Ezra Levant examines Canada’s plummeting World Happiness Report ranking—from 5th to 15th—blaming pandemic policies, Trudeau’s fear-mongering, and $10B in taxpayer-funded bureaucrat salaries while private-sector workers suffered. He critiques U of T’s Moderna research ties influencing vaccine mandates, like booster requirements for students despite rare COVID deaths under-20 and a 1-in-5,000 myocarditis risk. With 99% opposing forced boosters in residences, Levant warns of growing authoritarianism and calls for skepticism toward government-driven health measures. [Automatically generated summary]
Interesting story today about the world happiness rankings.
Did you know that Canada, well, I'm not going to give it away.
Do you know what our rank is this year?
Well, I don't think you do know because I don't think any media are telling you because the answer is not an answer Trudeau would want published.
I'll take you through that today.
I'll show you some charts.
They measure sadness, anxiety, things like that.
I'll show you what the rankings are.
But before I do, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
I'm going to show you some charts.
I want you to see it.
I'm going to quote from this report.
I want you to read it.
That's the video version.
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right here's today's podcast tonight on a list of the world's happiest countries Canada falls to a new low It's August 10th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Shame on you, you sensorism bug.
This popped up on my Twitter feed today.
It was a tweet from Bloomberg.
It says, what is the world's happiest country?
Lists and Liberal Dreams00:05:21
Now, they don't tell you.
They want you to click the link to find out.
And then they say, the secret, social support, generosity of one another, and honesty in government.
Well, that spells bad news for us, eh?
Now, normally, Canada does pretty well on lists like this.
Semi-scientific lists that are, in some ways, like PR agencies promoting some globalist or socialist scheme.
I've seen this before.
The lists are almost always about measuring inequality, which sounds pretty good until you realize that in North Korea, everyone is equal in their misery, whereas, say, in America, people are unequal in their happiness.
That's the United Nations list, the HDI, they call it their Human Development Index.
The HDI was created to emphasize that people and their capabilities should be the ultimate criteria for assessing the development of a country, not economic growth alone.
That's what they say.
Like I said, it was designed to say America bad, socialism good.
Now, I'm not saying it was completely devoid of merit.
Life expectancy was a big part of that UN list, and that is a pretty good measure for many things because nutrition and health require prosperity.
Literacy was another one of their measures, and I agree with that, obviously.
I don't think anyone would dissent with the ranking that a poor, illiterate country where life expectancy is, say, 45 is much worse off than a rich, educated country with life expectancy of, say, 80.
But I know that one of the main uses of that UN list system was to nitpick between the US versus, say, the socialist Nordic countries that always were on top.
So it really felt political to me.
But I had never heard of the World Happiness Report before.
Have you?
And frankly, I'm even more skeptical of it than the UN's Human Development Index.
And how do you measure happiness?
How do you take a reading on it?
I think it's hard.
I think to a degree it's subjective.
It's psychological and philosophical.
Someone can have a small job with a small income and live in a small house and drive a small car and be truly, truly happy.
Someone can have a big job and a big income and live in a big house and drive a big car and be absolutely miserable.
In fact, maybe they're more likely to be miserable.
That's an old saying.
Who is happy?
He who is content with their portion.
So how do you measure that?
Well, there are some ways.
I guess one way to start is simply by asking people and to try to show some attempted standardization.
You know, in science, one of the tests of an experiment is, is it replicable?
That is, if you do the same experiment again, will it yield the same results?
It's a test of if you're doing it right.
That's an attempt to bring rigor to social sciences.
It's a bit of art.
But with that disclaimer, take a look at this.
This is what was behind that tweet I saw.
Turns out this World Happiness Report is a UN project too, but it also has private companies and private donors funding it.
A lot of participation from Canada.
As a matter of fact, Canadian universities, a Canadian government grant, of course.
They're trying to be science-y, I think.
I'll give them some credit.
They're working with Gallup Polling, which at least tells you something about their methodology.
So they've been at it now for 10 years, and obviously, the pandemic has cast a shadow over world happiness.
Or if you ask me, the lockdowns and government abuses in response to the pandemic have cast a shadow over happiness.
It wasn't COVID that banned people from going to work or school or seeing each other.
It wasn't the pandemic that forced churches to close and funerals to cancel and weddings to cancel.
