On Monday, September 23rd, the Toronto Board of Health convened a meeting to pass a motion to abolish personal belief vaccine exemptions for children. Here you can watch our many supporters give compelling testimony on their vaccine injury experiences. Mary D, a concerned mother attended the meeting and wrote the following report.
Please make sure to watch this wonderful “Oh Canada” video that provides highlights from the Board of Health testimonies and artfully weaves in additional information and video clips about the vaccine issue.
I attended the Toronto Board of Health (BOH) Meeting at City Hall in Toronto the morning of September 23rd.
Initially, I’d been uncomfortable about going. I prefer to be in the background, thoughtfully and occasionally researching and writing anonymously about this issue. But when a fellow member of VCC contacted me looking for a ride to Toronto, her phone call resolved my wavering and I made the decision to go to the meeting.
We got there early and I sat at the back, just a few rows behind the speakers, where I had a view of the whole room. As the meeting time approached, the room filled up. The chairs were all taken and many people were standing. There were many ages represented and yes mostly women. I was also surprised by the number of babies and children in attendance. Out in the hallway there were even more parents with babies in slings, toddlers in strollers, older kids colouring on the floor. Had the Toronto Board of Health ever seen so many babies and small kids at any of their City Hall meetings before? Many people held signs; some home-made, some copies of the VCC billboards that had been removed last winter, some signs similar to those made by U.S. activist Joshua Coleman.
The meeting began with a plea to address the poor health of Toronto’s young people. Two of the topics touched on were suicide and diabetes. There was a motion of some kind to REALLY, REALLY commit to doing something about these problems, to not let these sad statistics sit in a drawer somewhere. The painful irony was felt by those present and was evident in the murmurings throughout this presentation.
Those representing and advocating for the new recommendations made their case. While the recommendations are written in seemingly non offensive language, they are starkly cruel and so obviously not in keeping with a free, democratic and theoretically constitutionally beholden society. They involve restricting the free speech and expression of citizens, the restriction of medical decision making, the restriction of access to taxpayer funded public education. I don’t think 20 years ago, a political observer would have predicted that such proposals would come from the municipal government of Canada’s largest and one of its’ most progressive cities.
The proposals were read out. Amongst the many references to vaccines being “safe and effective”, there was a proposal that the Province adopt a Vaccine Injury Compensation Program similar to the one in Quebec. There was mention that ‘serious reactions do occur.’
I am guessing this was added as a kind of conscience reliever-a bizarre counter balance to the remarkably restrictive proposals. It is strange to allow that some babies, toddlers and schoolchildren might be hurt so badly from the products one is coercing their parents to consent to that they might indeed be entitled to compensation.
The World Health Organization (WHO) was mentioned. This is understandable as the WHO has sounded the panic around the world regarding ‘ vaccine hesitancy.’ This is no surprise as 54% of the WHO’s budget comes from pharmaceutical companies. This ‘panic’ message sent out around the world had clearly trickled all the way down to Toronto’s Public Health Department.
The speakers began. There were about 25 who spoke against the recommendations and 5 who spoke in favour of it. It was announced that because there were so many speakers, there talks would be limited to three minutes instead of the promised five. Because of this, people had to speak faster than they had originally planned but they still spoke eloquently, steadily and articulately.
There were nurses, lawyers, teachers, dads, grandparents and most commonly and not surprisingly a lot of moms. The moms spoke of their experiences with their children, the pain of watching them suffer and in some instances die following a single shot or a set of vaccines. People also gave personal testimony of suffering as children themselves. There was testimony of a deterioration in a woman’s health after a flu shot in pregnancy. It was not only a sharing of personal stories but there were also studies referenced, pleas made to freedom of conscience, freedom of religion and bodily autonomy. At one point ingredients in vaccines were read out; aborted fetal DNA, polysorbate, formaldehyde, aluminum, mercury, etc. There was a plea to be looked at in the eye, (many Board members were focused on their phones throughout the meeting), a plea for compassion. One speaker drove 5 hours to be there. She concluded her talk by asking that the Board members share their own vaccine record with the public. The speeches were not strident or silly or demanding. They were carefully constructed and within the whole group covered a variety of angles on this issue. Although their hearts must have been pounding, their hands and their papers weren’t shaking.
A young 16 year old young woman spoke. She was beautiful and calm as she addressed the BOH. In her short speech, she declared that she was unvaccinated, active, busy and loving her school, tired of her peers being sick and tired and medicated, disgusted that her health choices would be on a database. She finished by quoting MC hammer, “you can’t touch this.’ As with all the speeches critical of the recommendations, there was an audible and delayed cheer in the central hallway where the parents and strollers were. In retrospect, this young woman’s speech was maybe the one that rattled the BOH members the most. She was obviously healthy, thriving, confident and able to address a disinterested and distracted BOH with her simple defiance. She represented all that we want our young people to be and was experiencing all that we would want our teenagers to experience. She was what the ardently pro-vaccine cannot stand to see, a completely unvaccinated thriving happy individual. It is no surprise that her speech was the one that Del Bigtree showed on his YouTube show, The Highwire the following week, a show now seen by thousands around the world.
Those that spoke in favour of the recommendations spoke of their own pain. One woman whose two year old son had tragically died from influenza despite having been recently vaccinated, another about the damaging effects of polio. They deserved to be there and to voice their countering concerns, even if we disagreed with them. Their personal pain must never be discounted. However, as much as they were entitled to speak as anyone else, were they entitled to their assigned special seating-cordoned off from the rest of us? Were they entitled to be the only non-bureaucrats present at the press conference? Were they entitled to extensive media access?
How did the BOH members respond to all of this? Not one question was asked of 25 earnest and thoughtful fellow Canadians in front of them. It seems very likely that they were specifically instructed, “we have to listen to these people today but DO NOT ENGAGE.” There had to have been a pre-determined outcome, there had to have been deals made (with vaccine manufacturers no doubt), contracts signed, agreements obtained with international organizations. Maybe all of these were iron-clad in their minds. Was there maybe a twinge of conscience or concern? Maybe, but none was on display. The whole morning was carefully organized and comments following the deputations were seemingly pre-written.
One could argue that nothing changed after this day. All of the driving, the writing, the speaking, the time booked off work, the childcare arrangements etc, etc. Was it all in vain?
The BOH was unmoved and will carry on as planned. At the same time however, EVERYTHING has changed. The words uttered in that room on September 23rd were never spoken in that space before. Thousands of people have watched the speeches on YouTube and those speeches will no doubt inspire others to write their own speeches for their own politicians. Multiple media outlets were exposed to individuals, signs and ideas that they have never seen anywhere near Toronto City Hall ever before.
The truth spoken by sincere individuals, even if ignored initially, moves and spreads as weightily and as significantly as any ‘recommendation’ from the most powerful and the most controlling industry in the world.
“U can’t touch this” has taken on multiple new meanings for all of us that were there and always will. We are only getting started…