Tag Archives: vaccines

#BCPoli | Charlie Smith Weighs In| Campaign 2024

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In a change of pace, on VanRamblings today we will publish the latest column written by respected British Columbia journalist, Charlie Smith, for nearly two decades the Editor of The Georgia Straight newspaper.

In the 2024 British Columbia provincial, Mr. Smith has come forward as an Independent candidate for office in the riding of Richmond-Bridgeport.

Please find below an “abridged” version of Mr. Smith’s column. The original, unexpurgated column may be read in its entirety by clicking or tapping here.


Protesters against vaccine mandates often invoked Nuremberg 2.0.

Random thoughts on John Rustad, Nuremberg 2.0, and Teresa Wat’s decision to join the B.C. Conservatives
Richmond-Bridgeport Independent candidate Charlie Smith wonders how Rustad could have misunderstood “Nuremberg 2.0”, given all the publicity

This week, the anti-science leader of the B.C. Conservatives apologized for his earlier response to a question about trying public-health officials for war crimes. John Rustad expressed regret for saying he would “certainly be participating with other jurisdictions”.

This came after he was asked in an online meeting about his position on Nuremburg 2.0.

Rustad professed that he misunderstood the question.

As the Independent candidate in Richmond-Bridgeport, I am feeling skeptical. If he indeed misunderstood, then he is remarkably ignorant about a subject that has received tremendous attention in recent years.

I say this as someone who has written several articles about how opponents of mRNA vaccines have been raising a ruckus about Nuremberg-style war crime trials.

In fact, I’m currently being sued for defamation by someone who sent me a notice of liability. This notice purported that I had violated the findings of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal through my reporting on COVID-19 vaccines.

In the past, I also received threats of lawsuits from others who opposed the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. They too claimed that I was committing grave crimes through my reporting.

A group called Action4Canada created these notices of liability. They were widely distributed to politicians, health officials, and media workers.

One of them states …

“Members of the Media who lied and misled the German People were executed, right along with Medical Doctors and Nurses who participated in medical experiments using living people as guinea pigs. Those who forget the past are condemned to relive it.”

Sometimes, the activists would gather outside TV and radio stations and distribute these notices of liability. In one of these notices that I obtained, this message appears under a photo of Nazi war criminals being hanged.

Politicians hanged in effigy

Then, there was the highly publicized rally in front of the B.C. Legislature on December 9, 2021. Provincial NDP politicians were hanged in effigy as part of the protest. This took place at an event promoted as the 75th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials.

Just over a week later, a sandwich board sign was placed outside a Vancouver church declaring “Nuremberg Trial 2.0”. This phrase appeared above the face of Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry after she had prohibited in-person church services to stop the spread of the Omicron variant.

Earlier that year, I wrote about a COVID-19 denier who warned staff at the Castanet media outlet that they will hang for “being involved with the most corrupt hoax in history”. The man’s associate mentioned the Nuremberg trials.

I wrote another article about how a former People’s Party of Canada candidate wrote “should happen again” on social media. She did this in response to a meme declaring: “During the Nuremberg trials, even the media was prosecuted and put to death for lying to the public.”

Then, there were the mass protests at hospitals by opponents of mRNA vaccines. Outside Vancouver General Hospital, a crowd chanted “lock her up” in response to a speaker mentioning Dr. Henry by name. Health workers complained that they had trouble getting through the crowds.

“Some of these activists are eager to hold Nuremberg-like show trials for public-health officials and politicians who support vaccine passports,” I wrote at the time.

Yet Rustad claims that he misunderstood the question about Nuremberg 2.0 when he was in a Zoom meeting with people who opposed the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. This week to defuse the controversy, he insisted that it was a “distortion of history” to draw links between the crimes of the Holocaust and the mass immunization of the public against COVID-19.

A political double standard

All I can say is if Rustad did not know the meaning of Nuremberg 2.0 after playing political footsie with the people advancing this idea over the past two years, then he hasn’t really been listening to what they are saying.

I also marvel over the incredible double standard that we have in B.C. politics.

When a brown and renowned pediatric cardiac surgeon accidentally hit a “like” on a tweet mentioning a Nazi war criminal, a media and political uproar drummed him out of politics. But when a white leader of a right-wing party proclaims that he misunderstood the meaning of Nuremberg 2.0 in response to a direct question, all is forgiven.

Rustad is still in the race to become Premier.

I’m running in Richmond-Bridgeport for several reasons. One of them is so that residents have the option of voting someone who has always favoured evidence-based responses to the COVID-19 catastrophe.