Or bizarre anti-human punishments like hugging loved ones through walls of plastic.
Do you think this schoolchild is happy in band?
Bands should be really fun.
Do you think he was happy?
It wasn't the virus that did that.
It was other people.
I thought this was interesting.
Genetic studies involving twin or family designs reveal that about 30 to 40% of the differences in happiness between people within a country are accounted for by genetic differences among individuals.
The other 60 to 70% of differences between people result from the effect of environmental influences that are independent of the genes.
I think that rings true.
Look at this.
In 2020, for the first time, the Gallup World Poll asked questions on the experience of your life being in balance, feeling at peace with your life, experiencing calm for a lot of the day, preferring a calm life to an exciting life.
Focus on caring for others or self.
The majority of people in almost every country prefer a calmer life to an exciting one.
But that preference is no higher in Eastern countries than elsewhere.
However, it is particularly high in the poorer countries, especially in Africa, where actual calm is low.
Both balance and peace contribute strongly to a satisfying life in all regions of the world.
Why Measure Happiness?00:07:59
Isn't that interesting?
You know, maybe there's some signs here after all.
These are some good questions, don't you think?
Anyways, you can find the whole study online.
We'll put a link to the full report on the website beneath this video.
So here's why I'm talking about this.
Other than I thought, well, how do you measure happiness?
And I think some of the answers were thoughtful.
Well, it's like I said before, though, Canada always does well in rankings like this, especially rankings done by the United Nations, especially rankings paid for by Canadian tax dollars like this one.
I mean, Canadians think we're nicer than other countries, don't we?
Come on.
But I think some of that is narcissism or vanity or snobbery.
Just know we're better people than those Americans.
In fact, they're, in real life, more charitable than we are.
Did you know that?
In many measurable ways, they are actually nicer than we are.
Did you know that?
I think it's just a kind of snobbery up here in Canada, like our belief that you used to hear a lot of 20 years ago, you don't hear a lot anymore, that we have the best health care in the world.
You really don't hear anyone say that now, not even politicians.
No one would believe them.
So, what are we best at in the world now?
Sanctimony?
I mean, official Canada.
Ordinary Canada is still wonderful.
I mean, I'm talking about the official people, the politicians, and the media and the banks and the big companies.
What exactly are they better at?
Best in the world, I mean, best brand in the world, ambassadors to the world.
I'm not sure if that's just true anymore.
We're persona non grata in China.
They literally kidnapped our citizens.
Trudeau humiliated us in his India antics and was never invited back.
Trudeau failed at getting a seat in the UN Security Council despite spending millions in bribes.
No one stops to look at his fancy socks anymore when he goes to a G7 meeting or a NATO meeting.
That was sort of funny once, but now it's just pitiful.
Trudeau has taken a lot of photo-ops.
And in Ukraine, he raised the flag at the Canadian embassy there with some difficulty, but it was a fake.
The embassy was not actually open.
It was a media trick.
Trudeau just broke his own sanctions, sending critical gas pipeline turbines to Russia to help them make billions in natural gas sales to Europe.
I wish Trudeau would let Western Canada have natural gas pipelines, oil gas pipelines too.
So yeah, we've fallen in the world a bit.
The whole world saw Trudeau go full banana republic on the truckers, invoking martial laws, seizing bank accounts.
It sounds like a bit of a fascist sometimes.
Oui, on va s'en sortir de cette pandémie par la vaccination.
Puis on en connaît tous, des gens qui sont en train d'hésiter un petit peu.
On va continuer d'essayer de les convaincre.
Mais il y a aussi des gens qui sont farouchement opposés à la vaccination.
Qui sont extrémistes.
Qui ne croient pas dans la science, qui sont souvent misogynes, souvent racistes aussi.
C'est un petit groupe, mais qui prend de la place.
Et là, il faut faire un choix en tant que leader, en tant que pays.
Est-ce qu'on tolère?
So yeah, we've come down a bit in the world, haven't we?
Which brings us to the happiness rankings.
Where is Canada on the list?
And it's not all on politicians, of course, but what are the things that make you anxious or angry or sad or stressed?
I don't know.
I can think of one being demonized by your politicians, being forced into isolation for months or years, being put under a kind of house arrest, being forced out of your job, out of your school, out of society, be banned from restaurants, banned either by a lockdown of your business or because you're not vaxxed.
