In last week’s Press, Leslyn Lewis posted an official statement concerning her position on COVID, vaccines, and vax-passes on the Opinion page.
A couple of electoral ridings away, however, in St. Catharines, which may have seemed distant enough to be safe from local eyes, her comments apparently carried additional information: “This is what we campaigned on as the Conservative Party – that we would respect the medical decisions that Canadians make.”
During the recent Federal election, the Conservatives made policy statements on many issues, which I will list alphabetically, rather than give any impression of importance. They are COVID recovery, child care, climate change, emergency preparedness, foreign policy, green energy, gun control, health care, housing, income support, Indigenous services, job creation, long-term care, mandatory vaccines, pipelines, racial inequality, reconciliation, seniors, and small businesses.
None of those statements, including the one on mandatory vaccines, produced the position that the Conservative Party would support the individual medical decisions made by Canadians. But, since it’s possible that the Party statement was missed during the campaign, perhaps she could illuminate us as to when and where it was made? Or was it simply another contradiction of Conservative Party policy to bolster her own political position?
I don’t recall her ever raising such an issue during the campaign. In fact, her only issue statements that I remember involved abandoned gas wells and the Provincial debt.
Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole, who was democratically elected in the same leadership race in which Ms. Lewis participated, stated that all 119 Conservative MPs would be either vaccinated or given medical exemptions by first day of the sitting, which was Monday, November 22. Since Ms. Lewis was apparently in the House, as indicated by an accompanying picture, we can only assume one of two things.
The first is that she has had the required shots, which belie her position of standing up for the choice to not get vaccinated, or, hiding behind her legal background, her “right” to not disclose her medical history.
The second is that she has obtained a ‘medical disindication of full vaccination’, which doesn’t actually list the possible conditions eligible for an exemption, but may or may not include bone spurs!
Bruce Burton,
Canfield
