Very well said. Some "charitable" organizations are also still mandating this for their employees and volunteers (I tried to volunteer at the Fort York Food Bank in February of 2023 and was told that I need to be vaccinated).
As far as I know Toronto/TTC etc have not rehired any workers who refused the jab. Dr de Villa is still the Chief Medical Officer of Health after advocating for and leading some of the most disastrous public health measures ever. What is your position on these issues?
The same as they've been since day one. I view mandates as discriminatory and many of the public health measures (mandatory masking, mandatory closures) as government over-reach. There has been a widespread misunderstanding by our elected officials of the appropriateness of public health recommendations vs public health mandates. The former is fine as long as we have transparency and a healthy avenues of debate in place (both of which we need to work on, since we don't). The latter is unacceptable no matter what the recommendations are.
I agree that in an ideal world our politicians should have stood up to Public Health in this case.
Are you saying you would let Dr de Villa off the hook because de Villa was just making recommendations? and recommendations which happened to align with the medical "consensus" at the time? However there was evidence at the time that masking didn't work, jabs were ineffective etc etc. How do we prevent this disaster from happening again, if nobody can be held responsible? Who would you hold responsible and for what?
Also what would you do to increase Public Health transparency? A public inquiry similar to the COVID-19 National Citizens Inquiry, or perhaps Toronto funding the Citizen's Inquiry and contributing by publishing Toronto Public Health internal deliberations?
Hi Greg. I don't consider myself a judge, I have been on the outside of government and I too have found myself in direct opposition to Dr. de Villa's policies. But I'm not interested in looking backwards or condemning specific people as much as I am with looking forwards and reforming the systems and ways of conducting government that led to them. Each of us have to come to terms with our own actions of the past few years. You have a lot of good questions about process and I don't have answers for them all. I can simply say that I agree with you that all of these things are supremely important: preventing this type of action from happening in the future, making government more transparent (and doing away with the unnecessary levels that make it opaque), allowing people to tell their stories of how they suffered these past years. I do not have all the answers for how we do these things, but that they are necessary I agree with. I am open to everyone's ideas.
A mayor may not be a judge in the legal sense, but it seems to me the job is still mostly about judgment and also about making processes work for us, including firing people if appropriate...
I have more thoughts on transparency but I'm not sure they are on topic for this post.
In my experience the Toronto bureaucracy is a force to be reckoned with and just being open to everyone's ideas may not be sufficient when the bureaucracy has so much power to shape the debate.
The COVID-19 mindset that we can conquer and eradicate viruses that drove the response to COVID-19 is very much in evidence in the battle over backyard hens. https://secure.toronto.ca/council/agenda-item.do?item=2023.EC3.4 Toronto now seeks to ban backyard hens and the fear of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) is one of the main reasons. MLS is not alone in this, they appear to have considerable support from a variety of animal welfare groups, veterinarians etc.
It turned out we couldn't eradicate SARS-CoV-2 but we did enormous damage to ourselves with the lockdowns. HPAI has natural reservoirs and crosses multiple species so we are not likely to eradicate it either, at least not without destroying the entire natural world. Unfortunately the fear of viruses and our seeming refusal to consider nurturing our natural immunity and any treatment options for viruses is leading to us trying to separate ourselves from the natural world which we are a part of. I don't think we can survive as the only life on this planet.
Thanks for letting me know about this Greg. The attitude of "if we control everything we'll never get hurt" seems to be part of this type of policy. It's unfortunate because, not only is it harmful and destructive, it actually doesn't work. These are the kinds of bylaws that I think are ridiculous, harmful and costly. Dogs and cats carry pathogens (eg cat litter and toxoplasmosis) but fortunately no one suggests banning them. Banning hens over fear seems like a big mistake to me. Thanks for your post and the news, I'll share it elsewhere too.
The MLS report uses the term bio-security on page 10 in conjunction with a whole slew of hypercontrol measures against HPAI. This is frighteningly similar thinking to the WHO's current "One Health" initiative as described here https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/one-health-agenda-surveillance-control-earth-who/ This underlines just how essential it is, possibly to our survival, to learn the lessons of COVID-19 so we don't fall into "One Health" dystopia. I doubt there is any place for backyard chickens in a "One Health" world.
Very well said. Some "charitable" organizations are also still mandating this for their employees and volunteers (I tried to volunteer at the Fort York Food Bank in February of 2023 and was told that I need to be vaccinated).
I wish these organizations could see they are only hurting themselves with these policies!
