My Speech at Toronto's Rally for Freedom #6
Engaging the civic immune system for the health of society.
Exciting new times and rampant “coercion”: I was talked into making an appearance at the Toronto event for the Worldwide Rally for Freedom #6 on Saturday, 22 January 2022. My friend at Bright Light News thought that mandate protesters would appreciate knowing about Canadian Academics for Covid Ethics and about our new Canadian Centre for Learning (to go online shortly).
The following is my brief address to a crowd of some 5,000 or more people congregating in Toronto’s Queen’s Park, the location of the Ontario Legislature. A recording is available via BLNews’ Twitch account, with my contribution starting around the 00:35:15 timestamp.
Hi everyone,
my name is Claus Rinner. I am a professor at a nearby university and have been blogging about the pandemic since March 2020.
Today, I would like to tell you about Canadian Academics for Covid Ethics. We are a group of 80 faculty members from Canadian universities and colleges, who are concerned about the mismanagement of this crisis. We have a wide range of expertise – including health sciences, psychology, geography, history, theology, economics, business, IT, math, and engineering! – and we have a lot to say about what’s happened to society in the last two years.
You may have come across some of our writing, including:
- “A Letter to the Unvaccinated”. 2 August 2021.
- An op-ed titled: “Mandatory vaccination for COVID has no rational basis'” from 24 August 2021.
- Together with the Canadian Covid Care Alliance, we responded to the Toronto Star, explaining that “Hatred towards [unvaccinated people] is a result of continuing misinformation in the media.” Submitted on 30 Aug 2021
- Call for the resignation of all medical officers of health in Ontario. Published 13 September 2021.
- “The Greater Toronto Declaration”. A petition to reverse most pandemic response measures, published 5 October 2021.
- For Halloween, we wrote “Mandatory experimental shots – Canadians are being tricked, not treated”.
- Letter to Premier Ford titled “Hands off our children!” 6 Nov 2021.
- Most recently, we forecast “Another year of chaos at Ontario’s universities and colleges”. 23 December 2021.The Ontario universities’ and colleges’ COVID policies have a cruel impact on students, staff, and faculty. Indeed, many members of Canadian Academics for Covid Ethics have already lost their teaching contracts during the fall semester or at the start of the winter semester. Others, including myself, are threatened with unpaid leaves and termination. Staff careers have been destroyed and students’ education is being disrupted by de-enrolment from in-person classes (which continue to be taught online anyway).
Many academics have been concerned about problematic developments in the higher-education sector before COVID. Therefore, a subgroup of Canadian Academics for Covid Ethics has come together to found a new Canadian Centre for Learning based on principles of free expression, open debate, and mutual respect. We are preparing a first round of courses to start in April.
There are so many new communities and networks, exciting ideas and promising initiatives that I do believe that we will overcome the divide in society and the alienation from family, friends, and colleagues. We can all play a role in restoring humanity and building a society that is more resistant to mass formation events like this.
So, please be aware of Canadian Academics for Covid Ethics, or CA4CE, find our web site, and share our publications in your own advocacy for freedom, civil liberties, and common sense!
I want to thank my colleagues at CA4CE for suggestions on my draft speech. Within CA4CE, we include unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals, conservatives and progressives, contract and tenure-track faculty, and we have lively open discussions about anything relating to COVID-19, higher education, and beyond. We are one of many new, diverse communities that will overcome and persist well past this crisis.
Everyone who came out to the Toronto rally, or any freedom rally around the globe, should be applauded for being on the right side of history. I am writing this while watching the life stream of the #DefeatTheMandates rally and march on Washington DC. In Germany, the COVID-19 opposition has revived the tradition of the Monday Walks, peaceful in-person gatherings that accelerated the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the oppressive East German socialist regime in Fall 1989. The right to peaceful assembly is a powerful component of the civic immune system that protects our societal body from attacks of fear, hate, segregation, and tyranny.