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Protect our Province BC calls for the immediate resignation of Dr. Henry and a review of the entire leadership of BC Public Health, who have participated either directly or indirectly in the deception with regards to Covid infection risks in schools.
The joint Burnaby Beacon and Capital Daily’s article is damning. It comes after a string of just as damaging investigations, including the under-reporting of COVID related deaths in BC and the publication of the BCCDC seroprevalence study, co-authored by Dr. Bonnie Henry. The seroprevalence study revealed how poorly protected BC school children are, without effective COVID mitigation measures in schools and with more highly contagious, vaccine evading variants circulating.
The latest joint article shines the light on the deliberate manipulation by the Provincial Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, of public health data on COVID-19 transmission in BC schools.
“By cherry-picking information that only supported the message she wanted the public to hear, Dr. Henry has violated the trust of the people of BC and cannot be viewed as a credible leader anymore. She must either step down or be removed,” says Dr. Lyne Filiatrault, a retired emergency physician and Protect Our Province BC member.
As Jennifer Heighton of Safe Schools Coalition BC states, “students, educators, their families and communities were needlessly put at risk with some paying with their health, while others paid with their lives. Leaders need to be accountable,” .
Protect Our Province BC demands that the incoming premier, David Eby, distinguish himself as a person of integrity who is committed to the health and safety of the people of BC by immediately replacing both the Provincial Health Officer and Minister of Health, Adrian Dix. Minister Dix who ultimately failed in his oversight of the Provincial Health Officer and the BC CDC.
Minister Dix allowed BC school children to be infected under his watch, a sharp contrast to Germany’s Health Minister Karl Lauterbach’s statement:
"It is incompatible with my job as Health Minister that children are falling ill in large numbers. Infecting an entire generation is irresponsible. We don’t know yet what this infection does to the children’s immune system when it occurs repeatedly. As a society we cannot take the risk of mass infection in schools.”
The toxic culture permeating BC Public Health will make selecting a replacement from within that group unacceptable, as it would fail to create the major change required to restore the public’s trust. Protect Our Province demands that Premier Eby creates a Multidisciplinary Independent Science Table whose recommendations cannot be ignored by politicians without public justification. This model will preempt the current complete disregard of the precautionary principle highlighted by the SARS Commission, as well as the lack of both acknowledgement and incorporation of the evolving COVID science into policies that has happened under the current BC Provincial Health Officer and her team.
Finally and most urgently, given that the true risk of COVID transmission in schools was hidden by the BC Provincial Health leaders, we call on Minister of Education Jennifer Whiteside to immediately implement COVID safety protocols in all BC schools as Protect our Province suggested in its Open Letter of August 29th, 2022. This will prevent more school children, educators and families from being needlessly harmed.
Public Health in BC has failed to protect our future generation. To assess the full magnitude of this failure will ultimately require an independent review. This should not stop urgent action from taking place now. We call on the BC NDP to act today.
Protect Our Province BC is a grassroots group of physicians, nurses, health scientists, health policy specialists and community advocates. We are working together to help people in BC stay safe by sharing accurate information about the COVID-19 pandemic in BC, and advocating for evidence-based policies. Our ultimate goal is to end this pandemic through a vaccines-plus strategy that includes ventilation, better masks, and improved testing and contact tracing.
Media Contacts:
Dr. Lyne Filiatrault, Protect Our Province BC, contact@protectbc.ca,
