At the end of November, the National Citizens Inquiry (“NCI”) released the final report of its months-long investigation into Canada’s response to covid-19. Despite the climate of fear created by the Canadian government, 305 witnesses have testified to create the largest and most robust record of the covid experience in the world.
The NCI is a public inquiry created, led, and funded by Canadian citizens. It is not a government-sponsored or government-directed inquiry. It set out to examine the conduct of all levels of the Canadian government’s covid policies – federal, provincial and municipal. The inquiry was led by an independent Commission consisting of four Commissioners. It is strictly funded by donations from Canadian citizens.
Over 24 days of hearings held in 8 cities from March to May 2023, NCI heard from 305 witnesses with 94 experts giving testimony.
In September NCI released an interim report focused on the regulatory approval process and safety of covid injections. On 28 November, NCI released its final report.
At 5,324 pages, the final report is a thorough documentation of proceedings and evidence. You can read the full report HERE. Volume 1 and 2 of the report, ‘Analysis & Conclusions’, is 636 pages in length. Details of the public hearings can be found starting on page 96:
Approximately 300 members of the public testified at the Hearings.
Testimony was invited from representatives of all levels of governments across Canada, and in order to facilitate schedules, subpoenas were issued and government witnesses were given the option of testifying either in person or on video conference at any of the eight hearing locations.
Sixty-three members of government, regulators, and authorities were subpoenaed to attend and testify.
Zero members of government appeared at the public hearings to testify.
As a result of the lack of government representation at the hearings, and to properly represent the government position on various topics, sworn affidavits obtained from various court proceedings involving key government witnesses were read into the record. It was this sworn evidence attesting to the actions taken, press releases, statements of policy, and news articles from mainstream media that were utilised to represent the government position.
Actual video-recorded statements and press conferences were aired at a number of the hearing locations.
As a citizen-led initiative, the Commission did not have the ability to compel the government witnesses to appear through judicial subpoenas.
Inquiry into the Appropriate and Efficacy of the Covid-19 Response in Canada, NCI, 28 November 2023
Videos of the witness testimonies are available on the NCI website and transcripts of each witness testimony can be found in Volume 3 of NCI’s final report, which you can download from THIS webpage.
In a video unveiling NCI’s final report, Lead Counsel for NCI Shawn Buckley made some opening remarks. He said:
“Today is November 28th, 2023. This is a historic day. We are making history.
“Never before have citizens banded together in such a formal, comprehensive and fair way to inquire into the actions of their governments.”
The NCI is also unique in its scope, Buckley said. “We travelled across the country giving a voice to Canadians across the nation. We heard the sworn testimony of 305 witnesses, all questioned by lawyers and questioned by the Commissioners.”
“We have created the largest and most robust record of the covid experience in the world,” Buckley said, “and we did this in a climate of fear.”
NCI hearings started eight and a half months before the final report was released. Buckley reminded Canadians how much fear the nation was in when NCI began its proceedings.
“We would do ourselves a disservice as this report is released if we do not recall what came before, and the context and the climate of fear in which the National Citizens Inquiry hearings took place,” he said. “Beginning in the spring of 2020, we were plunged into a culture of fear which threw the entire nation into a panic.”
“Many believed that there was a dangerous virus that posed a mortal threat to them and their loved ones. Others saw the country become a police state.
“There was public discourse about putting unvaccinated Canadians into camps. There was public discourse about criminalising the refusal to take a medical treatment.
“We were put under house arrest. We were muzzled like animals with masks. We were viciously divided into camps; the vaxxed and the unvaxxed.
“We were censored. We had our bank accounts frozen.”
Buckley recently gave two lectures during which he asked audiences of approximately 850 people: “Put up your hand if, during the height of the covid madness, you honestly believed that the army would be going door to door dragging unvaccinated people out of their homes and forcibly jabbing them.”
The audience of these lectures was a mixture of covid vaccinated and unvaccinated people. “Almost every hand went up. The country was under such a cloud of evil and darkness, that a large number of Canadians believed that the army would be used to forcefully vaccinate us,” he said.
“We watched in horror as masked police officers … dressed in black to be intimidating, forcibly dismantle the peaceful trucker protest … We all watched as our fellow Canadians locked arms to resist and chanted to each other: ‘Hold the line!’ as one by one the police picked them off and arrested them and … at times put the boots to those on the ground. We watched and we saw, and we remember.”
But through all the horror, Buckley wants us to remember the trucker protest as a beautiful event, an example for everyone to follow.
“Because,” Buckley said holding back tears, “we watched our fellow Canadians hold the line as long as they could. And they set for us a beautiful example to follow. And we owe them and we owe the truckers a debt of gratitude because they bought us a period of peace. It’s no coincidence that the following month, in March 2022, the provincial restrictions started to fall and most of the federal restrictions, but for the travel restriction, fell.”
This period of peace that the trucker protestors brought to Canadians allowed the NCI to happen, Buckley explained. “It was during this lull that we appeared on the screen,” he said.
Buckley described some of the obstacles NCI had to overcome, including intimidation and fear, to get to the stage of releasing their final report concluding with: “Commissioners, it is my honour to invite you to release your report.”
Ken Drysdale, chairman of NCI Commissioners, followed Buckley’s opening remarks to give an overview of the intention of the Inquiry, why the Inquiry was required and what it has done.
Each of the Commissioners then provided a statement regarding the report. You can watch the statements unveiling of the NCI report below.
