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COVID-19

Court puts Freedom Convoy leaders’ trial on hold after resuming for just one day in the new year

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Because the trial has lasted far longer than expected, new dates for the proceedings are being determined.

The trial for Freedom Convoy leaders Tamara Lich and Chris Barber resumed but only for one day. Because the trial has taken months longer than expected, the court now must determine future dates.

The Democracy Fund (TDF), which is crowdfunding Lich’s legal costs, noted in a Day 34 trial update that the sole court date on the books for 2024, which was last Thursday, saw Crown and defense submissions “regarding the admissibility of the February 2022 injunction hearing transcripts.”

The injunction hearing transcripts concern a horn-honking injunction placed on Freedom Convoy protesters in February 2022 after local citizens launched a complaint about the noise.

According to the TDF, the defense counsel is asking to have the transcripts admitted to the court record. The Crown is contesting this.

Barber’s lawyer, Diane Magas, presented to the court excerpts from both injunction hearings and emphasized the importance of “understanding the context behind the injunction judge’s comments” by “explaining his acceptance or rejection of specific terms.”

Magas asserted how the transcripts discuss the consequences of “breaching the injunction, highlighting the judge’s clarification that a breach would result in civil contempt, not criminal charges.”

“Additionally, she noted the injunction judge’s statement permitting individuals in Ottawa to continue protesting post-injunction,” the TDF said.

Lich’s lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon, spoke to the submissions that were made by then-Freedom Convoy leader lawyer Keith Wilson during the injunction hearing in 2022, “underscoring that it strictly pertained to honking and noise,” as noted by the TDF.

“Greenspon highlighted the injunction judge’s remark that there was ‘no evidence of any breach,’ emphasizing the credibility of a superior court judge who heard experienced counsel’s submissions,” the TDF said.

“They emphasized the injunction judge’s statement that the sole issue before him was honking horns, providing context to Greenspon’s ‘no evidence of breach’ quote,” the TDF stated.

The Crown had suggested that the injunction judge “referred only to a lack of evidence regarding honking horns, not a lack of evidence of any wrongdoing.”

Counsel is soon set to meet to determine the next days for when Day 35 will be scheduled.

Trial that began in September was supposed to last only 16 days

The trial, which began September 5, 2023, was expected to last only a few weeks.

In 2022, lawyers for both sides agreed that 16 days would be a reasonable amount of time for a fair trial. The Crown, however, took a long time going through its witness list.

Just before Christmas, the Freedom Convoy leaders’ lawyers said a $290 million class-action lawsuit filed by disgruntled Ottawa residents against the leaders is designed to “silence” the leaders’ right to free “expression.” The Freedom Convoy leaders’ lawyers have applied to have the case dismissed.

The trial until last Thursday was on hiatus since December 7.

On the last day of the trial for 2023, TDF observed that the court will resume in 2024 with a “voir dire,” or trial within a trial, to be “held over how comments made by the judge presiding over the Ottawa injunction order of February 2022 should be treated.”

“In the days following, there should be a decision on the defense motion to dismiss the Carter application,” TDF said.

Thus far, per TDF, the Crown has asserted “that the absence of violence or peaceful nature of the protest didn’t make it lawful, emphasizing that the onus was on the Crown to prove the protest’s unlawfulness.”

The Crown has been holding steadfast to the notion in trying to prove that Lich and Barber had somehow influenced the protesters’ actions through their words as part of a co-conspiracy. This claim has been rejected by the defense as weak.

The reality is that Lich and Barber collaborated with police on many occasions so that the protests were within the law.

Lich and Barber are facing multiple charges from the 2022 protests, including mischief, counseling mischief, counseling intimidation and obstructing police for taking part in and organizing the anti-mandate Freedom Convoy. As reported by LifeSiteNews at the time, despite the non-violent nature of the protest and the charges, Lich was jailed for weeks before she was granted bail.

In early 2022, the Freedom Convoy saw thousands of Canadians from coast to coast come to Ottawa to demand an end to COVID mandates in all forms. Despite the peaceful nature of the protest, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government enacted the Emergencies Act on February 14.

During the clear-out of protesters after the EA was put in place, one protester, an elderly lady, was trampled by a police horse, and one conservative female reporter was beaten by police and shot with a tear gas canister.

LifeSiteNews has been covering the trial extensively.

Alberta

Red Deer Doctor critical of Alberta’s COVID response to submit report to Danielle Smith this May

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Leading the task force is Dr. Gary Davidson, who was skeptical of mandates at the time.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith will soon be receiving a little-known report she commissioned which tasked an Alberta doctor who was critical of the previous administration’s handling of COVID to look into how accurate the province’s COVID data collection was, as well as the previous administration’s decision-making process and effectiveness. 

As noted in a recent Globe and Mail report, records it obtained show that just less than one month after becoming Premier of Alberta in November of 2022, Smith tasked then-health minister Jason Copping to create the COVID data task force. 

Documents show that the Alberta government under Smith gave the new task force, led by Dr. Gary Davidson – who used to work as an emergency doctor in Red Deer, Alberta – a sweeping mandate to look at whether the “right data” was obtained during COVID as well as to assess the “integrity, validity, reliability and quality of the data/information used to inform pandemic decisions” by members of Alberta Health Services (AHS).  

