COVID-19
Preston Manning stepping away from National Citizen’s Inquiry to focus on the Alberta Public Health review
From the National Citizen’s Inquiry
The National Citizen’s Inquiry (NCI) – a citizen-led inquiry into Canada’s response to COVID-19 – is finalizing plans to hold hearings across the country. With two of five commissioners now in place, the inquiry has booked its first two events – in Atlantic Canada and Central Canada.
Across the country, we are seeing more and more clear signals that Canadians are not only ready to ask the hard questions about how our governments reacted to this pandemic, but also require the answers.
Nation-wide concern
Another Liberal minister has said the quiet part out loud. Former Finance Minister Bill Morneau joined his one-time colleagues Joel Lightbound, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Marcus Powlowski, John McKay and Yves Robillard in expressing dismay that the Trudeau Liberals used vaccine mandates as a political wedge issue, an approach that “stigmatizes and divides people” as Lightbound put it.
In fact, after two years of vaccine distribution, the state broadcaster this week also published one of its first articles chronicling widespread vaccine injuries. The article acknowledged that those suffering from adverse effects also deal with “silence” and “stigma” as a result of the overly politicized tone set by Ottawa.
In Ontario, 164 former health care workers rallied to let the public know that, while the provincial health care system buckles under immense pressure and nurses are shipped in from other parts of Canada, there are hundreds of workers that were terminated because of vaccination mandates – and to the surprise of most – they are still not permitted to resume their careers.
In Alberta, Premier Danielle Smith has commissioned a Public Health Emergencies Governance Review Panel which will “review the legislation that guided Alberta’s response to COVID-19 and recommend changes to improve the handling of future public health emergencies for Albertans.”
NCI Spokesperson
On that note, Preston Manning will be stepping away from his role as spokesperson for the NCI to chair the Alberta review. The NCI welcomes this positive initiative by Premier Smith and believes the people of Alberta will be well-served by the appointment of Mr. Manning as Chair. Taking over for Manning is acclaimed investigative journalist Trish Wood. Wood worked for 10 years on CBC’s Emmy Award-winning Fifth Estate before exposing the heartbreaking stories of Iraq War veterans in What Was Asked of Us and later pioneering the modern renaissance of true-crime storytelling. This experience has allowed her to hone the kind of unapologetic critical thinking and investigative skills that she will bring to bear in this role.
Hearing Details
Plans for the Inquiry’s in-person hearings – supplemented by virtual participation – are now being finalized. The first hearings will be in Atlantic Canada e.g. Truro/Nova Scotia, March 16,17,18 and Montreal/Quebec, 22, 23, and 24 of March.
Additionally, the Inquiry has appointed its first two commissioners. They are Bernard Massie and Ken Drysdale.
Invitations will soon be sent to government officials at all levels across the country. These individuals will be invited to provide their perspectives and reflect on the decisions that were made.
Invitations are also extended to experts in the areas of economics; health care; mental and physical wellbeing; constitutional expertise; learning; and any other area significantly affected by pandemic response at any level. The Inquiry is also welcoming non-experts with personal stories that will help illuminate any unarticulated and overlooked shortcomings in the government responses. As demonstrated in the article reference above, there are many Canadians who feel silenced and stigmatized.
Take the example of Christian and Margarita
Immigrants from Mexico, they chose to start a life and a family here in Canada. Christian holds a PhD and was a lecturer at a prominent Canadian university. His wife was a program manager for a regional health authority.
After soberly considering their risk profile against the available data, as well as suspecting that the mRNA vaccination was incompatible with aspects of their faith, they chose to wait.
And in their situation, we see the unfortunate cascading effects of these poorly considered policies, developed in bureaucratic silos.
Christian and his wife – who worked from home, incidentally – were both put on indefinite administrative leave by their employers. Both streams of household income effectively removed.
And because of the Federal government’s policies, they were also deemed ineligible for any employment insurance.
Being immigrants, they also did not have family around them. In fact, their main community connections were from a church they attended. Unfortunately, they were also no longer allowed to attend worship services because of the imposition of the vaccine passport program by the provincial government.
At the time this happened, Christian and Margarita were also living on an island. Federal travel mandates left them effectively stranded.
In the span of a month, these highly skilled individuals – who had made Canada their new home – lost all income; were disqualified from any social assistance; lost their primary community support system; and could not even get on a plane to leave.
Now Christian and Margarita are in the process of returning to Mexico, where they have more confidence that the government will leave them in peace.
It is stories like this that will not be heard at an internal meeting between government officials and senior bureaucrats. It is stories like this that demand a citizen’s inquiry.
About the National Citizen’s Inquiry
NCI is a citizen-led and citizen-funded initiative that is completely independent from government. In early 2023, the NCI will hear from Canadians and experts and investigate governments’ COVID-19 policies in a fair and impartial manner. The NCI’s purpose is to listen, to learn, and to recommend. What went right? What went wrong? How can Canadians and our governments better react to national crises in the future in a manner that balances the interests of all members of our society?
