National Citizens Inquiry – Day 01 Truro, NS

The National Citizens Inquiry kicked off on March 16 2023, with the Atlantic portion of the Inquiry being held in Truro, Nova Scotia. The gallery room at the Best Western Glengarry was full all day, with people coming in from all across the Atlantic provinces, and with roughly 11,000 virtual attendees tuning in over the course of the day through various social media and video streaming platforms.

As the name of the commission suggests, and as Preston Manning made clear in his November 2022 announcement of the commission, this is a National Citizens Inquiry, organized, led and funded entirely by Canadian citizens, many of whom are notable professionals in their respected fields, volunteering their time to make this happen. The purpose of the Inquiry is to give a voice to the Canadians who have been silenced or suppressed during the last 3 years, whether they are medical professionals who have been threatened with disciplinary action for speaking out, or people whose lives have been negatively impacted by the various COVID-19 policies put in place by bureaucratic and corporate institutions. 

In doing so the Inquiry aims to learn what went wrong, what worked (if anything) and what didn’t, so that in the next time of crisis the people of Canada will have established best practices for dealing with it in a mindful and minimally impactful way. That means it shouldn’t segregate society, delay the development and education of children, and undermine what were the foundational values of our culture. 

Citizens Alliance Nova Scotia played a big part in helping to get the event organized, and even helped bring Cathy Jones on board who has been outspoken against many of the public health measures since their inception. She invited people at the event to sit down with her and share their stories about how COVID policies had negatively impacted their lives, giving a voice to so many who had been silenced for so long.

The hearings were led by a team of lawyers who felt they had a moral and civil obligation to bring out the truth, using their legal experience to make that as palpable as possible for the Commissioners.

They examined the witnesses throughout the event, many being renowned scientific and medical expert witnesses, as well as several civilians harmed in various ways by the policies put in place that were meant to “flatten the curve” or keep everyone safe. 

We heard testimony from Dr. Chris Milburn, Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Patrick Phillips, as well as former nurses, teachers, and paramedics. Every speaker received a standing ovation from the crowd, with cheers of support throughout. Much of the testimony was not only incredibly informative, but also deeply moving. 

Dr. Milburn’s testimony opened the event, and he spoke eloquently about his role as Head of Emergency for the Eastern Zone in Nova Scotia, where he saw the “terrible impacts of COVID policy” that were much more prevalent than COVID itself. He also detailed his querying of policy being made without consultation with practicing doctors and nurses and without justification. When asked why more physicians are not speaking up, Dr. Milburn relayed information about the memo sent to all physicians in 2021 by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Nova Scotia, in which physicians were reminded of their “professional [obligation] of complying with public health COVID-19 guidance”, and detractors were implied to be anti-maskers or anti-vaxxers. Milburn stated that the Colleges should walk back their directives, especially considering the overwhelming evidence reported by the Cochrane Collaboration that masks don’t help to prevent the spread of respiratory illnesses.

Dr. McCullough detailed the number of adverse events reported following COVID vaccination, including the fatal cardiac events and blood clots, claiming that at least 15% of those vaccinated have since developed new diseases.

Dr. Phillips spoke about his difficulty with reporting adverse events with the Adverse Events Following Immunization system. Shockingly, doing so actually resulted in negative consequences for his patients and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario filing charges against him.

Shelly Hipson, a civilian researcher who has spent the last several years filing Freedom of Information Requests, testified that not only were most of Nova Scotia’s hospitals actually empty of COVID patients in 2020 and most of 2021, but Nova Scotia’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Robert Strang, knew of serious adverse events following vaccination as far back as June 2021 – before the vaccine mandates and passport systems were rolled out the following October. 

The Chief Medical Officers of Health, and the Ministers of Health, for each of the Atlantic provinces were in fact invited to provide their testimony to the Commission in front of the Canadian people. It was an opportunity for them to present the evidence and information they relied upon to make their policy decisions. Perhaps unsurprisingly, not one of them showed up.

This of course raises the question: why? In a democracy our government has a responsibility to its people and should be held accountable for its actions. The lack of engagement by public officials with the NCI certainly speaks volumes.

Thankfully it’s an open invitation, so any of the invited government officials can testify at any of the hearings taking place across Canada, the next one being in Toronto from March 30th – April 1st 2023, with the final hearings taking place in Ottawa later this year. It will be interesting to see if any government officials or ‘experts’ testify at any of the hearings.

The Commissioners’ Report will be delivered to the public by the end of June. The Report will be uploaded to the National Citizens Inquiry website for anyone and everyone to view. Hopefully this information will be transformative in that people will learn from it and apply the appropriate pressure to the institutions that made, and continue to make, COVID policy decisions. The petition for supporting the NCI is also available there, and I encourage everyone to sign to show their support. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that this is one of the most important events in Canadian history. 

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National Citizens Inquiry – Day 03 Truro, NS

The conclusion to the Atlantic portion of the National Citizens Inquiry occurred on March 18th 2023, held at the Best Western Glengarry in Truro, Nova Scotia. Though the gallery started at around 50% capacity in the morning, it was abuzz with excitement, and reached almost 100% capacity by the end of the day. Online stats for the day indicated more than 9000 views across social media platforms, while the total impressions for the event on Twitter exceeded 1.1 million: the event’s Twitter page received a 7% percent engagement rate, which is far higher than the average Twitter engagement rate of 0.05%.

How have I been? Well…

How have I been? Well…
I suppose it starts with the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa. It was an emotional few weeks, and it culminated in a violent quelling of a peaceful protest, which was perfectly in line with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms Section 2(c) (the fundamental freedom of peaceful assembly). It was legal to participate in, and fund, such a gathering until the government decided to pass orders and measures which made it illegal.

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