As reported by LifeSiteNews in 2021, Davidson said during the height of COVID that the hospital capacity crisis in his province was “created,” was not a new phenomenon, and had nothing to do with COVID.

“We have a crisis, and we have a crisis because we have no staff, because our staff quit, because they’re burned out, they’re not burnt out from COVID,” Davidson said at the time. 

Davidson also claimed that the previous United Conservative Party government under former Premier Jason Kenney had been manipulating COVID statistics.  

In comments sent to the media, Smith said that in her view it was a good idea to have a “contrarian perspective” with Davidson looking at “everything that happened with some fresh eyes.” 

“I needed somebody who was going to look at everything that happened with some fresh eyes and maybe with a little bit of a contrarian perspective because we’ve only ever been given one perspective,” she told reporters Tuesday. 

“I left it to [Davidson] to assemble the panel with the guidance that I would like to have a broad range of perspectives.” 

After assuming her role as premier, Smith promptly fired the province’s top doctor, Deena Hinshaw, and the entire AHS board of directors, all of whom oversaw the implementation of COVID mandates. 

Under Kenney, thousands of nurses, doctors, and other healthcare and government workers lost their jobs for choosing to not get the jabs, leading Smith to say – only minutes after being sworn in – that over the past year the “unvaccinated” were the “most discriminated against” group of people in her lifetime. 

As for AHS, it still is promoting the COVID shots, for babies as young as six months old, as recently reported by LifeSiteNews.  

Task force made up of doctors both for and against COVID mandates  

In addition to COVID skeptic Dr. Gary Davidson, the rather secretive COVID task force includes other health professionals who were critical of COVID mandates and health restrictions, including vaccine mandates.  

The task force was given about $2 million to conduct its review, according to The Globe and Mail, and is completely separate from another task force headed by former Canadian MP Preston Manning, who led the Reform Party for years before it merged with another party to form the modern-day Conservative Party of Canada. 

Manning’s task force, known as the Public Health Emergencies Governance Review Panel (PHEGRP), released its findings last year. It recommend that many pro-freedom policies be implemented, such as strengthening personal medical freedoms via legislation so that one does not lose their job for refusing a vaccine, as well as concluding that Albertans’ rights were indeed infringed upon. 

The Smith government task force is run through the Health Quality Council of Alberta (HQCA) which is a provincial agency involved in healthcare research.  

Last March, Davidson was given a project description and terms of reference and was told to have a final report delivered to Alberta’s Health Minister by December of 2023. 

As of now, the task force’s final report won’t be available until May, as per Andrea Smith, press secretary to Health Minister Adriana LaGrange, who noted that the goal of the task force is to look at Alberta’s COVID response compared to other provinces.  

According to the Globe and Mail report, another person working on the task force is anesthetist Blaine Achen, who was part of a group of doctors that legally challenged AHS’s now-rescinded mandatory COVID jab policy for workers. 

Some doctors on the task force, whom the Globe and Mail noted held “more conventional views regarding the pandemic,” left it only after a few meetings. 

In a seeming attempt to prevent another draconian crackdown on civil liberties, the UCP government under Smith has already taken concrete action.

The Smith government late last year passed a new law, Bill 6, or the Public Health Amendment Act, that holds politicians accountable in times of a health crisis by putting sole decision-making on them for health matters instead of unelected medical officers. 

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COVID-19

Inquiry shows Canadian gov’t agencies have spent $10 million on social media ads for COVID jabs

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

One campaign cost $1.5 million alone to encourage children to receive the COVID-19 shots.

A recent Inquiry of Ministry request revealed that Canada’s Public Health Agency (PHAC) along with Health Canada have combined to spend approximately $9.9 million on social media advertising to promote the experimental COVID injections since 2020.

The Inquiry of Ministry information showing the large advertising spending on the COVID shots became known as the result of a request from Conservative Party of Canada MP Ted Falk, who demanded answers about what was being spent by officials to promote the shots.

The information published on April 8 shows that PHAC and Health Canada spent approximately $4.6 million on production costs of ads, with $5.3 million on actual advertising of the COVID shots on social media platforms Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Pinterest from 2020 to 2024.

One mass COVID vaccination advertising campaign titled the “Ripple Effect” cost about $1.8 million alone. PHAC claimed the campaign served to “remind Canadians about the collective vaccination effort required to see a reduction in restrictions and public health measures.”

Other campaigns ranged in spending from $75,000 to $564,000 to promote the shots to young adults.

PHAC also spent $1.5 million on a campaign to promote the COVID shots to parents with kids to try and encourage them to get their kids injected.

It should be noted that PHAC, as per a 2021-22 Departmental Results Report, had tried “diligently to counter false statements and misinformation” to prop up the COVID shots. In 2023, PHAC was looking to hire social media influencers to promote the jab to Canadians who were opposed to taking the shots.

Health Canada previously was found to have spent some $132,000 on social media influencers to promote the COVID shots.

As reported by LifeSiteNews recently, the Trudeau government is still under contract to purchase multiple shipments of COVID shots while at the same time throwing away $1.5 billion worth of expired shots.

Canadians’ decision to refuse the shots also comes as a Statistic Canada report revealed that deaths from COVID-19 and “unspecified causes” rose after the release of the so-called “safe and effective” jabs.

LifeSiteNews has published an extensive amount of research on the dangers of receiving the experimental COVID mRNA jabs, which include heart damage and blood clots.

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