
- It could cause serious distress to relatives who discover their loved one’s details are being discussed online.
- Misinformation/misinterpretation of the data could itself damage public confidence and therefore harm mental health on a wider scale.
In short, the UKHSA started with “this is personal data, full stop,” which later became “well, maybe it can be anonymised, but releasing it anyway would endanger people’s health or safety.” Then they threw in every possible additional exemption (cost, vexatious, political damage, and legal confidentiality) to make absolutely sure at least one would stick.
- The closed hearing and confidential bundle
Other anomalies that stood out were the following: a closed hearing on 24 June 2025 that Dr Craig was not allowed to attend. And a closed/confidential bundle of documents that she was not allowed to see. Later, the tribunal gave her a written gist (a few paragraphs) that said, in very general terms, what topics have been covered in the closed sessions and what the secret evidence was broadly about—without revealing anything that the UKHSA deemed too sensitive!
When asked for comment, Dr Craig wrote: “There is more than enough evidence that the vaccine products caused death. The majority were covid deaths in the first two weeks after injection and in the period after the third mRNA dose. Non-covid deaths also rose and these did not come in waves. However, the ONS stopped published their data when the problem became undeniable. I hope this story about hiding the data wakes people up to the failure of our institutions to respect the truth over their own agendas.”
Silencing the Signal: From Excess Deaths to Black-Ops Disinformation
This active form of suppression has gone far beyond merely downplaying any possible link between COVID shots and excess mortality. What has been actively concealed includes:
- The very fact of sustained excess deaths appearing across many countries from 2021 onward.
- The extensive evidence of harm caused by the experimental mRNA and viral-vector injections themselves, as documented in the manufacturers’ own pharmacovigilance reports submitted to regulators (reports that were meant to remain confidential). Read my analysis of these reports here, here, here, here and here.
- A systematic campaign of scientific censorship: dozens of peer-reviewed studies and preprints that identified serious adverse events, novel mechanisms of injury, or elevated mortality signals were retracted, withdrawn, or smeared—often without legitimate scientific justification.
- An overt psychological and information-warfare operation orchestrated by state actors—including the UK’s 77th Brigade and Counter Disinformation Unit, U.S. agencies, NATO’s strategic communications centres, and independent NGOs, such as the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH)—all coordinated to intimidate, defame, deplatform, and silence doctors, scientists, and citizens who publicly questioned the “safe and effective” narrative.
- Collusion with Big Tech platforms to throttle, shadow-ban, or deplatform dissenting voices under the pretext of “countering disinformation.”
In 2023, I wrote about how governments and mainstream media worldwide have imposed a “veil of silence” on the issue of excess deaths, particularly after the rollout of COVID shots in mid-2021—in stark contrast with their earlier obsession with daily COVID death tallies. My piece centred on a pivotal UK parliamentary 30-minute adjourned debate on October 20, 2023, secured by then-independent MP Andrew Bridgen.
Piercing the Veil of Silence over Excess Deaths
It is important to remember how the BBC inserted live captions during Bridgen’s debate to fact-check and undermine him in real-time, labelling his claims as “misinformation.”
Molly Kingsley, co-founder of UsForThem, a campaign group (also targeted by the Counter Disinformation Unit) that requested the UKHSA to release the data under freedom of information laws, took to social media to post a further detail in their legal case.
“The UKHSA also alleged that if they released the data, someone might use it to promote a misleading impression (misinformation) about a possible relationship between dates of dosage and dates of death. They argued that this had the potential to damage confidence in vaccine programmes and so could endanger the health of the public.”
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A closer look at suppressing the link between excess deaths and Covid shots
In June last year, a bombshell study examining excess deaths on a global level, was published in BMJ Public Health by a group of researchers (Mostert et al.) from Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam.
BOMBSHELL STUDY: 3 MILLION EXCESS DEATHS IN 47 COUNTRIES
Their results showed:
The total number of excess deaths in 47 countries of the Western World was 3,098,456 from 1 January 2020 until 31 December 2022. Excess mortality was documented in 41 countries (87%) in 2020, 42 countries (89%) in 2021 and 43 countries (91%) in 2022. In 2020, the year of the COVID-19 pandemic onset and implementation of containment measures, records present 1 033 122 excess deaths (P-score 11.4%). In 2021, the year in which both containment measures and COVID-19 vaccines were used to address virus spread and infection, the highest number of excess deaths was reported: 1 256 942 excess deaths (P-score 13.8%). In 2022, when most containment measures were lifted and COVID-19 vaccines were continued, preliminary data present 808 392 excess deaths.
The group’s findings were amplified by an article in The Telegraph: “Covid vaccines may have helped fuel rise in excess deaths.”
Notably, shortly afterwards, the Princess Máxima Center (the Paediatric Oncology centre affiliated with the authors) issued a statement, “distancing itself” from the publication. It went on to assert: “The study in no way demonstrates a link between vaccinations and excess mortality; that is explicitly not the researchers’ finding. We therefore regret that this impression has been created.”
This triggered BMJ Public Health to respond with an “expression of concern” a few days later, stating: “The integrity team and editors are investigating issues raised regarding the quality and messaging of this work.”
