🧵I've long expressed concerns about professional regulators—beginning with a successful revolt against our law society's Statement of Principles which required lawyers to promote DEI (in their personal lives too), making an ideological litmus test a condition of practicing law.

https://twitter.com/LDBildy/status/1722334304317981114

Regulators should be politically neutral & confined to their statutory mandates, IMO. They should not be curtailing professionals' off-duty speech, or acting on complaints from random activists who don't like their opinions, whether on Covid, gender or other controversial topics.

🧵Charter cases are sometimes thrown out for mootness—that’s not unusual. But there are factors that can weigh in favour of continuing with a hearing, even if there’s no “live issue”—such as when the social cost of uncertainty as to availability of Charter remedies is high. 1/8

https://twitter.com/nchartieret/status/1583285420560773120

So far, all Covid Charter cases have failed, so it’s increasingly seeming that there are no Charter remedies to be had. That invites a social cost too, especially when the public’s perception is that the Charter has been interpreted expansively in most other social contexts. 2/8

Some of my comments on this case are in the article, but to elaborate:🧵
1. We are disappointed but not surprised with this result. Quite frankly, there is an irreconcilable clash of worldviews in our society right now & that is reflected in this decision.
nationalpost.com/news/canada/gr… 2. A young child (age 6) was told that boys and girls aren't real, and when the teacher allegedly 'clarified' things with the class after the girl's mother raised concerns, she did so by drawing a line on the board, with boys on one end and girls on the other—a gender spectrum.

A year ago today, scores of vaccinated people spread Covid-19 to each other at several events on Cape Cod, proving that the mRNA vaccines don't stop onward transmission & that the vaxxed carry comparable viral loads. By July 30, even the CDC admitted this. cnbc.com/2021/07/30/cdc… This was ignored by virtually all institutions, which soon mandated the jab for youth sports, universities, employment & travel. Passports were required for restaurants, gyms, events & shops, creating a 2-tiered society. People were coerced into the vax. Some were harmed or died.

Our population is divided, possibly beyond repair. We don't just disagree, we live in completely separate & irreconcilable realities. We have different facts, different science, different media, different narratives, different values. We view each other as distorted caricatures. When we engage primarily online, our echo chambers keep us apart. But the truckers inserted their messy, physical, salt-of-the-earth reality into the urbane pseudo-reality that holds all cultural & political power. For a brief moment, the power balance shifted to team reality.

Re-upping this thread I wrote in May of 2020. I've been speaking out about lockdowns and the broader impacts to society since the very beginning. Sadly, I think my concerns then were justified.

https://twitter.com/LDBildy/status/1261130308176445448

Another pertinent thread from about 10 months ago:

https://twitter.com/LDBildy/status/1366925571821830145?s=20

Watch for a rush to the exits, as journalists, scientists & politicians throw the nearest guy under the bus & try to pretend they were never in favour of lockdowns. It will happen in the UK first, where there are still the remnants of a culture of debate & verbal sparring.

https://twitter.com/GBNEWS/status/1472678779805970434

It will pick up steam elsewhere too, as the latest hysteria becomes impossible to reconcile with the facts on the ground & serious inquiry finally begins. Here's a taste in Canada, soon to be in the 'mainstream' rags too:

https://twitter.com/brianlilley/status/1472662286653435912?s=20

Things seem to be in complete chaos in this province, as fears of Omicron relieve our decision makers & managerial class of their senses (what’s left of them). Here are 10 policy suggestions for @fordnation to keep the wheels on & bring the chaos to heel before the next election: i) Provide home test kits to ease minds & recommend that people isolate themselves if positive. Otherwise, stop testing asymptomatic people, and stop recording cases. They are untethered from hospitalizations and deaths (that’s a good thing) and we need to stop focusing on them.

I've been contacted by many specialist physicians who are about to lose hospital privileges because of these mandates. Their reasons for not complying are unique, informed & rational, but virtually no exemptions are being granted. Mandates WON'T make them change their minds. 1/5

https://twitter.com/Roman_Baber/status/1450868121196244997

These doctors will leave their hospitals, maybe even their careers & very likely the country. There are friendly US states that pay doctors better anyway, & don't require the jab in order to work.

Another brain drain is about to ensue. 2/5

My latest for the Epoch Times.

"The events of the last year have made the culture shift undeniable. Group rights are in. Individual rights are out."
theepochtimes.com/covid-response… "It is remarkable that the notion of voluntary, informed consent—the hallmark of medical treatment in a civilized society—is now seen as an unreasonable and selfish obstacle to unquestionable goals.

1/ The Ford gov't was supposed to return to the legislature this week if it wanted to continue the 2nd "state of emergency", which the cabinet could only keep in place for 28 days (now finished).

Our elected legislature would have had a chance to debate, consider & vote. 2/ Instead, just like they did in July with the "Reopening Ontario Act" (doublespeak much?), the gov't is managing to avoid the legislature (although it did pass the Act), keep the emergency orders in effect & continue to concentrate power in the cabinet (particularly, the CMOH).

The compelled speech angle wasn't fully explored in Shahdin's op-ed, which I understand was abbreviated to fit space constraints @CanLawMag, but the directive requires ALL lawyers to state their own pronouns, not just extend a courtesy to those who may prefer something different.

https://twitter.com/JChiummiento/status/1358150878444851200

Most lawyers are respectful toward individuals who identify themselves differently. But the main point of contention is that this goes beyond courtesy into enforced complicity in controversial gender ideology.

If the pandemic is over when we say it is (nyti.ms/2AMeUWO), we've got a long way to go. 75% of Ontarians are afraid & it seems most are willing to let the gov't do whatever necessary to keep them safe, for however long. It's now unfortunately political to say otherwise. I said on @am640 today that the onus is on the gov't to prove that the ongoing suspension of civil liberties is demonstrably justified in light of what we now know about the virus (it's mainly a LTC problem). That calculus is different than in mid-March. nationalpost.com/news/four-out-…

Thread about viruses & tyrants:

1. This study proves a relationship between the threat of infectious disease & individuals' authoritarian tendencies.

People respond to a threat of disease with "functionally adaptive shifts in cognition & behaviour."

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P… 2. As the sort of person who is sensitive to the "madness of crowds," I tend to observe from the outside with some fascination. This shift in cognition to more authoritarian tendencies has been quite evident in our fellow citizens who turn to snitch lines to report on neighbors.