Richmond-Bridgeport has many voters of Chinese ancestry. I admire how they played a leadership role in the early days of the pandemic by being among the first to wear masks to stop the spread of COVID-19. Chinese community leaders were among the first to call for more testing and greater use of masks. I know this because I edited an article by two of them.

To her credit, my Conservative opponent who is seeking re-election in Richmond-Bridgeport issued stirring words at the start of the pandemic.

“I rise today to remind everyone that the coronavirus is a common enemy, one we must fight and overcome together,” Teresa Wat said in the legislature on February 12, 2020 as a B.C. Liberal MLA.

“We must also fight hard against the spread of fearmongering and stigmatization,” Wat continued. “Negative stereotypes towards any group have no place in British Columbia or in Canada. It is in times like this, more than ever, that we as Canadians have a responsibility to protect our multicultural communities and support our local businesses.”

Bravo.


Teresa Wat sided with Rustad against ex-colleagues who back mRNA vaccinations.

Wat sides with the B.C. Conservatives

But now more than four years later — after Rustad pandered to the Nuremberg 2.0 crowd — Wat decided to abandon her caucus colleagues. She did this despite B.C. United caucus members consistently supporting mRNA vaccines to fight COVID-19.

Instead, Wat threw her lot in with Rustad after already qualifying for a lucrative MLA pension if she chose not to seek reelection.

Wat became a B.C. Conservative MLA even though the party was built, in part, by leaders in the movement against mRNA vaccines. Some in this movement talk seriously about Nuremberg-style war crimes trials for public health officials, politicians, and journalists.

One of the anti-mRNA vaccine movement’s slogans has been “the media is the virus”.

Donald Trump uses the racist phrase “China virus”.

I urge the voters of Richmond-Bridgeport to keep this history in mind when they go to the polls. I will fight for the health of all voters regardless of race, ethnicity or national origin by proposing evidence-based responses to public-health issues.

It’s an obscenity against the victims of the Holocaust to liken the work of B.C. public health officials, politicians, and hardworking journalists to sadistic mass murderers who were hanged after the Second World War.


You may subscribe to Charlie Smith’s necessary and invaluable Substack by clicking or tapping here.

#BCPoli | John Rustad and Issues of Con-cern | Pt. 1

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Women comprise 51% of British Columbia’s population, and electorate.

As such, whether provincial, federal or municipal, political parties offering candidates seek to ensure fair representation of the candidates running on their slates.

In the 2024 British Columbia provincial election, approxiately 60 per cent of B.C. NDP candidates, 45 per cent of B.C. Green candidates and 25 per cent of B.C. Conservative candidates are women, heading into the October 19th election.

According to a a Sunday article published in the Victoria Times Colonist the online journal Equal Voice, which advocates for gender parity in provincial and federal elections and tallies up the nominees on its ­election tracker, notes that 42.5 per cent of MLAs elected in the last ­provincial election in 2020 were women.

Kimberly Speers, a University of Victoria assistant teaching professor in the School of Public Administration, said political parties in British Columbia need to ensure their candidates for office reflect the population the party is seeking to represent.

“Otherwise, they may face voters who do not see their needs and themselves reflected in the policies and faces of political party and will vote for the party who has made the effort,” she said.

According to Statistics Canada, women make up just over half of the 5.6 million people living in British Columbia, 2.85 million women versus 2.75 million men.

Ensuring a legislature or council effectively represents its population is critical for a well-functioning government and society, said Speers.

While women run for all ­political parties and have varying perspectives on how to govern, “the common trait is that they represent a group that has been underrepresented in positions of political power,” said Speers.

Women candidates for office are dramatically underrepresented on the slate of 93 candidates John Rustad’s Conservative Party of B.C. are offering to the people of British Columbia, which in 2024 must be seen as regressive, and a step backwards.

The lack of women candidate representation in the B.C. Conservative Party is a source of concern that must considered when casting your ballot, at either an advance polling station — which open this upcoming Thursday, October 10th — or on Election Day, just 13 short days from today, on Saturday, October 19th.

Do British Columbians Really Want to Elect an Anti-Vaxx Premier?

In a series of interviews conducted with the press, B.C. Conservative Party leader John Rustad has expressed deep concern about the COVID-19 vaccine — both Pfizer and Moderna — saying he regrets having had three COVID-19 shots, attributing a heart condition with which he was afflicted months later to the COVID shot.

