Tamara Ugolini, a Rebel News journalist, reveals how Ontario’s COVID-19 enforcement—like Regulation 364-20 mask rules—fails to protect exemptions or dissent, with officials dismissing rights concerns and threatening trespass charges. She cites cases of harassment, including a Paralympic swimmer denied entry despite no hands, and vaccine passports forcing compliance (e.g., healthcare access). Unions’ silence on teacher dissent and mandatory asymptomatic testing near Christmas deepens alarm over long-term societal control, as governments exploit flu season excuses. Rising cases and long-term care deaths undermine mask/distancing efficacy, yet Ugolini warns relief is unlikely without public resistance, urging freedom and accountability to counter growing authoritarianism. [Automatically generated summary]
Hello Rebels, you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my weekly Wednesday night show, The Gun Show.
However, this is the internet, so you know what?
Feel free to listen or watch whenever you want.
My guest tonight is my Rebel colleague, Tamara Ugalini, and we're talking about her work on trying to find out what exactly the COVID restrictions are and who enforces them and what becomes of your human rights in the midst of all that confusion.
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How are normal people supposed to know what the coronavirus restrictions are if the police don't really know on any given day?
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
I'm getting a lot of mixed information from the public health unit and simultaneously a security guard and now the police.
can you help me you know clarify what's going on nothing That is my rebel colleague, Tamara Ugalini, being threatened with a trespass violation for just trying to do her job and report on some of the more ridiculous coronavirus restrictions.
And you can see from her interaction that not only do the police not know quite what's going on because Tamara had not been asked to leave and so she was not trespassing, but the police really didn't know what the law was, what they needed to be enforcing, and what Tamara's human rights were because it's a violation of Tamara's human rights to ask her why she is mask exempt.
And I will note in that video, Tamara is heavily pregnant, not a good look on the police.
Anyway, Tamara's reporting as of late has really been on that theme.
What are the restrictions?
Because they're changing so fast.
They change by the day depending on where you live and the whim of the politician in charge that day.
And what are peace officers, bylaw officers, and the police supposed to do when they don't know the laws?
And how are the police supposed to balance the human rights of Canadians in the mix?
And so joining me now in an interview we recorded earlier is one of our newest, but I think quickly becoming a fan favorite, Rebels, Tamara Ugolini to discuss her reporting on the pandemic and her job of trying to alleviate some of the confusion around the rules we're all expected to follow and what she thinks 2021 will bring.
Joining me now from her home in Coburg is one of our newest rebels, Tamara Ugolini.
Tamara, you have been on the show before and that was a lot of fun.
It was a couple months ago.
And I thought as, you know, an end of the year kind of thing, we'd check back in with you.
First of all, how are you liking the new job?
It's been great.
Yeah, I'm really finding a groove finally.
It was, I think I mentioned this back the initial time I was on the show.
Adjusting to the Camera00:02:05
It's been a big learning curve.
So lots to learn.
I've had a lot of really great experiences, met a lot of really great people, gained a lot of insight.
So all in all, it's been a really, really awesome learning opportunity.
And yeah, I finally feel like I'm adjusting and getting more comfortable with everything in front of the camera.
It's hard when you're not, you know, like as David Menzie says, a trained broadcast professional.
However, he's actually a trained broadcast professional.
And I don't know.
I don't know what's going on there.
But it is hard when you're like a regular person.
And then all of a sudden you're talking to a camera and through that camera or cell phone, you're talking to the rest of the world.
And it's a little bit challenging to find your footing, to realize like you talk a little bit differently when you're talking to a camera as opposed to, you know, like you're talking to your friends and you have to find a way to communicate a little differently and you're trying to shoehorn so much information into a video in the least amount of time because you want people to be able to watch it.
And that's difficult to learn.
But I don't think that I don't think it matters whether or not you're a regular person or a trained broadcast professional because, well, CBC employs trained broadcast professionals and like nobody's watching their stuff, right?
What a failure that's become.
