Author: Andrew Lawton

First published at True North on April 22, 2020.

The denturist who killed at least 22 people in a weekend rampage in Nova Scotia did not have a firearms license, police believe.

“We have a fairly good idea, at least in Canada, that he did not have an FAC – a firearms acquisition certificate,” Nova Scotia RCMP superintendent Chris Leather said at a Wednesday afternoon press conference.

Leather was referring to the possession and acquisition license (PAL) required to buy and own firearms in Canada, which replaced the firearms acquisition certificate (FAC) in 1995.

Police remain tight-lipped on the type or types of guns used in the attacks. With the knowledge Gabriel Wortman didn’t have a firearms license, it’s not clear where he obtained the firearms, or the RCMP uniform he wore and the mock police car he drove.

After pleading guilty to an assault charge in 2002, Wortman was banned from owning firearms for nine months as part of a conditional discharge agreement.

Leather’s acknowledgement came one day after RCMP and government officials declined to say whether Wortman was a licensed gun owner – information they would have been able to glean as soon as they learned Wortman’s name.

“The RCMP are in the earliest hours and days of this investigation, and it’s a complex one and I think it’s quite appropriate for them to be careful about the release of information until they’ve had the opportunity to verify it and confirm it,” Public Safety Minister Bill Blair said Tuesday. “And, so it is, I think inappropriate and the Commissioner would, would quite naturally be very reluctant to reveal details of that investigation until it is complete.”

In the wake of the shooting, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reaffirmed his commitment to further restricting firearms access in Canada, calling the Nova Scotia killing “a tragic reminder of the fact that we need to do more to keep Canadians safe.”

First published at True North on April 21, 2020.

The RCMP commissioner, the public safety minister and the prime minister are all unwilling to answer a simple – but important – question about the man who killed at least 22 people in Nova Scotia: did he have a firearms license?

As the investigation, which spans at least 16 crime scenes, goes on, there are understandably many details that aren’t yet known. No one expects police to have answers to all our questions right away. Whether Gabriel Wortman, the now-deceased murderer, was lawfully authorized to own guns is an easy one that could be answered in just a few keystrokes.

When police respond to a domestic violence call, they know if there’s a licensed gun owner in the home. If they pull someone over for speeding, they know if they’re a licensed gun owner. Authorities would have known the second they ran Wortman’s name in their system if he had a possession and acquisition license.

The police and government know. They are just refusing to say.

It’s possible this is an example of the police brass tendency to err on the side of silence. It’s also possible the answer to the question would prove inconvenient for the government.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was fielding gun control questions the day after Wortman was killed by police. While he initially said his focus was on the victims and not politics, he gave numerous subsequent answers in which he professed his commitment to advancing further restrictions whenever an opportunity arises.

Neither he nor his public safety minister, Bill Blair, has said whether this will come in the form of a cabinet directive or a bill that would have to be debated and passed by members of parliament.

Even without knowing the details of Wortman’s killing spree, Trudeau called it “a tragic reminder of the fact that we need to do more to keep Canadians safe,” as though his forthcoming gun control plan would have prevented this.

When asked Tuesday morning about the types of guns used in the attacks, Trudeau didn’t even pretend to answer the question.

“I’m going to trust the RCMP on releasing information as they feel it is important to,” Trudeau said.

Clearly the RCMP missed the memo, as just one day prior Blair seized a reporter’s question about if Wortman had a firearms license – a question actually directed to RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki. Not that it mattered, given Blair’s obfuscation.

“The RCMP are in the earliest hours and days of this investigation, and it’s a complex one and I think it’s quite appropriate for them to be careful about the release of information until they’ve had the opportunity to verify it and confirm it,” he said. “And, so it is, I think inappropriate and the Commissioner would, would quite naturally be very reluctant to reveal details of that investigation until it is complete.”

People might say this is nitpicking over a minor detail in a horrific tragedy. I wish I didn’t have to, but lawmakers have left me no choice by sparing no time to politicize said tragedy, and cramming it into a pre-existing narrative that has nothing to do with saving lives and even less to do with the legacies of the Nova Scotia victims.

We know from the RCMP that Wortman was wearing an authentic police uniform, and for a time was driving a police car with seemingly identical markings to bona fide RCMP cruisers.

He was committed to what he did and clearly had no issues committing numerous crimes, not the least of which is murder.

If Wortman was illegally in possession of firearms, no amount of gun control would have done anything.

According to the Toronto Star, Wortman pleaded guilty to a 2001 assault charge, and was ordered “not to own, possess or carry a weapon, ammunition, or explosive substance.”

Wortman received a conditional discharge and the weapons ban was lifted nine months later, which perhaps explains a release from the RCMP Tuesday afternoon saying Wortman had no criminal record.

It’s possible to get a firearms license with a criminal record, though it is difficult – especially if the conviction was for a violent crime.

