Federal public health authorities didn’t know if COVID-19 vaccines would prevent transmission but they foisted sweeping vaccine mandates on Canadians anyway.
Despite repeated claims from the Liberals that unvaccinated Canadians were transmitting COVID-19 to vaccinated people, Canada’s health agency admitted it was never sure the shots would prevent the spread of the virus.
In response to an order paper question from Conservative MP Colin Carrie, the Public Health Agency of Canada wrote that suspected vaccines prevented transmission but wasn’t sure.
“In Dec. 2020, COVID-19 vaccine guidance from the National Advisory Committee on Immunization to PHAC and stakeholders emphasized uncertainty surrounding the ability of COVID-19 vaccines to prevent transmission and the need for ongoing monitoring,” said the reply, signed by Yasir Naqvi, the parliamentary secretary to the health minister.
“Emerging evidence suggested preventing infections and some degree of prevention of transmission was achievable…However, the emergence of highly transmissible variants like Omicron at the end of 2021 made the efficacy of prevention measures, including booster doses, less certain.”
During the 2021 election campaign, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said unvaccinated Canadians were putting “vaccinated people at risk.”
By the end of 2021, the omicron variant of the virus had spread through Canada despite all the measures that segregated the vaccinated from the unvaccinated, causing the Public Health Agency to become “less certain,” that the vaccines affected transmissibility.
The health agency reaffirmed that despite being informed of a lack of evidence suggesting that vaccine mandates would reduce transmissibility, the government nonetheless implemented its segregation policies, contributing to the Freedom Convoy protest against vaccine mandates in 2022.
Omicron arrived in Canada from international travel at the end of Nov. 2021. Trudeau’s government banned unvaccinated Canadians from boarding trains and planes in October 2021 and imposed a sweeping mandate on federal public servants.
Trudeau continued to blame unvaccinated people for putting other Canadians at risk in 2022.
Carrie also asked if the government and Public Health Agency of Canada worked with the World Health Organization’s Strategic Group of Experts on Vaccination and Immunization, Vaccines Together and the International Vaccine Institute when informing the governments’ implementation of vaccine passports and mandates, but the agency said it did not.
