Emails revealed by Radio-Canada show the province of Quebec decided to issue a curfew last New Year’s Eve and asked for medical justification for it the same day — only to hear the opposite..At 10:31 a.m., on December 30, the assistant to then-public health director Dr. Horacio Arruda wrote to the Montreal Health Institute and Marie-France Raynault, a senior medical adviser for an “argument” to help justify the need for a second curfew effective New Year’s Eve..When Radio-Canada issued an information request on the email exchange, whole pages were redacted and much of what was disclosed suggested the premier not do it. Montreal Public Health said the policy had no evidence to support it and the previous curfew had collateral damage such as increased domestic violence and Quebecers who slept at work to avoid being arrested by police for being out of their homes at forbidden hours..Undaunted, at 5 p.m., Premier François Legault announced the province’s second curfew. Starting December 31, it banned Quebecers from leaving their homes from 10 p.m. until 5 a.m. in the morning. And until public outcry reversed the policy, people couldn’t even take their dogs out for walks..Ontario Civil Liberties Association Executive Director Joseph Hickey wants a probe made into Quebec’s COVID responses. He believes more truth deserves to be dug into unjustifiable COVID-19 policies there and elsewhere..“Because the policies have been so without any basis, there must be many other documents that would be extremely revealing of a similar nature,” Hickey said in an interview..“We hope that these will come to light. We hope that whistleblowers will expose these documents and make them public so that the public can see the truth about what has occurred.”.Arruda resigned on January 10, stating in a letter to the Premier, “Recent comments about the credibility of our opinions and our scientific rigor are undoubtedly causing a certain erosion of public support.”.Hickey said the revelations of these emails made 11 days prior are even more “important” given the events that followed..“Shortly after he (Arruda) resigned, the government announced that they were going to implement the vax-tax on the unvaccinated. It was going to be a financial penalty for unvaccinated people, something that has never been done before. It’s completely unprecedented off the chart in terms of a new draconian measure.”.Douglas Farrow, professor of theology and ethics at McGill University in Montreal, sees a different significance to the emails in a longer-term view. .“The real story here, in my opinion, is not the arbitrariness of their actions or even their attempts to cover the arbitrariness by last-minute appeals to unconvincing studies they had not studied. The real story concerns their paranoia about overwhelmed hospitals. In two years the hospitals never were overwhelmed, staffing shortages aside,” Farrow told the Western Standard..“When in March of 2020 it cleared hundreds of beds—at the expense of postponed treatments and of unnecessary deaths in the LTCs—many of those beds remained empty. If the government at first believed they would be filled, it soon learned otherwise.”.Farrow believes those responsible for the freedom-curtailing COVID-19 responses will try to avoid the investigation they deserve..“Neither the incompetent nor the scheming want any such inquiry, of course. Indeed, the frenzy of lies and punitive measures directed at the freedom convoy tells us that our politicians, provincially and federally, are desperate to avoid such an inquiry and the accountability to which it must lead. We must not permit them to avoid it.”.Samuel Bachand, Quebec lawyer for the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, issued a court case against the government for its requirement for vaccine passports to attend church services. He hopes court action will restore freedoms and reveal the truth, but wonders if Quebecers have not been complicit in the loss of their own rights..“Quebecers at some point have to stand up. They have been extremely, and I would say, very unfortunately docile for the last two years,” Bachand said in an interview with Western Standard..“They accepted the curfews. Nobody was in the streets protesting for that. To me, a curfew rhymes with German occupation in Paris in 1940.”.Lee Harding is a Western Standard contributor living in Saskatchewan.
