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During the lockdowns and the height of the COVID pandemic, fear -mongering, many of us came to see the police as jack -booted Nazis, enforcing violations of our rights to support a false narrative.
But while there are some bad apples in every basket, many officers were doing their best to defend our rights, in some cases even refusing orders from higher up to arrest or harass citizens for violations.
violations. What we did not know was the extreme abuse that the officers and other employees of our police services were themselves being subjected to by management,
coercion to take vaccines against their will, violations of their medical privacy, ostracization and persecution in the workplace. And in many cases,
these abuses went well beyond what people in the private sector were subjected to. Natasha Gonuk is a former investigator for health services.
Last year, she was approached by dozens of employees of the Edmonton Police Service, including many officers, to investigate the human rights abuses and violations of the law that they were subjected to under the auspices of the police department.
department's COVID pandemic response. Abuses which were in many cases not just violations of OHS's policies but in fact illegal under the criminal code and the administrators who put the policies in place knew that after reviewing some 9 ,000 pages of freedom of information documents.
Natasha reveals the shocking details of the treatment that Edmonton Police Service officers and support staff were subjected to. Since releasing these documents just a couple of months ago,
Natasha has received many calls from officers with other police departments across the country, including the RCMP, telling her that these same abuses and violations of the law.
happened in their police services as well Natasha,
welcome to the show Thank you. Well for having me. I appreciate it Well, I very much wanted to do this interview with you when I saw the information you sent to me and was able to go through it Myself it's it is truly shocking and you said yourself you had this experience where people would look at this and they'd get about 30,
40 pages in it that you'd be getting messages from the executives. Is this true? I mean, is this serious? Yes, it is. Before we get into however, what you found itself, would you please explain to our viewers your background and what very much qualifies you to do this sort of study?
Yeah, most definitely. Thank you all. Well, so for the viewers, my background is in here. started out in the medical field. So I started out of the university.
I set up the Herfeld Transplant Program for then Capital Health Authority. And so I come from that medical base, developing procedures, developing policies within the healthcare system.
Over my career, I have done a variety of things. that have all come in handy now. I was a crisis worker as a volunteer,
victim services worker for the imitant police service, which gave me a very strong training that I've used throughout the remainder of my career, you know,
talking with families, dealing with trauma, really being able to interview and perform my job duties as an investigator later in my lifetime.
I did work at occupational health and safety for a short stint and interpreting legislation for employers and you'll notice my report is quite OH &S heavy because of that.
And then after raising my kids and going back into the workforce, workforce, I really wanted to get back into that investigation mode in the medical side and that's when I went to the office of the chief medical examiner and I was one of their investigators for a number of years in a casual way,
but there were very few of us, so I worked a lot. And I just I loved investigations so much that I ended up taking that on full time and going into and getting my training to be a regulatory investigator.
And so that regulatory investigator for people that don't know is we're kind of the, we're the civilian investigators that would handle complaints say against a doctor or a nurse or paramedic.
So if there's a concern about anything from their practice or in support. or their employer had an issue with them that they deemed was unprofessional,
all the way through to patient death and kind of the whole range in between. And those are quite substantial investigations.
It would be what would be considered quite major kind of case management type of of reporting that we would do because what we would evaluate and assess and investigate would be presented directly as part of a hearing tribunal.
So we were actually developing the document for the Civil Court proceeding. So that's where my background comes in and that's what brought people to me to be able to do this assessment.
is that I had that wide range to be able to address the issues that they were facing in their workplace. And workplace investigations were just part of doing regulatory investigation.
- Right, now of course, at no point in this interview are we gonna be mentioning names, but some people came to you and asked, "Would you do this?" I would assume that these are members of the Edmonton Police Force that we're very concerned about.
concerned about what was going on there, is that correct? - That's correct, yeah, they were given my name from a healthcare professional that I had helped. So after I lost my employment during the COVID timeframe,
the, I ended up helping a lot of people that would come my way. And whether they were healthcare practitioners, or that's doctors, nurses, chyros, kairos, to families who had been mistreated.
And so my name kind of floated around is that she'll fill the gap. There's a gap there between getting help from your union or getting help from a lawyer.
And sometimes there's not the ability to do that. And financially, there was a lot of restrictions for people as well. Anyway, so... the one healthcare professional that I had assisted,
knew some of these police officers, knew what they were going through, they had been expressing their concerns to each other, and they reached out to her and said,
"Who do we go to for help?" And so I got a phone call one day from one of the members saying, you know, there's a group of sworn and civilian civilian eminent police service employees and we need your help and How large was this group?
So it it kind of ranges. There's a core group of about 25 that I deal with more regularly and then there's a larger group of well over a hundred and Then there's even a larger support group that kind of remain hands You know hands off because there's so much discipline related to pushing you back against your employer And so those supporters in the background Are 400 plus members in total so seems so we're looking at
about 400 plus members supporting Reviewing these these documents and getting the answers to it. And that seems pretty significant to me given that according to your documentation,
the Edmonton police force has 2 ,700 employees. That's correct. 427, that's a lot. A lot of very concerned people.
That's a lot. And that was as of October 23 of 2023. 2023, or sorry, October of 2023, my apologies. And I drive that number of support because,
and I'll tell you, because the Edmonton Police Association, which is their version of the union, put forward, because they had put forward a request to have the review supported by the association,
as well as them support either me or another. independent person to analyze those documents. It didn't have to be me, but anybody to do that independent review who is not from within the organization.
The association deemed that to be a political and they put it to a vote at their AGM to the membership. And so the approximate numbers from that,
that vote in 2020. were, there were about a thousand members that voted. And of the vote for the review,
they had approximately 400 people vote to say, "We want a review of that." And I believe the numbers, if they did it today, would be much higher because following that last rollout with the vaccine plus all of the disclosure that has come since the fall,
there's a lot more of the members that are speaking with me saying, "My teammates are now coming up to me and asking me questions about this and questioning what was the response.
What does that document say?" And they're expressing the harm that they have had or their families. So it's really broad about that conversation piece. within the organization as well.
Right. So before we get into what you found, I have one more question about the procedure. And that is how do you go about this? Obviously you have to, you know, you started out with talking to all these people who were coming to you,
but that's only a starting point. Where do you go from there? Yeah, so they, we put in a freedom of information information request, they had actually launched it before they talked with me and then we revised it and put in a second version of that freedom of information request with the Edmonton Police Service to obtain the pandemic response documents,
emails, procedures, any information that we could gain around that to have understanding. And so they, the request had gone in, there was an ask astronomical fee being charged to them.