I don't think anyone is happy now other than the ruling class, the staycation class who got pay raises to work from home for the government, even if they weren't actually working.
We'll talk more about that later in the show.
So how is Canada doing in the happiness rankings?
Well, let me tell you.
I'll quote: France reached its highest ranking to date at 20th, while Canada slipped to its lowest ranking ever at 15th, just behind Germany at 14th, and followed closely by the United States and the United Kingdom at 16 and 17.
Ten years ago, Canada ranked fifth.
How could we have fallen?
Oh my gosh, can you imagine?
Next year we'll be below the United States.
What will Trudeau say then?
How could it be that 10 years ago under the evil Stephen Harper, Canadians were so happy?
According to this taxpayer-funded, UN-funded survey, well, some things were better back then.
The economy was stronger.
We weren't pitting West against East.
We weren't pitting Anglophone against Francophone.
We weren't demonizing entire industries and their workers.
We had pride in our armed forces.
We weren't denouncing each other as racist and sexist and homophobic and transphobic.
We were working at reconciliation with Indigenous people, not calling Canadians genociders.
We were cutting taxes, not raising them.
Things were more normal.
From fifth place to 15th, you'd think that would be on the news.
Oh, it would be on the news if Stephen Harper were presiding over our unhappiness.
No surprise the news is buried, given Trudeau's in power and cutting the bailout checks.
And don't get me wrong, we're obviously still a better place to live than many third world countries, at least until Trudeau goes full Castro and censors the internet and seizes your bank account, shuts down farms and farmers and oil workers and brings in mandatory digital ID surveillance.
All these things he's proposing.
There really is a Cuban level of misery.
Two quick charts from the study.
Here's one on page 92.
Look at that chart on the left.
Anxiety.
Canadians are almost 25% more anxious now.
Do you think so?
I think so.
Look at sadness on the top right.
Imagine managering our national sadness.
Almost 15% more sad.
I guess we're a bit less angry now, which is a plus.
I'm a bit surprised.
But there's a net negative change in life.
Here's a chart on page 95.
A couple of them.
It's a bit hard to understand, but when you understand it, it's a bit shocking.
Do you see Canada on the anxiety chart on the left?
Here's what this chart is called.
Time intervals for which anxiety and sadness remained continuously above their median level in 2019 in each country.
In other words, how long were you anxious compared to 2019?
How long were you sad?
Look at Canada there.
35 days of anxiety in a row?
More than any other country, if I'm reading this chart right.
And look at sorrow.
Only the UK and New Zealand were sadder.
A virus didn't do that.
The lockdown did.
The punishments did.
The fear-mongering did.
That's Trudeau and Teresa Tam and the media party and the entire establishment.
Trudeau made us sad and anxious.
He made us depressed.
He demoralized us.
He's made us miserable.
Don't take it from me.
Take it from a study that his government funded.
Stay with us for more.
How did you do during the lockdowns?
Well, I guess the answer depends on who you are.
Federal Bureaucrats Boom00:13:38
If you were in the internet business like Amazon or Netflix, it was the best thing that ever happened to you.
Those folks doubled their value.
Not because they provided an amazing service, but rather because their local competitors were legislated out of work.
You couldn't go to your local shop.
You had to order from Amazon.
DoorDash and other online food delivery companies did well, and I don't begrudge them that, but it was because you were banned from going in person to restaurants.
There were certain people who made out like bandits.
Typically, they were well-connected.
But there were many people who were left with very little or with nothing, working-class people who couldn't do their job as a store clerk or a cashier from home.
Government workers had the best of all worlds.
If they had to work at all, they could work from home.
And of course, there's never a recession in government land.
Many government teachers didn't have to work at all.
Schools were closed.
Do you think they weren't paid?
I can tell you, people who work at gyms or theaters were not paid, but government workers didn't miss a cent.
Look at this headline in a new press release by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
45,000 more federal bureaucrats receiving six-figure salary than before the pandemic.
You think you've lost ground?
You think inflation has taken away your spending power?
You lost your job altogether?
Well, you just got the wrong job, bud.
You've got to work for the government.
Let me read you a sentence from the press release and then we'll invite its author on to say it.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is calling on the federal government to implement a sunshine list as government documents reveal 114,433 employees received more than $100,000 in 2021.
