When imposing lockdowns and vaccine passports on Albertans, former premier Jason Kenney dismissed those who disagreed with him as “unhinged conspiracy theorists.” This was essentially the same tactic used by former prime minister Justin Trudeau when he denounced Canadians who refused to get injected as racist, extremist, misogynist and anti-science.
Jason Kenney won’t debate the lockdowns he imposed on Albertans six years ago, in March of 2020. I know this because I’ve asked him several times to debate publicly the merits of his lockdowns and vaccine mandates, to no avail. Still to this day, Albertans have never had the benefit of seeing Jason Kenney (or former chief medical officer of health Deena Hinshaw) needing to justify or defend in a debate the policies which seriously violated our Charter freedoms of association, conscience, religion, expression, peaceful assembly, mobility and travel, and the right to bodily autonomy.
Serious and numerous lockdown harms included the deterioration in Canadians’ mental and physical health; the alarming surge in opioid overdose deaths; the cancellation of hundreds of thousands of medically necessary surgeries and diagnostic procedures; more Canadians dying from liver diseases, diabetes, and hypertensive diseases; a significant rise in deaths among Canadians under the age of 45 that had nothing to do with Covid-19; rising rates of assisted suicide; higher rates of homicide, identity theft, fraud and online child sexual exploitation; unemployment and bankruptcies; and soaring government debt that must be repaid by our children and grandchildren.
The lockdowns that drove vulnerable Albertans into isolation, loneliness, depression, anxiety, poverty, and drug overdoses were not debated by MLAs in the Legislature or approved by a vote. Instead, Jason Kenney and Deena Hinshaw issued decrees at news conferences, which were received enthusiastically by government-funded media that never challenged either of our rulers with tough questions.
In Alberta’s Legislative Assembly, the NDP Opposition called for earlier, harsher, and more destructive lockdowns. A popular joke in 2021 went as follows: “Question: What’s the difference between Jason Kenney and Rachel Notley? Answer: about two weeks.” Like Jason Kenney, the NDP denounced any disagreement with the dominant narrative as “conspiracy theories” and “dangerous misinformation.”
It wasn’t until April 2021, after more than 12 months of soul-destroying, job-killing, poverty-creating lockdowns, that 17 United Conservative Party MLAs signed a public letter against lockdowns. Presumably, there had been confidential internal debates within the UCP caucus, behind closed doors. But at no time did Jason Kenney or Deena Hinshaw ever face an opponent in a public debate with fair rules and equal time given to both sides.
When Jason Kenney made the Covid-19 vaccine mandatory in 2021, Alberta doctor Eric Payne wrote a 19-page letter outlining his concerns about these mandates, asking numerous questions. Dr. Payne supported his assertions with numerous references. Neither Jason Kenney nor Deena Hinshaw (nor anyone at the College of Physicians and Surgeons) responded to the issues he raised in this letter. Instead, the authorities commenced disciplinary proceedings against Dr. Payne, including for “misinformation” and writing select Covid-19 vaccine exemption letters. Eventually, all investigations ceased because nobody was able to point to a single statement by Dr. Payne that was factually incorrect. Rather, as the public data overwhelmingly continued to support Dr. Payne’s concerns, Alberta Health Services simply removed the public Covid-19 data from its website. Such was the state of “the science” in Alberta.
University of Alberta law professor Tim Caulfield was a passionate cheerleader for lockdowns and vaccine passports, frequently interviewed by government-funded media. In numerous court challenges across Canada to lockdowns and mandatory vaccination policies, governments readily admitted in court that their policies did violate Charter rights and freedoms. One might hope that Professor Caulfield would refute the arguments made by Dr. Payne, point by point. But this academic, like so many others, adopted the same approach as Jason Kenney and the NDP, simply dismissing Dr. Payne’s thoughtful letter as “misinformation.” I’ve invited Dr. Caulfield to debate publicly the proposition that lockdowns and vaccine passports did more harm than good. I’m sure he will refuse to debate, but I hope that my foregoing prediction will be proven wrong. Of interest, Tim Caulfield and the University of Alberta have received $3,000,000 in federal grants to combat “COVID-19 misinformation” put out by people like Dr. Payne.
It’s understandable why people like Jason Kenney, Tim Caulfield, and Deena Hinshaw won’t debate the freedom-violating measures that inflicted so much harm on so many people for so many years. Their policies were based on the wildly exaggerated claims of Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London, who in March 2020 falsely asserted that Covid-19 would kill as many people as the Spanish Flu of 1918. Jason Kenney and Deena Hinshaw engaged in the same fearmongering when claiming in April 2020 that Covid-19 would kill as many as 32,000 Albertans — a number higher than the total annual deaths in the province from all causes combined. (This fearmongering modelling has since been removed from the Alberta government website.) These claims were thoroughly discredited within months of having been made. Sadly, the fear that was generated by politicians and the media remained a powerful force for years on end.
Fear drove doctors to abandon their ethical duty to assess both the benefits and harms of lockdowns and mandatory vaccination policies. Very few doctors gave appropriate ethical consideration to the serious harms that lockdowns and vaccine mandates inflicted on their patients.
Fear impairs our thinking, blinds us from seeing facts, and drives us to unquestioning obedience. Fear explains why so many Canadians unthinkingly complied with nonsensical and highly toxic policies that were not grounded in science.
Now that government-funded media are no longer promoting unwarranted fear of Covid-19 on a daily and hourly basis, the public can benefit from a dispassionate debate about the merits of policies that violated our Charter rights and freedoms.
So, Jason Kenney, will you publicly debate the merits of Alberta’s Covid-19 lockdowns and vaccine passports?
John Carpay, B.A., LL.B., is president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (jccf.ca).
