[00:00:00]

Shawn Buckley

Welcome back to the National Citizens Inquiry in Red Deer. I’m pleased to announce our next witness who is going to be attending with us virtually, former RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] Corporal Danny Bulford. Danny, can you hear us? So I’ll ask again Danny, if you can hear us, and we can’t hear you yet, so we’ll work out that technical difficulty.

Daniel Bulford

I can hear you perfectly.  Can you hear me?

Shawn Buckley

We can hear you now, so we’ll commence.  I’ll ask if you can start by stating your full name for the record spelling your first and last name.

Daniel Bulford

Daniel Joseph Bulford, D-A-N-I-E-L B-U-L-F-O-R-D.

Shawn Buckley

And Danny, do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Daniel Bulford

I do.

Shawn Buckley

Now, I’ve already indicated that you are a former RCMP corporal. My understanding is that you worked for the RCMP for 15 years and that your last eight years of that was on Emergency Services Support Team protecting the Prime Minister of Canada.

Daniel Bulford

Yes, that’s correct.

Shawn Buckley

Now, you’re here today to share some of your experience as an RCMP officer and to voice some opinions that you have concerning the RCMP and the police, and so I’m just going to perhaps start by asking you whether your trust in that institution changed and if you can share your experience with us.

Daniel Bulford

Yeah, definitely. Throughout the course of my career, it was a progression: you know, very proud to receive my Red Serge and my badge, get out into the field, work on detachment as a general duty officer. You quickly learn, and it’s common knowledge within the force, that you’ll quite often hear the expression that you’re just a number. Senior management doesn’t really care about you.

But the colleagues, your brothers and sisters that you’re going to calls with, and you’re doing the job with, that’s who’s supposed to have your back, and that’s who you go to work for, and that’s, you know, for the public and for your fellow colleagues. And it’s just kind of accepted that if you get into any kind of trouble, even if you do exactly what you were trained to do, if there’s an opportunity for a political win for senior managers, they’re happy to sacrifice a member, even if the member did nothing wrong.

And so over time, I lost a great deal of trust in our senior managers. I was fortunate to have some good leaders throughout my career. And then, of course, with the implementation of COVID mandates, and then my departure from the RCMP for opposing those mandates, and then what I saw during the Freedom Convoy, and COVID enforcement, and then the testimony from our commissioner for the Mass Shooting Commission in Nova Scotia, and then her testimony for the Public Order Emergency Commission regarding the Emergencies Act. Unfortunate to say that I have very little, if any, trust in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

I know there are good members that are still in the organization that joined for the right reasons, that want to be there to do good work, but at the senior management level I don’t have any trust that they will apply the law equally to everyone in Canada.

Shawn Buckley

Okay now, just pulling you back. So early in 2021, so the vaccine is being rolled out. It’s in short supply so different groups are being prioritized. My understanding is you were actually a little surprised when your unit became eligible for the vaccine. Now can you share with us what your thoughts were about the upcoming vaccine rollout and then kind of the journey you took and how your thoughts changed.

Daniel Bulford

Yeah, so for most of 2020 I wasn’t really questioning anything. If I wasn’t at work, I was spending my time on our own home construction project,

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and I had stopped paying close attention to mainstream media years previous. I had my trusted sources regarding COVID information, a big one being the DarkHorse Podcast hosted by Dr. Bret Weinstein and his wife, Dr. Heather Heying. They’re both evolutionary biologists in the United States, so they were kind of my go-to for credible information regarding COVID-19. My wife started to express some concerns to me about the new technology, specifically the mRNA [Messenger Ribonucleic Acid], and I hadn’t given it a whole lot of thought.

But then early 2021, my team was organized for a mass group of police and other first responders to go and receive kind of like a mass group inoculation session, and we were expected to just show up and get it done. And so I asked my supervisor at the time if it was mandatory. And at that time, he said, “No, but maybe in the future.” And so I just made the decision at that time, to pause and wait until I could find out more about it, based on some concerns I’d heard from Bret Weinstein and from my wife.

Shawn Buckley

And then you started into an investigation just to-

Daniel Bulford

I did and I was I was definitely surprised that my team, or our unit, was selected to kind of get priority access because we were not a high-risk category.  By that time, we knew very well who was vulnerable and who wasn’t. And we were probably one of the lowest risk categories next to young healthy children in my team. Because we’re all strong, fit, healthy men in our 30s and 40s-very low risk, and so I was surprised. I thought, “That’s odd. Why would they prioritize us when, you know, we’re supposed to be the people who are willing to take risks so that other people can be safe first?”

Some of the rationale was given that if we were providing protection to the Prime Minister and other VIPs [Very Important People], we wouldn’t want to be a risk to them. I also thought that was strange because it had been public knowledge already that COVID-19 had gone through his household, and also in the role that I was performing I was never in tight close to him.  I was either a few vehicles behind him in his motorcade or I was up on a rooftop somewhere working with one other person.