Now, I wanted to talk to you about some of the things that are on your beat because your beat has really been like people who wear, don't want to wear masks or who are exempt from wearing masks or who want to be just left alone generally in the world and who are being harassed for not wearing masks.
For example, the young man who was, I guess, basically booted out of Costco for not wearing a mask to go buy medication for the illness that makes him mask exempt.
Mask Exemptions Struggles00:14:46
Right.
I mean, it just seems to be enforced so heavily that there's no longer any room for logic, reasoning, rationale.
I mean, there was that woman, I think it was in BC, the Paralympic swimmer who has no hands, and they denied her entry to the Indigo chapters there.
she physically is unable to put on a mask.
I mean, this is the extreme that it's going where there's no room for anything else other than wear the mask or what?
You can't be in society anymore.
I mean, is this a stepping stone?
A lot of people are speculating.
Well, and I think that's one of the things that I really admire about your reporting, especially lately, is nobody knows what the heck the rules are.
The rules are also changing so fast that you can't expect normal people to keep up with them.
But you can't even expect the cops to keep up with, you know, how fast the rules are changing and what the rules are today versus what the rules were yesterday and what zone, color-coded zone.
Just today, I went into Tim Hortons to grab a coffee and the sign on the door said something about the mask and the emergency measures and civil protections act.
And I thought to myself, that hasn't been in effect since I don't know the exact date, but the end of the summer at least.
Now it's all in Ontario anyway, it's all under the Ontario Reopening Act.
And there's still signs up on legislation that was ended months ago.
And you've been trying to get answers and you've been trying to get answers from cops when they are thinking about ticketing you for trespass.
Face to face.
Face to face.
You've been trying to get answers from health officials who then say, oh, send you everything in an email.
And then they don't give you the information.
You've been trying to get answers from the ministry.
If you can't get the answers and you're a journalist who, I mean, you live in this world all the time.
This is our job to ask questions and get answers.
How on earth does the Ontario government expect normal people to get the answers that they need to make sure that they are in compliance with the law?
That's a, yeah, and that's a great point and a great question.
And something that where I, where, again, I feel I've found my groove here is that I've really liked being able to, for lack of a better word, name drop myself to these officials and say, I'm Tamara Ugolini.
I'm a reporter with Rebel News.
To clarify on a story I'm covering, I'd like to ask you a few questions and I will feature your response.
And in honoring the other side of the story, I will share that with my report.
And so I feel like it's given me a bit more of a leg to stand on with some of these officials.
But as I'm finding, it's still not enough.
And there's no real answers, or it's very word-salad political speak.
I have a response, a few other responses that I haven't quite bundled up into a video yet.
So that should be coming out in the new year in terms of the police and what's being enforced and how heavily.
So, you know, just going back to when I was just a normal person, I was doing these things on my own, not specifically pandemic stuff, but for the last few years, various issues.
And I wasn't getting anywhere.
So that's not new territory to me, but having a little bit more of a leg to stand on to try to get some accountability has been a really fun and challenging thing, especially to try to remain unbiased in how I point the questions.
Yeah.
And that's, I think, something that maybe people aren't aware that we do, but we do our very best to reach out to the other side of the story.
We're definitely advocates for the little guy, the normal person, the businesses that want to open through iwillopen.com, the people who have been fined at fightthefines.com.
We are their advocates and their champions because we believe in the rights of small business owners to operate.
And we believe in the rights of normal people to just go about their business and do normal things that were completely normal and not illegal 10 months ago that are suddenly illegal now.
We're advocates for those people, but we do want to make sure that we reach out to the other side, the health officials who are making these rules, because not only do we want to get their side of the story on the record, but sometimes just asking the question exposes them for how little they know.
And that's been evident in so many of your stories.
I mean, when you're asking the cops when they're trying to ticket you for trespass when you were not asked to leave, and you're asking them like, well, what about the other side of this?
Like, what about who's worrying about the human rights issues here?
They had no idea.
When you call it, they didn't even care.
They didn't care.
He said that.
He said, you can file a human rights complaint.
I don't care.
I mean, and that's our enforcement.
That's our police.