We're not all in this together, said Franco Terrazano, federal director of the CTF.
It's not fair to ask the Canadians who lost their job or took a pay cut during the pandemic to pay higher taxes so the federal government can add thousands of highly paid bureaucrats.
And joining us now, Via Skype is our friend Franco Terrazano.
Frank, great to see you.
What's so astonishing, and that's an astonishing number, 45,000 new sunshine list, 100,000 heirs.
But in just since the pandemic, the list has grown to 114,000.
So it almost doubled in size.
The number of $100,000 earners has almost doubled in government land under the pandemic.
That's amazing.
It's absolutely crazy.
And really, it's more evidence to show that we're not all in this together.
What we have seen is a tale of two pandemics.
One full of private sector pain where people who are working for a business, who are self-employed, may have lost their job, may have taken a pay cut, maybe even lost their small business.
And then the other side of the pandemic was full of economic gain for government bureaucrats and for politicians.
Now, the federal government doesn't have a sunshine list, so we had to dig these documents up through access to information requests.
And what we found is absolutely eye-popping.
In 2021, there was more than 114,000 federal government employees that received more than $100,000 in annual salary.
And that means, as you pointed out, that more than 45,000 more federal bureaucrats are receiving six-figure annual salaries than there were before the pandemic.
Yeah, and by the way, we're thinking six-figure is okay, $100,000.
Some of these folks, like Teresa Tam, are close to the half million dollar mark.
You know, I just was scribbling some numbers.
100,000 people earning $100,000.
You know what the math is on that?
I can't even believe it.
It's $10 billion.
And that's, again, if they were just making $100,000 even.
Like I say, some of these folks like the Teresa Tams are making quadruple, quintuple that.
That's such a large number.
That's such a large number.
That's almost Bezos money.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
And of course, we're talking about costs here of billions and billions of dollars when it's all added up.
And who has to pay that cost eventually?
Well, the burden is going to fall on the taxpayers who struggled in the private sector, lost their job, took their pay cuts, did everything right their whole lives to save that money, to invest in their business.
And their business may have got shut down during the pandemic, got shut down during the lockdowns, and now they're going to have to face a higher tax burden because we have all these highly paid bureaucrats that the federal government is hiring.
But again, this is just the tip of the iceberg because, Ezra, these are just talking about the salary.
Of course, then there's pensions, there's other types of perks like bonuses that the government's throwing around.
And here's another slap in the face to taxpayers.
During the pandemic, the federal government gave more than 300,000 federal employees at least one pay raise.
And guess what?
The federal government has no records of ever reducing its employees' pay.
Yeah.
Well, maximum number of bureaucrats of all time, maximum pay of all time.
You know, there may be a recession looming for ordinary people, but it's boom times in government land.
You know, I was looking for the stats.
I saw a report a few weeks ago.
I don't know if it's still true, that a majority of the people who work for the passports office are still working from home.
Now, that may have been remedied in the last few weeks.
I haven't seen an update on that.
But just stop and think about it.
I mean, there's these huge lines of passports office.
People are literally camping overnight.
There's months-long waits.
Last time I was in a passport office, you have to see the person.
They have to, like, you need to meet the person.
I don't know how you could do that from home.
That would be like being a waiter from home.
How does that work?
You have to be at the place.
And I mean, there's not a lot of ways that we interact directly with the federal government every day.
Like with the city government, you can tell, okay, there's garbage pickup, there's the police.
With the provincial government, it's sort of easy to know schools and hospitals.
Like, really, how do we interact with the federal government on a regular basis?
It's not quite as often, but passports and airports are two that come to mind.
Those are the two biggest operational disasters in Canada.
Frankly, I don't know if you saw it, but Toronto Airport was ranked as the world's worst airport for delays in the world.
And they had a strike at Paris's airport.
They were still better.
They had a strike.
And it's not on the airlines' fault.
Don't think I'm blaming the airlines.
It's this ArriveCan app.
It's still the vaccine rules.
The two things government's supposed to do that we come into contact with, they're failing.
But I bet everyone's getting raises all around.
Yeah, there's really two issues that we've been talking about.
The first one, which we've been highlighting, is that it's not fair to ask the person who may have lost their job, who may have taken a pay cut, to ask the person who may have lost their small business to pay higher taxes, to fund all these pay raises, to fund all these government bureaucrats that they're adding.
