The prime minister’s hard line in the fall of 2021 was a far cry from what he said in March 2021, when Trudeau argued that every Canadian who wanted to be vaccinated would have a dose available by the fall, implying that it would be voluntary — at a time when Canada was struggling to procure enough vaccine doses and was lagging far behind the UK, US and other major Western countries in its vaccination campaign. The vaccine mandate proposal was to become the cornerstone of Trudeau’s re-election bid. Speaking in a Toronto suburb that is home to Canada’s largest and one of the busiest airports, the prime minister reiterated his government’s intention — possibly if re-elected — to mandate vaccinations in all areas under federal government control. , which is completed. to federal employees and travel. Trudeau has always maintained that his government’s Covid policies were based on science and the latest evidence. However, his changing rhetoric, before and after his election, tells a different story. Thanks to a civil lawsuit against the travel order by two British immigrants, we’ve now seen the guts of part of Trudeau’s Covid machinery, and it’s become abundantly clear that it has little to do with science and everything to do with politics. Recently released court documents, which I broke in a story for Bari Weiss’ Common Sense, show us senior government bureaucrats scrambling to find a scientific justification for the travel order just days before it goes into effect. We got a glimpse into the inner workings of Trudeau’s vaccine machinery thanks to two British expats, Sean Rickard and Carl Harrison, who sued the Trudeau government in Federal Court. Thanks to their efforts, and that of their attorney, Sam Presvelo, the affidavits, depositions and cross-examinations of key government witnesses are now public. These documents clearly show us that the bureaucrat accused of holding the pen, under repeated cross-examination, refused to go into detail about who gave the order, citing “Cabinet secrecy”. Just why the rationale for a public health order should be so confidential raises the troubling possibility that there really was no rationale. It’s clear that a political decision was made by Trudeau and his cabinet to go ahead with the orders, and the hapless bureaucrats were tasked with finding some rationale, any credible rationale in retrospect. As it happens, the bureaucrat tasked with creating one of the world’s “strongest vaccination mandates” in the world, according to her and Trudeau, has a degree in English literature and apparently didn’t have the scientific knowledge over the phone. Nor were there doctors, epidemiologists and scientists on her team, a secret panel whose members are not published anywhere, and which rates a passing report on the government’s website. The federal government’s vaccine mandates were just the icing on top of provincial vaccine mandates, cover-up and distancing requirements and some of the toughest lockdowns in the Western world. Under Canada’s federal system, these fall under provincial jurisdiction, although they certainly had the moral support of the Trudeau federal government. Canadians, especially the unvaccinated, were effectively prisoners in their own homes and country. Except of course for unvaccinated Ukrainians, who were allowed to enter Canada after the war started, even when unvaccinated Canadians were banned from traveling. Maybe, if they tried hard enough, someone could come up with a “scientific” rationale for that too. They may also need to work a little to find a scientific basis for why, if the vaccine mandate was necessary, it was not imposed before the election, but after. The five million or so unvaccinated Canadians were, after all, pawns in a political chess game. Trudeau has smartly secured vaccination, and government mandates stemming from them, as a strong issue ahead of the fall 2021 snap election he has called. He hoped to win his Liberal government a majority, which was in a minority position in the House of Commons, having squandered a previous majority thanks to public revulsion at corruption and cronyism in his government. As it happened, Trudeau’s gamble didn’t pay off and the Liberals returned him, again, with a minority — although, given the quirks of Canada’s Westminster system, the Conservatives, two elections in a row, won the popular vote but lost the election . Trudeau now clings to power in an alliance with the Socialist New Democratic Party and likely won’t face voters again until 2025. The story of Trudeau’s vaccine mandates has ramifications far outside of Canada. All over the world, governments have invoked draconian powers, hitherto only used in wartime, to control and regulate their peoples and curtail fundamental individual freedoms, such as the right to assembly or the right to mobility. Governments everywhere are telling people, like Trudeau told Canadians, we’re very sorry, we hate to curtail your freedoms, but we’re just following the science and the evidence. We know, in the case of Canada’s travel mandate, that this is simply false. In Canada’s case, Trudeau’s ministers have made it clear that suspended orders could be reinstated, as, indeed, could Covid-based restrictions around the world. Thanks to two British expats, we now know how Canada’s Covid Policy sausage is made, and it’s not pretty. Rupa Subramanya is a columnist at the National Post in Canada
