Bloggers note : with transcript
VIDEO ...
okay
okay well I'd like to say thank you for uh being here and and welcome as you all know the covid-19 pandemic unprecedented event as far as Canada the countries in the world are concerned and the response is by the governments to covid-19 has been unprecedented as well and one of the consequences of that is a large number of people at least that I've heard from want to see inquiry into what went right what went wrong and most importantly for the future what lessons can be learned from how this was managed that would be ensure better Management in in the so the purpose of this conference is this morning is to announce that uh an inquiry of that kind is being organized National independent citizen-led inquiry into Canada's response to covet 19. the organization behind this at this stage we've Incorporated a not-for-profit um is a not-for-profit company that will receive donations to support this effort's going to cost some money to and to spend it and to direct the operation at the beginning there's also a more importantly a website's been set up national citizens uh inquiry dot CA where people are being invited to a indicate their support that they want such an inquiry secondly to suggest the names of Commissioners that they would have confidence in because this inquiry would be conducted by Commissioners and thirdly to donate if they wish because there's going to have to be some money raised in this connection so and the plan is to keep that website open for November and December to and Endeavor to get support for this concept of the inquiry and get these suggestions for commissioners but to then hold public hearings across the country in in starting in the New Year the initial idea is that there'd be one in Atlantic Canada probably centered in Moncton one in Quebec in Montreal one in Ontario in in Manitoba in Winnipeg one in Red Deer for Saskatchewan Alberta one in Victoria for BC and then concluding with a a summary Hearing in Ottawa and the the Commissioners would be expected to produce a report shortly after that these hearings would be in-person and with the opportunity for virtual so that's really the plan and uh the uh as I say the purpose of this um news conference this morning is just to announce the organization of that inquiry and to direct people particularly to that website because that's where the information will be on who is supporting this what are their suggestions for who they would trust as Commissioners and and the progress of this thing will basically be recorded by viewing that website so that's probably enough for me but I'm happy to answer questions about this I should mention mid-october a public opinion survey was indicated 74 of Canadians felt that harm was done to them by the health protection measures adopted with respect to covet 19. this is not harmed from covid this is harmed from the protection measures that those were in four categories harms to People's Health people on the waiting lines for example people that suffered adverse effects from vaccines and so forth harms due to restrictions of Rights and Freedoms social harms mainly due to social distancing and of course economic harms due to the lockdown of the economy and that survey including Regional breakdowns on it is on that website as well for people that want to take a look at that anyway that's enough nice to see you again Mr remaining usually a public inquiry the the strength of it is that they have a legislative power to compel testimony to make sure that those who know actually give a testimony which you wouldn't have with a citizen-led commission so how do you ensure The credibility of the process if you can't ensure that those who know will actually appear no that's a good question we looked at that of course normally on on issues like this I like you're suggesting the inquiry will be held under the public inquiries act either the federal one or the provincial ones where the Commissioners would have appear and this inquiry that doesn't have that now the the reason for doing this as a citizen-led inquiry is because so many people are suspicious that if the government commissions an inquiry to look into how the government handled things that that would be biased and so the idea was to try to make this thing citizen-led inquiry it will not have the powers to compel witnesses to appear although it can invite them to appear and publicly invite them to appear and when they say they won't if that's what they say it does raise the question how come what if you got to hide but that is one of the the challenges of holding this inquiry as basically a citizen-led one not a government-sanctioned one but but again I ask my question so don't you open the door of people criticizing that initiative as being something like which will be led by conspiracy theories and people you know have this version of institution Etc yeah oh yeah they'll be those accusations but the way to answer that question is not like academically for me to say no it's not going to happen that way the thing is to actually see the hearing and see and then make a judgment after the hearing after you've seen who the testimony is from the cross-examination and the intent is to have people testify as to the impacts of this the covet protection measures at these hearings and anyone that testifies even if someone wants to testify that this group's information is misinformation but they'll have to testify under oath they'll be a commissioner both asking that what you say is that you swear that's the truth not just the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth and secondly you will be subject to cross-examination by somebody who probably knows more about this than you or me so that these are a couple of measures to try to get the ensure the Integrity of this process but in the end of the day people have to judge is this a fair objective exercise or is it skewed one way or the other oh okay hi Mr Manning Stephanie Levitz the Toronto Star who will get to decide who the Commissioners are that would be a lot of power I mean I understand that people get to recommend who they'd like but who's the person who ultimately gets who the right right now this the the organization behind this is this Canada this National inquiry Canada which is this Federal not-for-profit Corporation with three directors of which I I am one but the the hope is to add to this group that will organize this thing so it's broader