One in three Canadians opposed pandemic lockdowns: poll

One UofT bioethicist condemned politicians for 'too much zealotry' on COVID vaccines, such as demonizing the unvaccinated as 'right-wing radicals'.

Alex Dhaliwal
  |   December 12, 2024   |   News Analysis   |   Be the first to comment

A new Leger poll says 36% of Canadians believe governments overreacted to the COVID pandemic. Western Canadians were most likely to view vaccine mandates negatively, it said.

According to the National Post, the poll results hold implications for future pandemic planning and how compliant citizens might be during another pandemic.

Though the survey singled out vaccine mandates, in particular, the Association for Canadian Studies (ACS) suspects a more grudging response to lockdowns and restrictions on individual freedoms.

Kerry Bowman, a University of Toronto bioethicist, told the Post she’s surprised the sentiment isn’t higher. Overall, 50% of respondents did not consider the pandemic response excessive.

“I think a lot of Canadians have doubts,” said Bowman, pointing to 47% of Albertans viewing lockdown measures as excessive, followed by 45% of Saskatchewan and Manitoba residents.

“What we didn’t do as a nation was think about, in a mature democratic society, how far can we go with restrictions, and how far can we go, quickly, in the absence of clear evidence.”

Men were more likely (41%) than women (32%) to think governments overplayed the threat of COVID-19. The sentiment also held more water among Canadians under 55. 

Meanwhile, ACS President Jack Jedwab defended the poll’s findings, claiming “many people” lost sight of the pandemic’s severity, five years after the fact.

“Some people probably feel like it was yesterday. Some people feel like it was a decade ago,” he said.

Other findings include one in six people regretting the COVID vaccine. Among those respondents, three-quarters said pandemic responses by the government were overblown.

Two times as many people under 35 (21%) were likely to regret getting the jab than respondents over 55 (10%). Large swathes of the former demographic do not intend on getting vaccinated this year. 

Jedwab said those sentiments among younger people reflect the narrative he hears often, “that COVID was disproportionately affecting older people, in terms of mortality.” 

Bowman, however, articulates that “the lockdowns, in combination with the mandatory essence towards the vaccines,” contributed to those concerns.

He condemned politicians for preaching “too much zealotry” concerning the COVID vaccine, such as demonizing the unvaccinated as “right-wing radicals”. 

Like most Western countries, Canada mandated lockdowns in response to COVID. Bowman articulates that emergency situations often procures “policy overreaction,” which he says is a “common phenomenon”. 

Canada had some of the highest vaccination rates in the world, but neither vaccination nor infection appeared to induce prolonged protection from COVID, the Post said.

Bowman iterated that vaccines absolutely do protect against severe disease and death, even though there are no randomized, placebo controlled studies to back up this claim.

According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University of Medicine’s Coronavirus Resource Centre, Canada’s pandemic death rate of 135.2 cases per 100,000 population exceeded New Zealand (53), Japan (58), Taiwan (74), Australia (77), and Norway (96).

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland championed Canada’s pandemic response, despite boasting a higher death rate than other industrialized nations.

“Our experience during COVID, which was a tragedy where every single COVID death was a tragedy, of course, we could learn lessons about how to do better,” she told reporters. “But broadly, Canada did pretty well. We did well because we had a real Team Canada approach.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, said Canada was a world leader in emergency management. “Canada is among the best-prepared countries in the world,” he told reporters on March 11, 2020.

Years later, Parliament passed watered-down legislation, voting down a clause that would mandate federal reviews of pandemic governance.

Bill C-293, The Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Act, barely passed third reading in June amid tentative NDP support. The opposition party opposed “an advisory committee” assessing public health and pandemic response capabilities of all governments.

On October 23, 2023 the Trudeau government rejected calls for a public inquiry in favour of a closed-door review by Health Minister advisers.

As of writing, Health Canada completed 21 audits into the government’s response but refused to publicly disclose those records. The audits concluded the department lacked a “clear understanding” of compiling critical data, during the pandemic.

Bowman articulates that public health officials “should have been a bit more humble.”

PETITION: No More Shots!

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Please sign our petition to demand that Canada’s Minister of Health, Mark Holland, take the mRNA COVID-19 shots off of the market immediately, following the revelation that Health Canada has confirmed the presence of at least one previously undisclosed plasmid, a residual DNA sequence.

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Alex Dhaliwal

Calgary Based Journalist

Alex Dhaliwal is a Political Science graduate from the University of Calgary. He has actively written on relevant Canadian issues with several prominent interviews under his belt.

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