And they do take an oath to uphold the Charter of Human Rights and the Human Rights Code.
So where do these pieces, again, I'm still left, what, six weeks later, questioning, where does this become a cohesive front here on what's being enforced?
Well, I think that's why it's so important the work of like the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms and what we're doing at iWillopen and fightthefines.com is because we're trying to balance the human rights side.
And I do get why cops would say, like, look, file a human rights complaint.
I deal with the criminal side.
Fine.
You know what?
On some level, I don't want the cops worrying about, you know, Human Rights Commission area stuff because I really don't want the cops to come and arrest me because I said something that hurt somebody's feelings.
And that's sort of what human rights are turning into these days.
So I don't want that.
But at the same time, the people who are drafting the legislation, it's their job to balance pandemic legislation with human rights.
And they're not.
They're just throwing the human rights side completely in the garbage and only worrying about what they think will stop the pandemic.
And that's actually, that's something that's that I've found interesting in researching the Ontario Reopening Act.
And again, I keep going back to specifically Regulation 364-20, is that it is in the law.
And they did make stipulations in there specifically for the mask exempt or exceptions.
It's spelled out very clearly.
And so I don't know where there's that segregation that's happening, that why one part of that law is being enforced so heavily and the other parts are being disregarded.
And the same thing I'm finding with the Trespassed Property Act.
There are certain parts in that act that are being completely disregarded.
And police go right to the enforcement arrest part of the law.
So it's like the cherry-picking that's happening in all aspects of the pandemic.
It's, it's mind-blowing that people are getting away with it and it's gone thus far.
Now, that, I mean, I suppose we could talk about the pandemic forever, but there's you've, you're also part of the work that you do.
And I think it's because you're a mom and I appreciate it because I'm a mom, but you also are finding and giving a space to teachers to come out and talk about politics in the classroom.
And not just teachers, but also kids too.
And I think that's because you approach these issues in such a gentle, sort of nonpartisan way that you have teachers coming out, coming forward to you, talking about the sort of the politics around indoctrination and the politics around masks in the classroom.
And that's very unusual.
We very rarely have teachers that we can sort of coax out of the shadows and advocate for the other teachers standing behind them who are not willing to come out of the shadows.
You've been that, and I think that's really great.
Well, and it's been tough, to be honest, trying to find people who are willing to have an opinion first and foremost and then voice it on a platform.
There doesn't seem to be many of those left or around these days.
Everyone's very scared, and especially the teacher that I have featured, you know, there can be repercussions for coming forward.
And I mean, in a free and democratic society, that is very concerning to me that anyone that has a dissenting voice that goes against this sort of general accepted narrative is vilified and criminalized.
I mean, what kind of country are we living in?
Well, and it's not even like people who are coming out with an opinion, a teacher who's saying, well, yeah, I'm kind of a conservative in the classroom.
And these are teachers who are saying, you know what, my opinion is that you don't need my opinion in the classroom.
And somehow that is controversial in this day and age.
And, you know, their unions who normally will stand up and help bad teachers, they are sort of the first ones who crack down on them and refuse to stand up for their free speech.
And that's an interesting point that you make on the unions because I have another story that I'm working on, again, with some individuals who are fearful to come on camera with me, but where the union is failing these workers and not advocating for what they truly want and using, I mean, all across the board, we've seen these bullying and coercion tactics being used on people to gain their compliance.
And typically or traditionally, the unions were where people could go for a voice or an advocate.
And unfortunately, we're not seeing that here on one side of the spectrum.
Now, another story that I think you've sort of been one of the or three journalists to cover in the entire country is the use of fetal cells in the COVID vaccines.
And it's not all the vaccines, but it is some of the vaccines.
And nobody's really talking about the ethical and moral and religious freedom implications surrounding the vaccines.
Now, Doug Ford has come out and said that vaccines aren't going to be mandatory.
However, health officials have said, oh, they're not going to be mandatory.
But there's this big long list of things that you can't do in a free society now if you don't take the vaccine.
So it's that coercion you're talking about.
And it's completely, again, throwing out the whole human rights side of the debate.