COVID-19
‘They lied to us’: Wife of 53-year-old who died hours after receiving Remdesivir speaks out

From LifeSiteNews
By Michael Nevradakis Ph. D., The Defender
Shannon is trying to raise public awareness of the COVID-19 hospital protocols that she believes led to her husband’s death.
In August 2021, 53-year-old Michael E. Pilgrim and his wife Shannon had just celebrated their 29th wedding anniversary and were looking forward to their daughter’s marriage in October.
A former military service member and father of two, Michael was a “good husband and great dad” and enjoyed golf in his spare time.
However, Michael’s fortunes dramatically changed that month when he experienced difficulty breathing and a low oxygen level. On Aug. 17, 2021, he was admitted to Dallas Regional Medical Center, near his hometown of Forney, Texas, with a COVID-19 diagnosis.
Two days later, on Aug. 19, he was dead.
In an interview with The Defender, Shannon Pilgrim said that from the time Michael was admitted to the hospital, she and other members of her family were barred from visiting him and kept in the dark about the treatment he was receiving.
READ: 26% of those prescribed Remdesivir for COVID died, according to Medicare database
According to Shannon, Michael’s medical records showed that doctors barely offered Michael any treatment and emphasized his unvaccinated status. Treatments Michael received included the controversial drug remdesivir — administered hours before his death.
Today, Shannon is trying to raise public awareness of the COVID-19 hospital protocols that she believes led to her husband’s death. She shared extensive medical documentation with The Defender corroborating her story.
‘Contradictory’ medical records contained ‘many gaps’
Shannon recounted that she and Michael became sick at the same time, but she recovered. Meanwhile, Michael remained bedridden. Shannon said Michael was previously healthy and was not taking any medications, but his breathing difficulties “scared” her and led her to call 911 — a decision she now regrets.
“The worst thing that’s ever happened to me is calling 911,” Shannon said. “I thought that I was doing the best thing for Michael. I came to find out that was the worst thing.”
Michael was taken to Dallas Regional Medical Center, a hospital that “has a horrible reputation” according to Shannon. She accused the hospital of refusing her request for Michael to be transferred and did not let her see him after he was admitted.
Shannon said communication with the hospital was limited. “I would call and the nurses would tell me they were on shift change or were busy and couldn’t talk to me.”
Doctors’ interactions with Michael were also limited, Shannon said. “They were just leaving him in a room and they had an iPad popped in to ask him about medical stuff.”
According to Shannon, most of what she’s learned about Michael’s treatment came from the medical records she obtained after his death — even though the records “are completely just contradictory” and contain “many gaps.”
Shannon referred to an instance when a Dallas Regional doctor told her that Michael was doing well — while the records indicate that the doctor called her to say Michael was in critical condition.
Shannon said the records revealed that the hospital “did nothing” for Michael. She said:
On the first day, they basically didn’t do anything except give him oxygen. The next day, he had a chest X-ray and then doctors gave him vitamins … there’s contradictory stuff in here about whether he even had an IV. I can’t even get — from looking at his medical records — if they gave him fluid.
They started giving him Lovenox shots for blood clots. Why? He didn’t have blood clots … Then they started giving him insulin. Why were they giving him insulin? He wasn’t a diabetic.
But according to the medical records, they really didn’t do anything, and that’s what just completely floored me — except they gave him remdesivir.
Remdesivir, which has been linked to deaths and injuries in COVID-19 patients, was commonly administered to patients under the COVID-19 hospital protocols.
According to Shannon, the records indicate that Michael was administered remdesivir on the day of his death. But as she recalls, when she spoke to her husband on the phone that day at noon he showed no signs of being in danger.
“He called me, and I actually got to talk to him. I didn’t talk to him very long, but he wasn’t on a ventilator. He was better,” Shannon said. “I called my kids and I was like, ‘He sounded so good.’ I said, ‘He’s going to be coming home.’ I was so excited.”
Yet, that afternoon, Michael was given remdesivir. According to Shannon, the hospital called her a few hours later to say that Michael was found unresponsive.
“I got hysterical,” Shannon said. “I was asking again and again, ‘Is he OK? Where is he? How do I get in touch?’ … She wouldn’t give me her name. She just said, ‘I’m so sorry.’ She said he coded and they took him to ICU and ‘someone will call you tomorrow’ … And she hung up the phone on me.”
Shannon’s son called Dallas Regional and was told Michael had died. But the family’s difficulties did not end there, as the hospital did not allow them to see Michael’s body.
“We didn’t get to see him until he was embalmed, because they told us that he had COVID,” Shannon said.
Shannon said she believes her husband’s unvaccinated status played a role in the treatment he received. She said Michael had been “cautious” about the COVID-19 vaccine and reluctant to receive it — and that the hospital was aware of this.
“You see all through his medical records, ‘unvaccinated,’ ‘unvaccinated,’ ‘unvaccinated,’” Shannon said. “It’s even written in there, ‘doesn’t trust the vaccine.’”
‘They completely lied’
Shannon said the hospital stonewalled her and her family after Michael’s death.