The original estimate was around $7 ,000 to obtain these documents. And when they wanted them digitally, then it was reduced to $4 ,500.
And these members ended up paying for that out of pocket because it was so important. They knew that there was going to be close to 10 ,000 pages. and they knew the information in there would be substantial.
So the part of the process was getting the documents. We weren't even sure if we were going to get them. No freedom of information releases are really going out to people or any substantial ones.
I know other agencies where they're still waiting, and the privacy commissioners have had to get involved to try to get documents released. So we were kind of crossing our fingers,
and I think there was some maybe some divine intervention on this one to be able to have these documents released to us. And so we got these in October of 2023 and they came in these massive digital files that were almost like they had been digitally scrambled.
They were a little bit of a mess to go through and I just. hunkered down and started working through them. So my report in order to even organize what they had given in some usable format and I wanted to be able to extract verbatim evidence right out because it's not my words.
I'm simply taking what they had given and putting it into a digestible kind of report that. that could be used. I had to generate 500 pages worth of spreadsheets that went with individually with each folder.
And in total, I had about 500 legal size spreadsheets to extract the information to then use in the report. Those aren't even attached with what you got happened.
So it's quite substantial to try to process that information. information, but yeah, it came together. And I think that it came together in a way where it's very usable for public,
for people like yourself who are trying to review this, for government to be able to action, for us to be able to go to other agencies. It'd be a useful tool for businesses,
especially in our province, to realize the impact. and the information that was flowing between government and law enforcement at the time. - Right,
and of course, we will be providing links, folks, to these documents below the interview, as we always do. Now, you said they were originally told $7 ,000 for printed copies of the Freedom of Information Quest.
They dropped it to 4 ,500 when it became digital. What would a normal fee be, if any? - You know, I do quite pretty well. -quests on other things and a normal fee when you file it is $25 up to $150 and then they do have the ability in the legislation to be able to charge extra for their time for for the documentation.
I was actually when I did a presentation last night there was a a former privacy officer in the room for one of the government agencies down south.
She's since retired, but she's like, I've never heard of a cost like that before. She's like, you know, maybe if we were doing something really,
really substantial and it was all paper. But even then, she's like, I've never heard of a cost. being that high." And I believe that,
yes, because the legislation has the ability to charge some fees in it, but I looked at this as more of a deterrent fee. And I don't think they believed maybe that,
and this is just my personal opinion, I don't think they believed that the officers would fund that themselves. So did EPS give any kind of official explanation for this ridiculous chart?
Did they try to justify it at all? They broke it down and in my summary, I've included the communication between the member that was dealing with the access and disclosure office and kind of trying to get these documents.
And they did break it down as time. So they were charging for their time. back to these officers to process this. Now this is a public office.
This is a city of Edmonton Edmonton Police Service and so they were charging back for their time to handle this freedom of information request as per their breakdown in those in those documents so that's why I made sure - Are they not paid by the public or are they not paid by our taxes?
- Allegedly, yes. - I just wanted to clarify that. All right, so now let me clarify that. So you get some 9 ,000 pages, as you say, scrambled,
very difficult to sort out what's connected to what. But I believe there was also a substantial amount of information missing. I'll be right back. In the future. the form of emails that were not there. That's correct.
Yeah, so there's at least 4 ,500 pages of emails that were not included. We're trying to gain access to those via the Privacy Commissioner now.
But the member that did the request had to put in a request for review of that. And as well, I've noticed that there was a significant amount of information missing in the form of emails that were not there. gaps. So there are noticeable gaps in information,
in updates, in information that wasn't provided. So we're going to seek to have those gaps addressed as well. Given what we're about to discuss and what you did find,
I have to wonder what's in those 4500 emails they didn't want us to see. Yeah. Alright, so let's get into what you did find. And before we move into anything very specific to the abuses that took place,
I wanna establish a framework and make sure that I understood what I was reading when I was going through this, because everything we're about to discuss is all being done, as you say, as part of their COVID response.
- Yeah. - But, September 16th, 2021, you've got Edmonton Police Commission up. and this is a quote, "The service currently has 11 active COVID cases." 11 out of 2 ,700 employees.
And all of the abuses we're about to discuss are happening within that context. I mean, I was a paramedic when I was younger. 2700 people, if in September, all you had was 11 cases of,
say, flu or... or cold, you'd consider that to be a pretty light season. That's nothing. Yeah. That's correct. So I'm just making sure.
I understood this correctly. This quote, this is providing a framework for how extensively COVID had was affecting the Edmonton Police Service. Yeah.
Yeah, there's-- And two, that was-- and I'm sure that that that information was in there So that people had an idea relating to illness that I mean this is a young healthy workforce that we're looking at even their civilian population is Is a healthy population and those are included in that number.
So that's not just sworn members, right? And and so when you look at illness reporting it's always talking about in these documents positive test cases and close contacts,
isolations. They are not anywhere in the documents that they presented to us. They did not discuss during prior to the vaccine rollout,
they did not ever discuss workers being hospitalized. worker death from COVID. There was no indication that there were serious illness occurring within the Edmonton police bars.
And people have to remember these officers, the frontline officers are out there executing warrants, wrestling with guys in the back of their cruisers. They're in close contact with people.
All their skittings. getting spit on there. You know, they are in the mix of it. And you know, I have the number from January 6th, 2022.
So January 6th, 2022. The reported number of total cases from 2020. So this is the whole time 2020 to January of 2020.
- The total cases that they reported of workers was 497. And that includes when they started to require the testing for unvaccinated workers.
If they had a positive test, that counted as a positive case. So, the numbers you saw in the report, I included some of the charting that they had. And it...
it, you know, you saw the spike go up, but they were also then requiring testing of the unvaccinated. And that kind of skews the numbers and all of this.
But yeah, the rest of the time, there was an initial spike rate at the beginning for isolations and positives. Most of those are based on travel related or travel related required isolation.
And then it just. kind of goes down and levels out. - Right, and I think we can reveal the, not perhaps not the lie, but how misleading that 497 figure is for the entire 2021 by the fact that as you've already said,
in all of these 9 ,000 pages of documents, not a single hospitalization, not a single serious illness, certainly no deaths. And if they'd happened, we can be certain they would have been in there as they would have wanted to justify what they were doing.
So they tell us those things did not happen. All we had was minor illnesses, flume -like symptoms, cold -like symptoms at a relatively small percentage of the police force population.