For me, as a Catholic, I'm not taking a vaccine with fetal stem cells.
I'm just not.
But if I lived in Ontario, well, that might mean that I can't get my driver's license renewed, or maybe I can't go to the emergency room.
So it's, you know, state force.
And for a lot of people, their choices may be, do I violate my religious freedom and thus compromise my soul?
Which is, you know, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter what I think or you think.
It matters what the religious person thinks.
So do I compromise my soul or do I go to the emergency room and deal with this life-threatening injury?
That could be the position that a lot of people are put in.
And you're really the only one talking about that.
Yeah.
And, you know, school, sending your, being able to send your children to school, that will be a big thing to address if and when the COVID vaccine becomes mandated.
Again, the mandate, you know, oh, it won't be mandatory.
Yet will kind of force your hand, because if you want your kids to go to school or you want to go on a trip one day, well then here's your uh Covie Pass.
That's I think that's Bill Gates technology um, to show that your proof of vaccination, I mean the technology, is all there.
So, if 2020 and 2021 continues to go in the way that all these conspiracy theorists as we like to, they like to refer to them as as they were speculating the big, the beginning of the pandemic, if it continues on this path, I mean, this is shaping up to be conspiracy fact, not conspiracy theory.
So yeah, the vaccine thing again, I think personally, I think, that some of these uh tactics are just that, that stepping stone.
Um, right now, you have people in the workforce being force tested uh for Covid 19, and there's a lot of speculation and questions around how reliable and accurate that test even is.
Um, it's very invasive and and men, healthy working men, who are not symptomatic for any illness, are being forced to take this test or threatened to with job loss right before christmas.
Um, so what are you going to choose?
And so where do we draw that line?
Do we stop at the vaccine?
Does it end there.
It didn't stop at the masks, it's not stopping at the testing, so why won't we just keep going?
You know that's a great point.
I for me, the longer this goes on, the further we are from the baseline of what actual normal is.
People are always talking about new normal and I hope that in 2021 we never hear that word again, but I think it is with us forever.
Um, but people are forgetting.
We didn't used to have to stand six feet apart and stand on these stupid arrows on the floor.
And we weren't like looking to see if someone's judging us if we're not wearing a mask in the grocery store or if we're going the wrong way down the coffee aisle.
Or, you know, if you took off your mask by touching the elastics and not pulling it off your face because people are going to judge you.
And little kids who are wearing masks.
Worries About Normalcy Loss00:08:35
for their first day of kindergarten.
This is all they know about school.
I'm concerned about how how much further we get away from what normal used to be.
I'm worried people are going to forget and there's a whole bunch of people, little people, who don't even know if they already forget.
It's been long enough that if you're young enough as a child.
You forget my, my almost three-year-old I mean.
We went to a play place last week, Week, and it was as though it was his first time ever being at a play place because it's been eight, nine months since he was last at an indoor play place.
And it was joyous.
Don't get me wrong.
I loved the whole experience, but seeing how excited he was and knowing that he's been to these places before, it definitely struck a chord.
I was talking about this earlier today with one of our I Will Open cases.
You know, little kids who are, you know, four years old, they've spent a full one quarter of their life.
You know, when you think about how we're approaching a year of this right away, they've spent a full one quarter of their life living this bizarre misery that we're all living.
And when you think about your earliest memory, it's probably three years old, three, two, three-ish.
This is all literally their first memory will be of the COVID weirdness.
That will be their baseline forever.
And I think that's really a tragedy.
It's child abuse.
Well, they say the formative years that forms who you are as a person.
And so these poor children who are going through those formative years during this time, I mean, can we come back from it?
There are people that I have spoken to that still haven't left their house since March.
This is terrible.
Their husband or whoever in the family is the designated person that leaves.
And they have a P-pod for their, this one particular person has a P-mat for their dog.
They don't leave the house.
This blows my mind that, you know, some people are just so happy to be a bird in a gilded cage.
The cage is nice, but you're still not free.
