Meet the secret COVID unit behind Trudeau’s vaccine travel mandate

Court documents recently released reveal the existence of a “COVID Recovery” unit inside the Trudeau regime which was responsible for ordering the country’s harsh vaccine travel mandate according to Rupa Subramanya at Common Sense. The COVID Recovery unit searched for a justification for the mandate only after crafting it. 

The documents were unsealed from a lawsuit brought against Canada’s government by two victims of the sweeping vaccine mandate, which barred anyone over 12 who did not get the injections from using public transportation or airplanes.  

According to the suit brought by plaintiffs Karl Harrison and Shaun Rickard, the travel mandate was issued by COVID Recovery, a unit within Transport Canada. 

But there is no available information on the COVID Recovery unit mentioned in the court documents, no website, nor mention of its mission, duties or members in government records (except for one fleeting reference here.) 

The little that was disclosed about COVID Recovery in the documents includes its director-general Jennifer Little. Little has an undergraduate degree in Literature from the University of Toronto, and has no background in medicine, public health or epidemiology. She testified that there are 20 people in the unit, but only divulged one name: Monique St.-Laurent. 

Little’s justification for keeping mum about the unit was that it would breach “cabinet confidence”, referring to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet. Her testimony suggested that she was ordered to create a travel mandate by someone in the cabinet, perhaps Trudeau itself.  

The COVID Recovery unit answers only to the highest levels of government, and the Canadian people don’t know it exists. 

An email exchange included in the court documents show that the government first created the mandate and then tried to find a justification for it. 

One email, sent in October 2021 from Transport Canada official Aaron McCrorie to Public Health Agency official Lumley-Myllari, read: 

To the extent that updated data exist or that there is clearer evidence of the safety benefit of vaccination on the users or other stakeholders of the transportation system, it would be helpful to assist Transport Canada supporting its measures.

Four days later, McCrorie emailed Lumley-Myllari again, just over a week before the travel mandate was to take effect, “Our requirements come in on October 30 so need something fairly soon.” 

Lumley-Myllari responded four days later listing the general benefits of the vaccine but did not address McCrorie’s specific question about the travel mandate. 

The mandate was subsequently paused over eight months later, though Rickard and Harrison are still pursuing the government for damages they suffered under the mandate. 

“What I have personally struggled with and have found to be the most unconscionable and objectionable aspects of how this pandemic has been managed,” Rickard said in his affidavit, “is the unnecessary hateful, vindictive and divisive behavior that I have witnessed from neighbors, friends, family members, colleagues and our government. The words and action of our government, which has entrenched policies based on vaccination status, without reflecting the risk of those unvaccinated, is far from the warm, caring, and thoughtful Canada I remember living in.”