Certainly, I would suspect no higher they would see an ordinary cold and flu season. And of course, a lot of those cases were false positives. Yeah, and you know that number,
that 497, that's from 20 from March of 2020, all the way to January of 2022. So that's a large time frame. And if that's your illness.
It's almost two years. Yeah, almost two years. I mean, they did have some people that were on kind of lost time or,
or illness related to COVID. But that also increased and they didn't break that number down for us into how many of those were mental health issues because a lot of people,
the measures that were put in place in the workplace, and I know because some of these people are part of the group of employees that I've had contact with, they had to take stress leave and so they would be included in those COVID leaves.
leaves because it was related to the pandemic stressors. So I would, we tried to get the breakdown of those numbers and, and it just wasn't provided to us.
So, yeah, that would be interesting to see as, you know, whether people were some of the civilians or maybe some of the other members had some long term issues related to that.
Thank you. or to maybe being sick, but that's not uncommon. You know, you have flu season and people, you know, often get lingering results of having an upper respiratory or a lower respiratory virus.
So those aren't, you know, some people are more susceptible to that. - Yes, of course. Some people, you know, I'm one of those annoying people who'll get some favorite, even bronchitis. which I've had a number of times. Give me a few days,
I'm fine. But you get other people who will get something like that. They'll be sick for weeks, even a couple of months before they can finally cure that infection. So yes, we know that happens. Now everything that we've just been discussing, Natasha, in terms of the numbers we were talking about,
that's just been logic and extrapolation on our part. But you are an expert in looking at statistics that are coming out with this information and you pointed that there's problems with their statistical reporting methods.
Thank you very much. the documents they provided. - Yeah, and there was no way to verify them. So they provided, there's hundreds and hundreds of pages of just daily stats reporting and that are in these documents,
but there's no way to verify what that data point actually is. So I didn't go into a whole bunch on the statistical side just because. in order to properly analyze that,
I would need to discuss kind of even what their parameters were because they were always changing. So they were changing the way they reported them, they were changing what they were counting as a case,
just like in the public that they seem to be reflecting how things were counted in the public. And so it was hard to put it. any true hard evaluation onto the statistics we were seeing,
just because verification of data points is very important to do. And without the ability to verify that process, make sure that I can quantify it and qualify it,
it became a point where I'm like, I can't focus on the statistical part of it without the ability to verify it. having more information and it just wasn't available.
- And one example that did stick out to me though was the total absences that were recorded were not broken down. So there was nothing, you know, information there to give you specifically, well,
how many of those absences were caused by COVID? - Yeah. - So basically in terms of analyzing their COVID pandemic response, response, that information is now worthless.
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because there's no way to confirm and, you know, they were using isolations,
they were positive, using positive test cases, but that didn't necessarily mean somebody was sick. We knew that, you know, they stopped the asymptomatic testing because it was wasn't an indicator of actual illness,
right? So the provincial government stopped that asymptomatic testing. And so, you know, when you're using that as a data point and then it goes away, how does that change your stats? I, you know,
the validity is a challenge with anything present from there. Well, all right, let's talk now about-- I don't think there's any other word for it.
but the abuses that were happening in the workplace against the employees, against the police, from the management. And I'd like you to talk first about the methods they went to,
to essentially coerce the employees to take the vaccines. Yeah, it was quite extreme. First of all,
I did almost probably about 100 hours of conversations with members. And most of that's not in my report, because it's too identifiable.
And it is, they're still being disciplined for stuff or targeted at work. And the harassment level is something that I have never seen before.
in a workplace. And it's actually heartbreaking to see the level of abuse that they had. So, you know,
in that workplace they were bombarded. So they're bombarded in society with what was coming out on the TV and the requirements and the pushing of the shots,
just like everybody else was, but then within their work workplace, they're being told by their leadership that they need to just go take the shot. In patrol meetings,
they're being told that people in their working groups were saying anybody who's unvaccinated should be locked in a concrete cell. Well,
then you're going into potentially a gun call and relying on that person to have your back. How do you do that? You know, that level of stress just kept on building in an environment that's already operationally high stress for their,
just because their job roles, they were being intimidated, their jobs were being threatened. If they spoke out and asked questions, that was almost even worse at that point.
And they were asking questions. They were pushing back the entire entire time. Start to finish with very intelligent police officers. A lot of them are former military trained.
A lot of them understand bio weapons because of that and were worried at the beginning. They submitted reports. They asked questions of OHS and they were being ignored.
So can you imagine going to your OHS person, person or group and asking a question about your safety on a work site and nobody even responds to it?
Or they say, "No, just trust me on this. I know what I'm talking about." Dismissive. Even right up until this fall, they've been dismissive about providing hazard assessments.
That's an obligation of OH &S. They allow the bullying in the work site, so the bullying was absolutely extreme, whether it was related to masking or the vaccine.
The workers that were deemed non -compliant, there was the constant threat of whether or not they would be suspended or disciplined.
And you saw that through the information in my report, is that conversation was occurring at the end of the day. the pandemic committee table. Can there be consequences for non -compliance from the workers?
So they're actually openly talking about disciplining a worker for an occupational health and safety requirement as it was deemed on their website.
And so the escalation just, it came top down. It came top down. down in direction from leadership. People being told,
just go get your shot. Why won't you just go get it? You know, their jobs were hinging on it. When they took these concerns to the union and were voicing these to their union to get support and say,
look, we should not have to give our personal medical information because that was made mandatory for them to disclose, mandatory disclosure, or you will be put on an unpaid leave." And there were workers that lost their jobs during that time.
They were put on an unpaid leave. I think we should comment right here. That's illegal. Yeah. That is illegal. You're forcing them to reveal their private medical records. That's illegal in this country. Always has been. That's great.
The fact that you work for the police does not change that. that. - That's correct. - All right, please conclude. I just had to jump in with that. - Yeah, no, it's okay, it's infuriating,
it is. And because that's exactly it, that was unlawful. And officers were saying that, this is unlawful. You cannot ask for this.
And not just a few, hundreds, the association commented that they were fielding hundreds of complaints and phone calls and emails in relation to this.
This was not something that they weren't speaking out for and trying to fight for themselves. People think that they were non -existent, not fighting back, they happen.
And if they did not provide that information to the employer by their deadline. Their employer gave their name to the union and asked the union to talk to them to get them to disclose the information.
