Two minutes with the Justice Centre

Governments have been scaring Canadians half to death over Covid for nearly two years. Bad news is played up, good news is played down. Every night the news plays their Covid fear porn.

Meanwhile, far more people have been affected by government responses to Covid, than by Covid itself. Everybody has been affected by lockdowns, but less than five percent of Canadians have ever tested positive with Covid, and fewer than 0.08 percent (30,399) have actually died with it.

Governments and the media will never acknowledge this, however. In fact, when forced to justify ubiquitous lockdown harms in court, government officials conveniently book vacation time.

Hardly surprising then, that while Canadians grumble about government restrictions, few question the logic of shutting down entire portions of society, schools, churches, workplaces and on. But they should.

For just one example, consider places of worship. In Quebec, 70 percent of all deaths during the first five months of the crisis – 4,000 people – were in long-term care homes. That’s infinitely more cases than were ever traced back to places of worship. Yet despite this colossal failure, nursing homes have faced little scrutiny for nearly two years.

Meanwhile, lockdowns of faith services have continued, pastors holding church services as normal have been thrown in jail and the province continues its crack down on its churches. Quebec now requires photo ID and vaccine passports using the province’s VAXICODE system, for entry into any place of worship, for all persons aged 14 to 75 years.

Similarly, New Brunswick is also ordering churches to restrict attendance to fully vaccinated congregants. This is perhaps not shocking, considering the province briefly gave grocery stores the option of refusing service to unvaccinated people.

But in BC, the enormous Northern Health Region now requires proof of vaccination at places of worship. That means in two-thirds of the province, no unvaccinated person over 11 may go to church this Christmas.

Significantly, nowhere in its public health order does Northern Health provide evidence that religious worship is a peculiar public health threat. That’s because it isn’t. The only Covid outbreaks or exposures listed in Northern Health’s December report, are at remote industrial locations and in hospitals and long-term care providers. From
northern BC’s churches, mosques and temples – there’s nothing to tell. And, no proven cases from gyms, restaurants or sporting events, either.

We forbear to speculate about why governments wish us to live in fear. The logic of their Covid responses however, is like drinking too much, getting sick and blaming the food. The so-called “science” governments are using to continue locking down our society nearly two years later, does not justify widespread shutdowns that violate Canadians’ Charter freedoms to speak, assemble, travel or worship. And common sense requires Canadians unite together to demand an end to it.

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