That's issue number one.
Issue number two, which you just nailed, is that why are taxpayers paying higher costs when Ottawa is failing on performance?
And get this, over the last few years, federal bureaucrats haven't even been able to meet half of their own performance targets.
And on top of the pay raises, on top of the new bureaucrats, taxpayers have also been forced to spend buckets of cash giving these government bureaucrats bonuses.
Ezra, this one really irks me.
The Bank of Canada has one job, one job, keep inflation low.
Well, if you've been to a gas pump, if you've been to a grocery store in the last year, you know that the Bank of Canada failed.
Well, what did the Bank of Canada do?
It was busy patting itself on the back, handing out $45 million in pay raises and bonuses during the pandemic.
Can you believe that?
Well, unfortunately, I can.
It's incredible.
I remember when Pierre Polyev, who is a candidate for the Conservative Party, he's being a critic of the Bank of Canada.
Put aside his leadership campaign, he's been a critic of the Bank of Canada for months, actually for years.
And everyone in the establishment jumped on him for it.
But Tiff Macklam, the absurdly named boss of the Bank of Canada, admitted, yes, he needs to be held accountable.
He actually said that, which I thought was surprising.
But of course, he wasn't held accountable.
He said, yes, I should be held accountable.
And then he wasn't.
He certainly would never resign.
He wasn't held to account by anyone.
So he needs to be held to account.
He agrees, but he isn't held to account.
And bonuses all around.
Champagne.
I wonder if they had champagne in caviar.
It's very frustrating.
You know, it's hard.
It's hard to accept the establishment because they're all in it together, it feels like.
I don't know.
I don't want to start sounding like a Marxist, Franco, but I think the government has failed us in many ways.
Last question: how can people get on your email list?
How can people, on a more regular basis, see what you're up to if you've got press releases like this?
What's the best website for folks to go to?
Taxpayer.com.
Check out our newsroom.
Sign some petitions.
You can join to get email action updates free of charge.
So please head over to taxpayer.com.
Taxpayer.com.
There you go.
Last question for you, just because I'm so curious, and I bet our viewers are too.
What's your pin on your lapel?
Taxpayer.com.
Are you serious?
I couldn't see it.
I just thought that's sort of, I didn't quite see taxpayer.com.
You know, I'm always on brand.
Isn't that great?
You're on brand.
You know what?
You guys have been doing the heavy lifting of defending the interests of the little guy, of ordinary taxpayers for decades.
And I think it's because you don't take a dime from Trudeau.
The minute you start taking government money, you're going to pull your punches.
You're going to tailor your message.
It's hard not to take government money.
We're in the same boat.
And that's why we love you guys at the Taxpayers Federation.
And I really encourage all my viewers: if you have a few extra bucks, give them to the taxpayers.com, sorry, taxpayer.com because they're one of the few independent voices left.
Thanks, Franco.
We'll look forward to talking again soon.
Thanks for having me on.
All right, anytime.
There you have it, Franco Terrazano with the news from taxpayer.com.
Stay with us.
more ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your viewer feedback.
Arepsicas, I think that's Shakespeare backwards, says, there is no doubt about that.
They are absolutely terrified of him and are doing and will continue to do absolutely anything, anything at all to be smirched.
His excellent name and his outstanding abilities of president.
Well, you're talking about Donald Trump.
You know, I was looking at a lot of coverage, especially up here in Canada, on that.
A raid, FBI raid on Donald Trump.
I see Andrew Coyne in the Globe Mail thinks Trump's going to prison for sure this time.
Andrew Coyne says that every few months.
Many of the reports neglected that it was the Presidential Paperwork Act.
When you say that, you almost think it's a joke.
Is that a real thing?
Yeah.
So Donald Trump had some papers that he says are his, and the government says, no, they're ours, and they're having a dispute.
It's not a criminal matter.
It's not high crimes or treason or insurrection.
They're literally having a paperwork disagreement.
Could you imagine not putting that fact in your breathless reports?
Trump's almost in jail.
We'll get him this time.
Sure, you will.
Ms. Sparkles and Glitter says this is exactly why he needs to run again and win.
The system will spend four more years of panic of what he could do.
Go Trump.
Well, you know what?
