Canadian Writers Speak Out Against Vaccine Mandates

On July 20, 2022, two dozen Canadian authors and writers released the following statement in response to government policies of medical coercion, segregation and censorship within the Covid dystopia. The statement will remain open for further signatures. If you are a Canadian writer and would like to add your name, email: goldberg@ncf.ca.

CANADIAN WRITERS SPEAK OUT AGAINST VACCINE MANDATES

As poets, authors, filmmakers, storytellers—as the chroniclers of our time—we are deeply concerned by the ongoing assault on basic human values of bodily autonomy and free expression that has been occurring as a result of Covid policies and official Covid messaging in Canada.

We have witnessed the vilification and segregation of unvaccinated citizens. We have watched policies of vaccine mandates and domestic vaccine passports create a two-tier society, denying millions of Canadians their jobs, education, travel and participation in normal daily life.

We have witnessed our nation’s politicians, media and the general public call for the forced confinement or even death of the unvaccinated in various ways such as denial of medical care, removal from organ transplant lists, fines, incarceration, removal from society.

We have witnessed the upending of democracy and the deliberate creation of a class of Untermenschen within the Canadian body politic.

We have witnessed the unprecedented suppression and deplatforming of doctors, scientists, journalists, scientific data and personal testimonials that do not fit the official narrative of public health policy on Covid-19.

Our position as writers of conscience and humanist values is that all coerced medical interventions must end. Every citizen must be able to say “no” to unwanted medical procedures, and without penalty. Doctors must be allowed to practice medicine without fear of license suspension. Journalists must be allowed to cover all aspects of the Covid-19 story without fear of job loss or having their stories spiked.

We therefore call on all levels of government to:

• undo any remaining vestiges of mandated segregation and discrimination against those who decline unwanted medical procedures;

• guarantee that this dark path away from justice and equality and our basic Charter rights will not be revisited;

• restore the privacy and autonomy of the doctor-patient relationship so that doctors, and not government, can deliver their best medical advice and best course of treatment for their patients;

• end the censorship and suppression of doctors with divergent views. The development of scientific thought and knowledge requires robust debate. Orthodoxy only generates pseudo-science.

Furthermore, we urge all Canadians to focus on our shared humanity rather than our ideological differences. We are all each other’s neighbours. Let’s invest ourselves in pursuits of mutual creation, not destruction.

Throughout history and across the globe, it has fallen to writers to be the frontline defenders of free speech, civil liberties and human rights in countless struggles against censorship and oppression—to be the moral conscience of a nation straying from its human core. We find ourselves in that role again today. We hope you will stand with us. 

Signed July 20, 2022 by:

Kim Goldberg
Sean Arthur Joyce
Richard Olafson
Kathy Figueroa
Elizabeth Woodworth
Christopher A. Shaw
Todd Michael Harris
Alan Cassels
Kyle Farquharson
Max Layton
Neall Calvert
Harry Posner
Steve Venright
W. Paul Anderson
Caitlin Hicks
Carol Ann Sokoloff 
PJ Reece
Amanda K. Hale
Ray McGinnis
Stephen Morrissey
Nowick Gray
Rena Graham
Ann Diamond
John C. A. Manley

Additional Co-signers after July 20, 2022:

Eva Karene Bartlett
Mike Zimmer
Pat Newson
Kevin Tang
Joanie Higgs
Evelyn Sommers
Diane A. Haynes
Zelda Sydney
Karen Selick
Claudiu Murgan
Andrew Mondia
Janine Bandcroft
catherine mcneil
Janeta Jane McNeill
Jennifer Zilm
Bill Code, MD