The head epidemiologist for the Public Health Agency of Canada admitted while I was cross examining her that they never recommended vaccination of air travellers,’ said Keith Wilson, a lawyer challenging the requirements on behalf of former Newfoundland premier Brian Peckford.
The top epidemiologist for the Public Health Agency of Canada said that the government agency never recommended COVID vaccinations as a requirement for air travellers, according to a statement made during a significant hearing on the validity of restrictions.
Speaking on last night’s episode of The Ezra Levant Show, Keith Wilson, a lawyer working on the Charter challenge brought forward by Brian Peckford, the former Newfoundland premier and last living signee of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, explained what he had learned during cross examination.
“The head epidemiologist for the Public Health Agency of Canada admitted while I was cross examining her that they never recommended vaccination of air travellers,” Wilson said, who added that he “was stunned” by the statement.
“The written advice that they [the Public Health Agency of Canada] provided did not identify vaccination as a mitigation strategy,” he explained. Instead, public health suggestions identified the use of masks, distancing of passengers while arriving, departing and on board the plane and a quarantine area if a traveller was sick.
So why didn’t the Public Health Agency include vaccine requirements in its COVID mitigation strategy?
“She [the head epidemiologist] said, she volunteered, that the reason is the scientific evidence doesn’t support that it would be effective,” Wilson stated.
During last year’s federal election, vaccine mandates featured as a prominent wedge issue Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used against then-leader of the Conservative Party, Erin O’Toole.
Despite his previous opposition to mandates, something the prime minister even referred to as “divisive,” Trudeau and his Liberal Party shifted strategies to supporting mandates after conducting polling research, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.
Describing more of the “remarkable evidence” that has been uncovered during the trial, Wilson also said that the lead policy expert for Transport Canada testified that the department “made a conscious decision not to grant exemptions for travel on compassionate grounds.”
Transport Canada “made a conscious decision in order to incentivize Canadians to get vaccinated, it’s just remarkable the evidence that’s come out,” Wilson told The Ezra Levant Show.
Vaccine requirements for domestic travellers, outbound international flights, federal staffers and transportation workers were suspended by the Trudeau government yesterday. While most measures are now removed, federal authorities cautioned restrictions could return should the COVID situation worsen.