So there's privacy violation right there. You know, they've disclosed that this person's not providing a medical status and they've provided to the union, which is a third party, to get them to pressure the worker to disclose their medical status.
status. It's absolutely horrific to think that an employer that knows the law, these are not people that can say,
"I didn't know. I didn't know what that law was." They can't claim ignorance. It is their job. It is part of their job to know the legislation.
They are to uphold the law beyond politics. Well, I think the good example here in this action would be, let's say we go back five or six years, and the police get a report of a doctor who has provided the patient's private medical information to,
say, an insurance company without that patient's consent. They would go and arrest that doctor for breaking the law. They would know that this is illegal. You can't do that. And yet here is the police force themselves trying to force them.
this and breaking the law, sharing their private medical records. And it wasn't it wasn't just officers. It wasn't just officers. They were they requested that they have the information on citizens who were subjects that may have had close contact with a member and a potential exposure or a spitting.
spitting. Normally on a body, and this is kind of maybe going down, a path you're not ready for yet, but I'm gonna take you there. There's a procedure in place when you're trying to obtain private information in relation to a bodily exposure.
So that's been in place for a long time, whether it's HIV, hepatitis, any potential infectious disease and you've had a bodily fluids or an exposure. you might have had an exposure with a person or a subject.
We had the same thing in healthcare. And there's a form that you can sign for to consent to being tested, consent to obtaining that information.
In policing, it's next to impossible to get that information on somebody who's a subject or a detainee. detainee. You know, defense lawyers don't like that if you're trying to go for their clients,
you know, medical status and what's usually done is that the member undergoes a medical or undergoes testing. - I think that's extremely important,
Natasha, what you've just pointed out, because even in the case of a person who is either been incarcerated or is awaiting trial for a crime, or be convicted. convicted of a crime They still have a right to the privacy of their medical records That's correct.
They do. They do not nobody forgoes their privacy rights And you do not forego your right to your private medical information because of a government emergency Right that is a very important thing that the public needs to understand understand is that that that public health order does not supersede existing legislation.
We've got extreme coercion of not just the police members themselves of the police officers, but everybody who works for the Edmonton Police Service. But the management would argue well at no point in time did we ever require it.
it," which technically is correct. But what happened to the people who didn't take the vaccines? Well, that's, you know, that's a play on words because require it.
Well, it's you take the vaccine, or you force test, which is an invasive medical procedure, or you're put on a leave without pay.
pay, that is discipline, that's jaw action. - Technically, I'm using the same terms that Trudeau used when he said, well, we didn't force anybody, well, you can choose to take the vaccine or you can choose not to be employed.
- Yep. - That's the same logic they're using here. But, - Yes. - Nonetheless, nobody was tying these people down and forcing the vaccine into their arms. So,
we did have some people who didn't. take them. But what happened to them in the workplace? - In the workplace, yeah. So they were the discrimination level and the Edmonton Police Service was too extreme.
And other police agencies have told me the same. So the policy actually outlines that police officers that chose chose.
the testing option could not do extra duty. They could not do non -mandatory training,
so they couldn't advance themselves professionally by doing anything that was deemed non -mandatory training. They were not allowed to use the gyms all of a sudden,
so they had been using them up until now, but they couldn't. use them all of a sudden if they were testing. They couldn't use the lunch rooms with their coworkers. Now, this is huge because they would be riding beside their partner for eight hours,
working, wrestling with subjects. They would be outperforming their duties, sitting in a confined space with them. But when they went in,
to stop for their break, they could not go to the lunch room and eat with their coworker. They had to go to what was deemed in some of the stations as the shame worm.
And there's an officer that lost his employment during this Rick Abbott, and he has gone into quite lengthy conversation about how enraged he was by the treatment.
treatment of his men and he stood up for that and he ended up losing his job for standing up for his men, but, you know, they had to go to the shame room.
There was such extreme discrimination that people were calling them, you know, anti -vaxxers, careful, he's infectious, you know, and saying this to either civilian members or members of the public.
Well, don't go or younger. younger recruits, don't go talk to that guy 'cause he's an unvaccinated, they're dirty people. Some of the levels of abuse I can't even get into because it would identify the workers here.
- Right, but I think another point we have to make here is how did the vaccinated members know who the unvaccinated members were? Well, it wasn't released technically of their medical records,
but because they were-- being denied access to certain areas, it was obvious who they were. Essentially management was outing these people in front of their coworkers and setting them up for this kind of abuse.
Yeah. And some of the supervisors were identifying them as well. They knew. So the medical information was not, there was no confidentiality. Even for people who were full on board,
that's what they don't realize until they, some of these members. members need to read my report because their medical information was provided and it was being discussed. Even if they were in agreement with what was going on in their workplace and supporting it,
I don't think they realized that if they were a positive test case that very often their name was actually in the meeting minutes. And those were the results.
redacted for when I got it, and that's how I know their names were in there. Their personal identifiers were communicated all over in relation to their personal medical information.
This is just so much bigger than just a vaccine issue, right? And that's what's the challenge right now, is everybody's focused on that vaccine component.
But the big issue is that... that there's been open breaking of laws that exist. And that was done by not just the regular employer that might not have known the law around it,
or you may deem that they should have known, but it was broken by those that knew the laws. And so they were openly discussing, though, positive test cases.
And, and off and it's a small group, pretty small group. So, you know, that information was never private and it's very concerning.
It's a perfect lead into a very concerning letter that was in this email. And that letter was sent March 18th of 2020.
So March 18th, 2020. And that letter was sent March 18th, 2020. And this letter was the chief of police acting as the president of the Alberta Association of Chiefs of Police.
So he also sits in that role. And it was to the Minister of Justice and Solicitor General for the government of Alberta at the time. And as I read this,
keep in mind, eminent police service did not have their first first positively tested employee, so their first positive case, until March 25th of 2020,
and it was noted who the person was and that it was travel related. So keep that in mind as I read this. They wanted priority notification for police in relation to test results.
And the chief of police, or the chief of police, police wrote this, that they were also requesting the province introduce an interim mechanism whereby Alberta Health Services can confirm or deny whether an individual has been tested or has tested positive for COVID -19 after being in close proximity to a police officer or other frontline responder.
We wish to remain or sorry, we wish to firmly state that privacy cannot trump global safety and there is no better time than now to end this.
So let me let me be clear on this. What they're wanting to do what have the authority to do now now we're not talking about police officers. We're talking about getting the medical records of any member member of the public a police officer has come in contact with.