But yeah, so essentially that was a little bit of a, not a major red flag, but a little bit of a twinge in my mind, like that doesn’t make any sense to me.  So then anyways after I made the decision to hold off, I started my own open-source investigation. I wanted to give it a fair, objective analysis, or as fair as I could.

I went to the official government websites first, specifically Health Canada, and then I even tried to get whatever I could from the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] and from the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]. I found that it was very lacking in any kind of specific information that would satisfy my questions about safety and efficacy. The only thing I could really find was like a product monograph which really, I wasn’t able to decipher, it’s outside of my wheelhouse.

But what I did notice was just the consistent themes of repeated talking points, like general vague statements like “safe and effective,” “benefits outweigh the risks,” and cartoonish graphics, which I kind of found a little bit insulting to an adult’s intelligence, but moving on. And then there was also the inappropriate analogies: like comparing it to helmets or seat belts or, in the police case, body armour.

So then after I was relatively unsatisfied with the government sources, I went looking at the pharmaceutical manufacturers themselves. There was no publicly available trial data at that time but I was able to find fact sheets for the big four: AstraZeneca, Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer, Moderna. And even on those fact sheets for the DNA-based [Deoxyribonucleic Acid] viruses, or pardon me, vaccine,

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there was an acknowledgement of thrombosis-related or blood clotting-related adverse events. And then in the Pfizer/Moderna fact sheets, there was an acknowledgement of an observed increased risk of myo- and pericarditis.

Then I went to independent media sources, such as Dr. Weinstein, and he was expressing concerns about the new technology, and he was referencing a doctor by the name of Geert Vanden Bossche, who I believe is in Belgium or the Netherlands. And he is a vaccine specialist. He was trying to ring the alarm saying that, “You do not mass vaccinate into a pandemic, and especially with a product that is a non-sterilizing vaccine,” and he further explained some concerns of his about how the function of this technology.

Shawn Buckley

We’ll just wait a second Corporal Bulford. You’ve frozen for a second so we’re just going to see if the Zoom call will catch up with us or whether or not we’ll have to log back in.

So we are currently frozen so what I suggest we do is that we have Danny Bulford re-log in and in the interim we have a clip of some of what we experienced earlier in Alberta during the COVID issues. Now, can we do both of those at the same time? So yeah, so we’ll just wait for Danny Bulford to log back in and while we’re waiting for him, we’ll watch this clip.

[00:12:12Ð00:21:09:  Several video clips of government officials, public health officials, and newscasters speaking on pandemic measures and vaccines were played while the hearings were paused for Mr. Bulford to regain his internet connection.]

Shawn Buckley

Okay, so we have Daniel Bulford back. Danny, can you hear me again?

Daniel Bulford

Thank you.  Sorry about that. Frequent power outages here.

Shawn Buckley

We were talking about your journey and I was hoping that you would get to speak about your brother because you were kind of talking about kind of how your mind changed on COVID, or the vaccine.

Daniel Bulford

Yeah, so like I had said before, what I ended up discovering was not very much detailed information at all, just a lot of generic talking points like you just saw in the video, overwhelming evidence. Well, where’s the overwhelming evidence? I have yet to see any of it.

But I did find many medical science professionals all around the world, some who specifically design vaccine technology, including Dr. Byram Bridle here in Canada, raising concerns about the injection not staying at the shoulder and bio-distributing throughout the body and concerns about interference with the innate immune system.

And then you had cardiology specialists like Dr. Peter McCullough, and now Dr. Aseem Malhotra in the U.K., expressing concerns about cardiac injuries. All of these things were starting to mount as we were approaching like spring, early summer of 2021, and then my older brother who is a member of the RCMP took two doses of Pfizer and experienced three weeks of intense stabbing chest pain after his second dose, any time he tried to do anything physical at all. And when I discussed this with him, I told him, I said, “You need to go to your doctor, you need to get checked out.”

And he did, and he received no diagnosis regarding his heart and he ended up getting a prescription to help him sleep through the night. And so fortunately, with connections that I’ve made now through speaking out and becoming a little bit more public, we’ve helped him align with a doctor who was willing to take that issue seriously and help him. So by summer, I had made my decision that no, I’m not taking this, and I really hoped that very few members of my family will take it either.

Shawn Buckley

I’m sorry, when the mandates were announced, what actions did you take?

Daniel Bulford

Okay, well, so I’d just like to add one more element here. So in July of 2021, the Prime Minister himself, at an infrastructure announcement in New Brunswick, made the admission on camera-you can still find it on YouTube I’m sure-that even double vaccinated people can still get infected and transmit the virus. And then he kind of paused and caught himself and said, “But it is much worse for unvaccinated people.” And that was a cue to me that like, okay, there’s no way that this will be mandatory.