Whether Wortman had a gun license or not has no bearing on the level of evil in him and his actions, but is nonetheless important to know as the government positions itself to use these murders as political cover.

First published at True North on April 16, 2020.

As countries around the world rise to the coronavirus challenge, Iran has simply reminded us why it can never be trusted.

Any hope of avoiding the global pandemic first rested on China’s actions, then on Iran’s – the virus’s second epicentre. The Iranian regime, however, chose to show a reckless and malicious disregard for human life, even exploiting its citizens’ deaths to indulge its favourite pastime of blaming the west for all ills.

While the official figures from Iran show nearly 5,000 deaths and over 76,000 COVID-19 infections, trusting them is foolhardy. 

Even the World Health Organization and Iran’s own regime-controlled parliament have said the real death toll is significantly higher. The Iranian opposition group MEK, which publishes its own findings gleaned from sources in hospitals, cemeteries, and inside the government, said the death count was over 30,000 and rising, as of Thursday.

Thousands of these deaths were preventable if only Iran had prioritized public health above public relations. Instead, Iran launched a malignant PR campaign, one still being waged as bodies pile up across the country.

Of course, it’s America’s fault, the regime says. A government spokesperson blamed the “virus of sanctions,” which he said must be fought.

Iran says it couldn’t contain the real virus because American sanctions – the ones reinstated when President Donald Trump withdrew from the Obama administration’s nuclear agreement – blocked essential medical supplies from the country.

That would be awful were it not for the inconvenient fact that it’s a lie – as untrue as the death figures Iran peddles.

The United States has “consistently maintained broad exceptions and authorizations to support humanitarian transactions with Iran,” the Office of Foreign Assets Control confirms.

Trump says the United States will help Iran if help is requested. But it hasn’t been.

The only thing blocking American relief from getting to Iranian hospitals is the Iranian government.

Ayatollah Ali Khameini says the United States “might bring a drug into this country that will make this virus stay for a long time.” Iran is sadly doing a good enough job on its own of ensuring the virus’s longevity.

It isn’t just Americans who’ve been barred from helping. A nine-person Doctors without Borders team was expelled from Iran and barred from setting up a field hospital as the country rejected “hospital beds set up by foreign forces.”

Iran seems to want assistance only if it comes in the form of contactless delivery on the front porch as though it’s a toilet paper order from Amazon. Perhaps the regime doesn’t want foreign aid workers to see with their own eyes the evidence of Iran’s criminal negligence.

Iran would rather let its people die so the regime can keep scoring political points on the United States, rather than swallow its pride and accept the help.

This attitude goes back to the beginning of the crisis. Iran only acknowledged its first case Feb. 19, though Iran’s opposition-in-exile, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, published leaked documents showing Iran was aware of the virus within its borders in January.

These three weeks of lead time are highly relevant as it was the business-as-usual outlook that let the virus spread as much as it did throughout Iran and then around the world.

Hundreds of thousands of Iranians congregated to mark the Feb. 11 anniversary of the regime’s rise to power.

Iran even held its parliamentary elections on Feb. 21. While these are farcical at the best of times, this year they were downright dangerous.

Nevertheless, the western mainstream media seems to be adopting, at least in part, the Iranian propaganda machine’s view of things.

“Punishing sanctions against Iran are turning the coronavirus pandemic into a massacre,” read one headline. “Sanctions make the coronavirus more deadly,” said another.

“U.S. sanctions hinder (Iran’s) access to drugs and medical equipment,” was one in the Washington Post.

The Washington Post story buries the lede, conceding (21 paragraphs down) that the Trump administration has “technically maintained an exemption from sanctions on the sale of humanitarian items to Iran.”

Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that “COVID-19 was (an) opportunity for the U.S. to kick its addiction to sanctions,” which is about as brazen a politicization of the tragedy as you could come up with.

Last week, President Hassan Rouhani eased lockdown restrictions, including reopening “low-risk” businesses in areas still grappling with the pandemic, like Tehran.

Once again, Iranians are jeopardized by their government’s illusion of things being fine.

The west needs to stop buying it.

First published at True North on April 4, 2020.

Step aside Hanoi Hannah: it’s time for Politburo Patty to shine.

I can’t think of any other name for Canada’s health minister, who boldly hewed to the Chinese communist party line during a briefing by Canadian officials on COVID-19.

Asked about whether China’s official numbers, which were adopted unquestioningly by the World Health Organization, were trustworthy, Hajdu said Thursday there was no reason to distrust China’s figures.

“There’s no indication that the data that came out of China in terms of their infection rate and their death rate was falsified in any way,” she said before accusing the reporter of “feeding into conspiracy theories.”

Her comments led a columnist for China Daily, a newspaper owned by the propaganda wing of the Chinese communist, to call her a “role model,” albeit a “disappointment to those paparazzi journalists and fearmongers.”

