A professor at Laval University (Université Laval) in Quebec City has been suspended without pay for two months for questioning the benefits of COVID vaccines for children. Microbiology and immunology Professor Patrick Provost sent out an email soliciting a discussion on the issue and raising his concerns. He has now been disciplined for merely raising such issues by a university that has discarded any semblance of academic integrity and free speech.
As with the university, Quebecor Media quickly yielded to a mob of critics and removed Provost’s remarks. Journal de Québec Editor-in-Chief Sébastien Ménard said that Provost’s points “were inaccurate or could mislead the public.” Notably, Ménard did not seem compelled to address the alleged inaccuracies in the comments or Provost’s basis for raising his concerns.
Ménard did not seem to entertain the possibility that the media can be a place for the exchange of such ideas, including a rigorous debate challenging Provost’s assertions. Instead, the solution, once again, was censorship.
Most of Provost’s colleagues have said nothing in defense of an academic being denied the very freedom that defines and sustains our profession. One exception is Douglas Farrow, a professor of theology and ethics at McGill University in Montreal, who denounced the suspension as “A Repressive Political Act” in a Substack article.
To its credit, the Université Laval faculty union has filed a grievance on Provost’s behalf.
I recently wrote a column on our own struggle with cancel culture in George Washington University in the effort to bar Justice Clarence Thomas from teaching. To its credit, the university sided with academic freedom. However, as the column noted, most people do not have a seat on the Supreme Court to reinforce their academic positions.
Last week, my study on the decline of free speech at universities was published by the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. The article entitled “Harm and Hegemony: The Decline of Free Speech in the United States,” explores the anti-free speech movement in the United States and the increasingly common claim that free speech itself is harmful. This is another example of that trend in Canada. It is part of an existential struggle for all faculty and students over the purpose and future of higher education in both countries.
Time to move to Florida.
Until a few librarians are shot, nothing will change.
Canada is becoming a very scary country in which to live. It has been building for decades, since Trudeau the Elder, and now it is in full bloom. It may not have the United States’ power of projection, thank God, but it has the ability to do enormous harm to its citizens. A feminized, authoritarian, Marxist, and dystopian shat hole. I’ve seen it fall in my lifetime. Started with the all-out jew-led attack on white males and Christian institutions at “major” schools, and proceeded into outright warfare on free speech, free expression, and freedom of thought. Ironically enough, when the jews were able to convince or bully everyone into agreeing that no criticism of Israel was permissible, that was the start of the pogrom against intellectual vigor in Canadian “schools”. It all took around half a century, maybe a little more.
…Armor Goldstein, is that you again?.ha ha you ALMOST had me there for a second or two!
Israel and Jews has nothing to do with Canada’s decline. The socialists in Quebec have everything to do with it.
Canada is gone it’s fully captured by the globalists as a Canadian I’m looking to leave and I suggest any other Canadian that values freedom move as well there’s no saving Canada
My wife and I are looking into relocating in a freer better country such as Mexico or Panama. If there is another round of shut downs, masks and other nonsense, we are out of here.
Someone please tell me why we should be surprised by this … the ideas of free speech and academic freedom have been eroding for some time now in Canada.
I don’t understand this insistence on mandating a vaccine that is now so out of date as Covid rapidly evolves that it does not prevent disease. Further, the most recent version of Covid is so mild that typically no medication is prescribed for children or adults. My entire family got it recently. My son’s pediatrician told us he does not prescribe any medication to kids unless they take a turn for the worse. He said this version going around is really mild in the vaccinated and unvaccinated both. When I got it, since I have asthma, I checked with my pulmonologist. He does not prescribe anything, either. He said even his COPD patients on oxygen did not see their O2 levels go down with Covid. I felt worse the second day, so I went to urgent care just in case. The doctor said my lungs sounded good, and they don’t prescribe anything for Covid either. All they do is prescribe a Z Pack if secondary infections develop, but as an antibiotic, it does zero for Covid itself. My husband was the last to get it. He said it sounded wrong that we weren’t prescribed anything, so he went to a different urgent care. They told him, wait for it, that they don’t prescribe anything for this version of Covid because it is so mild.
4 different doctors from 4 different practices in CA all agreed that this version of Covid is so mild it does not require medication and is of no concern. This variant luckily is a far cry from the original Covid that went deep into the lungs.
I don’t understand this push to mandate a Covid vaccine that is now out of date. It prevented vulnerable people from getting the nasty early variants of Covid, which were destructive to heart and lungs. It was a vital arrow in the quiver of pandemic response. But it’s served its purpose.
It’s like mandating the flu vaccine from a decade ago,except the vaccine side effects include tachycardia, lethargy so bad you have to stay home from work or school, and an increased risk of myocarditis. Risk without benefit.
It is entirely possible that a future Covid variant may be virulent, or be dangerous to children. We can modify the existing vaccine to bring it up to date. We can continue to study new technology to produce safer vaccines. But requiring a vaccine for such an older version of Covid that it is not protective? That makes no sense.