The following weeks, early August, it was either August 6th or 8th, the CDC director, Rochelle Walensky, admitted to Wolf Blitzer on air that the COVID vaccines did not prevent infection or transmission, but they are still staying with the claim that it prevented serious illness and disease.

August 13th of 2021 it was announced publicly that the Government of Canada was seeking to make COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for federal employees, specifically including the RCMP.

Shawn Buckley

So this is after our Prime Minister admits on television

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that vaccinated can still catch and transmit the virus, and this is after Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, announces publicly that the vaccines don’t prevent infection or transmission. It’s after that that you were mandated as a federal employee to take the vaccine?

Daniel Bulford

It was after that that the intention to make mandates, or to implement mandates was announced, but then of course he ended up calling a snap election.

Prior to that, I was having discussions with people at work. I specifically tried to get my one supervisor to listen to a podcast interview between a podcaster from the U.K. and a high-profile doctor in the United States who was expressing concerns about the COVID-19 vaccination safety and lack of efficacy. And specifically, I was trying to get this supervisor to listen to me because I knew that they were just about to authorize for the 12 to 17-year-olds. A lot of my coworkers had children in that age demographic that played competitive sports. And his response was, “Nope, I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear anymore. I just want to move on with life.”

And so that was kind of a first taste of being ignored. And then right after the official announcement was made that they were going to implement mandates on August 13th, I emailed my commanding officer who, at the time, was a highly experienced investigator who had managed the national security side of the RCMP for a long time-very switched on, capable, competent investigator, complex issues. And I pleaded with him to look at some of the information that I had concerns, about and I sent him a couple of links. I know they’re very busy, so I wanted to keep it brief and concise. I included a bunch of the doctor’s names for reference, and a couple of links for something that he could reference for information, pleading with him to investigate before any further harm or any mandates were to further potentially harm Canadians and his own employees. And I was ignored: no response.

So I joined Police on Guard. And then through Police on Guard, I learned about Mounties for Freedom and that’s where I focused most of my attention. And through that, we came to a consensus, in speaking with other Mounties that were in my position, no one was listening to us, and no one was taking us seriously.

Our union didn’t want to take up the fight for us because they had advocated for priority access to vaccine, and some people had even been told by their union rep that, “If you weren’t double vaccinated, you wouldn’t even be allowed near my child.” And so that was the kind of mindset that some people in the RCMP were dealing with at the time.

And I know other people who worked in higher profile units, like homicide investigation, that were made to feel like they were a conspiracy theorist, anti-vaxxer, like all the derogatory labels that you were seeing in the media. This was shocking to me, knowing that police know that the media lies about everything and that they twist and manipulate everything. Within my own unit, I was probably one of the least vocal people about the incompetence and ethical issues with our current federal government and so I couldn’t believe-

Shawn Buckley

Can I stop you for a sec because you’re talking about, you know, basically serious crimes people and many of the people watching wouldn’t appreciate that these really are the cream of the cream of investigators, like these are the people with incredibly, I guess, critical minds.  These people are trained to be looking at the other side and to be considering all things and basically not to get into that tunnel vision where they ignore things. And you’re telling us that that basically, to a person, you were running into it; you might as well have been talking to a brick wall?

Daniel Bulford

Well, there was basically three categories: people who didn’t agree that anyone should be forced to take it, but they weren’t going to say or do anything; people who thought that it was absolutely necessary and that anyone who didn’t take it wasn’t doing their civic duty,

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even though there was already plenty of evidence out there that it did not prevent infection and transmission, and so it’s basically a personal choice based on a personal risk assessment; and then there was people who just didn’t want to hear it at all and just wanted to, “No, I’m done. I just want to move on with life.”

And yeah, the investigators and serious crime or national security sections, they are the most highly qualified investigators in the mounted police.

Shawn Buckley

And they should have been the ones investigating this matter?

Daniel Bulford

Well, they’re trained to look at evidence, and from my basic open-source investigation, I couldn’t hardly find any evidence supporting the mandates, and there was loads of evidence, if you just barely scratched below the surface, to raise concerns about a lack of efficacy and safety concerns.

Shawn Buckley

Right. So my understanding is the Mounties for Freedom, on October 21, 2021, sent a letter to the RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki.

Daniel Bulford

That’s correct. Yeah, because we decided that we had to apply public pressure, both with the open letter and myself volunteering to speak out on behalf of the group, to draw attention because internally, we were having no success. No one was even willing to entertain our concerns or listen to us in any way, and we certainly were not getting any success in trying to get any kind of investigation.

Shawn Buckley

Now, we’ve entered that letter as an exhibit for the commissioners and the public to view; it’s Exhibit RE-4. Now, following that letter, the mandates were still imposed, and can you share with us basically what that caused you to do?

