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“If you tell the truth consistently, trust is automatic” – Former CBC Reporter blasts media coverage during pandemic and Freedom Convoy

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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

Rodney Palmer is an award-winning journalist who has worked for 20 years as a foreign correspondent for CTV news and investigative reporter for CBC Radio & Television in Canada and abroad. He was the CTV News Foreign Correspondent and Bureau Chief in India, China, and the Middle East.
Rodney’s explosive testimony during the NCI #Toronto hearing on day 1 provided evidence as to how #CBC in particular is not conducting newsgathering, they are focusing on propaganda.

 

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2025 Federal Election

Mark Carney refuses to clarify 2022 remarks accusing the Freedom Convoy of ‘sedition’

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Mark Carney described the Freedom Convoy as an act of ‘sedition’ and advocated for the government to use its power to crush the non-violent protest movement.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney refused to elaborate on comments he made in 2022 referring to the anti-mandate Freedom Convoy protest as an act of “sedition” and advocating for the government to put an end to the movement.

“Well, look, I haven’t been a politician,” Carney said when a reporter in Windsor, Ontario, where a Freedom Convoy-linked border blockade took place in 2022, asked, “What do you say to Canadians who lost trust in the Liberal government back then and do not have trust in you now?”

“I became a politician a little more than two months ago, two and a half months ago,” he said. “I came in because I thought this country needed big change. We needed big change in the economy.”

Carney’s lack of an answer seems to be in stark contrast to the strong opinion he voiced in a February 7, 2022, column published in the Globe & Mail at the time of the convoy titled, “It’s Time To End The Sedition In Ottawa.”

In that piece, Carney wrote that the Freedom Convoy was a movement of “sedition,” adding, “That’s a word I never thought I’d use in Canada. It means incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority.”

Carney went on to claim in the piece that if “left unchecked” by government authorities, the Freedom Convoy would “achieve” its “goal of undermining our democracy.”

Carney even targeted “[a]nyone sending money to the Convoy,” accusing them of “funding sedition.”

Internal emails from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) eventually showed that his definition of sedition were not in conformity with the definition under Canada’s Criminal Code, which explicitly lists the “use of force” as a necessary aspect of sedition.

“The key bit is ‘use of force,’” one RCMP officer noted in the emails. “I’m all about a resolution to this and a forceful one with us victorious but, from the facts on the ground, I don’t know we’re there except in a small number of cases.”

The reality is that the Freedom Convoy was a peaceful event of public protest against COVID mandates, and not one protestor was charged with sedition. However, the Liberal government, then under Justin Trudeau, did take an approach similar to the one advocated for by Carney, invoking the Emergencies Act to clear-out protesters. Since then, a federal judge has ruled that such action was “not justified.”

Despite this, the two most prominent leaders of the Freedom Convoy, Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, still face a possible 10-year prison sentence for their role in the non-violent assembly. LifeSiteNews has reported extensively on their trial.

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COVID-19

17-year-old died after taking COVID shot, but Ontario judge denies his family’s liability claim

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

An Ontario judge dismissed a liability claim from a family of a high schooler who died weeks after taking the COVID shot.

According to a published report on March 26 by Blacklock’s Reporter, Ontario Superior Court Justice Sandra Antoniani ruled that the Department of Health had no “duty of care” to a Canadian teenager who died after receiving a COVID vaccine.

“The plaintiff’s tragedy is real, but there is no private law duty of care made out,” Antoniani said.

“There is no private law duty of care to individual members of the public injured by government core policy decisions in the handling of health emergencies which impact the general population,” she continued.

In September 2021, 17-year-old Sean Hartman of Beeton, Ontario, passed away just three weeks after receiving a Pfizer-BioNtech COVID shot.

After his death, his family questioned if health officials had warned Canadians “that a possible side effect of receiving a Covid-19 vaccine was death.” The family took this petition to court but has been denied a hearing.

Antoniani alleged that “the defendants’ actions were aimed at mitigating the health impact of a global pandemic on the Canadian public. The defendants deemed that urgent action was necessary.”

“Imposition of a private duty of care would have a negative impact on the ability of the defendants to prioritize the interests of the entire public, with the distraction of fear over the possibility of harm to individual members of the public, and the risk of litigation and unlimited liability,” she ruled.

As LifeSiteNews previously reported, Dan Hartman, Sean’s father, filed a $35.6 million lawsuit against Pfizer after his son’s death.

However, only 103 claims of 1,859 have been approved to date, “where it has been determined by the Medical Review Board that there is a probable link between the injury and the vaccine, and that the injury is serious and permanent.”

Thus far, VISP has paid over $6 million to those injured by COVID injections, with some 2,000 claims remaining to be settled.

According to studies, post-vaccination heart conditions such as myocarditis are well documented in those, especially young males who have received the Pfizer jab.

Additionally, a recent study done by researchers with Canada-based Correlation Research in the Public Interest showed that 17 countries have found a “definite causal link” between peaks in all-cause mortality and the fast rollouts of the COVID shots as well as boosters.

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