They're proving every allegation and accusation he makes.
He calls them the deep state.
He says they're biased and partisan and rule breakers.
And they just went ahead and proved it.
David Faulkner says, absolutely shocking, shocking to the core of freedom.
The British government are even talking about a new constitution for us, even though we already have one.
Well, I'm not sure I've heard about that, and I don't think the UK has any power to change our constitution.
I think that's been fully repatriated here in 1982.
That sort of ended the UK's role here, other than the role of the monarchy, which would never devise a new constitution.
It's interesting, tyranny on the march, and I think that what happened to Donald Trump, I mean, it's the Presidential Paperwork Act, but raiding a president's house.
I wonder what precedent they're setting.
I think they're getting lawless down there.
It's almost like they're watching Trudeau.
That's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.
And keep fighting for freedom.
Welcome back to Rebel News.
This is Andrew outside of the University of Toronto Student Commons area, where they've instituted a booster requirement for any student who is coming back to live on residence.
Now, is it because of the university's connection to Moderna research?
Booster Requirement Debate00:08:24
Nobody knows.
We're going to go in to find out.
And let's not forget our land acknowledgement.
Hello there.
Hey guys, we wanted to ask you guys a question about if it's true that there's a booster requirement to live in these into the U of T dorms.
Is that true?
We're actually, we don't have comments for that because we're not working at the University of Toronto.
Okay.
Is there anyone here that wants to speak to us?
Not in the school.
Yeah, probably not in the studio yet.
I mean, I do have my University of Toronto shirt.
We're going to have to blur out my age on that in the year, but as we can see, this was a gift from my brother a long time ago.
I'm much more handsome now.
What's the best weather situation?
And yeah, I hope everyone stays healthy.
So that's not really a real answer.
I'm going to give you one more chance.
Do you agree with it?
Do you not agree with it?
Or you just don't want to say?
I don't want to say.
Well, I think that's unfair.
As someone who was unvaccinated myself, like I was affected by it.
I had lost my job for a little bit.
And definitely I think it's unfair forcing people.
Like, fine, if you want to say the first round, okay, but the booster shot, I feel like it's a little excessive because where does it stop?
You continue on?
Like, is there going to be a new booster every year?
Like, that's something that a lot of people are concerned about.
So definitely I think it's unfair.
I think it's unfair.
Unfair?
Why is that?
I think that decision should be left to the students.
Yeah, I would say I partially agree with it.
And why is that?
Because it's like it's more about a concern of, like, I might prefer not to have it, but like, I might be the vector for COVID to spread to others too.
So I'm putting others at risk.
But do you recognize that even when people have the vaccine, they still spread it and they still get it?
Okay, I guess the spread rate is much lower when they have the vaccine.
So and it's, I mean, in that way, we can have an argument that's better for me to recover once I have the vaccine because my body is used to that.
It has the necessary antibodies to fight against the virus as opposed to without having the vaccine.
So yes, spread, you can talk about that, but at the same time, it's good for me as well, personally.
I mean, I'm kind of against it, to be honest, because I'm against mandates.
I'm against any kind of mandates for anything.
So I wouldn't feel good about that at all.
I think that's a really interesting question because I do think that everybody should be triple vaccinated, but I don't think it's like ethical to force people to do it.
think everybody should just because of how good it is for like the betterment of the community and like for everybody around them they should take it but like you're not into forcing people i'm I'm not into forcing people.
But I do, that being said, I do think everybody should have it.
I personally don't agree with it, but I'm moving out.
So I mean, it doesn't affect my life.
I just think that, you know, maybe like, I don't know, it's like a gridline.
Like, I just think that if the residences are making it mandatory, then the university should make it mandatory.
And if the university is not making it mandatory, maybe the residents shouldn't make it mandatory.
I don't know.
You want to say where you're from?
We don't want Ukraine.
Um, okay.
You want us to talk about Ukraine at all?
Are we supporting Ukraine?
Yeah, yeah.
Supports for Ukraine, everyone.
Ukraine is the best country in the world.
In the world?
Oh, um.
I don't really know because I'm not a resident student, but extra precaution, I guess.
I'm not sure if a third one is necessary because currently I think the situation is better.
And so I'm not sure if mandating it is required.
It's ridiculous.
After two, you're good.
And why do you think they're doing that?