Daniel Bulford

Well, after I was interviewed, I had a series of interviews, but really after the first one or two interviews, as soon as that was public, I was contacted. I had to go to the office and turn in my building pass and my keys to the building, you know, thereby my security clearance was under review and eventually revoked. I knew that that was the end of the career for me, even if I wasn’t terminated at the time, that my career would be completely sidelined, at best.

Shawn Buckley

Right, and I’ll just step in so that people listening to your testimony understand when you say interview, you’re talking about speaking publicly against the government narrative.

Daniel Bulford

Yeah, specifically against the mandates; so I was speaking against the vaccine mandates. But another major issue, which was the biggest red flag for me during my whole, let’s call it investigative process, was while investigating concerns about the vaccination. I started to learn more and more and more about doctors and scientists who were being silenced about early treatment protocols that were being used very effectively all around the world to help prevent hospitalizations and death.

And that, to me, was the biggest red flag. That, to me, was the biggest criminal activity that our public health and government and media could have been contributing to, was if there is treatments that are safe, that have been around for a long time, and doctors all around the world are trying to raise the alarm, “Hey, we found something that works and it helps keep people out of the hospital, and it helps prevent people from dying.” And our officials and our media are actively trying to suppress that, that, to me, is at the low-end criminal negligence, criminal negligence causing death, possibly even more serious, possibly culpable homicide.

Shawn Buckley

Right, okay. My understanding is you ended up resigning?

Daniel Bulford

Yes, I made the decision to officially resign in December of 2021. My reasoning for that was when I was exploring my options about what was going to happen to me-whether I was terminated or placed on leave without pay or suspended-I found a clause in our pension act or superannuation act that said that if I was terminated for misconduct I would only be entitled to my contributions,

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which would have cut that number drastically. And it was ultimately up to the discretion of the Treasury Board, the final amount that I would be paid out if I was terminated for misconduct, so I know how vindictive the RCMP can be.

The previous witness talked about the vindictiveness of the chain of command in the Canadian Armed Forces and the RCMP is no different. I had had almost zero communication from anyone within the RCMP professional standards units. Actually, I had zero communication from any of them. I had very brief communication from my direct supervisor from the time that I initially spoke out in October until the time that I actually resigned in December. And I spoke with my father about it who is a 38-year RCMP veteran, and we both agreed that they’re strategically trying to determine how best to hammer you without creating a public relations problem. And so I figured that my time with the RCMP was done. I should just cut my losses and try and set my family up for a new start.

Shawn Buckley

Now, you were speaking earlier and you used the words culpable homicide in connection with some of the things that you had learned. Is it fair to say that you’re not aware of a single RCMP investigation into criminal activity that would be connected to COVID-19 and government directions or actions of other people?

Daniel Bulford

I’m not aware of any such criminal investigation. I have seen videos of people presenting evidence packages to different detachments, but I don’t believe that anything was actually investigated seriously because I’m fairly certain I would have heard about it.

Shawn Buckley

Now, we’ve heard in other contexts like, for example, medical doctors that seem to have been publicly disciplined so that other medical doctors would see them as an example of what happens if you speak out. Can you tell us about detective Helen Grus, who she was, and what her investigation was about, and what happened to her?

Daniel Bulford

Detective Helen Grus is a member of the Ottawa Police Service. She is currently facing disciplinary action from her police service. I think she’s charged under the Police Services Act for discreditable conduct and for conducting unauthorized investigations into a spike in sudden infant death syndrome in the city of Ottawa. I think it’s roughly a four-times increase of the annual sudden infant death that would be typical for the city of Ottawa.

Detective Grus, from what I understand, was trying to determine whether there was a correlation with the vaccination status of the mothers and the increase in sudden infant death syndrome. And she worked in the SACA, I believe it’s called, so Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Unit. She was suspended. I believe she’s back to work now, but under strict restrictions about what she can and cannot do and can and cannot say.

Her next disciplinary hearing is set for this coming Friday, April 28th in Ottawa, and there still has been no decision made. Actually, if you want to read all about a very quality chronicling of that entire saga with Detective Grus, DonaldBest.ca has done an excellent job, kind of independent media reporting on it. He’s a former police officer himself, former Toronto police, I believe.

Shawn Buckley

Okay, so my understanding is she’s in the Sexual Abuse and Child Abuse Unit and that unit actually has a responsibility in Ottawa that any time there is an increase in infant deaths, they actually have the responsibility to look into it. So she was basically doing her job, she was just looking into whether the vaccine was the cause for the increase that they were seeing?

Daniel Bulford

Yeah, she’s being punished for being a good investigator for following potential leads.

Shawn Buckley

Right. Now I had asked you if you are aware of a single RCMP investigation into any matter related to COVID.

[00:40:00]

Are you aware of an investigation by any police agency other than this one that was stopped by the Ottawa Police Department with Helen Grus?

Daniel Bulford

No, I’m not.  I’m not aware of any police investigation into anything regarding COVID restrictions and mandates.