Unfortunately, they don't. They see it as "taking care of our community" and the "greater good".
Well said! 👏
As far as I know Toronto/TTC etc have not rehired any workers who refused the jab. Dr de Villa is still the Chief Medical Officer of Health after advocating for and leading some of the most disastrous public health measures ever. What is your position on these issues?
The same as they've been since day one. I view mandates as discriminatory and many of the public health measures (mandatory masking, mandatory closures) as government over-reach. There has been a widespread misunderstanding by our elected officials of the appropriateness of public health recommendations vs public health mandates. The former is fine as long as we have transparency and a healthy avenues of debate in place (both of which we need to work on, since we don't). The latter is unacceptable no matter what the recommendations are.
I agree that in an ideal world our politicians should have stood up to Public Health in this case.
Are you saying you would let Dr de Villa off the hook because de Villa was just making recommendations? and recommendations which happened to align with the medical "consensus" at the time? However there was evidence at the time that masking didn't work, jabs were ineffective etc etc. How do we prevent this disaster from happening again, if nobody can be held responsible? Who would you hold responsible and for what?
Also what would you do to increase Public Health transparency? A public inquiry similar to the COVID-19 National Citizens Inquiry, or perhaps Toronto funding the Citizen's Inquiry and contributing by publishing Toronto Public Health internal deliberations?
Hi Greg. I don't consider myself a judge, I have been on the outside of government and I too have found myself in direct opposition to Dr. de Villa's policies. But I'm not interested in looking backwards or condemning specific people as much as I am with looking forwards and reforming the systems and ways of conducting government that led to them. Each of us have to come to terms with our own actions of the past few years. You have a lot of good questions about process and I don't have answers for them all. I can simply say that I agree with you that all of these things are supremely important: preventing this type of action from happening in the future, making government more transparent (and doing away with the unnecessary levels that make it opaque), allowing people to tell their stories of how they suffered these past years. I do not have all the answers for how we do these things, but that they are necessary I agree with. I am open to everyone's ideas.
A mayor may not be a judge in the legal sense, but it seems to me the job is still mostly about judgment and also about making processes work for us, including firing people if appropriate...
I have more thoughts on transparency but I'm not sure they are on topic for this post.
In my experience the Toronto bureaucracy is a force to be reckoned with and just being open to everyone's ideas may not be sufficient when the bureaucracy has so much power to shape the debate.
You might be right! My approach isn't the one for everyone. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, I appreciate it.
The COVID-19 mindset that we can conquer and eradicate viruses that drove the response to COVID-19 is very much in evidence in the battle over backyard hens. https://secure.toronto.ca/council/agenda-item.do?item=2023.EC3.4 Toronto now seeks to ban backyard hens and the fear of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) is one of the main reasons. MLS is not alone in this, they appear to have considerable support from a variety of animal welfare groups, veterinarians etc.
It turned out we couldn't eradicate SARS-CoV-2 but we did enormous damage to ourselves with the lockdowns. HPAI has natural reservoirs and crosses multiple species so we are not likely to eradicate it either, at least not without destroying the entire natural world. Unfortunately the fear of viruses and our seeming refusal to consider nurturing our natural immunity and any treatment options for viruses is leading to us trying to separate ourselves from the natural world which we are a part of. I don't think we can survive as the only life on this planet.
Link to Toronto Urban Growers opposing the item:
http://torontourbangrowers.org/news/keep-on-clucking-hens-again
Link to my post opposing the item:
https://f2sg.substack.com/p/you-will-own-grow-nothing-and-be
Thanks for letting me know about this Greg. The attitude of "if we control everything we'll never get hurt" seems to be part of this type of policy. It's unfortunate because, not only is it harmful and destructive, it actually doesn't work. These are the kinds of bylaws that I think are ridiculous, harmful and costly. Dogs and cats carry pathogens (eg cat litter and toxoplasmosis) but fortunately no one suggests banning them. Banning hens over fear seems like a big mistake to me. Thanks for your post and the news, I'll share it elsewhere too.
Just posted this: https://twitter.com/SarahC_Toronto/status/1650834551013273607?s=20
The MLS report uses the term bio-security on page 10 in conjunction with a whole slew of hypercontrol measures against HPAI. This is frighteningly similar thinking to the WHO's current "One Health" initiative as described here https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/one-health-agenda-surveillance-control-earth-who/ This underlines just how essential it is, possibly to our survival, to learn the lessons of COVID-19 so we don't fall into "One Health" dystopia. I doubt there is any place for backyard chickens in a "One Health" world.