CENSORING THE SCIENCE: Bombshell Study on Excess Deaths Faces Retraction
The last update, in January 2025, stated: “BMJ are awaiting the result of an institutional investigation into the conduct of the work, which was due to be finalized by the end of 2024. At present, the institution can offer no update on when the information will be sent to BMJ.”
Also noteworthy is that on 25 August 2023, the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) announced that it would no longer update its “Deaths by vaccination status, England” series, marking the end of its regular publications. The ONS stated: “We will no longer be updating the Deaths by vaccination status analysis, England series.” No specific reasons were detailed in the notice. This begs the questions: what caused ONS to make such a decision? Is it because an inconvenient pattern of truth was emerging that went against the “safe and effective” narrative?
On 18 April 2024, Andrew Bridgen managed to secure a landmark two-hour House of Commons debate on excess deaths since 2021 and their link to mRNA COVID vaccines.
Debate in Parliament Ignites over Excess Deaths and Vaccine Safety Concerns
Describing it as “the greatest medical scandal in living memory,” Bridgen — himself double-vaccinated and vaccine-injured — accused authorities of deliberately hiding and manipulating data, abandoning proven protocols, and using midazolam/morphine under NICE NG163 to hasten deaths. He highlighted UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) baseline changes that erased ~20,000 excess deaths in 2023 and their refusal to release anonymised record-level data.
The “inconvenient” data secured by Wouter Aukema
My series of interviews with senior data patterns & forensics analyst, Wouter Aukema, have been extremely revealing. Aukema and his team’s software was able to download 15 million case safety reports (within and outside of Europe) for 6000 drugs and vaccines from European Medicines Agency’s EudraVigilance system for the past 20 years. This information was presented on dashboards, built to make public pharmacovigilance data accessible and navigable. They shockingly revealed a three-fold increase in case safety reports for the Covid vaccines (at the start of the rollout) compared to all the other drug products and substances- over the past 20 years.
True Horrors of Covid Vaccine Harm Data NOW Exposed!
In my second interview with Aukema, he dropped the biggest bombshell. According to his systematic downloading of the data from EudraVigilance (which includes case safety reports from around the world not just the EU)- 40% of worldwide serious case safety reports (including hospitalization and death) in relation to Covid vaccines (only) have been removed from the European Medicines Agency’s database from October 2021-November 2022. In addition, case safety reports have also been retroactively modified, after their data lockpoint (DLP).
Data Crimes: Deleting Covid Vaccine Deaths
Only last month, I broke the story how the European Medicines Agency (EMA) had sent a letter to Aukema demanding he immediately delete the pharmacovigilance data dowloaded from EudraVigilance. It has also come to light that similar EMA letters were sent to French researchers Emma Darles and Pavan Vincent.
BREAKING: Data Analyst Faces EMA’s Demand to Delete Pharmacovigilance Data!
Just a day before Aukema was going to present his findings at the Back to the Future conference, he discovered an email from the EMA in his spam folder, with a subject line that sent chills: “Request to immediately delete non-public information originating from the EudraVigilance system and made available on the dashboards you have on Tableau Public.”
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One of the key claims alleged by the EMA was that Aukema’s dashboards, which include worldwide unique case identifiers and country-of-origin data, pose an “indirect” risk of identifying patients. “I have no access to patients’ birth dates or names,” he insisted. “Even if that data was available, I would never have downloaded it. My objective is to gather insights on patterns, not to find people.”
After further discussions with Wouter Aukema, he revealed a disturbing practice affecting approximately 40% of serious (including fatal) COVID-19 vaccine adverse-event reports.
Whenever a case narrative is updated – even for the most trivial edit, such as inserting a comma – the system generates an entirely new case ID number and a new receipt date. The previous version of the report, with its original identifier and timestamp, is permanently overwritten and becomes untraceable. There is no audit trail, no version history, and no way to retrieve the original entry. Aukema describes this as “a floating duck.”
On the surface everything appears normal, but the critical reference points are in constant motion, making it impossible to track changes or hold anyone accountable for what has been altered or suppressed. He suspects that this systematic erasure of original reports is not accidental. In his view, the manipulation originates from the pharmaceutical companies themselves and from national pharmacovigilance authorities – including Lareb in the Netherlands and, by extension, equivalent bodies such as the MHRA (Yellow Card scheme) in the United Kingdom – whose databases feed into the European system.
In short, not only are serious and fatal cases being under-reported or retrospectively downgraded; in a large proportion of instances, the original evidence that they were ever reported in the first place is being deliberately and irreversibly destroyed.
Now, turning back to the UKHSA’s blank refusal to release critical data which could expose the link between excess deaths and the Covid shots—perhaps this link could be found in Aukema’s damning data sets, which include case safety reports from the UK for the Covid shots.
Each individual case safety report (ICSR) in EudraVigilance includes (when reported): date of vaccination, date of onset of the adverse reaction, and the date of death (if fatal). If a large, tightly clustered peak of fatal reports were visible in the first 0–14 days—and especially if that peak exceeded the reporting bias and background mortality expected in the vaccinated population—it would represent a very strong safety signal requiring urgent investigation.