Shawn Buckley

Right. Now, as a police officer or you became a former police officer, you watched the police protest. People that basically were protesting the mandates, and you watched them not ticket BLM [Black Lives Matter] protesters. Can you share your thoughts on that and what you think is going on there?

Daniel Bulford

Well, obviously it’s completely hypocritical, but also, I think it’s a sign of the culture that we’ve created where it’s safe to discipline some. Socially it’s acceptable to discipline some and not others and to champion some causes and not others.

You know, for example, by comparison, I was working the day of the BLM protest in Ottawa, in downtown Ottawa, where they marched down to the U.S. Embassy. I was in the U.S. Embassy doing overwatch from an elevated position, watching over members on the ground. The crowds were there, they were loud, they were very aggressive towards the police officers on the ground. They were throwing items at them, specifically water bottles is what I really remember. There was no condemnation about that behavior and the Prime Minister even came out and knelt with them. And that was in the middle of one of our most restrictive lockdowns, if I recall correctly, in the city of Ottawa or in the province of Ontario.

And all the COVID restriction rules were cast aside for that specific protest, and even the police officers on the ground, the vast majority of them, took a knee when the protesters demanded that they take a knee. I can only remember one on the ground that I saw that didn’t. And yet, if you contrast that with the actions of the police during the clearing of the Freedom Convoy, there were protesters who did nothing more than just stand there and allow themselves to be pushed back, who ended up being assaulted by the police.

Shawn Buckley

Why do you think the police exhibited this behavior?

Daniel Bulford

In regards to the BLM protest or the Freedom Convoy clearing?

Shawn Buckley

No, no. In the Freedom Convoy. I don’t know if you’re aware, but we watched a video of a decorated veteran at the war memorial. The veterans had told the police there that they were not going to be violent, they were not going to resist, but they were not leaving. This veteran was actually a wounded veteran, and we watched the police throw this decorated, wounded Canadian war veteran to the ground and then start kicking him.

This video was provided to us by Tom Marazzo. I think I can speak for most Canadians that in watching what happened, we were shocked. And we didn’t understand how it would be that police officers in Canada could be engaging in that type of conduct, and I’m wondering if you can comment.

Daniel Bulford

Well, I’m aware of that video as well. It’s Chris Deering in the video, and he testified at the Public Order Emergency Commission. There’s two things that I think may have contributed to that, based on tactics that I saw during the clearing of the Freedom Convoy.

I suspect, somewhere in the briefing process, police officers on the ground were led to believe that protesters may be armed and violent even though that was clearly not the case. But, I mean, we saw a lot of that type of rhetoric being used in the lead-up to the clearing of the Freedom Convoy including from Interim Chief Steve Bell from the Ottawa Police Service at the time.

And then, coupled with the large amount of people that were at the Freedom Convoy protest when the police were taking action

[00:45:00]

to clear the people and to clear the roads. I think there were probably some police there that were pretty scared at what might happen if the crowd had decided to turn, even though the crowd never really gave any indication that they were going to.

And so I think that kind of comes down quite often to a lack of, maybe a lack of training or a lack of experience, when they overreact based out of fear. We saw the leaked WhatsApp messages that were being circulated amongst RCMP officers who were staying at the Fairmont Hotel, talking about jack boots on the ground and wanting to practice their maneuvers with the horses after seeing the video of the person being trampled-so there’s also likely some that probably enjoyed using that level of force against the Freedom Convoy protesters.

Shawn Buckley

Right. Now, you and I had dialogue before your testimony, and you sent me an interesting paragraph that I’m going to read where you’re defining what the problem is, and so I’m going to read this paragraph and then ask your thoughts on basically the way out of this. But you sent me a paragraph where you wrote, “The major concern for me, after a long period of reflection, isn’t so much the disgust of what the government did to drive a wedge between people and dehumanize millions of Canadians for political gain, it’s the fact that so many people went along with it, either actively cheering on the authoritarianism or keeping silently safe, even when they knew it was wrong.” And I’m wondering if you can explain that to us, and if you have any suggestions on how we get out of this and do this better, we’d certainly appreciate them.

Daniel Bulford

Yeah, well, I think that’s the biggest issue I’m trying to reconcile personally right now. My wife and I are trying to determine where we’re going to make our next permanent home. We’ve left the Ottawa Valley, and, I’ll be frank, I’m not sure if Canada feels like home anymore. There’s a lot of people that have said things to me in private or when it’s safe to do so like, “Oh, thanks for doing what you’re doing,” and “Thanks for standing up for us,” but they remain silent. That’s a hard pill to swallow for us because, you know, a few took a vocal stand and sacrificed everything, like their careers and their relationships and were completely ostracized by their communities, and even people who were supportive-the silent majority is what I refer to there.

There’s a lot of people who know what happened was wrong, but they just went along with it. And that’s exactly what has gone wrong throughout history when authoritarian systems of government have rose to power. It’s because so few people refused to say or do anything, even when they knew it was morally unjust and it was wrong.