While her finger-wagging to the reporter is still preferable to how the Chinese politburo deals with reporters who challenge the party line, it is still dangerous from a health official who has touted her government’s actions as being rooted in evidence rather than politics.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau didn’t go as far as Hajdu did. When he was asked earlier in the day whether he trusted China’s numbers, he simply said those were “questions…for future times.”

Hajdu merely revealed what has always been a significant China-sized blind spot in the Trudeau government’s approach to foreign policy.

Canadian foreign minister François-Philippe Champagne last week publicly thanked the Chinese for doing the “right thing” in response to a tweet from China’s embassy to Canada promoting a donation of medical supplies from the Bank of China.

I am all for giving credit where it’s due, but any supposed benevolent acts from China must be met with skepticism.

The shipment came as reporters were pointing out Canada had sent 16 tonnes of medical equipment to China when it was the coronavirus pandemic’s epicenter.

Champagne fell for what EU diplomat Josep Borrell called China’s “politics of generosity.”

At this point, it’s not even clear whether the shipment from China can be used. The Netherlands had to recall 600,000 subpar Chinese-made face masks. Spain found its Chinese-made test kits had only a 30% accuracy rate, making them even less effective than dollar store pregnancy tests. Several other countries have made similar findings about millions of units of gear.

To accept China’s numbers is, at best, naïve, and potentially far more insidious given China’s penchant for propaganda.

Despite Hajdu’s contention that we should take China’s data at face value, there is ample evidence China has been less than forthright throughout this crisis.

American intelligence officials concluded China underreported its case and death counts, according to a Bloomberg report. The British government similarly believes China’s coronavirus death toll could be 40 times the official tally, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.

Chinese people have seen stacks of thousands of urns outside funeral homes in the Hubei province – far more than the government’s numbers would warrant.

Interestingly, a Barron’s report suggests the data from China show a “near-perfect prediction model that analysts say isn’t likely to naturally occur.”

Even the Chinese regime acknowledged “shortcomings and deficiencies” in its handling of the coronavirus.

While these seeds of doubt are important, they shouldn’t detract from the broader point that China is simply unworthy of being given the benefit of the doubt about anything.

Canadian Conservative leader Andrew Scheer said as much when condemning Hajdu’s Chinese apologetics.

“Any government that operates in an autocratic fashion, a communist government that denies basic human rights to its own people, that stifles dissent and squashes the free press, should be distrusted,” Scheer said at a press conference Friday morning. “It’s puzzling to me why a Canadian minister would vouch for a country – a government of a country – that operates in that fashion.”

It’s less puzzling when you look at the pattern emerging with Trudeau’s Liberals, which even predates Trudeau’s tenure as prime minister.

In 2013, he became something of a punchline among Canadian conservatives when he lauded China for its expediency at the expense of democracy.

“There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China. Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime,” he said at a 2013 campaign event.

I’m all for diplomacy, but this is an admiration Canadians can live without.

First published at True North on April 3, 2020.

Let no one say the private sector isn’t rising to the coronavirus challenge.

A subsidiary of British American Tobacco is working on a coronavirus vaccine featuring an unlikely ingredient: tobacco.

Specifically a protein extracted from tobacco leaves, Owensboro, Ky.-based Kentucky BioProcessing said in a release Wednesday.

The company plans to distribute its potential vaccine on a not-for-profit basis.

“KBP recently cloned a portion of COVID-19’s genetic sequence which led to the development of a potential antigen – a substance which induces an immune response in the body and in particular, the production of antibodies,” the company said. “This antigen was then inserted into tobacco plants for reproduction and, once the plants were harvested, the antigen was then purified, and is now undergoing pre-clinical testing.”

It may sound surprising, but the process is not as novel as you might think. Kentucky BioProcessing’s tobacco extraction was used in an Ebola treatment called ZMapp, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration and used during the 2014 to 2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

The coronavirus vaccine’s developer says its plant-based process gives it “several advantages” over conventional vaccine production, such as faster accumulation of the necessary protein in the tobacco plants, and not requiring refrigeration.

With support from government agencies and third-party manufacturers, British American Tobacco says it could produce one to three million doses of vaccine per week, beginning as early as June.

“If the testing goes well, BAT is hopeful that, with the right partners and support from government agencies, between one and three million doses of the vaccine could be manufactured per week, beginning in June,” the release said.

BAT’s scientific research director, Dr. David O’Reilly, was unavailable for an interview, but said in the company’s press release that BAT is “engaged with the US Food and Drug Administration and (is) seeking guidance on next steps.”

The news from Kentucky BioProcessing puts British American Tobacco in a growing field of companies and research institutions racing to develop, test and implement a coronavirus vaccine.

Nearly three dozen organizations are known to be in the race, according to the Guardian. Of these, four have begun animal testing while at least one, a Boston biotech company, is set to begin human trials “imminently.”