By The Canadian Covid Care Alliance

The CCCA would like to bring your attention to an urgent issue.

Having been passed by Canadian parliament, Bill C-293 has moved to the Senate. Titled the Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Act, this bill creates the legal framework for establishing and enforcing measures similar to those used in the emergency response to COVID-19.

The CCCA recognizes that Bill C-293 poses a significant threat to Canada’s democratic rule of law governance, and to Canadian public health and safety, and we oppose it.

If Bill C-293 is passed, the adoption of a One Health approach to public health management for pandemic preparedness and prevention will be mandated in Canada. One Health is a global initiative fostered by the World Health Association (WHO). It is based on the apparently sensible premise that the health of humans, animals, and the environment are interdependent. In order to implement this approach, the bill allows measures that will effectively control our interactions with animals (both wild and domestic), the land, the sea, and the air. These measures may be developed by authorities outside of Canada, but imposed upon Canadians without the checks and balances of Canada’s democratic legislative process.

The bill’s language is broad, ambiguous, and open to interpretation, creating the possibility of sweeping restrictions on the lives of Canadians. There is no requirement for supporting evidence of the effectiveness of the measures it seeks to implement, and there is no requirement for an analysis of their impacts. The measures will be imposed without even attempting to generate an understanding of the impact of similar measures adopted in response to COVID-19. Though an analysis of the Canadian response was published in the British Medical Journal, it lacked the rigour of an independent inquiry and has been critiqued for its many deficiencies. You will find more information about the pandemic response on our website.

Here are some of the issues of concern with Bill C-293   

1. Creates legislation to regulate activities in order to prevent the “risk” of and prepare for disease outbreaks that “could lead” to pandemics, without defining the risk, without confirming causation of the illness, and without defining the severity of the illness in question.
2. Creates a national and international surveillance network to monitor our travel, health status, and other undefined factors to mitigate spread of infections. This infringes on our rights to privacy and mobility within and outside of Canada.
3. Focuses resources on unspecified public health measures to control/prevent disease outbreaks, at the exclusion of other well-established and necessary determinants of health; for example, the provision of potable water to all communities.
4. Invests the administrators of the pandemic prevention plan with the powers to phase out unspecified commercial activities, thereby threatening to impact our work environments and our economy.
5. Invests the administrators of the pandemic preparedness plan with powers to regulate communications regarding public health measures, thereby enacting systemic censorship of unapproved sources and limiting the ability for Canadians to provide informed consent.
6. Invests the administrators of the pandemic preparedness plan with the powers to regulate agriculture, the food supply, and the types of foods (protein sources) we consume.
7. Enables, and in fact, requires, influence and direction from foreign officials, including governments and unelected and unaccountable non-governmental organizations (NGOs) without public consultation or consent.
8. Disregards previous evidence-based pandemic preparedness plans, such as the 2019 Global Influenza Program prepared by the World Health Organization, whose recommendations often exclude measures adopted in response to COVID-19.
9. Grants additional unlimited, undefined power, duties, and functions that the Minister considers appropriate to an appointed coordinator.

Please write to your senator(s) asking them to vote to defeat this bill. Below you will find a template of a letter written by the CCCA which you may copy and email to your senator(s). sencanada.ca/en/senators

Dear Senator,

I am writing to oppose Bill C-293 on the grounds that, if enacted, it would surrender domestic governance and autonomy to foreign and unelected officials and entities, while stripping Canadians of essential, Charter-protected rights and freedoms. 

Bill C-293 threatens to eliminate Canadians’ ability to access consent-based personalized medical care while enforcing one-size-fits-all globally-coordinated and non-consensual public health measures. It grants over-broad and undefined powers to appointed administrators that put at risk Canadians’ protected rights, including our right to information; our right to participate in governance or the political life of the country; our right to informed consent to medical treatment including our right to refuse treatment; our right to privacy; our right to movement, including citizens’ rights to enter, remain in, and leave Canada; our right to work and gain a living by work freely chosen or accepted; our right to equality and non-discrimination.

It equally jeopardizes our freedoms from non-consensual experimentation, our freedom from coercion to accept a treatment not voluntarily chosen. The sweeping changes introduced in Bill C-293 pose a very real risk of paving the way for authoritarian measures and the anti-democratic imposition of oppressive controls upon the population and the economy.

Please use your authority as a Senator to defeat Bill C-293, thereby protecting Canadians’ rights and freedoms, our consent-based, personalized medical system, our economy, and our rule of law democratic system of governance.

Published as a newsletter by CanadianCovidCareAlliance.org