Mr. Rustad is also on record as stating that should he become Premier of B.C., a first order of business for his B.C. Conservative administration would be to fire Dr. Bonnie Henry — who, it should be noted enjoys a 62 per cent approval rating — as British Columbia’s well-regarded Provincial Health Officer. Firing Dr. Bonnie Henry, who got us through the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, is that a course of action with which most British Columbians would find themselves in agreement?

According to a September 23rd Vaughn Palmer column in the Vancouver Sun …

  • He (Rustad) now regards the COVID mRNA shots as “a ‘so-called’ vaccine.”;
  • He (Rustad) wishes he had not been vaccinated.;
  • He (Rustad) thinks the vaccine mandate was about “control of the population.”

Rustad has been accused of harbouring crackpots. On the video, included in today’s VanRamblings column, “he sounds like one himself,” writes Palmer.

As the icing on the cake of the craziness and chaos that would follow the election of John Rustad as British Columbia’s 48th Premier, he states that his administration would be open to joining other jurisdictions in legal proceedings inspired by the Nuremberg Trials, aimed at prosecuting those deemed responsible for COVID-19 public health measures and vaccines.

The Nuremberg trials were held in Germany after WWII to hold to account the Nazi leaders responsible for the murder of 8 million Jews, and LGBTQ and disability communities. John Rustad equates Dr. Bonnie Henry with WWII Nazi war criminals.

Nuremberg 2.0 advocates typically call for those who created, justified or enforced public health measures — including politicians, doctors, academics, journalists and police — to be jailed and even executed for “crimes against humanity.”


The BCPS Employees for Freedom Society interview with B.C. Conservative Party leader John Rustad (you have to skip the first video that loads) who states that if he is elected Premier, he would replace Dr. Henry, and further would compensate with government funds health care professionals who he believes were discriminated against and mistreated under the “regime” of Dr. Bonnie Henry.

Timothy Caulfield, a Canada research chair in health law and policy at the University of Alberta who specializes in online misinformation and conspiracies, says “it’s horrifying” to hear a political leader “legitimizing and normalizing” any talk of a “Nuremberg 2.0.”

“This is dark, nasty stuff,” Caulfield told Press Progress. “They’re not talking about some kind of careful judicial process, it really is code for execution and retribution. That’s what’s at the heart of Nuremberg 2.0.”

Peter Smith, an investigative journalist and researcher with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, says people who talk about Nuremberg 2.0 are typically fuelled by grievances about pandemic public health measures.

“It is a phrase that emerged during the pandemic and was supposed to be the title for these coming trials for ‘crimes against humanity’ that would be brought against doctors, politicians, police and more for enforcing and carrying out COVID-19 health restrictions,” Smith told the folks at Press Progress. “It is essentially accusing a large number of public and private individuals who acted during a health crisis of being on par with one of the worst campaigns of subjugation, humiliation and destruction in modern history,” Smith added, referencing Nazi atrocities during the Second World War.

A question: do you want taxpayer funds to go to compensation for the small rump group of British Columbia health workers who refused to get the COVID-19 vaccine to keep their patients safe, and further to fund a far-right-inspired government campaign to hold health officials, including Dr. Bonnie Henry and B.C.’s Minister of Health, Adrian Dix, “to account”? That’s what you’ll get if you elect John Rustad.

#CdnPoli | Erin O’Toole | The Times and Travails of Canada’s Tory Leader

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Poor Erin O’Toole, the beleaguered leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.

When Mr. O’Toole ran for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada, or order to defeat his  main rival, Nova Scotia’s Peter MacKay — a well-experienced senior Minister of the Crown in the near decade the Conservatives held power in Ottawa, from early 2006 through until late 2015 — Mr. O’Toole fashioned himself as a True Blue, Harperite social conservative who, although he would not allow a vote on abortion on the floor of the House of Commons were he to become Prime Minister of Canada, stood with and for the socially conservative values held by many members of the Conservative Party.

In a ranked ballot vote held on August 24, 2020, in order to secure victory and the leadership of the Conservative Party, the former Minister of Veterans Affairs in the Stephen Harper government, Erin O’Toole, explicitly sought the support of socially conservative leadership hopefuls, Leslyn Lewis and Derek Sloan, to secure the winning votes in the 3rd round of voting, with 19,271 winning ballots cast in his favour, with his rival MacKay securing only 14,528 votes.

