COVID-19
Federal appeals court rejects challenge against Canada’s COVID vaccine travel mandate as ‘moot’
From LifeSiteNews
People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier, former Newfoundland and Labrador premier Brian Peckford, and eight others contended citizens’ mobility charter rights were violated, but the case was dismissed because the restrictions are no longer in place.
The Canadian Federal Court of Appeal dismissed as “moot” a legal challenge initiated against the federal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over its COVID jab travel mandates that banned the vaccine free from travel.
The legal challenge was initiated by People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier, former Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador Brian Peckford, and eight others who said Trudeau’s mandates violated one’s mobility charter rights.
In a judgment issued November 9, Justice George R. Locke of the appeals court, on behalf of two other judges, ruled that the case was “moot for lack of live controversy” as the COVID travel jab mandates are no longer in effect.
“For the foregoing reasons, I would dismiss all of the present appeals,” the judge wrote.
Bernier and Peckford’s lawyers had argued that their case had merit, despite the travel COVID jab mandates being gone, as they could be reintroduced at a moment’s notice.
The appeals court did note that while COVID travel vaccine mandates may be reintroduced in the future, this was “highly speculative.”
Bernier, who was a strong supporter of the Freedom Convoy and did not get the COVID shots, said he was “very disappointed” in the court ruling but vowed to continue the fight against the “unjust” mandates.
“I am very disappointed but not at all surprised by this decision considering the types of slanted questions and comments that the judges made during our hearing a month ago,” Bernier wrote November 9 on X (formerly Twitter).
“I will speak to my colleague Brian Peckford and the other appellants to determine our next step. I will continue to do everything I can to fight these unjust travel mandates and make sure they are never implemented again.”
In February 2022, Bernier, along with Peckford, and eight others filed a court challenge to COVID mandates in place at the time that banned the vaccine-free from air travel. Bernier and Peckford had the help of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF).
The legal challenge made headlines as Peckford is the last living signatory to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which came into force in 1982.
In November 2021, the Trudeau government introduced COVID jab travel mandates, which remained in place until June 2022.
In October 2022, the Canadian federal court ruled Bernier and Peckford’s and the others court case as “Moot” in light of the federal government dropping COVID mandates in the same month.
Later, in April 2023, Bernier and Peckford, with the help of the JCCF, along with the others in the case filed an appeal in the “mootness” ruling.
JCCF said case was important as COVID travel jab mandates were a ‘Egregious infringement of Canadians’ mobility rights’
Last month, the Federal Court of Appeal in Ottawa heard Bernier and Peckford’s and the others’ court case. JCCF president John Carpay noted at the time that the case was important as well as unique.
“There has never been a more egregious infringement of Canadians’ mobility rights than what occurred due to the unconstitutional and unlawful travel vaccine mandates,” Carpay observed.
“For the Federal Court to find that it is not in the public interest to determine whether the Federal Government acted lawfully in prohibiting 5 million Canadians from flying across the country and internationally to see family members is a grave injustice that the Federal Court of Appeal ought to remedy.”
In September 2022, Bernier thanked all Canadian “freedom fighters” who protested against COVID mandates of all kinds after a federal travel jab mandate for air travel was dropped.
Bernier, who is a former MP and cabinet minister with the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) before creating the PPC in 2018, was one of the most outspoken politicians against the COVID mandates. He would frequently criticize his former party for not speaking out against the mandates.
Eventually, the CPC under its new leader Pierre Poilievre, but after the mandates had been lifted, began to speak out against Trudeau’s mandates.
A recent bill championed by Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) leader Pierre Poilievre that would have given Canadians back their “bodily autonomy” by banning future jab mandates was voted down yesterday Trudeau’s Liberals and all other parties rejected it.
In October 2021, Trudeau announced unprecedented COVID-19 jab mandates for all federal workers and those in the transportation sector and said the unjabbed would no longer be able to travel by air, boat, or train both domestically and internationally.
This policy resulted in thousands losing their jobs or being placed on leave for non-compliance. It also trapped “unvaccinated” Canadians in the country.
During the so-called COVID pandemic, Trudeau referred to those who chose not to get the experimental COVID shots as terrible people.
In 2021, Trudeau said Canadians “vehemently opposed to vaccination” do “not believe in science,” are “often misogynists, often racists,” and even questioned whether Canada should continue to “tolerate these people.”
COVID-19
NIH Quietly Altered Definition For Gain-Of-Function Research On Its Website, Former Fauci Aide Confirms
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By JASON COHEN
National Institutes of Health (NIH) Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak confirmed on Thursday that his agency’s communications department altered NIH’s definition for gain-of-function research, with the change being “vetted” by “experts.”
The NIH until Oct. 20, 2021 defined this research as “modif[ying] a biological agent so that it confers new or enhanced activity to that agent,” while “some scientists use the term broadly to refer to any such modification,” according to the House Oversight Committee. Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York questioned Tabak, a former aide to Dr. Anthony Fauci, about the agency changing its definition of the research on its website, asking him who authorized the alteration.
WATCH:
The current website does not define gain-of-function research, but asserts this research is usually uninvolved with enhanced potential pandemic pathogens.
“The change was made by our communications department because of the confusion that people have about the generic term of gain-of-function and the specific term gain-of-function,” Tabak testified.
Malliotakis responded by suggesting the communications department would not be qualified to make a change like this and must have had other input.
“The content was vetted,” Tabak testified. “By individuals who are subject-matter experts.”
