When the pandemic hit, and almost all of the western nations simultaneously adopted a western version of the lockdown strategy devised by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to respond to the original Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China, very few voices questioning voices were heard. But there were a few: Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Scott Atlas were two contrarians. And of course, there was the western world’s main contrarian, Anders Tegnell – author of Sweden’s thumb-in-the eye to the lockdown – The Swedish anti-lockdown strategy.
That was the strategy that drove the lockdown advocates crazy. Instead of locking up businesses, closing schools and sending welfare cheques to the mainly young and healthy unemployed people, Sweden did none of those things. Schools remained open, no businesses were forced to close, and the federal treasury was not raided to provide welfare cheques to healthy people forced out of their jobs. Yes, personal care homes and hospitals received special attention, but life went on in a relatively normal way.
These “contrarians” were attacked as heretics. Tegnell was subjected to international criticism on a daily basis. Bhattacharya was singled out by Twitter for “visibility filtering”, and other forms of internet abuse. But they persisted.
What is not as well known is that Canada had its contrarians too. The most steadfast and significant Canadian contrarian is Lieutenant Colonel (retired) David Redman.
This is his story:
Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) David Redman is the retired Head of Emergency Management Alberta (EMA). Prior to his retirement from EMA, he led the drafting of the Alberta Pandemic Influenza Plan with the Deputy Minister of Health. The latest version of this plan is still on the Government of Alberta’s website. Prior to serving in EMA, he served as an officer in the Canadian Army for 27 years, involved in many complex international operations. After leading EMA, he spent nearly a further decade working as a respected senior consultant in Emergency Management. He worked extensively with both government and the private sector, in both Canada and the USA. To state that he knows how to manage emergencies is an understatement.
When the Pandemic commenced in Canada, Redman immediately recognized that the virus was extremely age dependent, and that the first task should have been to protect our seniors. He was astonished when governments did not protect the seniors, rather invoked authoritarian Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) that we now refer to as lockdowns. He knew that for the SARS CoV-2 virus these interventions made no sense.
Therefore, starting in early April 2020, he began writing to all the Premiers of Canada, trying desperately to help them turn away from the deadly response they were following. Over the next year he wrote 12 monthly letters, with increasing details of what the response should be and how to transform to this response. Further he detailed the terrible impacts NPIs were having and would continue to have, for decades. He simply asked and then begged any Premier to call him.
They ignored him.
Further, from April 2020, he tried to get any media of the mainstream media (MSM) (e.g. CBC, CTV, Global) in Canada to talk to him; to offer a different solution to the pandemic in Canada. He watched as Sweden, from the very beginning, followed the Pandemic Plan that was a mirror image of the 13 provincial pandemic plans, that had been ignored in all 13 Canadian provinces. The MSM ignored him.
He published in peer reviewed Journals and Articles, with like-minded Pandemic response experts. He did over 50 interviews, webcasts, podcasts, and TV sessions on alternative media, becoming a well know name, at least in western Canada. The Premiers, Medical officers of Health, and the MSM ignored him. In fact, some went as far as to try to censor him.
In the Spring of 2021, he published two detailed Research Position Papers which he sent to the Premiers, MOH, and media across Canada. These Position Papers are available on the Frontier Centre for Public Policy; Canada’s Deadly Response to Covid-19 and Due Diligence: Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms verse Lockdowns .Both have been used in Court Cases against the use of “lockdowns” and continue to be referred to in cases. The Premiers, MOH and MSM continue to ignore him.
This was not the case in Sweden. Please read on below. Then ask the question, why not Canada?
Previously above I referred to professionals like Anders Tegnell, Jay Bhattacharya and David Redman as “contrarians”. That is actually not quite true. In fact, these people were really the traditionalists. It was the lockdown advocates who were actually the contrarians. Redman, Tegnell and Bhattacharya were arguing for the traditional emergency plans that had been used for the last century or so to safely get through pandemics. The lockdown advocates – for reasons that might never be fully known – insisted on a radical and untested lockdown model.
It is becoming clearer by the day that the lockdown model was a disaster. The extent of that disaster unfolds around us every day. It is also becoming increasingly clear that professionals, like Anders Tegnell and Jay Bhattacharya should have been listened to.
Canadians will have a chance to watch and listen to Dr. Jay Bhattacharya from when he testified at the Winnipeg National Citizens Inquiry (NCI) on Thursday, April 13, 2023.
They can also watch and listen to the many seminars and presentations featuring David Redman from 2020 to 2023.
It has become abundantly clear that Canada should have implemented the tried-and-true emergency plans put forward by Lieutenant Colonel (retired) David Redman.
If and when the next virus strikes, we must remember “The Redman Plan.”
Brian Giesbrecht, retired judge is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