First time leadership hopeful, Leslyn Lewis, had finished in third place on the second ballot with 10,140 votes — many of those votes going to O’Toole on the third ballot. Sloan finished last on the first ballot, with 4,864 votes. Mere months later, on January 18, 2021, Erin O’Toole kicked Derek Sloan out of the Conservative caucus. Note should be made that when Mr. O’Toole recently appointed elected members of the Conservative Party to form the Opposition’s Shadow Cabinet, social conservative Leslyn Lewis did not make the cut.

During the recent federal election, much to the chagrin of the Conservative candidates seeking election or re-election, when Erin O’Toole released the Conservative Party platform early in the campaign, in mid-August, Tory candidates were taken aback that the party’s platform came out foresquare in favour of a carbon tax — contrary to long standing Conservative party policy.

In fact, the Tory platform read, as many disgruntled Conservative Party members complained, as a “red” document, or a Liberal Party lite policy document.

In order to win over Canadians who live in the vote rich Metro Toronto and Metro Vancouver regions of Canada, Erin O’Toole had created a platform document that almost entirely jettisoned Conservative Party dogma, and where it didn’t, during the course of the election campaign, O’Toole “re-adjusted” Tory policy on the fly, all in the hopes of securing centrist urban votes.

The appeasement strategy did not work — under O’Toole’s leadership, the Tories lost four  Metro Vancouver seats, while standing pat in Metro Toronto, where the Liberal Party went onto win a near overwhelming victory.

Erin O’Toole’s Conservative Party enters the House of Commons down two seats, in a party riven by division, with a petition launched days ago by prominent Tory Senator Denise Batters calling for a leadership review within 6 months, specifically pointing to Mr. O’Toole’s loss of the 2021 federal election, and his party policy reversals during the course of the election campaign.

To make matters worse for Mr. O’Toole, as the 44th session of the Canadian Parliament gets underway, at a press conference held yesterday morning in Ottawa, Government House Leader Mark Holland told reporters that he believes it would be “statistically improbable” for several Tory MPs to have valid medical exemptions to COVID-19 vaccination — and those who do have them should provide “assurances” they were given for legitimate reasons.

“The Conservative caucus is 119 people,” Mr. Holland told reporters. “Statistically, the likelihood that they would have multiple people who are exempt … is extraordinarily low. There might be some possibility of it but I suppose there’s a possibility that that chair could fly,” he said, pointing to a chair in the room.

If one Conservative MP is claiming an exemption, Holland said, that is “exceptionally unlikely but possible.” More than one Conservative MP claiming an exemption, he said, would be “statistically impossible.”

To be fair, Erin O’Toole’s centrist position on the issues will play much better with the electorate and all but assure the Conservatives victory at the polls, when voters tire of the Liberal Party. Politics is like major sport, though: you’re ‘hired’ … only to be fired at some point in the not-too-distant future.

Still and all, Mr. O’Toole is hardly signaling defeat at the beginning of the current session of Parliament.

Mr. O’Toole has stipulated that battling inflation will be top of mind, by re-naming Mr. Mean, Pierre Poilievre, as his finance critic earlier this month. Poilievre has repeatedly warned about the risk of inflation during the pandemic, and has lately taken aim at the $101.4-billion stimulus package promised in the spring budget, which he now dubs the “$100-billion slush fund.”

In an interview on Friday, O’Toole told National Post columnist John Ivison that his party’s major focus will be on “the economic situation in the country.”

“There’s an inflation crisis, there’s lack of confidence, wages are flat, the cost of everything is going up, so people are actually losing purchasing power as if they were getting their wages cut, and we’ve never seen the country more fractured,” O’Toole said.

Tory House leader Gerald Deltell has said his party was supportive of the initial emergency spending on COVID-19 aid measures because of the unprecedented lockdowns that decimated the economy and forced businesses to close.

But the Tories will now argue that the government was too slow to adjust to changing circumstances, pumping too much money into the economy while running up massive deficits. The result, Deltell has said: businesses are having trouble finding workers & Canadian families are getting hit with rising prices.

For the most part, though, Mr. Deltell told reporters in a press conference held in Ottawa last week, that he could not get into whether his party will oppose various government policies until he sees what’s actually put forward on paper by the Liberals. The Conservative caucus met for two full days prior to the beginning of this session of Parliament to build a strategic political game plan.

“We have a strategy behind each and every issue,” says Deltell. “I can’t be wide open on the strategy right now.”

Here’s CPAC’s Peter Van Dusen in discussion on Parliament’s return, with the Toronto Star’s Susan Delacourt, the National Post’s John Ivison, and Globe and Mail Ottawa Bureau Chief, Ian Bailey …

See you all back here tomorrow. Thank you for reading VanRamblings.