Fauci firmly denied that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) funded gain-of-function research on bat-based coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) before the COVID-19 pandemic during a Senate hearing in May 2021.
“The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Fauci said.
Tabak testified on Thursday that the NIH did fund this research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but it “depends on [the] definition.”
The NIAID, which Fauci previously led, funded the nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance to study bat-based coronaviruses in China that consisted of the transfer of $600,000 to the WIV, the Daily Caller News Foundation previously reported.
From Heartland Daily News
Thursday, May 16, 2024
Federal Funding Stripped From Nonprofit at Center of COVID Lab Leak Controversy
Today, the Biden administration suspended federal funding to the scientific nonprofit whose research is at the center of credible theories that the COVID-19 pandemic was started via a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
This morning, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it was immediately suspending three grants provided to the New York-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) as it starts the process of debarring the organization from receiving any federal funds.
“The immediate suspension of [EcoHealth Alliance] is necessary to protect the public interest and due to a cause of so serious or compelling a nature that it affects EHA’s present responsibility,” wrote HHS Deputy Secretary for Acquisitions Henrietta Brisbon in a memorandum signed this morning.
For years now, EcoHealth has generated immense controversy for its use of federal grant money to support gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab.
In a memo justifying its funding suspension, HHS said that EcoHealth had failed to properly monitor the work it was supporting at Wuhan. It also failed to properly report on the results of experiments showing that the hybrid viruses it was creating there had an improved ability to infect human cells.
Congressional Republicans leading an investigation into EcoHealth’s research in Wuhan, and the role it may have played in starting the pandemic via a lab leak, cheered HHS’s decision.
“EcoHealth facilitated gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China without proper oversight, willingly violated multiple requirements of its multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health [NIH] grant, and apparently made false statements to the NIH,” said Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R–Ohio), chair of the House’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in a statement. “These actions are wholly abhorrent, indefensible, and must be addressed with swift action.”
Beginning in 2014, EcoHealth received a grant from NIH’s National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to study bat coronavirus in China. Its initial scope of work involved collecting and cataloging viruses in the wild and studying them in the lab to spot which ones might be primed to “spillover” into humans and cause a pandemic.
Soon enough, EcoHealth used some of the viruses they’d collected to create “chimeric” or hybrid viruses that might be better able to infect human lung cells in genetically engineered (humanized) mice.
This so-called “gain-of-function” research has long been controversial for its potential to create deadly pandemic pathogens. In 2014, the Obama administration paused federal funding of gain-of-function research that might turn SARS, MERS, or flu viruses into more transmissible respiratory diseases in mammals.
In 2016, NIH flagged EcoHealth’s work as likely violating the 2014 pause.
EcoHealth President Peter Daszak argued to NIH at the time that the viruses his outfit was creating had not been proven to infect human cells and were genetically different enough from past pandemic viruses that they didn’t fall under the Obama administration pause.
Wuhan Institute of Virology and Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance
NIH accepted this argument under the condition that EcoHealth immediately stop its work and notify the agency if any of its hybrid viruses did show increased viral growth in humanized mice.
But when these hybrid viruses did show increased viral growth in mice, EcoHealth did not immediately stop work or notify NIH. It instead waited until it submitted an annual progress report in 2018 to disclose the results of its experiments.
A second progress report that EcoHealth submitted in 2021, two years after its due date, also showed its hybrid viruses were demonstrating increased viral growth and enhanced lethality in humanized mice.
In testimony to the House’s coronavirus subcommittee earlier this month, Daszak claimed that EcoHealth attempted to report the results of its gain-of-function experiments on time in 2019, but was frozen out of NIH’s reporting system.
The HHS memo released today says a forensic investigation found no evidence that EcoHealth was locked out of NIH’s reporting system. The department also said that EcoHealth had failed to produce requested lab notes and other materials from the Wuhan lab detailing the work being done there and the lab’s biosafety conditions.
These all amount to violations of EcoHealth’s grant agreement and NIH grant policy, thus warranting debarment from future federal funds, reads the HHS memo.
That EcoHealth would be stripped of its federal funding shouldn’t come as too great a shock to anyone who watched Daszak’s congressional testimony from earlier this month. Even Democrats on the committee openly accused Daszak of being misleading about EcoHealth’s work and manipulating facts.
Rep. Raul Ruiz (D–Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House’s coronavirus subcommittee, welcomed EcoHealth’s suspension, saying in a press release that the nonprofit failed its “obligation to meet the utmost standards of transparency and accountability to the American public.”
An HHS Office of the Inspector General report from last year had already found that EcoHealth had failed to submit progress reports on time or effectively monitor its subgrantee, the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
When grilling Daszak, Democrats on the Coronavirus Subcommittee went to great lengths to not criticize NIH’s oversight of EcoHealth’s work. The HHS debarment memo likewise focuses only on EcoHealth’s failures to abide by NIH policy and its grant conditions.
Nevertheless, it seems pretty obvious that NIH was failing to abide by the 2014 pause on gain-of-function funding when it allowed EcoHealth to go ahead with creating hybrid coronaviruses under the condition that they stop if the viruses did prove more virulent.
NIH compounded that oversight failure by not stopping EcoHealth’s funding when the nonprofit did, in fact, create more virulent viruses, and not following up on a never-submitted progress report detailing more gain-of-function research until two years later.
The House Subcommittee’s investigation into NIH’s role in gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab is ongoing. Tomorrow it will interview NIH Principal Deputy Director Lawerence Tabak. In June, it will interview former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci.
Originally published by Reason Foundation. Republished with permission.
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