An Open Letter to Bonnie Henry, BC Provincial Health Officer
August 27, 2021
Dear Dr. Henry,
I am absolutely appalled by your announcement on Monday August 23, 2021 that you will be enabling the assault of thousands of British Columbians in addition to ensuring the violation of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. With the implementation of a medical apartheid in the form of a vaccine passport you are going against the foundational principles that Canada was built on, a country that I used to be proud to call my home.
According to legal precedent set in the Supreme Court of Canada, medical treatment is an assault if it’s done without informed consent of the patient. The concept of informed consent is illuminated in a couple of historical cases on the matter.
As stated in the 1945 Supreme Court decision of Parmley and Parmley, “The conclusion appears unavoidable that both of the parties hereto, particularly in the operating room, failed to recognize the right of the patient, when consulting a professional man in the practice of his profession, to have an examination, a diagnosis, advice and consultations, and that thereafter it is for the patient to determine what, if any, operation or treatment shall be proceeded with…. It may be that in the operating room the parties hereto were of the opinion that they were acting in the best interests of Mrs. Yule in extracting the teeth, but that is not the point….. No amount of professional skill can justify the substitution of the will of the surgeon for that of the patient”.
The 1980 Supreme Court decision of Hopp & Lepp used informed consent terminology and further clarified it. “… ‘informed consent’, frequently used in American cases, reflects the fact that although there is, generally, prior consent by a patient to proposed surgery or therapy, this does not immunize a surgeon or physician from liability for battery or for negligence if he has failed in a duty to disclose risks of the surgery or treatment, known or which should be known to him, and which are unknown to the patient. The underlying principle is the right of the patient to decide what, if anything, should be done with his body”.
In fact, in the case of the vaccine passport, there is no consent, let alone informed consent.
The 1999 Supreme Court decision of R. v. Ewanchuk is a sexual assault case, but it clearly outlines what consent is and is not:
“To be legally effective consent must be freely given. Therefore, even if the complainant consented, or her conduct raises a reasonable doubt about her non-consent, circumstances may arise which call into question what factors promoted her apparent consent.
“…no consent is obtained where the complainant submits or does not resist by reason of:
a) The application of force to the complainant
b) Threats or fear of the application of force to the complainant or to a person other than the complainant
c) Fraud
d) The exercise of authority”
It is clear that in Canadian law a patient must consent to any medical treatment, otherwise it’s a form of battery known as assault.
Vaccine passports are absolutely an exercise of authority. If a person receives the vaccine only because of authority and because they want to live a normal life the person did not consent to the treatment and it is clear that this is an assault. Physicians must do no harm under the Hippocratic oath. Assault is harm. You, Dr. Henry, are a physician. You, Dr. Henry, are enabling assault of enormous scale in British Columbia. This is absolutely unacceptable.
Your vaccine passport is offensive to a free and democratic society.
Your vaccine passport is injurious to the sanctity of the individual person guaranteed under section 7 of the charter of rights and freedoms. Indeed, suddenly no longer does everyone have the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof.
Your vaccine passport is enabling discrimination and segregation. Section 15 of the charter of rights and freedoms guarantees that every individual is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and in particular without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, sex, age, mental or physical disability. This is clearly not an exhaustive list. Indeed, abstaining from abuse should not preclude a Canadian citizen from section 15 of the Charter. Segregation of people has never been brought about by good or brought about good in return. Examples of segregation and passport systems include the Ancestors pass in Nazi Germany, the Jim Crow Laws before the civil rights movement in the USA, and apartheid in South Africa. And indeed, extremely high vaccination rates and a vaccine passport system for the very reason you’re promoting it has already demonstrably failed in Israel in addition to being morally abhorrent.
Your Vaccine Passport creates a divided society, as you yourself said on May 25, 2021: “This virus has shown us that there are inequities in our society that have been exacerbated by this pandemic, and there is no way that we will recommend inequities be increased by the use of things like vaccine passports for services with public access here in British Columbia”.
I, along with hundreds of thousands of British Columbians, are not asking. We, as Canadian citizens, are demanding that the order for vaccine passports to be rescinded immediately.
Sincerely,
Natascha Vogel
Concerned Citizen of British Columbia