I guess my only real practical solutions that I can think of is: tell the truth. If something is wrong and you feel that it’s wrong and you know that it’s wrong, say it. Yes, it takes courage. Yes, it’s hard to do because you’re afraid of what might happen to your reputation. But when you don’t, every time you actively suppress what you believe the truth to be, a little bit of you dies, and I think you feel like a coward. And I knew that’s how I would feel if I just went along with this.

Make yourself as financially independent from government as you can, so that you’re not so vulnerable to future restrictions and mandates and just, along with telling the truth, it’s do not comply with something that you know is unjust, undemocratic.

I mean, the vitriol in the language that we saw directed at unvaccinated Canadians because people were still operating under the false assumption that to take the vaccine was to protect other people.

[00:50:00]

It was false: admittedly false. That it didn’t prevent infection, and it didn’t prevent transmission. Yet people in our mainstream media and our government still kept pushing that agenda. And people went along with it, and no one said anything when people were forced out of their jobs, when people were arrested for not showing a vax passport at a hockey rink just because they wanted to watch their kid play hockey. No one said, or I shouldn’t say no one, but very few people said or did anything. I guess all that to say people need to learn how to stand up for themselves; have some courage.

Shawn Buckley

Thank you, Danny. Those are my questions. I’m going to turn you over to the commissioners and ask them if they have any questions for you, and they do.

Commissioner Massie

Thank you very much for your very courageous stand you took in this crisis and your testimony. Do you have any training in science or medical practices before you started to investigate this thing?

Daniel Bulford

No. No, I just, and I’ve said that many times, I’m not a doctor, I’m not a scientist, but I know what good quality evidence looks like compared to no evidence, and so that’s how I made my assessment. You know, you need a certain quantity of evidence to support a decision and a quality of evidence and so when I was making my assessment from the official sources, I found nothing but general vague statements without any significant information to back up what they were saying to support their talking points.

And yet when I found these other doctors and scientists who were being censored, they would provide detailed, high-quality information. They were highly qualified and they would always, always source and reference the documentation or the studies that were supporting what they were saying.

Commissioner Massie

So how hard was it and how long does it take to educate yourself to a level that you feel comfortable to raise questions or at least try to communicate to your colleagues or authority that there was something that was unusual, let’s put it this way?

Daniel Bulford

I would estimate I probably spent at least three months looking, for myself, before I started to kind of have debate-style conversations with colleagues.

Commissioner Massie

And given your background and education, do you think that what you’ve done is something that is also accessible to other people in the general population? Or do you have a special way of looking at a situation that gives you this ability to self-educate yourself on an area where it’s completely outside your expertise?

Daniel Bulford

No, there’s nothing special about my abilities. It’s just how I was trained, that when you investigate something, you are trained to look at both sides of the story. That’s what I was taught right from the very most basic call I would respond to as a general duty officer: there’s always two sides to a story. And so it’s very accessible.

Every time I spoke publicly, I always referenced my highest quality sources of information that were free for anyone in the public, anyone who listened, to go look at for themselves. I think it just came down to a willingness to look. It’s not that I had any kind of special investigator abilities; it was just a willingness to look and to actually try and read, have the patience and the determination to look and take the time to educate myself.

Commissioner Massie

Did you experience pushback from people surrounding you that you were talking about something you had no training or expertise to really raise questions about the issue?

Daniel Bulford

Some, yes, not in a malicious way, but there’d be conversations where it’d be like, “Well, my siblings are in healthcare and they say that we need to get this vaccine,” or “the unvaccinated people are the most likely to produce variants,”

[00:55:00]

which I believe a doctor like Byram Bridle could also refute.

And I mean, the problem was that the real debate amongst the qualified professionals wasn’t being allowed to happen but I know I had other people say things to me like, “What, you think the FDA is lying?” And I said, “Yes.” Specifically, regarding the suppression of the ability for ivermectin, for example, to be used as an early treatment drug.

Commissioner Massie

Do you think given the magnitude of this sort of information that was communicated to the population that people just couldn’t believe that they could actually be deceived at such a large scale, and that’s the reason why they were probably just folding back on their intention to ask questions or to question the authority because it was so big, and it was all over the world?

Daniel Bulford

Yeah, I will accept that that is likely a major factor, I’ll say for the general public. I don’t think that’s acceptable for police officers; we are trained to look for evidence.

Commissioner Massie

Thank you very much.

Commissioner Kaikkonen

Thank you for your testimony. For those of us who rely on police security clearance and background checks for working with vulnerable populations and youth, for example, how would you reconcile that one’s entire historical background and their life experiences can be eradicated by an authority figure’s stroke of a pen or, as you alluded to, for speaking publicly?