That's correct. Potentially, yeah. Wow. And that's, I missed that in the documents you sent me. I just, yes. I've supposed to be a journalist but sometimes Natasha,
some things just leave me speechless and that's one of them. You don't even know what to say to something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I get that people were scared.
I get it. People were scared when this was first coming in. But these are our law enforcement. They are supposed to act in the best interest of the public and not,
and they're supposed to be the oversight to make sure as a check and balance that the law is upheld, especially in the event of an emergency. Yes.
And they didn't. Yeah. And you know what's worse, Will, as we got into this. So in April of 2020, and we'll just wrap my sheets here,
because I have the protocol for it. So they actually did get this process put in place, where Alberta law enforcement, they did these request forms for COVID -19 results.
And this is included in the FOIP documents. So this is the blank form. And it has, you know, the police information on it. It has subject details.
So it includes the person's name, their date of birth, their address, their phone number. It includes the occurrence details, date,
time, location, any details. details of that for the officer to put in. It includes additional information, subject self -admitted to having been COVID tested positive,
yes or no, subject, whether they intentionally coughed or sneezed or spat on a police officer, that was required to be in there. If they have any COVID symptoms,
listing them off costs. cough, sneeze, fever, runny nose, sore throat, etc. Did the subject provide consent to be tested? Well,
there's no consent form for this. Is that verbal consent? I don't know. It's a checkbox. Was PPE worn at the time? And then there's a name of the duty officer that this notification went to and the date and time of that.
Now it's... what's really concerning about this form, and I was frankly, as somebody that comes out of the medical side and investigated healthcare practitioners,
we deal with a lot of privacy stuff. And this form with all of this information, all of these blanks filled, was sent to the Office of the Chief Medical Officer of Health in the province.
province. It was sent to the Executive Director of Alberta Justice and Solicitor General Office. It was sent to the Executive Director for the Alberta Association of Chiefs of Police.
It was sent to the duty officer for Edmonton Police Service for that shift. It was sent to the Pandemic Response Command Team to their Emergency Response Group.
email whoever opens that it was sent to a deputy chief and it was sent to the Occupational Health and Safety Section OH &S reporting email box.
Everybody that I just listed got a copy of that form. Right and once again I've got to clarify this so what you're telling me is there was a period of time there where this form was being filled in for every single interaction that police had.
with a member of the public, who many of whom may not have been guilty of anything, or at the very worst, some sort of minor infraction like a fine,
and all of this personal information on them was being shared across multiple levels of the government. Now, I'll just clarify well, is that this was not filled out for every time you had an interaction with the public.
public. So this was filled out when a EPS member believed that they had intentional or had an exposure. So we actually don't know how many times this form was completed.
We do know it was completed because there's meeting minutes discussing when a member called AHS for clarification on this form and it was said maybe we should just pre -check both boxes that that it initiated the testing and the information flow from Alberta Health Services because Alberta Health Services would not provide the information unless the person had intentionally coughed,
sneezed, or spat on a police member. So when a deputy chief is saying, "Miguel, we should pre -fill those boxes," he's taking a choice. away from member.
Now, that did not happen, but the fact that it was suggested is completely inappropriate. It's up to the-- One factor is down. It's all is completely inappropriate. Yeah. Yeah, so I don't-- And it doesn't matter how few people it might have affected.
Yeah. Once again, we're getting back to breaking the look, the privacy laws. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And that's the thing. So this was this form being developed.
And, and so again, we come back to this, throwing away of, of privacy legislation, had somebody considered filling in this form before COVID,
take COVID out of it, put any other topic in there. And you said, okay, we're going to, we're going to do this for your, your pant size or something. Then we're going to give your personal measurements away.
People would be. saying, "Why are you sending it to all those people?" You know, it's completely inappropriate to disclose to all these third parties.
These, every time that hit their inbox, they're not custodians of health information. You know, we have a Health Information Act.
They're very, very detailed. on obtaining, on accessing, and on disclosing personal medical information. And you're supposed to be very limited in what you disclose without identifiers.
You know, there's a whole bunch of rules around the disclosure of personal medical information. And this violates a lot of them, all of them. Yes. Yeah. All right, Natasha,
I want to get back to to what was happening to the employees themselves. And I think in this particular case, we may be focusing actually mostly on the officers. I was a paramedic when I was younger and I worked closely with police many times.
And so I know something that many people do not know and there's this perception in the public that the police are hard asses who can handle anything. They're just people like everyone else. And they have to go through some pretty horrific experiences.
in the line of their work And so there's a reason why police forces have staff psychiatrists counselors therapists Yeah, from what you were able to glean from these documents and from the conversations I think would think especially that you had with the people who approached you What was a psychological and emotional impact of this on the employees?
It's so extreme they are are broken. The morale of the force was already pretty low pre -COVID, you know, the lack of support,
the lack of, or any attacks, you know, you have all the movements attacking the police and really making their job even harder. The escalation of violence in our communities,
you know, they've had this level of operational stress. And when you throw in the air, you know, you're going to have to go through this, you know, you're going to have to go through this, you know, you're going to have to go through this, you know, you're going to have to go through this. abuse, the coercion, many members described what they experienced at work as extortion.
They had to comply with what was going on. They had to do things in order to maintain their employment, in order to be able to provide for their families.
And the trust, because of that, the trust is completely broken. broken. These members are holding on right now, some of them by a thread, some of them are off on leave.
Others just are trying to make it through the day. They're no different than you and I. They go home, they suffer through what's going through in their communities, their families have suffered tremendously.
They've had the same harm from all the lockdown stuff and then added on top the abuse in the workplace and the targeting of them in the workplace has just,
they will not recover from that, especially when there's no accountability for the actions taken against them. And there's no movement to even try to begin repairing that.
In fact, the chief of police recently came out in his year in review talking about the abuse in the workplace. the people on leave of absence, and they're on for all sorts of reasons. But there's a significant number of the workforce that's on a leave.
And he referred to the people off for mental health leave as having above -the -neck injuries. And for somebody who has operational stress injury,
or post -traumatic stress injury, to tell them they have an above -the -neck injury is such an insult, and then to add in that they were going to be controlling their return to work.
And that's a statement right out of his statement. That's not something I'm... So there's just this compounding mental health trauma. trauma, and there's no support for it.
People say, "Well, they have access to all these psychologists." Well, some of the psychologists that they deal with and that they went to advise them that they should be getting vaccinated,
they pushed medical, and that's out of their scope of practice. That was a violation on their part. People don't realize that people cannot make medical suggestions to people out of their scope of practice.
of practice and They should should have been more cautious with what they said when it is not part of their training But medical professionals didn't do that.