Trying to justify their existence, trying to make themselves feel busy, I guess.
Astronomy and astrophysics, Mauricio, if there's ever been a department where I can just walk in and get straight A's, it's that one.
All you gotta say, flat Earth.
The University of Toronto has a research agreement with Moderna, the vaccine manufacturer, to research, further research their mRNA vaccines.
Do you think that influences the decision to mandate vaccine requirements or no?
Oh yeah, absolutely, for sure.
Yeah.
I mean, if they're working together with them, obviously they'd want, they'll be like, they'll be on their side and they'll influence the students in the same way.
All right, anything else you want to say?
No, but I think people should think critically.
Oh, that's fair.
Do you think it has anything to do with the U of T agreement?
They have a research agreement with Moderna to further research mRNA vaccines.
Do you think that plays into it at all or do you have an opinion on that?
I didn't know that fact, but if that is true and they do have a research agreement, I wouldn't be surprised if it does.
But that being said, all the data does say that vaccines are beneficial, and there hasn't really been anything to say that it isn't beneficial.
So I don't really see an issue with, I guess, making us test subjects for it, especially for the betterment.
Let me tell you what the head doctor of Ontario, what's his name again?
Do you remember?
Anyways, Kieran Moore, Dr. Kieran Moore, who makes the announcements for the vaccine mandates, the last time he promoted the triple, the third booster, as in the third vaccine, he said for people, men particularly between 18 and 25, there's a 1 in 5,000 chance of myocarditis, which is a severe heart condition.
If we're an 18-year-old healthy individual, the risk to getting hospitalized, if we have no underlying medical illness, is very, very low.
We know there is a risk, a very small risk, one in 5,000 that may get myocarditis, for example.
And you'd have to have that discussion on the risk-benefit of a complication from the vaccine versus a benefit of decreased hospitalization for a young, healthy person.
1 in 5,000 is 100 divided by 5,000.
That's 1 over 50.
So that's 0.01% of a chance.
When you actually look at it statistically, like there are more people who die as a result of COVID compared to the people who could potentially contract mitochondria.
So I'm asking you, though, the amount of people under 20 years old who have died from COVID is extremely low.
We're talking in the hundreds in the entire country in this whole time.
So if there's 5,000 people in this residence, then one of them is going to get a heart condition where they may not have had any effect from COVID at all.
Do you want to counter that?
I have accounted for that.
I like this.
If you look at it from a utilitarian perspective, a majority of the people who are contributing the most to the economy are above 30 plus.
They're the most of the people who are in positions of leadership, positions of power.
And I guess the risk that it poses to them far outweighs it.
And again, even though we aren't considered in that category of people that are most at risk, eventually we would become in that category.
And vaccinating would, I guess, help our community and help us as we grow older.
Maybe when you get to that age group, but I think from now, and the reason why they have the multiple boosters and everything is because the antibodies wear off over a certain amount of time, which is why they're asking you to get it, you know, every three months to start and then every nine months now is what they're saying to be up to date.
So I think that if you were to get it at your age, for example, I'm guessing you're like under 22 or something, that the antibodies you develop are shown to last much longer from illness that doesn't affect your age group as harshly.
I want to do one final point.
Fine, final, fun.
I do have to get food anyway.
I would still say, like, it's kind of like a flu shot, whereas like people have to consistently take flu shots because it makes us feel better.
And like, from what I know from my friends who are in life science, like the whole consensus with COVID is that eventually speaking, it'll turn into like more of the common cold through these like continual boosters.
So I would still advocate for like, you know, continuing boosters.
But like you do have a valid point in that you say that we aren't the category that's at risk.
But I think for society to function, we need to kind of like accommodate for the people who are at risk for it.
I have no idea what the Moderna controversy is.
I think it does because UFT is a research-based institution.
So anything to do with research or involves research will really influence UFT's decision.
I mean, listen, on the surface, yes, I could see it playing a role.
Would it surprise me if it's playing a role?
But I don't know, to be quite honest with you.
Guys, wrapping up on the University of Toronto campus, now 99% of the people we ask don't agree with forced boosters for people having to live in residencies.
Even if they believe in the booster and think other people should get it, they don't exactly think that people should be forced.
Now, is Moderna influencing their decision on whether or not they should force this?
Most people don't know, but we try to provide more information to them.