And I've got a real problem with being a bird that doesn't, you know, being a bird, I guess for lack of a better term, that likes to crap on newspaper.
I just want to be free, you know?
Give me the grass.
Give me the grass.
Tamara, I want to ask you, maybe your predictions for 2021.
I think this is not going away.
And I think that because in the UK, they're already talking about how to deal with the latest mutation that might be named COVID-21 or whatever.
So I think we're going to see governments come up with a lot of excuses to hang on to the power they snatched away from normal people.
What are your predictions for 2021?
In 2021, I mean, I just hope that more people can start to see what is actually happening around, you know, Ontario, Canada, the world.
Give the dissenting voices more of a platform.
We had here in Ontario, in Toronto, an ER doctor speak out, and he was able to get some airtime on 680 News.
He had some really valuable insight to bring to the table.
He is a frontline worker.
He, I think, has been an ER doctor for 16 years.
These are reasonable, rational people who are offering a perspective that's very valuable and for some reason is being disregarded.
So for 2021, I hope to see more of them and less vilification of those people.
And hopefully we can turn this around because I personally don't think it ends until enough people get together and say, enough is enough.
Yeah, I think we're going to see maybe a hardening of positions.
So I think there are people who are going to be like, you know what?
I'm happy to just have my dog pee on a cotton pad on the floor and never leave my house again and just Netflix and chill until I'm in a coffin one day.
There are people like that out there.
There are also people out there who just say, you know what, it's not so bad wearing a mask and following these obnoxious stupid arrows on the floor and they're lumped in that pile of people.
I think are those people who are happy to wear the modern day keyboard warrior mask where you can hide your identity and still yell at other people.
That's what I think the masks are.
There's going to be those people on one side and everybody else who was either against the lockdown, the masks, the infringements on their liberties from the very beginning, those people are going to be joined by people who are saying, I see no benefit to everything that we've agreed to do.
And so I'm not agreeing to do it anymore.
I think it's just going to harden off into those two sides and there's going to be nobody left in between.
I think we are going to see more division in society and real clashes of those two groups of people.
And that's really unfortunate.
And I blame first and foremost the government, but also the mainstream media outlets.
I mean, on one side, they claim unity and inclusiveness and then they intentionally, except when you're talking about diversity of thought.
Yeah.
Let's vilify anyone who says anything in opposite of what we're putting out.
And what's the end goal here?
You know, that's something I keep coming back to as well.
What's the end goal?
And we see that the masks aren't working.
The distancing isn't working.
None of these measures are protecting the vulnerable people who are still dying in the long-term care homes under horrible conditions.
That's another story that I've been pretty focused on.
And we're still waiting on an access to information request on some of those details to confirm.
But this, you know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
So who's insane here?
Is it the people still doing the same stuff over and over and expecting different results?
Because the cases are going up.
People are dying in long-term care homes.
The hospitals aren't overrun.
So what are we doing?
You know what?
That's a great place to leave this interview.
What on earth are we doing?
I know what I'm doing.
I know what you're doing.
We're fighting for freedom.
We're telling the stories of the little guy and we're trying to put the government in its place a little bit every single day.
But what is everybody else doing?
Our governments, our unelected, unaccountable health bureaucrats, the authoritarians in the general populace that now feel emboldened to curse out their fellow citizens because they didn't stand on the right spot on the floor.
What are we all doing?
Let's hope in 2021 sanity returns, but I'm not optimistic.
Fingers crossed.
Well, Tamara, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Merry Christmas.
Happy New Year.
And here's hoping you get a little time off from fighting for freedom to spend with your beautiful family.
Thank you, Sheila.
Merry Christmas to you and yours.
Thanks.
I think 2021 is not going to bring us any relief from the coronavirus restrictions.
I think, as is the case with an average flu season, people are going to be sick as they are confined to the indoors because of adverse Canadian weather.
That's just how it is.
That's why our flu season is when it is, is because we're indoors together when it's cold outside.
And I think our politicians are going to use that as an excuse to keep their tight grip on our freedoms and civil liberties unless we fight back.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much.
As always, for tuning in, I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.