So yeah, yeah So even a psychiatrist who is qualified to prescribe certain drugs those drugs are only for psychiatric conditions It's not within the scope of their expertise to tell someone to go take a vaccine That's correct Right.
So they went to seek help and support, and that's what they ran into when they were trying to find help and support. So where do they go? They're left hanging.
They're left hanging out there with no support. And then you take away their gym, and people go, "Oh, they lost their gym access. Oh, I've had so many people,
and I just sit and have to take care of them." That's correct. breath and let that out and say, but you don't realize for frontline workers,
whether they're fire, paramedics, law enforcement, military, part of the training is that you manage the stress and that you become operationally ready for your duties of the day by using exercise.
It is is the best way for them to de -stress. And so when people criticize that. - There's an excellent book written by Dr. John Rayty. It's called "Spark." And he's probably the world's foremost expert on the mental and emotional effects of exercise.
There is no better antidepressant or stress reliever than exercise. And so they put these people under extreme stress and then deny them the one thing.
thing that could help them to deal with it Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. Yeah, and the city and the civilians civilians were banned longer from even being able to use the gym So the civilians suffered Just as much as the sworn members Well,
and this this of course was It's especially cruel in this situation because of what they're doing to them But this happened society -wide when they closed all the gyms - That's correct. - Yeah,
of course, I knew from day one the entire narrative was BS, but the one group of people I was really upset with, was the gyms, who went along with it and shut down. 'Cause you're taking away from people the one thing that's going to make them both mentally and physically resilient.
- Yeah. - If anybody should have end well -gripped, thankfully there were. There was at least one gym here in Calgary, the one run by. Rebecca Ingram, and she took the government to court and won.
So that's the kind of thing that Jim should have done. But anyways, I'm digressing, I'm going on a rabid trail here. That's right, it's important. We've painted a picture of the kind of coercion and abuse that was taking place,
and we know for a fact there was a large number of people on that police force who did go and take those vaccines they didn't want to. to, but they were coerced into it. And there's data in the documents you got on vaccine injuries.
Yeah. There's data in the documents for the injuries. So they actually are accommodating workers that were granted either short -term disability coverage related to vaccine conditions.
conditions, as well as one employee who was granted long -term disability. So there's only a handful of or a couple of them mentioned in the report from the employer.
However, the Edmonton Police Association started in March of 2023 at the member's request, taking a file of injury,
vaccine related injuries. illness and some alleged deaths. And they have written statements from those employees,
sworn members in their files of vaccine harm, and they've been in possession of those. And that's the employees we're trying to get the association to help these workers,
help them get coverage. coverage, help them get compensated. Many of them still, their vaccine injuries are not being related or being responded to appropriately by either the employer or the union.
They're still fighting right now to get coverage for their disabilities and their injuries. And these aren't minor things. These are people that were hospitalized or they're,
or have to attend emergency services. There's officers that have gone down on duty. If you're on a gun call and you go down or you're chasing a subject and you go down because of a vaccine -related injury,
that puts us all of society at risk. Since this has become a little bit more public within the EPS, that there's a group pushing for it,
the group that approached me, a lot of people now come to them. They don't want their employer to know that they are suffering or that they're regularly sick because of,
and that they've never been sick before. They're coming forward and disclosing and asking for help, which is unfortunate. They should have that support. End up. right.
Okay, so what? And I know I'm stating the obvious and yet I think you we have to sum it up because we've been we've been going for almost an hour now and Yeah, so that we're coming and we're not done yet.
There's a few questions for you yet But what you've what we've done is we've pity or what you've done is you pay this picture of this obscene abuse within the Edmonton police service that the psychological trauma that was caused,
now we've got the proof of the physical arms by people who should have known the law and were openly breaking it, and what I want to wrap all of that in is this,
that by 2021, AHS and the government were openly admitting that these shots did not prevent transmission, they did not prevent infection. You have spent a lot of time analyzing this.
I realize you're not a psychiatrist and I'm putting you on the spot with this question. But can you theorize any kind of explanation for how they could justify this sort of behavior when every piece of data they had told them not only was this unnecessary,
it was harmful. now No The only thing personally that I can come up with is that they didn't care They didn't care what I did.
Okay, but that begs the question. Why why didn't they care? I don't know That's what I would hope that we would be able to get an investigation To determine is what is that root cause?
that pushed all of this onto everyone. It's not that they just knew in the spring of 2021, in the documentation, in the report,
beginning of January 2021, January 6th of 2021, the Edmonton Police Service has attended a law enforcement webinar put on by by Anthony Fauci,
and he clearly stated in that webinar that the vaccines didn't prevent transmission you could still get and transmit COVID, that there was no long -term information that they were awaiting that.
And all of these were known that they would need to stagger staffing because of side effects from the vaccines. There was a briefing. briefing note issued after that from one of the deputy chiefs that outlined that they couldn't make the vaccine mandatory,
but they need to figure out how to increase compliance with it or increase the percentage of their staff that had it. And it also outlined that they were going to have to come up with a plan to stay for staffing so that there weren't shortest due to adverse or side effects in illness especially after the second shot.
So you know when you have a briefing note from a deputy chief that's already in January 2021 talking about that,
that is knowledge, knowledge that you may be causing harm to or illness into your workers.
You cannot put that in. You have a duty of care in instructing your workers. That is in the criminal code and that is in the OH NAS requirements.
In their positions, they have a judiciary duty of care in directing the workers. workers. And by putting that on paper, you have acknowledged that you might be making the workforce sick and that they may not be operationally ready to perform their duties.
That should concern every citizen, every citizen. And that brings us to something extremely important. And we briefly touched on it earlier. but I want you to go into more depth now Not so much the lack of informed consent because that was society -wide nobody was able to give informed consent But within the case of the Edmonton police service the lack of risk assessment And I said we touched on this very briefly earlier
I'd like you to go into the details on that because you've just told us at At the latest January 2021 a month after the vaccines came out. They knew these things were potentially harmful.
That's correct. But there was almost no risk assessment done. There's none. There was, oh, I shouldn't say none, I'll change that,
then you can strike that one. So their risk assessment, and so everybody understands occupational health and safety and that's why that's so much of my report.
Because the obligation of the employer is to perform a hazard assessment to assess the risk to the worker in the workplace. That's number one.