Daniel Bulford

Well, it’s had a major impact on my professional future. I’m pretty much essentially blacklisted for ever pursuing a similar career in Canada or even in the private sector abroad. Specifically, after the CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] published an article claiming that an OPP [Ontario Provincial Police] report had documented information from the RCMP that it was believed that I had leaked the Prime Minister’s schedule months before the Freedom Convoy, which is a complete lie.

But, now that it’s out in the public sphere, they take your security clearance, that’s a major strike against me if I was to try and pursue private sector employment in security and intelligence. And with that article, it’s very damaging, I have to completely start over essentially, in a completely new field.

Commissioner Kaikkonen

And we’ve all heard commentary from different people, not just your colleagues, who allude to just moving on with our lives. Do they really believe that this is a move on from your life if you allow what has happened to stand without question?

Daniel Bulford

I think, for many, the desire to just stay in the comfort zone supersedes the desire to know the actual truth.

Commissioner Kaikkonen

Thank you.

Commissioner Drysdale

Good morning. Thank you for your testimony this morning. I am trying to understand a little bit about what’s going on in the RCMP. In your testimony, you talked about your father’s, I think you said 38 years of service. Your brother is in the service, or was, in the service, and you had 15 years in the service. You also talked about a proud day that you had when you graduated, and I think you used the term Red Serge, and I could still feel that pride in you, believe it or not. Can you tell me, you know the military, the RCMP, a lot of what they do and a lot of what their culture is based on honor, it’s based on tradition. Can you tell me who, as an RCMP officer when you graduated, who did you swear allegiance to? Was it the Canadian people?

Daniel Bulford

Our oath is three parts: the Oath of Office, the Oath of Allegiance, which is to the Crown,

[01:00:00]

and the Oath of Secrecy. The Oath of Office includes the oath you’re swearing to apply the law equally to every citizen without fear or favour. You don’t specifically swear an oath to the Charter or to the Constitution like other police services do.

Commissioner Drysdale

The RCMP, one of their main focuses or one of their main duties is to investigate crime and report it, is it not?

Daniel Bulford

Yes.

Commissioner Drysdale

At what point are the RCMP compelled to investigate a crime? Let me help you out with that. The reason I’m asking that is because in your testimony, you talked about a number of things. You talked about whether something may be manslaughter or worse. So that made me think that if you’re saying that, and we’ve heard a lot of testimony about it, we’ve heard testimony about breaches of ethics, we’ve heard testimony about people being coerced to do things, it’s almost sounding like there was an organized crime committing in Canada. And yet you said the RCMP didn’t act, or you don’t believe that they’ve investigated, so my question is when are the RCMP compelled to act and launch an investigation?

Daniel Bulford

For something of this magnitude, and as sensitive as it is because it would involve investigating government, I don’t know if I can provide a clear answer to that. But my impression is that an investigation will take place when the political will exists for one to take place.

Commissioner Drysdale

If the Canadian public can’t turn to our federal police force, the RCMP, who can they turn to?

Daniel Bulford

I don’t know. I’ve said before that if the police didn’t go along with this, none of this would have happened. If the police didn’t agree to enforce these restrictions, then none of these, the Freedom Convoy, none of this would have had to occur. I think I’m somewhat hopeful, you know, skeptical optimism, that maybe the Supreme Court will be the last stand.

Commissioner Drysdale

You used a terminology a couple of times that I just wanted to briefly talk to you about. You used the term open-source investigation.

Daniel Bulford

Mm-hmm.

Commissioner Drysdale

I’ve heard that terminology used in policing, and can you briefly tell me what open-source investigation might mean?

Daniel Bulford

It’s just gathering intelligence or gathering evidence from sources that are publicly available. So quite often it’s from media outlets or government websites, social media. You just basically mine information from what’s available in the public sphere. So it’s open source. It’s not closed in. It’s not protected information that’s encrypted or anything like that or that would be confined within a specific organization. It’s all publicly available information if you just go looking for it.

Commissioner Drysdale

So it’s information that’s available in the public, if I’m hearing you correctly, for instance Facebook posts, those kinds of things. Can you comment on what kind of an effect it might have if the Canadian people believe that the RCMP is monitoring and data mining all of their social media; what kind of effect might that have on the people’s perception of freedom of speech?

Daniel Bulford

Well, I think we fall into the same issue that we saw throughout the last three years. In that there are some people that will be very concerned and very outspoken about it, and there will be other people that choose to ignore it

[01:05:00]

because they don’t feel it directly impacts them.

But my concern is we keep seeing these incremental steps of invasions of our privacy and our fundamental rights. If we continue to just concede and act like, “Well, it’s no big deal, it’s no big deal. It’s just, I have nothing to hide.” I’ve even been guilty of that myself in the past, “I have nothing to hide. I don’t care if they monitor what I say.” Eventually we’ll get to a place where the authoritarianism will impact you.