and more more representative than us but that that group will decide but they'll have to base it on what people themselves say is who who would they trust to do this and at this stage we don't know who what those suggestions will be at this point some people have suggested what you want is is a the most objective people you can get like a retired judge or somebody others have suggested this is typical of Canada uh know what you want is expertise on that panel you want a medical person you want a civil rights person you want an economist and so forth I think what may end up is a combination of those probably with a chief commissioner whose main characteristic is objectivity and so forth but others on on that panel that have that expertise and then as I said to the earlier question people will just have to judge is this a legitimate panel in which they have confidence if they don't then they won't pay attention to it if they do then they will this seems um a few months back now you were you were talking if I recall correctly about the need for a Citizens Commission in general about the government about how our country and that sort of followed through in a few years prior you were talking about how the country needs a pop-off valve for all the populist anger that is out there right now and I mean do you fundamentally think that something is broken in our existing institutions right now that we people no longer have the question would I be happy to answer on some other occasionally I don't want this is not so much connected to that or this inquiry is an inquiry into one particular response by governments to a particular crisis I I'd be happy on another occasion to get into the broader subject of the need for reform but I think you've heard me on that subject before but this is on sort of a narrower inquiry just into the responses to the Stephanie Taylor with the Canadian press who are the must-haves in terms of witnesses that would testify at this I understand it sounds like this is very early stage we're just putting things if you can't compel people to come and and testify or to speak to some of the decisions made at the inquiry it raises some questions about the process so in your mind who would this inquiry have to hear from well the the I think the largest group is people who were impacted by these measures what this public opinion survey shows that 74 percent the Canadians said they were injured they were harmed by the health protection measures to cope with copen19 so people to testify as to what were those harms what were the effects on their the adverse effects on their health what were the effects on rights and freedoms what was the effect on their their social well-being what were the effects on their economical being I would expect a fair amount of the testimony from those people and they'll be subject to cross-examination too so the comments at face value I think a witness will be scientists and medical people who have an alternative negative an alternative narrative to the one that was put forwards by the government there's a lot of those people and then the third category which I think you're getting at it would be nice to get a response from some of the government people and officials themselves they can't compel those people to participate but you can invite them and it was maybe encouraging the other day that Dr Tam said that the government would welcome an inquiry into how this was done so maybe there'll be a more positive response there than than we the federal conservatives under the new leader have focused a lot on the cost of living a lot on affordability um some concerns about the arrive can app about the irgc but in terms of the effects of coveted mandates and some of the Civil Rights concerns that people have expressed they haven't to my um super vocal as of late on those what do you what do you make of that should this be something the federal conservatives take on on Champion well make this less political less partisan political than you know what does the one party think or what is one party doing partly because they're getting the suspicion from the public if the if the government took the initiative on this if the liberal government took the initiative people would say this will be a whitewash if if the opposition gets too militant on it they say well this is a Witch Hunt so it's best to keep the parties not directly involved I mean they can choose to be or not but it's best to keep them not and to hopefully the representation on that website will be cross-partisan not particularly skewed one way or the other and again like we could discuss this academically at the end of the day people are going to have to look at these hearings and make a judgment is this objective was this a worthwhile effort or was it skewed One Way politically or skewed another way from the standpoint of hi there uh Matthew Orr from the Western standards good to see you um you mentioned briefly that there would be talk about uh adverse reactions of vaccines I've certainly heard from a lot of Canadians that have experienced that but there hasn't been much attention given to it could you provide more details on what exactly you'd like to see would these be individual Canadians harmed by vaccines testifying would these be groups on behalf of them what what sort of details can you provide on that well one thing in the on this website one of the background items is that there was a group in Toronto in June that conducted as sort of a test hearing what would happen if you had public hearings for three days they had 60 different uh people testify most of them for 10 minutes on what the effects were on them those testimonies covered quite a range it wasn't just negative Health impacts it was the rights and freedoms the social and economic but the ones that did testify on the health impacts there were two categories one was from people that felt that the the lengthening of the waiting lines where people suffering from something other than covid people that had people die on The Waiting lines because of our incapacity of our system to handle a surge in demand that that was a negative health impact as a result of the the covert restrictions and then others were on the subject of adverse effects from the vaccines but I I would think from what we've seen thus far those are probably the two types of testimonies with respect to health impacts and we'll see what they are would you have any Canadians testify who