“They wouldn’t talk to me, they wouldn’t take my calls,” Shannon said. “I kept calling up there and begging to have somebody tell me what happened and nobody would tell me.” The hospital then started pursuing her for unpaid medical bills, she said.
When she did speak to hospital personnel, they misled her. In one instance, she said a doctor told her that while she had the right to have an autopsy performed on Michael’s body, local authorities were “six to eight months behind” and that she’d have to wait that long for the body to be released.
“They completely lied, because later I found out that by law they have to do an autopsy within two weeks, and then it can be six to eight months before you actually get the report. But they have to do it and they have to release the body. But they lied to us and we trusted them,” Shannon said.
Instead, Shannon said the government-funded COVID-19 Bereavement Assistance Fund offered a $10,000 payout for Michael’s death. “They were giving up to $10,000 if the death certificate had COVID on it. And I said, ‘no way in hell will I take that payout.”
Instead, Shannon became an advocate for families that endured similar experiences, by joining the FormerFedsGroup Freedom Foundation. Through her involvement with this advocacy group, Shannon has met with legislators, attorneys and family members of other COVID-19 hospital protocol victims.
“It’s hard, but I don’t want other loved ones to go through what we went through,” Shannon said. “I realized that I want to keep fighting. And so, as hard as it is to keep reliving this timeframe, I will keep doing it … I don’t want people to think he died from COVID, because he didn’t. He died at the hospital because of them. They killed him.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
COVID-19
Media failing to cover ‘powerful testimony’ of people injured by COVID vaccines

From LifeSiteNews
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D., The Defender
Kate Scott’s husband Jamie was an athlete, a high-power executive, and an active husband and father of two boys until he nearly died after experiencing jab-induced immune thrombosis and thrombocytopenia from the AstraZeneca COVID shot.
Important information coming out of the ongoing UK Covid-19 Inquiry is “slipping between the cracks” of media coverage, YouTube commenter John Campbell, Ph.D., reported on a recent episode of his show.
Campbell played clips of testimony by Kate Scott, who represents the U.K.’s Covid Vaccine Injured & Bereaved (VIBUK). Kate’s husband, Jamie, suffered a traumatic brain injury and was left severely disabled by the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Kate’s testimony is part of the inquiry’s fourth module, investigating issues related to the COVID-19 shots and therapeutics.
Jamie was an athlete, a high-power executive, and an active husband and father of two boys until he nearly died after experiencing jab-induced immune thrombosis and thrombocytopenia. He was in a coma for four weeks and five days.
Jamie survived, Kate explained, but his life will never be the same. His traumatic brain injury affects his thinking processes and his emotions. He is partially blind and he will never be able to work again, to live independently, or to look after their children.
Kate said that she and her group were testifying to draw attention to the fact that many people were injured by the shot, to remove the stigma of jab injuries, and to compel the government and pharmaceutical companies “to look again at how to deal with the inconvenient fact of vaccine injury and bereavement and the lives it has shattered.”
She said the very first serious side effects from the AstraZeneca shot “should have rung an alarm with the MHRA” – Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency – and the U.K. “government that there was a serious problem. However, no action was taken.”
She presented data that VIBUK obtained via a freedom of information law request showing that, as of November 30, 2024, 17,519 vaccine injury victims have made claims to the government’s Vaccine Damage Payment scheme.
Of those, she said, only 194 victims have been notified that they are entitled to payment, and only 55 have received any payment. The maximum allowed payment is 120,000 pounds (approximately $150,000).
Kate also revealed that people are deemed ineligible for compensation if they are considered less than 60 percent disabled and that many people receive diagnoses that they are 59 percent disabled.
“A percentage disablement is also somewhat offensive,” she said. “Regardless of if it’s 10 percent or 59 percent or, Jamie, way over 60 percent, or dead — I guess that’s 100% disabled — there’s no compensation if you fall below that [60 percent].”.
“The consequence of being told, ‘sorry you’re only 55% disabled,’ it’s awful, it’s devastating and then there’s nothing for you, no one to help.”
Commenting on her testimony, Campbell asked, “How on earth can a clinician adjudicate someone is only 59 percent disabled? Why not 58? Why not 61? How can you be 59 percent disabled? I don’t understand that. I simply don’t understand it.”
Kate added, “Statistics are interesting, aren’t they? Within our group, [for] 100 percent of the people in it, [the vaccine] was not ‘safe and effective.’”
The group recommended that pharmaceutical companies should not fund the government agencies that regulate them. They also said the Yellow Card scheme — which is the U.K.’s adverse events reporting system for medicines, vaccines, medical devices and other products — should be mandatory rather than voluntary.
Kate also said the government should follow up when people file yellow cards. Many people in their group had filed cards, but no one ever contacted them to investigate.
“We are important,” she said. “We’re part of this pandemic story.”
Campbell asked, “Why is it that so many things only come to light from freedom of information requests?” He said it’s a pity these stories are not being picked up by the media. “Powerful testimony, not well-covered, unfortunately,” he said.
Watch here:
Republished with permission from Children’s Health Defense – Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
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