The Trudeau Liberals acknowledged their COVID jab mandate for the transportation sector was overly “aggressive” in denying travel to nearly six million Canadians by air and train.
According to the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, a 2021 in-house memo they obtained contradicts public claims that the mandate “followed the recommendations of public health experts.”
“For the system to operate efficiently for the majority and handle all the exceptional circumstances,” said the memo A Vaccine Mandate For The Transportation Sector, “keep exemptions to strict vaccine mandates simple to avoid complexity and costly administrative burden for operators and travellers.”
Instead, the Department of Transportation conveyed it must act “quickly and aggressively,” noting the mandate “would make Canada unique in the world in terms of strict vaccine mandates for domestic travel.”
The memo advised the department that unvaccinated Canadians and those who declined to show proof of vaccination “would lead to some awkward cases of sympathetic or vulnerable Canadians denied travel.”
The Trudeau Liberals maintain their approach was backed by science, reported Blacklock’s Reporter.
“”followed the recommendations of public health experts, doctors and scientists,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters on September 26, 2022.
However, the Public Health Agency of Canada never recommended vaccine mandates, reads the memo. “The vast majority of unvaccinated Canadians would not be able to travel,” it said.
In an affidavit, Jennifer Little, Director General of COVID Recovery at Transport Canada, provided her Covid Recovery Team’s October 2, 2021 presentation, entitled Implementing a Vaccine Mandate for the Transportation Sector.
She admitted during cross examination that neither Health Canada nor the Public Health Agency of Canada recommended a mandatory vaccination policy for travel, which later devolved into “one of the strongest vaccination mandates for travelers in the world.”
Dr. Lisa Waddell, a senior epidemiologist and the knowledge synthesis team lead at the Public Health Agency of Canada, also admitted her agency never made the recommendation.
The Justice Centre challenged the mandates as unlawful, but the Federal Court of Appeal on November 9 dismissed it as ‘moot’ since the federal government suspended the mandate in June 2022. They said it neither served the public interest nor is it an appropriate use of court resources to pursue the challenge further.
“The federal government can impose these same travel restrictions on Canadians again without notice,” warned the law firm, having since asked for the Supreme Court of Canada to hear a final appeal.
This is a developing story.