have relatives or friends that passed away from vaccines there's one gentleman in particular his son Sean Hartman passed away a couple days after doing the vaccine he got in order to play hockey and he's been quite outspoken on social media well these people be entitled to uh our intent is not to sort of try to first of all to see who who is willing to testify on this sort of thing and about what but I would expect there would be people that would testify along those along those lines and the only caution I give to anybody that wants to testify on this is a you'll be asked to affirm that what your chain is the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth which we never had to take that off in Parliament but this is another subject and and secondly that you will be subject to cross-examination you it won't just be accepted you'll be asked by somebody that's very knowledgeable about your testimony but uh hopefully people with these stories will come forward they certainly did at this Toronto uh thing and and the and the hearings are available on this as background material on this website again uh just a quick question uh you mentioned that there were three directors of your entity what are the two others yeah they're they're listed on that website doctor or Mr David Ross who's a chartered accountant in in New Brunswick and also has quite a reputation for her uh uh ethics in the accounting business and uh uh on Ottawa lawyer here who did the legal work of putting this thing together uh Andre litchenko and the names are on the uh I'll check with the brick bio on each of us yeah and the other question I wanted um I don't think we're talking right now of having a real public like an official public inquiry but this but if it were to happen uh do you think it would be a good replacement of your citizen-led initiative or you think that both could uh live side by side well I think this citizens one would be a good test case to see what would actually happen if you tried to have this inquiry the if the government were to commission it'd have the same you know skepticism that some of you might Express with respect to this one how objective would it be governments investigating themselves particularly on something like that would would that be objective would the public say no this thing is skewed there's a real challenge no matter who does this to get credibility and and we feel the starting point for that is to ask people themselves who would you trust to do this you know and go with to the two can coexist I I would think this one would proceed I would think the politicians will watch this one particularly if it can be done fairly quickly to see what happens what comes out and then that might condition their decision as to whether you have one or Inc stories of people's uh feelings about the pandemic restrictions feeling about the vaccine experiences with the combination of thereof they're already out there you yourself cited a public opinion survey where uh you know people's trust in how the pandemic was handled was low so what new thing would you learn from allowing this kind of airing of grievances well like I don't want to prejudge the outcome of this but if I was one of those Commissioners I would listen to these stories but the last question I would ask a witness is okay what would you recommend as to how this could be done differently so that the harm that you've talked to us about wouldn't have occurred and to try to get on to not just what went wrong but what can be done differently and and that might be the most useful outcome from this and and you then you will get into some of the suggestions that have been made already was it the wisest thing to hand the management of this over to the healthcare bureaucracies when one of the conclusions from the SARS pandemic was that our bureaucracies are not the right people to handle the emergency is that so so what's the alternative uh what you might get is some of these alternative narratives from the science and and medical community who who argue that the the idea that there's a single scientific narrative with respect to anything is not scientific science involves competing hypothesis so you might you might get that kind of output and that would be useful it's going Beyond just what went wrong and what were the harms but what can be done to try to manage this stuff better in the uh just two other questions for me who's gonna pay for this well I wish I knew we've got to donate button on this website and and hopefully and we'll say to people it's all very well to click on here and say you want this hearing but somebody's got to put up the the money uh one of the hopes is to get a lot of donations in kind like just the facilities to hold the hearing in a certain town is well somebody put that up so that we don't have to pay for it but that's going to be quite a crucial thing and and at this stage there's this not-for-profit company set up to collect the money and to spend the money and we'll just have to see whether there's enough financial support to really make okay that that brings another a bunch of other questions to my head but um have you I mean you talked about hoping that this would supersede or yeah supersede anything that the government might choose to do on its own have you gone to the government anyone in the liberal government or the opposition parties and said what do you think of this do you um and would you back I haven't but of course there have been demands from other people or suggesting that this should be done and so far at least as I understand that the government have been pretty cool towards it and for the obvious reasons this is an investigation into something that they themselves did I had a profound level this is an unprecedented intervention so I I think the impression has been given so far is that the government is reluctant to have this done or if it were to do it it would be skewed in a certain way maybe the most uh recent and most welcome thing was that Dr Tam did I and some of you I think made me covered that her comments she did say that there's they would welcome an inquiry and it was quite vague but so maybe the government okay have we covered the field okay well thank you very much and say really that website is the source of ongoing information on on uh on this uh this uh national citizen-led uh inquiry into the response to covet 19. so thank you very
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