You have to do that. That's an obligation as per the OH &S legislation. That's Canada -wide. Every employer was required to do that. So in 2020,
they had their normal normal hazard assessments because they did them yearly in the Edmonton Police Service, and then they did a COVID -specific one.
So, they identified the risks all as low risk, all the way through with measures in place. Those measures were masking distancing and not not masking,
sorry, N95 masking, bit tested. So not cloth mask, not procedure mask. We're talking actual respiratory fit proper N95s.
And that was standard off of their previous assessments for most positions. Interestingly enough, the OH &S section didn't have that on theirs.
So in their specific ones. for that year. So we do go through and they never did, they never redid their hazard assessment in 2021.
They did it in 2022, again, for COVID specific, and there was no change to it. So the, or minor,
minor little revisions, but no change, no addition of vaccination. - We have to clarify in 2022 when they said COVID specific, that doesn't mean they're testing to see if the vaccines are safe.
- No, that's just a risk assessment on site. That's their hazard assessment. They're assessing the hazard in the workplace, and they didn't do it in 2021. And the employees kept asking for it.
They kept asking, well, where's the change in the workplace? We've been working. front line with nobody getting sick or hardly anybody getting sick this whole time,
right? So these are guys front line. They've been in the hospitals. They have seen that the hospitals were pretty much, you know, empty hallways and echo chambers, and they weren't responding to a whole bunch of sudden deaths at home,
and they would because they'd be there, have to go to it. it at each one of those. So they weren't seeing anything demonstrated that supported the need now to put in a vaccine requirement in that workplace.
And they asked for the hazard assessment, they asked why, what changed? What risk changed in the workplace? Well, none. And the employer presented nothing in the documents.
nothing. And there's a big omission. I think you have to comment on the importance of that. What you've just said is that everything we've discussed in this interview, all of these abuses,
at no point in time did the management of the Edmonton Police Service provide any kind of documentation to justify what they were doing. Exactly. And I'm going to go a step further,
Will. I'm going to read right out of this white closure letter. letter because it'll kind of summarize this perfectly. One statement in relation to this. "Both the pandemic committee and the human resources legal department have confirmed that there is no correspondence relating or regarding the forced disclosure of confidential medical information or outlining the grounds allowing the employer to super supersede any medical
privacy, health information, PIPA, FOIP, and labor laws to request medical information. So that's at the request of the medical information.
They had nothing and that would have been required if they had information and legal advisement to do that would have been part of that providing providing proof that something had changed in the workplace,
that number one required disclosure and superseding of all of those other privacy rights that you would have. I mean, you'd have to demonstrate a significant risk to be able to request that information.
There's a test. It's called a KVP test that you have to perform. It forms reasonable. reasonable grounds to be able to request that information.
None of that was there. And again, to go into the next step of requiring the vaccine, you'd even have to have more evidence to support that decision.
That due diligence has a higher threshold and to require a medical treatment that is non reversible in your employees. in a work site,
people would need to, as an employer, have significant amount of documentation to back that. And of course they had none at all.
None that was provided as the disclosure. And there's some of the omission, potentially. Potentially. All right. All right.
Thank you. Thank you, Natasha. You've been extremely thorough and you've been very patient. We're almost done, but I do have a couple of questions for you based upon what I was reading in the documentation.
And one of the things that jumped out at me, because I did not know this myself, and I'm going to ask you to clarify it, maybe, maybe I'm misunderstanding it. And I'm going to frame the question first. One thing I do know is that in the US,
the development and distribution of the vaccines was funded funded by the U .S. Department of Defense to the tune of some $40 billion. I did not know until I read your document.
The vaccines here were distributed by the Canadian Armed Forces. Now was that just to the police? Was that everywhere? That was everywhere. What's the CAF doing distributing vaccines?
That's a question that I have in my report. I actually... actually put a recommendation in that this needs to be investigated further because that is not normal distribution of vaccines.
And you know, I've had a few people come to me and say, well, but that's because it had to be distributed at low temperature. And I say, well, I kind of call BS on that because in my role when I set up the heart valve transplant program,
those that valves were stored at minus 160 in liquid nitrogen and in order to transport them we had little indicators so if I was shipping them to Toronto for a transplant we have little indicators that we would put in the box usually three of them so and they would indicate if the temperature breached a threshold that made that tissue no longer viable for transplant and it was transported on dry ice for the transplant
surgery. So I understand this piece quite substantially. You can ship things that need to go at low temperature.
We do it all the time. And there's also tools in place by the amazing manufacturers that produce little temperature gauges or...
little indicators that we can put inside those packages. This is not an unknown. This is something that's done. We did not need the military to distribute that vaccine.
That's a huge question. I'm not just not just not in England. It's clear that it's health services that has the expertise to do this. There's nothing that I would know about of our Canadian military that would necessarily give them that expertise.
Yeah. Yeah. And there's also a large component of that communication section that deals with the security and providing armed security for the transport of the vaccines.
That I've never heard of a vaccine needing armed transport. You know, Canada doesn't have a whole bunch of militia running in. And what's interesting is that the RC documents that are included in here as well,
the intelligence documents, are quite interesting because they use one of their sources as CBC, which, wow, that's... Well, I believe on that particular case of the armed security,
I can propose a theory on that one. When we look at the fact that in the past nine months now, we've had quite a number of revelations come forward some scientists who have analyzed the vials of vaccine most importantly dr.
Kevin McKernan Finding the substantial amount of DNA in there that we found the sv -40 Proteins that were in there that we know cause cancer that we know are designed to insert foreign DNA into the host DNA Yeah,
my theory would be it was big being protected by the military because, and it was been extremely difficult for these scientists to get a hold of these vials. Governments, the manufacturers,
did not want people looking at what was in those vials. And I would say that's why it was shipped by the military. - Yeah, yeah, and you know what? Well, to speak to that, because I have so much contact with healthcare professionals,
I've talked to a lot of public health nurses, and when they-- first ruled out, they could not believe the measures put around those vaccines,
even if they weren't giving them, the people in their clinic that were, the wastage, the documentation, the vials were tracked.
You couldn't even throw away the regular vial into the regular garbage. It had to be tracked through. So there was a lot of conco - yes, about any of those vials or any of the samples of it being not put into a body and there was a tracking that these nurses have never seen before,
ever with a vaccine. So there's something, there is something more to that that needs to be looked at, I agree. Yes. All right Natasha, the last question and this is another one where I'm going to read it to you.
documentation and I'm taking the notes and I'm thinking am I really understanding what I'm reading here? The proposal by the Edmonton Police Service, not by the officers,
but by administration, for an AI mask detection unit. So that was the city of Edmonton Program,
not an Edmonton police, and it was presented to the Edmonton Police. police leadership. And so I have personally done my own voice that's tied up in city of Edmonton legal.