Commissioner Drysdale

One of the reasons I asked that question is because I believe you made a comment with regard to how the upper management of the RCMP are very smart at targeting members and putting pressure on them; I’m sure I haven’t got your words quite right, but that was the general gist of it. So in your opinion, is it not possible that these same people are using the intimidation of RCMP open source investigations into chilling the public discourse in our country?

Daniel Bulford

Well, yeah, I think that’s definitely possible. People will self-censor themselves to avoid attracting attention.

Commissioner Drysdale

You know, that is one of the most chilling things that I’ve heard you say in your testimony, and I know I don’t want to minimize what your family has gone through, but that our federal police force, potentially, is having a chilling effect on the exchange of freedoms and exchange of ideas in our country. And that citizens are thinking twice about what their police might be doing. Of course, they’re not calling it investigations, they’re calling it open-source investigations. To me that sounds very similar to a lot of other things we’ve heard renamed over the last two years, you know, relative versus absolute, and I have a list of them that I’ve asked other witnesses prior to you.  In any case, that must be frightening for you and to all other Canadians.  Can you comment on that just a little bit?

Daniel Bulford

Well, I know that’s why we, as a family, are actively looking for a new home. I don’t know. My job earlier in this was to try and raise awareness amongst police officers; that was my goal, was to raise the alarm. I worked with many people, I know many people within the RCMP and other police services. I was hopeful that if they saw me speaking out about my concerns and providing sources of information that they could go look for themselves to corroborate what I was saying for themselves, that it would rally enough police to take a stand against what was happening in Canada, and it didn’t work.

Commissioner Drysdale

Is there a point where a police officer’s inaction becomes a crime?

Daniel Bulford

Yeah. Yeah, there’d be a- well, definitely, within the RCMP Code of Conduct you can be disciplined for neglect of duty.

Commissioner Drysdale

Has the RCMP neglected their duty?

Daniel Bulford

I believe they have. Yes.

Commissioner Drysdale

Thank you, sir.

Shawn Buckley

I believe that is all the questions that we have for you. Danny, on behalf of the National Citizens Inquiry we sincerely thank you for joining us today and giving us your testimony.

Daniel Bulford

Thank you very much for having me.

[01:09:42]

Final Review and Approval:  Anna Cairns, August 30, 2023.   

The evidence offered in this transcript is a true and faithful record of witness testimony given during the National Citizens Inquiry (NCI) hearings. The transcript was prepared by members of a team of volunteers using an “intelligent verbatim” transcription method.

For further information on the transcription process, method, and team, see the NCI website: https://nationalcitizensinquiry.ca/about-these-transcripts/

Credentials

• Former RCMP corporal for 15 years

Summary

Daniel Bulford is a former RCMP corporal. His last eight years of service was on the Emergency Services Support Team protecting the Prime Minister of Canada.

Mr. Bulford described the progression of his disillusionment with RCMP senior management over his 15-year career, culminating in the Freedom Convoy and COVID enforcement, the testimony from the RCMP commissioner for the Mass Shooting Commission in Nova Scotia, and her testimony for the Public Order Emergency Commission regarding the Emergencies Act. He no longer trusts that RCMP senior management will apply the law equally to everyone in Canada.

As a result of his own research, Mr. Bulford concluded that he was not in a high-risk category for COVID. He was therefore surprised when his unit was prioritized for the vaccines. This led to further research, both from conventional sources and from so-called anti-vaxxer sites. His older brother, also a member of the RCMP, had an adverse reaction to his vaccinations.

As federal mandates were being discussed and implemented, Mr. Bulford attempted to raise awareness of the contradictory information about the safety and efficacy of the COVID vaccinations, but his attempts were in vain. He described senior RCMP officers as being in one of three categories: those who didn’t agree that anyone should be forced to take the vaccine, but would not do or say anything; those who thought vaccination was absolutely necessary and that anyone who didn’t take it wasn’t doing their civic duty; and those who just wanted to “move on.”

As Mr. Bulford’s opposition to mandated vaccinations grew more public, he lost his security clearance and knew that his RCMP career was essentially over. He officially resigned in December 2021.

Mr. Bulford discussed the censorship of other dissenting voices. He detailed the case of Ottawa Police Service detective Helen Grus who is facing disciplinary charges for her investigation into a spike in SIDS, possibly related to the COVID vaccinations. He is not aware of any police investigation into anything regarding COVID restrictions and mandates. He contrasted the treatment of Freedom Convoy protestors with BLM protestors in his assertion that there is a double standard for certain types of protests and certain types of protestors.

Mr. Bulford discussed the events of the Freedom Convoy. He believes that police officers were led to believe that protestors were armed and violent. He expressed concern over how easy it was to drive a wedge between Canadians over vaccinations, where some were supportive of the actions taken against protestors, and others were simply silent about it, even if they thought it was wrong.

He encourages Canadians to tell the truth, regardless of the potential outcome; make themselves as financially independent from government as possible.