Is this the reason why the EMA are so fixated on the deletion of the country-of-origin data? Could it be a case of an orchestrated cover up shared by regulators amid liability fears?
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The Liberals’ first budget under Mark Carney— about nine months overdue— snuck through Parliament with Green Party leader-of-one Elizabeth “Margarita” May as the deciding vote. (All it took was a commitment to her insane climate targets.) A quick review of the Book of Revelations does not reveal this as a sign of the Apocalypse. But to Canadians who voted for a change in the spring it’s a rude reminder that no one is minding the store in Ottawa.
The Parliament Hill media has largely shelved discussion of Carney’s budget ‘guzintas (the PBO said there is a “less than 10 percent chance the government will keep its deficit-to-GDP ratio on a downward track through 2029-30… and Finance Canada has “changed its reporting of deficit financing, separating capital from operational spending.”) Translation: If Carney keeps on this track till 2030 the total GST collected from Canadians will not be enough to service the federal debt.
The chattering class is, however, full speed ahead on their Pierre Poilievre deathwatch. The leader of the CPC is one of their more anodyne figures to lead a party since Mackenzie King. His earnest kitchen-table schtick is about as dynamic as a cheese sandwich. Even when he famously defenestrated a blundering BC journalist in an apple orchard he never raised his voice. (What page am I taking from Trump’s book?”)
In the House of Commons, he has performed a monotone strafing of Liberal policy since becoming leader in 2023. He hasn’t elbowed aside a female NDP member. In the fine tradition of the House he does mock the Liberals front bench, throws water on their fevered policies and acts like a vice-principal of a small high school disciplining a student.
But in the judgment of today’s febered media— okay, the Liberals— he’s “rage-farming” or “rage-baiting” when pointing out that Canada’s debt is out of control, its real estate is a bubble waiting to burst and the relationship with the U.S. is flat lining. In fact he’s all rage, all the time, for their purposes. According to Carney’s bots, Poilievre stoops “to stirring and riling up ‘white-trash’ elements in society into hateful rhetoric against the prime minister. “
Team Carney has gloried in his travails since Donald Trump upended the spring election by cozying up to Carney. (Poilievre didn’t help himself taking pot shots at Trump who then dismissed Poilievre). CBC/ CTV/ Global savants who spit every time they mention Trump bizarrely were suddenly in enthusiastic approval of Orange Man Bad spanking PP for them.
The tone about his performance as opposition leader is vitriolic. “Pierre Poilievre’s rage-baiting and empty slogans aren’t what Canada needs”. His slogans (stolen by Carney during the election campaign), his by-election win in Alberta, his insistence on core issues— it drives the panelists on talk shows to fits for pique.
Which is funny when you think about it. Those with longer memories can recall the hijinx of the Liberals’ Rat Pack in the 1980s and 90s. Led by Sheila Copps (dubbed Tequila Sheila by Tory justice minister John Crosbie), Don Boudria and John Nunziata they were an early version of Polievere and Melissa Lantsman and the CPC front bench. Just more obnoxious.
Except the wind therapists were amused by them. Instead of rage monkeys they were the subjects of puckish CBC features. Copps could speak Italian with her (Hamilton) constituents and also had “perfect French,” said reporter Jason Moscovitz.” But she needles Mulroney in plain English,” he added, as Copps introduced a question for Brian Mulroney by comparing him to to Johnny Carson.
The irreverent Rats even produced their own T-shirts to wear in the House. “Other MPs say he’s sleazy, slimy, and a snake,” said Moscovitz, of Nunziata as he donned one of the T-shirts. So Nunziata used the same words in the House of Commons.”Sleazy, slimy Tory patronage!” he proclaimed on the floor of the House.
Laugh? We could have died. It was entertaining in the collegial debating club of the time. The sparring of the feisty Copps and her target John Crosbie was mint.
But now that the Liberals are entering a second decade of mismanaging the nation, their appetite for impertinence has disappeared. So the clever ripostes of Copps are now Poilievre “rage” farming and “rage baiting”. Some people have noticed the contrast: “Caucus unrest treated as a calamity when it involves the Conservatives, while Liberals get a pass” But the bubble-bound Canadian public only hears one slant.
In the U.S. there are hopeful signs of a bubble breakthrough. Hip TV host Bill Maher was forced to tell Woke comedian Patton Oswalt that his BlueSky world was strangling him. He enlightens an oblivious Oswalt on the UK grooming gangs. He also brought him up to reality when Oswalt said the Left never orders gender off of passports.
It’s not much, but it’s hopeful, at least in America. Here in Canada the information corridor is so thoroughly policed by the culture Stasi (using their dreaded Trump guns) that nothing can get through. Singing O Canada and not abusing the lyrics is considered a sacrilege on the Left. Daniel Smith is a Trumpist etc. Carney is intent on importing British hate speech convictions, not AI chips and nuclear energy.
If that isn’t enough of a bummer remember that Carney is just a stop-gap, a guy to rag the puck for a few years till the Liberals have groomed Justin’s eldest for the PMO. Where he can complete the Woking of traditional Canada that Grandpapa Pierre started in 1968.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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