During the height of COVID-19 restrictions, opposition to Canada's lockdowns came from many places. One of the most prominent voices supporting a return to sanity and normalcy was the owner of a restaurant in Calgary, Alberta, Jesse Johnson.

Tragically, the key word here when it comes to Jesse's business is “was”. The reason Jesse's business — the aptly named Without Papers Pizza — failed not because of poor management on his behalf. No, the reason Without Papers Pizza was forced to close was because Jesse and his restaurant faced off against Alberta's government, refusing to check the vaccine passport of a teenage patron.

On last night's edition of The Ezra Levant Show, Jesse joined guest host David Menzies to look back on Canada's shameful lockdown policies that ruined livelihoods across the country.

Outlining why he took this principled stance, Jesse told David:

I was never an anti-vaxxer, I simply didn't think that it was right for me to discriminate anybody to come into my restaurant, especially to turn somebody away for being nothing else other than the exact same as me.

I would not participate in it, and I expressly stated that, and that upset a great many people, including the mayor, [former premier] Jason Kenney, all sorts of members of the NDP.

All of these people were customers of mine. Jason Kenney used to come and drink at my restaurant often. There was no way I was going to participate in that [segregation], and I couldn't believe so many people fell for it, that this was nothing — it was based purely on political science and it was obvious for anybody except the completely daft to see.

Addressing the severe fracture of society that was caused by vaccine passport policies introduced both provincially and federally, Jesse said:

I never thought that I would see the country divided, that bylaw, the vaccine passport, was the most heinous crime ever enforced on Canadians.

It literally divided a nation, pitted family up against family, peer against peer, all for private medical decisions. And those decisions should have been kept private all along, and they were forced to be public and upon doing so you're to be vilified and ostracized.

It was disgusting. It was absolutely disgusting, and it shocked me how we refused to learn from our past.

To see more Rebel News coverage of Jesse and Without Papers Pizza's story, click here.

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