What also makes no sense is the US allows millions of illegal border crossings since Joe Biden took office by mostly unvaccinated people, yet the US has barred tennis champ Novak Djovic from entering the US to compete because he is unvaccinated. He’s had Covid. Any vaccine mimics certain aspects of infection so the body will make protective antibodies. Treating people who’ve recovered from Covid, especially from recent variants, as if they are pariahs less worthy than someone who was vaccinated last year and hasn’t had Covid is unsound.
Aren’t you the one who kept arguing about Hydroxychloroquine being an effective treatment? Over a million Americans died of COVID. Without vaccination, many more would have died. You aren’t qualified to give medical advice.
The vaccine was very effective against the original strain of Covid, which targeted the lungs. It helped save lives. I got vaccinated.
However, there is no dispute that SARS-CoV2 has evolved new variants that bypass both naturally acquired and vaccine induced immunity. If you claim that isn’t true, then you’re peddling medical misinformation.
People can decide on their own whether to get vaccinated with the existing vaccines, wait for a future vaccine more effective against current variants, or not. I am not against vaccines, but rather mandates.
You can be FOR something but AGAINST forcing someone to do it.
“Over a million Americans died of COVID.”
No. Get your facts right. Over a million died *with* covid. And those hospitals got $39,000 for each patient ($plus $plus $plus!) for each patient diagnosed with covid, vented with covid, and that died with covid, and then covid listed as “cause of death” on c of d. The financial incentives given to hospitals are a scandal.
“Without vaccination, many more would have died.”
Thank President Trump for this.
Yep
Nope. His intentional lies about the seriousness of COVID have been established to have caused at least 130,000 unnecessary deaths. All the hog you worship did was divert taxpayer funds for vaccine development and promise to purchase vaccines even if they weren’t effective. Credit goes to the scientists who used existing technology to sequence mRNA and figure out the dosage and administration protocols and the CDC with its surveillance, reporting and monitoring of disease trends, not your hero. And, he did immeasurable harm by pushing quack cures like Hydroxychloroquine that was proven ineffective. His lie about Hydroxychloroquine alone caused a shortage of the drug for people who really needed it for rheumatoid arthritis and Lupus.
Folks this is what pure Peak Trump derangement looks like read Natasha’s comments to fully understand what this illness does to a person’s cognitive ability it literally rots their brain away leaving a lobotomized drooling dumb down zombie lemming leftist cult member that can be let around by its nose.
It’s always the women too they’re so gullible and naive childlike for their whole life actually
“His intentional lies about the seriousness of COVID have been established to have caused at least 130,000 unnecessary deaths”
I’d like to hear more of this nonsense. What exactly were Trump’s words that caused deaths?
Trump’s existence has caused your brain to rot. That is the problem you face.
Whatever Trump’s faults with warp speed, he was not for forced vaccinations, I greatly appreciate that!
He didn’t have to be for forced vaccinations. It was obvious even then that someone else would force it, he wouldn’t have to take the blame, but he still insists on credit for creating this nightmare. He rushed it through without the usual years of safety testing, which he boasts about, and strangely many think that’s a good thing, even though their so-called ‘safety testing’ doesn’t mean anything they sell is safe anyway, after all, it’s not about good health, for them it’s about profit. Trump quote, among other quotes, “people are refusing to take the vaccine because they don’t trust his (Biden) Administration”. He knows that’s not true because what seemed to me like 99% of his supporters, at least the ones that were commenting on social media, told him they didn’t want it. And have made it clear at his rallies.
“He didn’t have to be for forced vaccinations. It was obvious even then that someone else would force it,”
Trump never forced vaccines and there is no indication he was relying on anyone to force the vaccines. Do you wish to explain further?
Without the vaccines, many more might have lived.
Many more would not have have died had the experimental gene therapy not been shot into their bodies.
HCQ is an effective treatment. Many without vaxx were successfully treated and thousands of lives saved. No thanks to the government, Fauci, media liars and censors, etc.
“You aren’t qualified to give medical advice.”
She’s more qualified and informed than you, missy.
Lol…. thanks for the laughs halfwit.
Everything you said was wrong.
You must be a Democrat only you people are so clueless and lobotomized and obtuse
Many were damaged or killed by the vaccines, but no one is allowed to mention it.
Many more would of died huh, got numbers to prove that statement…i knowyou dont because no numbers exist, and what makes you anymore qualified to give medical advice then the poster you responded too?
lol – keep sucking that gov narative = marxist.
Not true. They died with covid, not from covid. Big difference.
I also wonder how many hospitals tweaked the deaths to collect money from the government for covid involved sickness.
The numbers are no where near correct.
Natacha, the NIH and CDC want to disagree with you. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7534595/
kotumoastad —- NIH simply provides a link to this article. There is no endorsement.
You’re just a drooling Normie who’s been fooled gave his whole family the bio weapon and he still doesn’t understand what’s going on WOW must be a Democrat
Follow the Money and it all makes sense.
Many many people got wildly rich of the Pandemic. Big Pharma, medium Pharma, Fauci, Wuhan, Hospitals…