They won't release it yet. But there's so much concern around that. And that was an AI facial recognition of whether or not people were being mask compliant.
And and then it's if you weren't compliant it uses that behavioral nudge technology to put a message up on a digital board that this person would then walk into their vision line of vision give them a nudge about masking and and so this was a research project that the city of Edmonton did during during COVID to do determine mass compliance in population.
So I am still seeking to obtain every document around that. And when I get it, I'll let you know. And I believe that even though,
yes, I misunderstood that a little bit, it was coming from the city, not from the police, but it's still very significant. Because when you look at how draconian that is, of using AI to monitor the populace to see,
are you being compared? And then we were talking earlier about the management at EPS and how they just didn't care, didn't care they were breaking law,
didn't care the abuses they were subjecting the employees to. And you know, I asked, do you have any theories why and no, you don't know. And that's quite far right,
but I would then ask this question, who do those administrators work for? The city. The city.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, at that point in time, one of the deputy chiefs in the, in the notes, he did question,
well, is there anything ethical about this? Are there ethical considerations about, well, of course, there's ethical considerations, you're Your facial scanning, somebody goes, well,
it doesn't store their facial images. That was one of the, there was a Q and A sheet handed out with that. And I'm sitting there going, do people not understand AI?
AI builds because it builds a database. Of course it's storing the information in some capacity for that person. person, and that person is being scanned by AI technology without their consent.
Again. It's not just detecting whether or not that person's wearing a mask. With the AI technology, the facial recognition, they know who that person is. Yeah. Yeah. And then the question popped up in that Q &A sheet that went with that presentation.
Could this be combined to determine somebody's vaccine status? That's in the Q &A. And you know, I mean, you think of,
so that's the thought process that's going on. And this research group is, um, not listed in, in any orc chart I could find with the city of eminent,
eminent, it took the freedom of information lady a little while to find it. And so, um, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, be very interesting when I get the final VoIP release to see,
I'm imagining it'll have a lot of blank pages, but hopefully not. - I'm very much hoping that I'll hear from you when you get an answer to that question. - Yeah. - So I have just the one final question to tell you.
- Yeah. - You've put a tremendous amount of work into this for something that mainstream media obviously isn't going to work. to touch it with a 10 -foot pole. You're not going to hear about this on CBC.
You have to go through independent media such as myself. So my question would be, what do you hope that we can accomplish by revealing this information?
Well, there's a few things. Thanks. I think that's an excellent question. It's the one I get the most. What can we do? what can we do now? So there's a couple of things that we really need to do.
A lot of people are angry at the police and don't understand what's happened to them or the abuses and they tell me,
well, they should just leave then. They should take a stand. And if they get fired, well, that's too bad. But then who takes their place? - Yeah, if all the good opportunities...
who reject to this leave, who does that leave? - Yeah. - The people who are quite willing to go along with it. - Exactly. And so it's really important that, number one, people understand that those officers that are even today being professionally harmed in their positions and suffering every day that they're there with the mental health injuries,
they're staying there. because of you and me and our communities and the fact that they know that people like them are needed in those positions.
And so we need to support them. The other thing, you know, I've been pushing with government officials to get my recommendations addressed and filing complaints with appropriate agencies.
to try to get action to address the violations that are in the report. So I am pushing that. Again, it's not these are these offices are bogged down with the complaints.
And it takes time to address especially something of this magnitude where it's not just eminent police. I've had calls from across Canada and my inbox is full almost every day from RCMP officer.
officers, from Calgary police officers, from all sorts of police all over saying this, I read your report, this, that's what happened to us too.
And so it speaks to the bigger issue that, and we've known for a long time, that the culture and the workplace has been toxic for policing for a really long time.
That's not new. Everybody knows about that, but it really doesn't matter whether it's COVID or something else. If they're willing to go to this extreme, it doesn't matter what that topic is,
so we've got to address it. And I think public needs to be aware so that they can put that pressure forward, especially businesses. You know, the public was deceived. Businesses were deceived.
I've had business owners come to me. and say, I put in measures in my workplace. I couldn't afford to get a lawyer. I couldn't afford to go get legal advice on that.
And I was scared that they were gonna come shut down my business and I did that. I have liability and they're terrified, but they're like, I only did it after the police put it in.
Voluntary Compliance They were used to gain voluntary compliance. And that's a municipal and a provincial government issue that needs to be addressed.
So I'm pushing that. It's not easy. I can imagine it is not. It boggles my mind to think of how difficult it must have been to go through those 9 ,000 pages at large.
largely scrambled information and pull out the very cohesive picture that you did. So thank you, Natasha, for all of that work. And folks, once again, you will find links to the executive summary and the full document directly beneath this interview.
Go and take a look at this for yourself. It is truly shocking, the extent that they went to. So, Natasha, thank you again for all of your hard work. Thank you very much for having me.
- And just one last thing I'd like to say is the courage of the police officers that have come forward and taken the time to spend hours talking with me and telling me their horrific trauma needs to be recognized.
And lots actually couldn't speak to me because it's too traumatic for them to go through. And they are really the most brave brave and amazing people that I've had the opportunity to work with.
And I appreciate them putting their trust in me to put this out there, like I'm their voice because they still can't speak. So, you know, they are truly remarkable and yeah,
Bad Apples in every type of organization, but truly these are amazing people. that are trying to do their best for their communities. - And I would second that,
of course, being the founder of Strong and Free Canada as well and having attended many, many demonstrations during the COVID period. Yes, I had my own experiences with officers who very clearly didn't deserve a badge and others who were very courageously,
I would say, going through the process. the motions, appearing to do their job, but yet obviously very much in support of our protests or the violations of our rights.
And so I think people need to remember that when they're dealing with police. Until that officer reveals one way or the other what their inclination is, be polite,
be respectful. People, you may be talking to. to someone who's completely on our side and is putting up with a horrendous amount of pressure at work under very poor conditions to be able to continue to do their best,
their very best to defend our rights. - That's right, yeah. Let's unshackle them, let's give them back a voice. Let them do their jobs to investigate 'cause if we don't,
you can't get a candidate. anywhere if our law enforcement aren't freed up. Well said. Thank you. Thank you very much, Will.